What's
Wrong With My Website?
What's Wrong With My Website?
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 Engines seeing? 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!
ANYBROWSER http://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 (Red Green 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 Meta Tags for you:
WEBSITE GARAGE http://websitegarage.netscape.com/turbocharge/metatag/
META MEDIC http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html
MULTI-META-MAKER http://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 15 seconds to
load, the problem is most likely with your web host. The solution
is to change web host. Here are 2 services that will check the speed
of your web host's server and compare it with other web hosts:
HOST COMPARE http://www.hostcompare.com/testtools.htm
CNET WEBSERVICES http://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.
SPINWAVE http://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 Search Engines give
lower rankings to pages that have poor quality HTML (such as incorrect
nesting of elements).
Here are some free online validators:
http://www.htmlhelp.org/tools/validator/
http://www.cast.org/bobby/
http://watson.addy.com/
About the Author 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 get massive free
publicity and dramatically increase traffic and sales. Click here
to find out more: http://www.ezine-writer.com
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