Michael J Byers

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is all about improving your website to increase quality traffic from a search engine through organic search results. Organic search results are the links that are not adverts on the search engine results page.

The good thing about organic results is that you don't have to pay for them to be there (unless you pay an SEO company to get them there!).

The higher up a link appears the better the rank, resulting in more traffic to that website.

Optimising Content

Optimising a website properly involves editing the HTML and the contents. The HTML should use web standards and accessibility standards while the content should include relevant keywords. The text of internal links (links to other pages on your website) should be descriptive like "Accessible Websites" and not "click here". The file names should also be descriptive and it is usually best to use the page title as the file name. Something like "accessible-websites.htm" is much better at improving your search engine listing than "aw1.htm".

Make sure the content is understandable to your visitors. Don't go repeating the same keywords over and over on the page. This will just annoy your visitors as well as the search engines who could mark your site down. A bad example might be:

"Promote your website with my Website Promotion techniques. Website Promotion will boost your page rankings. With Website Promotion I can drive more traffic."

By having the same keywords "Website Promotion" so close together search engines realise you are trying to inflate your ranking by overusing the same keywords. A better example that is much easier for the visitor to read and at the same time uses relevant and related keywords might be:

"Using my Website Promotion techniques I can improve your website. It will boost your page rankings and drive more traffic to your website."

Page Titles Are Important

Use unique page titles, meta descriptions and meta keywords. Ensure that the keywords used appear on the page. Make sure your page title contains the most important keywords and correctly describes the page.

Follow The Search Engine Guidelines

Most importantly when using SEO always ensure you follow the guidelines of the search engines. Otherwise you could lose rankings or be delisted from the search engine entirely.

Constant SEO

SEO is something that needs to be constantly monitored. You can't do it once and leave it. It is an ongoing process of improving your content, modifying keywords and checking your page rank. Organic search results offer the best Return on Investment but for promotions or short term traffic boosts then paid advertising can be better. Although a combination of both can work extremely well.

PR: wait...  I: wait...  L: wait...  LD: wait...  I: wait... wait...  Rank: wait...  Traffic: wait...  Price: wait...  CY: wait...  I: wait...  L: wait...  YCat: wait...  I: wait...  Top: wait...  I: wait...  L: wait...  C: wait...

Accessibility, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO services, Website Promotion google, accessibility, page rankings, search engine optimisation, website promotion

Don't force a new window on users unless there is a very good reason to do so. Here are some reasons why you should not open links in a new window:

• Opening links in a new window is disrespectful to your visitors. If they want the link to open in a new window they'll do it themselves.
• Unless you warn them, they will expect the link to open in the current window.
• It resets the browsers back button which is highly used in navigation.
• A new broswer window adds to the taskbar giving the user even more programs on the taskbar.
• It confuses or disorientates visually impaired or novice web users.

The only time I would use a new window was on a form to link to Help for the form or for the Privacy Policy related to the form. That way when the user is completing the form they are not taken away from the form to read the help or privacy policy.

Accessibility, Usability accessibility

For an accessible web form one of the requirements is that input fields require explicit descriptions. The "for" attribute in the label element must be associated to the input id.

With Visual Studio this can be difficult to achieve. When using master pages Visual Studio renames the ids of the of the input fields to ensure they are unique within the master page. This means that the label tags are no longer associated with input fields.

To resolve this issue give the labels an id and runat="server" then in the Page Load put

This fixes the accessibility issue of input fields having labels associated with them.

.Net, Accessibility .net, accessibility

Ensuring your website conforms to the W3C Accessibility standards is difficult. Here is a list of some online/freely available accessibility tools that may help:

• TAW (Web Accessibility Test) is a tool for the analysis of Web sites, based on the W3C - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0)
• Webagogo (currently being redeveloped - so keep checking back)
• WAVE is a free web accessibility evaluation tool provided by WebAIM

Automated tools like these won't give you a perfect result but are great for getting your website to an acceptable level of accessibility. Make your website accessible.

Accessibility accessibility

net-guide is an accessible search engine promoting the accessibility rating of each website.

Whilst many search engines are easy to use for people with visual impairments, mobility issues, learning difficulties and other issues that impact on using a website, this is not necessarily true of the sites returned in the results. It is estimated that as many as 86% of websites present barriers to some or all of these user groups. Continually visiting websites that are not accessible can be a very frustrating experience.

net-guide is a search engine that gives an accessibility rating for every website returned for a search. Similarly, the directory entries also carry an accessibility rating.

Visit net-guide for more information.

Accessibility, Usability, Website Promotion accessibility, website promotion

I am currently improving the South Ayrshire Council website to meet at least the Double A accessibility standards. You will find that I have even surpassed that on many pages by making them Triple A compliant. Using XHTML web standards along with accessibility standards I have improved page performance and made the converted pages more accessible to users. Through Search Engine Optimisation techniques I have also improved the page rankings.

The updated pages are being built with ASP.NET using VB.NET.

More About South Ayrshire

South Ayrshire is an ideal base for family holidays. Long stretches of sandy beach, superb sports and recreational facilities and entertainment have helped make Ayr one of Britain's premier coastal resorts. Troon is also a popular holiday resort with its soft sandy award-winning beach overlooking the Isle of Arran. The towns esplanade offers various facilities for families including crazy golf and putting. Girvan is proud of its reputation for floral attractions and colourful displays which are situated in many parts of the town and include the Rose Gardens, Knockcushan Gardens and Orchard Gardens. The town is also a good base for exploring on foot or by bike the Carrick Forest and the many picturesque villages of the surrounding Carrick area.

From Burns Cottage to Culzean Castle, South Ayrshire is full of history and culture. The leisure is not too bad either! Play on some of the best golf courses in Scotland along with the world famous Royal Troon and Turnberry. Given its coastal location, there are also plenty of opportunities to take to the water for fun. Troons bustling harbour is a magnet for anglers, sightseers and yachting enthusiasts who can enjoy the first-class facilities of the Troon Yacht Haven, one of the Clyde's leading sailing centres. Sea-angling trips operate from Ayr as does the world's last sea-going paddle steamer PS Waverley which takes cruisers on trips down the Firth of Clyde during the summer.

.Net, Accessibility, General, SEO services, Usability south ayrshire council, accessibility, search engine optimisation, .net