| Advice to New Webmasters Page 2 Find a good host. I use DWHS.net and I'm very happy with them. Remember: there is a
difference between Windows servers and Linux servers. Ask what type of
servers a host uses. Windows servers are beneficial if you want to
truly stream videos. Servers that use Windows Media Server can stream
a single video at multiple bit rates (at the rate a user is connected,
be it fast or slow), which saves you encoding time. You encode a
single video that can stream at a half dozen speeds. However, Linux
servers are much cheaper and they have better security than Windows
machines. DWHS uses Linux and I'm very happy. Powerful Linux servers
can progressively download videos quite effectively. For more
information about progressive downloads, streaming, and multiple bit
rates, refer to Using Windows Media Encoder. Web sites, Webmasters. If you hire a Webmaster, make sure the Webmaster understands search
engine optimization. Be careful about putting all your material or
your entire Web site in any one person's hands. In fact, it is often
best not to hire a Webmaster per se, but to contract out specific
tasks that you need completed. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) When hiring people, always start with an SEO. Hire an SEO specialist
to get your site optimized for the search engines. Ask questions.
Figure out what the person is doing. Make sure the person is relying
on good, honest techniques and not cheap tricks that will come back to
bite you later. Google SEO and read all about it. Graphic designers should work with the SEO, not against If you hire a graphic designer, have the graphic designer work closely
with the SEO. A great looking design can kill all the work that your
SEO does. Here are some basic SEO rules: SEO basics
- Always provide text links with your graphic links; the search engines
follow text links.
- Place reasonable descriptive text in your ALT tags for all images;
that is, describe the images in your ALT tag with honest, succinct,
descriptive terms that a blind person could follow. I mean this
literally. Software used by blind people relies on information in ALT
tags to navigate sites. Search engines know this. You get bonus points
for knowing it too.
- Don't use spaces or underscores in your file names. Use dashes.
- When possible, do not use deep directory structures for your site. Search engines
won't follow members/images/galleries/pages. If you use PhotoShop to create
picture galleries, you'll have to do a lot of tweaking, such as
renaming index files and moving them closer to your root directory.
- Dreamweaver can facilitate this process because when you rename a file
in Dreamweaver, it updates most of the pages that link to it (most,
not the individual Previous and Next buttons on the PhotoShop gallery
pages; go figure).
- If you use a great product like Dreamweaver, watch out for all the
JavaScript it automatically inserts in pages. Take that junk out. If
you must use JavaScript, put your JavaScript on a separate page in a
separate folder and reference it.
- Use a cascading style sheet to set up H1, H2, and H3 and body tags.
Use them. Search engines read the text on your page and they look at
how it's formatted.
- If someone links to your site, ask them to use text links.
- Use title tags on each page. Keep them
short. Keep them honest. Use them to describe every page. Don't use
the same title tag for every page.
- Do not post your site with broken links. Post your site to a server
when it is completely finished. Use Xenu's Link Sleuth to check for
broken links. Check for broken links every time you update your site.
Search engines hate broken links.
- Xenu builds a site map for you. Use it. Put a site map on your site. Search engines love them.
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