What's
Wrong With My Website?
by Michael Southon
I ask myself that question
about once a month. My website looks fine to me, but what are
other people seeing? And what are the Search Enginesseeing?
Here's a checklist of 10 ways to optimize your website for peak
performance:
1. Browser Compatibility
The first thing is to look at
your website through other people's browsers. I do this
regularly and I've sometimes been shocked at what I saw!
ANYBROWSERhttp://www.anybrowser.com
2. Broken Links
About 5% of all links on the
Internet are broken. A site that contains broken links gives a
bad impression to visitors and is a frequent cause of lost
sales .Also, the major Search Engines and Directories will
not list your page if it contains any broken links or
missing images.
Here are some free link
validators:
LINK SCAN http://www.elsop.com/linkscan/quickcheck.html
NET MECHANIC http://www.netmechanic.com/maintain.htm
WEBSITE GARAGE DEADLINK
CHECK http://websitegarage.netscape.com/O=wsg/tuneup_plus/index.html
3. Web Safe Colors
Are the colors on your web
site displaying properly on other people's browsers? You may
have a beautiful shade of lilac on your index page but it could
look very strange on someone else's computer.
There are only 216 colors
that you can safely use on the Web. These colors display solid
and consistent on any computer monitor or web browser that is
able to display at least 8-bit color.
The Web Safe Palette contains
six groups of colors with 36 colors per group. These 216 web
safe colors can have any combination of the following RGB (RedGreen
Blue) values: 0, 51, 102, 153, 204, 255 (each RGB value must be
divisible by 51).
Here's a good palette of web
safe colors:
WEB-SOURCE SAFE COLORS http://www.web-source.net/216_color_chart.htm
4. ALT Tags
ALT Tags allow you to give an
alternative to people who have the 'view images' function
turned off in their browser. Let's say the navigation system on
your website is a series of buttons that link to other pages on
your site. If you don't have ALT Tags, people who have the
'view images' function turned off will be unable to navigate
through your site - in place of your button they will just see
an empty space.
But an ALT Tag allows you to
tell those people what that button does. For example, if the
button is a link to your 'Site Map' you could insert the
following ALT Tag:
ALT Tags also allow you to
raise your keyword density .For every image that is not
hyperlinked you could insert your main keywords. For example:
5. Meta Tags
Meta Tags are so important
they deserve a whole article on their own. The most important
Meta Tags are the Title Tag, the Keywords Tag and the
Description Tag.
The Title Tag should be no
more than 64 characters (longer than that and it will be cut
off in some Search Engines).
The Keyword Tag should
contain about 5 to 10 keywords that appear on your page. Never
include words that do not appear on that page - in some Search
Engines your website will be penalized for this. Do not repeat
the same keyword - this is called 'keyword stuffing' and is
also frowned upon by the Search Engines.
Separate your keywords with
spaces (not commas). This allows the Search Engines to combine
your keywords into phrases ,for people who do 'phrase
searching'.
The Description Tag should be
no more than 200 characters. Include as many of your keywords
as you can. Remember also that your Description Tag must be
enticing - it must make people want to visit your site.
Here are some programs that
will generate your MetaTags for you:
WEBSITE GARAGEhttp://websitegarage.netscape.com/turbocharge/metatag/
META MEDIChttp://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html
MULTI-META-MAKERhttp://www.multimeta.com/tools/multimetamaker.html
6. Load Time
A slow-loading index page is
one of the main reasons for lost sales. The generally accepted
maximum time for a page to load is around 15 seconds. Here is
a free service that tells you how long your web page takes to
load:
NETMECHANIC http://www.netmechanic.com/cobrands/FutureQuest/load_check.htm
Your pages should be no more
than about 30Kb in size. To calculate the size of your web
page, highlight the HTML document and then click on 'File'
and' Properties' and note down the file size. Then do the same
for any graphics you have on that page. Then add those figures
together to get your page size.
If your page is less than
30Kb and takes more than 15seconds to load, the problem is
most likely with your web host. The solution is to change web
host. Here are2 services that will check the speed of your web
host's server and compare it with other web hosts:
HOST COMPAREhttp://www.hostcompare.com/testtools.htm
CNET WEBSERVICEShttp://webservices.cnet.com/ping/
7. GIF (or JPEG) Cruncher
Shrinking the size of your
images is one of the best ways to get a faster-loading web
page. You can usually reduce a GIF or JPEG image by 40% to 50%
without losing any significant definition or sharpness.
SPINWAVEhttp://www.spinwave.com/crunchers.html
8. HTML Optimizer
Another way to make your page
load faster is to compress (or optimize) your HTML code. An
HTML Optimizer removes all blank spaces in your HTML code and
also removes certain unnecessary tags.
On average, an HTML optimizer
will reduce the size of your page by 15% to 20%. That
percentage may not seem much, but the saving in load time is
much higher, as your visitor's browser will parse your page
much more efficiently.
A word of caution: in most
HTML Optimizers you will find an 'Options' menu that tells the
program to ignore certain parts of your code. Make sure
your Optimizer does not compress embedded script tags - if they
get compressed, the script will usually not work.
ADVANCED HTML OPTIMIZER http://www.pcbit.com/htmlopt/
9. WIDTH, HEIGHT and BORDER
Tags
The WIDTH, HEIGHT and BORDER
attributes are essential for each image that you have on your
website. When you hyperlink an image, always make sure that the
BORDER attribute is set to zero (BORDER=0). If you don't do this,
your hyperlinked image will have an ugly blue border around it.
The WIDTH and HEIGHT
attributes allow your page to load faster, as the browser knows
in advance how much space the image requires. To find out the
width and height of any image, just double click on the image
file. This will automatically open 'Microsoft Photo Editor' -
your image will appear, with the width and height of your image
(in pixels) displayed on the tool bar.
10. HTML Validator
Always check the validity of
your HTML. Some SearchEngines give lower rankings to pages
that have poorquality HTML (such as incorrect nesting of
elements).
Here are some free online
validators:
HTML HELPhttp://www.htmlhelp.org/tools/validator/
BOBBYhttp://www.cast.org/bobby/
WATSONhttp://watson.addy.com/
Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3
years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this
simple technique to build a successful online business.
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