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A web standards checklist

The term web standards can mean different things to different people. For some, it is ‘table-free sites’, for others it is ‘using valid code’. However, web standards are much broader than that. A site built to web standards should adhere to standards (HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSLT, DOM, MathML, SVG etc) and pursue best practices (valid code, accessible code, semantically correct code, user-friendly URLs etc).

In other words, a site built to web standards should ideally be lean, clean, CSS-based, accessible, usable and search engine friendly.

About the checklist

This is not an uber-checklist. There are probably many items that could be added. More importantly, it should not be seen as a list of items that must be addressed on every site that you develop. It is simply a guide that can be used:

- to show the breadth of web standards
- as a handy tool for developers during the production phase of websites
- as an aid for developers who are interested in moving towards web standards

The checklist

1.Quality of code
a. Does the site use a correct Doctype?
b. Does the site use a Character set?
c. Does the site use Valid (X)HTML?
d. Does the site use Valid CSS?
e. Does the site use any CSS hacks?
f. Does the site use unnecessary classes or ids?
g. Is the code well structured?
h. Does the site have any broken links?
i. How does the site perform in terms of speed/page size?
j. Does the site have JavaScript errors?

2. Degree of separation between content and presentation
a. Does the site use CSS for all presentation aspects (fonts, colour, padding, borders etc)?
b. Are all decorative images in the CSS, or do they appear in the (X)HTML?

3. Accessibility for users
a. Are “alt” attributes used for all descriptive images?
b. Does the site use relative units rather than absolute units for text size?
c. Do any aspects of the layout break if font size is increased?
d. Does the site use visible skip menus?
e. Does the site use accessible forms?
f. Does the site use accessible tables?
g. Is there sufficient colour brightness/contrasts?
h. Is colour alone used for critical information?
i. Is there delayed responsiveness for dropdown menus (for users with reduced motor skills)?
j. Are all links descriptive (for blind users)?

4. Accessibility for devices
a. Does the site work acceptably across modern and older browsers?
b. Is the content accessible with CSS switched off or not supported?
c. Is the content accessible with images switched off or not supported?
d. Does the site work in text browsers such as Lynx?
e. Does the site work well when printed?
f. Does the site work well in Hand Held devices?
g. Does the site include detailed metadata?
h. Does the site work well in a range of browser window sizes?

5. Basic Usability
a. Is there a clear visual hierarchy?
b. Are heading levels easy to distinguish?
c. Does the site have easy to understand navigation?
d. Does the site use consistent navigation?
e. Are links underlined?
f. Does the site use consistent and appropriate language?
g. Do you have a sitemap page and contact page? Are they easy to find?
h. For large sites, is there a search tool?
i. Is there a link to the home page on every page in the site?
j. Are visited links clearly defined with a unique colour?

6. Site management
a. Does the site have a meaningful and helpful 404 error page that works from any depth in the site?
b. Does the site use friendly URLs?
c. Do your URLs work without “www”?
d. Does the site have a favicon?

1. Quality of code

1.1 Does the site use a correct Doctype?
A doctype (short for ‘document type declaration’) informs the validator which version of (X)HTML you’re using, and must appear at the very top of every web page. Doctypes are a key component of compliant web pages: your markup and CSS won’t validate without them.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/doctype/

More:

http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html

http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/about-boxmodel.htm

http://gutfeldt.ch/matthias/articles/doctypeswitch.html

1.2 Does the site use a Character set?
If a user agent (eg. a browser) is unable to detect the character encoding used in a Web document, the user may be presented with unreadable text. This information is particularly important for those maintaining and extending a multilingual site, but declaring the character encoding of the document is important for anyone producing XHTML/HTML or CSS.

http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/

More:

http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset.html

1.3 Does the site use Valid (X)HTML?
Valid code will render faster than code with errors. Valid code will render better than invalid code. Browsers are becoming more standards compliant, and it is becoming increasingly necessary to write valid and standards compliant HTML.

http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/sit2003/06.htm

More:

http://validator.w3.org/

1.4 Does the site use Valid CSS?
You need to make sure that there aren’t any errors in either your HTML or your CSS, since mistakes in either place can result in botched document appearance.

http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/articles/webrev/199904.html

More:

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

1.5 Does the site use any CSS hacks?
Basically, hacks come down to personal choice, the amount of knowledge you have of workarounds, the specific design you are trying to achieve.

http://www.mail-archive.com/wsg@webstandardsgroup.org/msg05823.html

More:

http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=CssHack

http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=ToHackOrNotToHack

http://centricle.com/ref/css/filters/

1.6 Does the site use unnecessary classes or ids?
I’ve noticed that developers learning new skills often end up with good CSS but poor XHTML. Specifically, the HTML code tends to be full of unnecessary divs and ids. This results in fairly meaningless HTML and bloated style sheets.

http://www.clagnut.com/blog/228/

1.7 Is the code well structured?
Semantically correct markup uses html elements for their given purpose. Well structured HTML has semantic meaning for a wide range of user agents (browsers without style sheets, text browsers, PDAs, search engines etc.)

http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/benefits/index04.htm

More:

http://www.w3.org/2003/12/semantic-extractor.html

1.8 Does the site have any broken links?
Broken links can frustrate users and potentially drive customers away. Broken links can also keep search engines from properly indexing your site.

More:

http://validator.w3.org/checklink

1.9 How does the site perform in terms of speed/page size?
Don’t make me wait… That’s the message users give us in survey after survey. Even broadband users can suffer the slow-loading blues.

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/

1.10 Does the site have JavaScript errors?
Internet Explore for Windows allows you to turn on a debugger that will pop up a new window and let you know there are javascript errors on your site. This is available under ‘Internet Options’ on the Advanced tab. Uncheck ‘Disable script debugging’.

2. Degree of separation between content and presentation

2.1 Does the site use CSS for all presentation aspects (fonts, colour, padding, borders etc)?
Use style sheets to control layout and presentation.

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-style-sheets

2.2 Are all decorative images in the CSS, or do they appear in the (X)HTML?
The aim for web developers is to remove all presentation from the html code, leaving it clean and semantically correct.

http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/benefits/index07.htm

3. Accessibility for users

3.1 Are “alt” attributes used for all descriptive images?
Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-text-equivalent

3.2 Does the site use relative units rather than absolute units for text size?
Use relative rather than absolute units in markup language attribute values and style sheet property values’.

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-relative-units

More:

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-relative-units

http://www.clagnut.com/blog/348/

3.3 Do any aspects of the layout break if font size is increased?
Try this simple test. Look at your website in a browser that supports easy incrementation of font size. Now increase your browser’s font size. And again. And again… Look at your site. Does the page layout still hold together? It is dangerous for developers to assume that everyone browses using default font sizes.

3.4 Does the site use visible skip menus?

A method shall be provided that permits users to skip repetitive navigation links.

http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=12

Group related links, identify the group (for user agents), and, until user agents do so, provide a way to bypass the group.

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-TECHS/#tech-group-links

…blind visitors are not the only ones inconvenienced by too many links in a navigation area. Recall that a mobility-impaired person with poor adaptive technology might be stuck tabbing through that morass.

http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/Chapter08.html#h4-2020

More:

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/websmith/508/o.htm

3.5 Does the site use accessible forms?
Forms aren’t the easiest of things to use for people with disabilities. Navigating around a page with written content is one thing, hopping between form fields and inputting information is another.

http://www.htmldog.com/guides/htmladvanced/forms/

More:

http://www.webstandards.org/learn/tutorials/accessible-forms/01-accessible-forms.html

http://www.accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/accessible-form-builder.asp

http://accessify.com/tutorials/better-accessible-forms.asp

3.6 Does the site use accessible tables?
For data tables, identify row and column headers… For data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers, use markup to associate data cells and header cells.

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-table-headers

More:

http://www.bcc.ctc.edu/webpublishing/ada/resources/tables.asp

http://www.accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/accessible-table-builder_step1.asp

http://www.webaim.org/techniques/tables/

3.7 Is there sufficient colour brightness/contrasts?
Ensure that foreground and background colour combinations provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having colour deficits.

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-colour-contrast

More:

http://www.juicystudio.com/services/colourcontrast.asp

3.8 Is colour alone used for critical information?
Ensure that all information conveyed with colour is also available without colour, for example from context or markup.

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-colour-convey

There are basically three types of colour deficiency; Deuteranope (a form of red/green colour deficit), Protanope (another form of red/green colour deficit) and Tritanope (a blue/yellow deficit- very rare).

More:

http://colourfilter.wickline.org/

http://www.toledo-bend.com/colourblind/Ishihara.html

http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckURL.php

3.9 Is there delayed responsiveness for dropdown menus?
Users with reduced motor skills may find dropdown menus hard to use if responsiveness is set too fast.

3.10 Are all links descriptive?
Link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context - either on its own or as part of a sequence of links. Link text should also be terse.

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-meaningful-links

4. Accessibility for devices.

4.1 Does the site work acceptably across modern and older browsers?

Before starting to build a CSS-based layout, you should decide which browsers to support and to what level you intend to support them.

http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/process/index_step01.cfm

4.2 Is the content accessible with CSS switched off or not supported?
Some people may visit your site with either a browser that does not support CSS or a browser with CSS switched off. In content is structured well, this will not be an issue.

4.3 Is the content accessible with images switched off or not supported?
Some people browse websites with images switched off - especially people on very slow connections. Content should still be accessible for these people.

4.4 Does the site work in text browsers such as Lynx?
This is like a combination of images and CSS switched off. A text-based browser will rely on well structured content to provide meaning.

More:

http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview

4.5 Does the site work well when printed?
You can take any (X)HTML document and simply style it for print, without having to touch the markup.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/goingtoprint/

More:

http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/support/Training/Online/webdesign/css.html#print

4.6 Does the site work well in Hand Held devices?
This is a hard one to deal with until hand held devices consistently support their correct media type. However, some layouts work better in current hand-held devices. The importance of supporting hand held devices will depend on target audiences.

4.7 Does the site include detailed metadata?
Metadata is machine understandable information for the web

http://www.w3.org/Metadata/

Metadata is structured information that is created specifically to describe another resource. In other words, metadata is ‘data about data’.

4.8 Does the site work well in a range of browser window sizes?
It is a common assumption amongst developers that average screen sizes are increasing. Some developers assume that the average screen size is now 1024px wide. But what about users with smaller screens and users with hand held devices? Are they part of your target audience and are they being disadvantaged?

5. Basic Usability
5.1 Is there a clear visual hierarchy?
Organise and prioritise the contents of a page by using size, prominence and content relationships.

http://www.great-web-design-tips.com/web-site-design/165.html

5.2 Are heading levels easy to distinguish?
Use header elements to convey document structure and use them according to specification.

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-logical-headings

5.3 Is the site’s navigation easy to understand?
Your navigation system should give your visitor a clue as to what page of the site they are currently on and where they can go next.

http://www.1stsitefree.com/design_nav.htm

5.4 Is the site’s navigation consistent?
If each page on your site has a consistent style of presentation, visitors will find it easier to navigate between pages and find information

http://www.juicystudio.com/tutorial/accessibility/navigation.asp

5.5 Does the site use consistent and appropriate language?
The use of clear and simple language promotes effective communication. Trying to come across as articulate can be as difficult to read as poorly written grammar, especially if the language used isn’t the visitor’s primary language.

http://www.juicystudio.com/tutorial/accessibility/clear.asp

5.6 Does the site have a sitemap page and contact page? Are they easy to find?
Most site maps fail to convey multiple levels of the site’s information architecture. In usability tests, users often overlook site maps or can’t find them. Complexity is also a problem: a map should be a map, not a navigational challenge of its own.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020106.html

5.7 For large sites, is there a search tool?
While search tools are not needed on smaller sites, and some people will not ever use them, site-specific search tools allow users a choice of navigation options.

5.8 Is there a link to the home page on every page in the site?
Some users like to go back to a site’s home page after navigating to content within a site. The home page becomes a base camp for these users, allowing them to regroup before exploring new content.

5.9 Are links underlined?
To maximise the perceived affordance of clickability, colour and underline the link text. Users shouldn’t have to guess or scrub the page to find out where they can click.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040510.html

5.10 Are visited links clearly defined?
Most important, knowing which pages they’ve already visited frees users from unintentionally revisiting the same pages over and over again.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040503.html

6. Site management

6.1 Does the site have a meaningful and helpful 404 error page that works from any depth in the site?
You’ve requested a page - either by typing a URL directly into the address bar or clicking on an out-of-date link and you’ve found yourself in the middle of cyberspace nowhere. A user-friendly website will give you a helping hand while many others will simply do nothing, relying on the browser’s built-in ability to explain what the problem is.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/perfect404/

6.2 Does the site use friendly URLs?
Most search engines (with a few exceptions - namely Google) will not index any pages that have a question mark or other character (like an ampersand or equals sign) in the URL… what good is a site if no one can find it?

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/search-engine-friendly-urls

One of the worst elements of the web from a user interface standpoint is the URL. However, if they’re short, logical, and self-correcting, URLs can be acceptably usable

http://www.merges.net/theory/20010305.html

More:

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/search-engine-friendly-urls

http://www.websitegoodies.com/article/32

http://www.merges.net/theory/20010305.html

6.3 Does the site’s URL work without “www”?
While this is not critical, and in some cases is not even possible, it is always good to give people the choice of both options. If a user types your domain name without the www and gets no site, this could disadvantage both the user and you.

6.4 Does the site have a favicon?

A Favicon is a multi-resolution image included on nearly all professionally developed sites. The Favicon allows the webmaster to further promote their site, and to create a more customized appearance within a visitor’s browser.

http://www.favicon.com/

Favicons are definitely not critical. However, if they are not present, they can cause 404 errors in your logs (site statistics). Browsers like IE will request them from the server when a site is bookmarked. If a favicon isn’t available, a 404 error may be generated. Therefore, having a favicon could cut down on favicon specific 404 errors. The same is true of a ‘robots.txt’ file.

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Your website is where your business resides — it’s like the headquarter of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practise good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible.

Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.

Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.

Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.

Make sure your website complies to web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.

Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.

Use CSS to style your page content because they save alot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.

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Link popularity is a common term that is used with internet marketing. It basically means how many links to your website from other sites on the internet there are. There are various ways to measure this and this article will help you make sense of them.

Link popularity is important to all webmasters. It determines where you rank on the search engine pages for your keywords and can be absolutely vital in getting that coveted number one space on Google! While other factors are included in the equation, link popularity definitely figures high on the list and you should do your best to increase your incoming link as much as possible.

First of all, if you just want to check and see how many other ranked sites are linked to you on any particular search engine, you can simply enter “link:” (minus quotation marks) followed by the URL of your website and hit Enter. This will quickly turn up a basic link popularity count for you and is a good indication of the number of links you have from other areas.

It is important to note that you will get different results from different search engines because each search engine ranks link popularity according the links that it personally knows about. So if a website that links to you has made it onto Yahoo’s list, but not Google’s, it will only appear as a link in your link popularity rating when you do a search on Yahoo. On Google, you will be at least one link down.

Also, there are filters that may prohibit backlinks from being counted toward your site. This can affect your link popularity rating as well, changing it from search engine to search engine. It can also change with time, as the search engines are constantly adjusting their filters and requisites for link popularity.

PageRank, by Google is a basic form of link popularity, ranking sites from 0 (no link popularity) to 6 (amazingly high link popularity) must be taken with a grain of salt because of the above. There are most likely many sites that link to you which are not yet listed on Google and have not been spidered. They will not show up on your PageRank number until Google has checked them and only then if they are not banned by the filtering system which is notoriously difficult to get through on Google.

There are special freeware and shareware programs such as Link Popularity Check 3.0.3. You can install these on your computer and check your link popularity at any point with the click of a mouse. Or, if you prefer not to download anything, you can find several link popularity counters online. Some can even be set up right on your website, to display your link popularity stats to the public. This is only recommended if you happen to have fairly high ratings, otherwise, you are simply advertising that you are not very popular!

Link popularity is fairly easy to check and it is worth keeping an eye on after any promotional campaign. This way, you can see which marketing techniques boost your ratings more and continue only with the successful ones.

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Graphics can add a real nice touch to a website . . . or they can slow it down so much that no one will wait for the page to load! Webmasters designing new pages are forced to examine the pros and cons of web page graphics. As you plan your latest website project, will you use graphics or not, and if so, should you? Here we will look at both sides of the equation.

It all boils down to functionality. If you are selling paintings on your website, you will obviously need graphics, no two ways about it. The same goes for nearly any kind of product that could be featured graphically, such as books, stereos, etc. People like to see what they are buying, so you pretty much need to have pictures for these items.

However, if you are going to put photos of your products up, you should consider making them thumbnails for faster loading and make them clickable. Clients can then choose which one they want to see in more detail and click to see the full version. Since they know what they are doing, they won’t mind waiting a little extra time to see the product graphics.

Apart from purely practical use, should you use graphics on your website? That depends on what kind of graphics you want to use. You need to make the page easy to read and relatively fast to load. This rules out most giant graphics, such as photographic backgrounds, unless they are absolutely necessary.

If you do decide to use some reasonably sized graphics, you should try to limit the number per page. While a cute logo is fine, having little animals all over your sidebars and buttons can be not only distracting, but it also looks pretty unprofessional. Cluttering up your site with too many graphics is not generally a good idea, it gives a bad impression and if you are trying to sell something, an amateur look is not the way to go, no matter how fun it is.

When deciding whether or not to add graphics to your website, you should consider whether or not it adds quality to the page. Do you feel that your website will be represented through the graphic you are considering? Will it help sell your products? Is it going to convince the customer to stay when they might have thought about clicking away? If you find yourself saying yes to any one of the above questions, you have a good reason to be putting graphics on your site. Otherwise, you should probably forget about it and stick to a more simplistic look.

The decision of whether or not to display graphics on your website really is a personal one, but it can make all the difference in terms of sales and how many visitors actually stay on the page! If it takes too long to load graphics that you simply must have, try lowering the resolution a bit for faster loading times. Remember that people are impatient and will simply click away to another site if yours is too slow or too cluttered.

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There are companies such as Picky Domain Names that specialize in finding the perfect URL for your business, but there is no reason why you can’t do the same thing yourself, for free! All it takes is a good imagination and some time to brainstorm. If you have friends who can help, all the better.

Most of the regular domain names have been bought up and used now, so it is a real challenge to find ones that are unique, describe your business and are easy to remember. That’s why you need to get creative.

-First off, there are a few general ground rules to ensure that your visitors remember your domain names. This is obviously the most important part of choosing an URL, so keep the following in mind:

-Limit yourself to a maximum of three words. Longer phrases tend to be difficult to remember and also they take too long to type in. People want information fast and if they have to try and remember a twenty letter URL, they probably won’t bother.

-Use words that are easy to spell. If you use weirdly spelled words just to get the domain names you want, you will lose a lot of visitors. For example, if myspace.com is taken, don’t go for myspayce.com, you will just end up sending traffic to the other domain name.

-Think carefully before using anything apart from .com as an ending for your domain names. It is the most common and often people will forget if you use a more unusual ending such as .name or .tv.

Now that you have the basics in mind, it is time to brainstorm. Start by writing down all the words you can think of that relate to your business. For example, if you have a diaper service, you would end up with a list of keywords that include “diaper, diapers, baby, bottom, cloth, wet, dirty, clean, service” etc. Include any slang or nicknames as well, such as “nappy, stinky,” etc.

Once you have a good long list, start trying to put the words together in a form that would work as domain names. You should be able to come up with at least a dozen that fit the description of your business. For our diaper service example you might end up with nomorestink.com, dirtytoclean.com, nappybottom.com, etc.

Next, you need to go to a domain names registrar such as GoDaddy and check to see if your domain names are available. Start with the ones you like best and work your way down the list. Chances are you will find at least two or three that are available. These are then your choices for domain names!

This whole process works best if you have two or more people to bounce ideas off of. Domain names that are wacky and outrageous are sure to come up as you work your way through a brainstorming session with friends or coworkers! And at the end of it all, you should have a handful of domain names that you can go with.

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Article marketing basically consists of submitting your promo pieces to article directories and hoping that they will be approved. However, there is a better way of doing things than simply submitting and waiting with crossed fingers. The trick is to guarantee that article directories accept your work.

It takes time and effort in order to write an article, submit it by hand to the article directories (the recommended method), and if you get rejected, you have wasted all of that time. Simply completing the submission process can take a minute or two and if you are submitting to several article directories or are trying to send multiple submissions to one, that could easily add up to half an hour, time for you to write a whole other article!

The best way to guarantee that article directories accept your work is to be familiar with their guidelines. Each directory is different, but by following general rules, you can ensure that everyone will accept your article. The editors are not usually that picky, as long as you follow formatting guidelines and stick to non-offensive information, you have a pretty good chance of adding your work to the roster.

Formatting guidelines for article directories are pretty standard. If you write an article that is between 400-800 words, you will be fine for length. Article directories tend to like their articles formatted for the web, which means writing in the same manner as this article that you are reading right now, single spaced lines, with a double space between paragraphs. This is easy to read and easy to write, as well. Avoid using TABS or indentation and stay away from automated numbers and bulleted lists. While using number is encouraged for steps, just make sure that your word processor isn’t adding them and indenting them automatically.

Your paragraphs should be fairly short as well. Three to four sentences is usually good. This means there is plenty of white space on the page and gets your article noticed faster. While the editors might accept your article even with long paragraphs, webmasters and ezine editors will be more likely looking for something that is easy on the eyes.

Spellchecking is a must for any article that will see the light of day. There is no excuse for submitting misspelled words to article directories. They will not accept this. All basic grammar rules should be followed, as well. Capitalization at the beginning of sentences and all other such rules need to be applied or your article will probably be rejected. The idea is to look professional, even if that means getting someone else to critique your work.

Links are also a no-no in many article directories and it is best to simply avoid them. If you want to add a link, you can do so in your bio at the end of the article. Otherwise, you can mention company names (like Chapters), but not the site (chapters.com). This will boost your chances of getting accepted into article directories drastically.

By following the guidelines above and making sure to read the submission rules on all article directories that you submit to, you will be sure to have success.

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Website templates are very affordable and they save you a lot of effort and time when you want to create a new layout for your website. However, a lot of people make mistakes in the process of choosing and using a web template and end up with something that was unlike the image they had in mind. Here are some guidelines to help you avoid those mistakes.

The first obvious mistake you should be aware of is using a template that is very popular. If many people use the same template, your website will not appear unique at all and your credibility as a solid, different website will be tarnished. In other words, you will appear generic just like your next-door neighbours.

To whole point of using a web template is to save time and effort. You just change the title and appropriate details and you’re done. The biggest mistake one makes is to customize the template beyond recognisation. While that may be good in the sense that you’re creating a unique graphic, you’re defying the very purpose of using a web template — saving time and effort.

However, on the opposite side, if a template you purchase is suitable but some changes must be made to suit your site’s theme, then you will have to take some time to make the changes. For example, you can find a very nice template that suits your hobby site except the original designer has put an image of stamps in the header. You can find images of garden plants and spades to replace the stamps for your gardening hobby site. However, do only make the necessary changes and don’t redesign the whole template.

In some circumstances, some people simply make the wrong choice of templates. This is a very subjective issue but you have to be careful in selecting templates to suit your audience. Do not choose templates just because they are pretty, choose them because they serve your purpose.

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There is no point in building a website unless there are visitors coming in. A major source of traffic for most sites on the Internet is search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista and so on. Hence, by designing a search engine friendly site, you will be able to rank easily in search engines and obtain more visitors.

Major search engines use programs called crawlers or robots to index websites to list on their search result pages. They follow links to a page, reads the content of the page and record it in their own database, pulling up the listing as people search for it.

If you want to make your site indexed easily, you should avoid using frames on your website. Frames will only confuse search engine robots and they might even abandon your site because of that. Moreover, frames make it difficult for users to bookmark a specific page on your site without using long, complicated scripts.

Do not present important information in Flash movies or in images. Search engine robots can only read text on your source code so if you present important words in Flash movies and images rather than textual form, your search engine ranking will be affected dramatically.

Use meta tags accordingly on each and every page of your site so that search engine robots know at first glance what that particular page is about and whether or not to index it. By using meta tags, you are making the search engine robot’s job easier so they will crawl and index your site more frequently.

Stop using wrong HTML tags like <font> to style your page. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead because they are more effective and efficient. By using CSS, you can eliminate redundant HTML tags and make your pages much lighter and faster to load.

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It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. When a topic is typed for search, nearly instantly, the search engine will sift through the millions of pages it has indexed about and present you with ones that match your topic. The searched matches are also ranked, so that the most relevant ones come first.

Remember that a prospective customer will probably only look at the first 2-3 listings in the search results. So it does matter where your website appears in the search engine ranking.

Further, they all use one of the top 6-7 search engines and these search engines attract more visitors to websites than anything else. So finally it all depends on which search engines the customers use and how they rank your site.

It is the Keywords that play an important role than any expensive online or offline advertising of your website.

It is found by surveys that a when customers want to find a website for information or to buy a product or service, they find their site in one of the following ways:

1. • The first option is they find their site through a search engine.
2. • Secondly they find their site by clicking on a link from another website or page that relates to the topic in which they are interested.
3. • Occasionally, they find a site by hearing about it from a friend or reading in an article.

Thus it’s obvious the the most popular way to find a site, by search engine, represents more than 90% of online users. In other words, only 10% of the people looking for a website will use methods other than search engines.

All search engines employ a ranking algorithm and one of the main rules in a ranking algorithm is to check the location and frequency of keywords on a web page. Don’t forget that algorithms also give weightage to link population (number of web pages linking to your site). When performed by a qualified, experienced search engine optimization consultant, your site for high search engine rankings really does work, unless you have a lot of money and can afford to pay the expert. With better knowledge of search engines and how they work, you can also do it on your own.

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Referrer logging is used to allow web servers and websites to identify where people are visiting them either for promotional or security purposes. You can find out which search engine they used to find your site and whether your customer has come from a ‘linked site’. It is basically the URL of the previous webpage from which your link was followed.

By default, most hosting accounts don’t include referrer logs but may be subscribedd for an extra monthly fee. If your web host does not provide a graphic report of your log files, you can still view the referrer logs for your website by logging into the host server using free or low-cost FTP software, like these:

FTP Explorer: http://www.ftpx.com/
LogMeIn: http://secure.logmein.com/dmcq/103/support.asp
SmartFTP: http://www.smartftp.com/
FTP Voyager: http://www.ftpvoyager.com/

The log file is available on your web server which can be download into your computer later. You can use a log analysis tool, like those mentioned below, to create a graphic report from your log files so that the files are easier to understand.

Abacre Advanced Log Analyzer http://www.abacre.com/ala/
Referrer Soft http://www.softplatz.com/software/referrer/
Log Analyzer http://www.loganalyzer.net

You can view the files using Word, Word Perfect, txt or WordPad files even if you don’t have the right tool. This information is very crucial to your business and marketing plans and is not advisable to neglect it.

In addition to identifying the search engine or linked site from where your visitor arrived, referrer logs can also tell you what keywords or keyword phrases your client used for searching.

As referrer information can sometimes violate privacy, some browsers allow the user to disable the sending of referrer information. Proxy and Firewall software can also filter out referrer information, to avoid leaking the location of private websites. This can result in other problems, as some servers block parts of their site to browsers that don’t send the right referrer information, in an attempt to prevent deep linking or unauthorized use of bandwidth. Some proxy software gives the top-level address of the target site itself as the referrer, which prevents these problems and still not divulging the user’s last visited site.

Since the referrer can easily be spoofed or faked, however, it is of limited use in this regard except on a casual basis.

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