A client recently asked me if we could get sitelinks for our site in Google. I mentioned google sitelinks back in my series on Google Webmaster Tools (Part 4, specifically), but it was time for a closer look.

Just how does Google decide to put sitelinks on certain sites in their search results?

Well, as usual with Google, they don’t really tell you. Google says that the sitelinks are automatically generated using a secret algorithm. They are designed to help users find what they want on the site without having to click down into the site. (more…)

By Karen Morrill-McClure

Where to start in a review of a book that’s over 900 pages long? Hard to say.

Maybe I should start with what I was looking for. I’m not a complete beginner with PHP, I’ve been using it on my sites for several years now and I’m starting to write more complicated web applications using both PHP and MySQL. I’ve mostly used online resources to learn about PHP and MySQL. I have one old resource book, a 2001 PHP and MySQL Web Development manual from SAMS. (more…)

By Karen Morrill-McClure

Recently I got sucked into this situation: a client asked for a quick estimate on a catalog site. I gave a quick, off the cuff estimate, assuming just a home page, listing the products for sale, and an individual page for each product, driven by a database of all the products. I’ve made a couple of sites like this, using Paypal to take orders. They’re pretty easy to set up and they work well for a simple online store.

The client said go ahead, so I asked some questions about who the audience of the site was (and didn’t get real firm answers, which should have been a warning sign in itself). I make a rough layout and send it to the client and get back some notes on the layout talking about customer sign in.

What? (more…)

Building Findable Websites
Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond by Aarron Walter

I just read the excellent book, Building Findable Websites, and it truly is the book I’ve been searching for over the last couple of years. I’ve been interested in search engines and how they work for a long time and I’ve been dismayed with the emphasis on Search Engine Optimization over other methods of building findability. This book serves as a great introduction to findability and is chock full of how-to’s and how-not-to’s. (more…)

Findability and Search Engine Optimization have been on my mind lately (and on everyone else’s I suppose). Some SEO experts seem to look at the whole thing as a game that you win by getting your page ranked number one on a search result with particular keywords.

I do appreciate that search engine ranking is a concrete result (for that moment in time, at least) and it’s easy to point to (look, we rank number 2 for this keyword). I feel a certain satisfaction when a client’s site ranks high on the keywords we are targeting.

But it seems like the SEO experts (and their clients) often see the search engine (most usually Google) as the enemy, something to beat or trick.

There’s one big problem with this view. (more…)

Well, really I mean when users’ needs conflict. How do you design a site that meets the needs of two different groups of users? Mostly I run into this with the sites I create for non-profit organizations.

Who are the two groups of users?

One group is the people that the organization helps. These are the ones I think of first and foremost and I try to design an easy to navigate site with lots of good information for them. This group often has some technology limitations (face it, most non-profits aren’t helping the folks in Beverly Hills with fios internet connections and the latest desktop computer). So, I make my pages lightweight and fast loading, I try to limit the graphics, and I keep in mind older computers and monitors. (more…)

I recently switched web hosts for a client. I hate switching hosts, but it seems like a lot of hosts that start out great (good price, good customer service) hit a certain size and then go down hill rapidly. I’ve had that experience with Frogee and now with Midphase.

So, I looked at the site, checked what email addresses we needed and what services we needed, then tried to figure out the best way to do this switch with no downtime. In theory, I could switch them over without visitors even noticing, but having accounts at both hosts, so that the web files would be up in both places, when the DNS (domain name server) switched from pointing to the files at Midphase and pointed instead to the files at Network Solutions, no one but me and the DNS server would notice the difference. (more…)

If you’ve looked around in Google’s Webmaster Tools (See Part 4 of my series of posts on the tools), you’ll see where you can upload your sitemap file for your web site.
Now, if you’re an inquisitive person like me, you might be asking yourself some questions, namely:
What are Sitemaps? What does the sitemap do for you? Do you need one?
In this post I will address these questions and hopefully provide satisfactory answers for them. (more…)

Checking on the incoming links to my blog one day, I found a link to a photo from one of my posts. I was surprised to see that another blog was using my photo in one of their posts. They didn’t give any credit to me for the photo, though they did link back to it.

I spent some time trying to figure out how they’d found that photo to use and didn’t come up with any firm answers. I even emailed the blog writer, but got no response. It did open my eyes a bit to something I know can be a problem: people taking the images on your web site and using them elsewhere. (more…)

Earlier this week, I began my final installment of this series about Google’s Webmaster Tools with a discussion of the robot.txt file, geographic targeting and the enhanced image search capability. Today, we’ll delve even deeper into the Tools Section. I’ll talk about site verification, crawl rates and preferred domains, and I’ll also tell you how to remove URLs from the Google search index. Enjoy!

Manage Site Verification

Anyone with a Google account and FTP access to your site can verify the site and view its stats using Google’s Webmaster Tools. Here you can see who has verified the sits, so at least you’ll know who’s checking up on you.

Set Crawl Rate

There are two reasons why you might want to adjust Google’s crawl rate: either it’s crawling your site too often and eating up your bandwidth, or it isn’t crawling often enough, meaning your updates aren’t accurately reflected in the current search results.

On this page you can request that Google adjust the rate at which it crawls your site. The change isn’t guaranteed, but at least you’ve done all you can.

Set Preferred Domain

Most sites can be reached via URLs with or without the www prefix. For example, www.tridivas.com and tridivas.com both take you to the same place. If you prefer one address (more…)