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 Engines seeing? Here's a checklist of 10 ways
to keep your website
at 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
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
NET MECHANIC
WEBSITE GARAGE
DEADLINK CHECK
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
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:
<IMG SRC=sitemap.gif BORDER=0 ALT="Click here to view Site Map">
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:
<IMG SRC=bullet.gif BORDER=0 ALT="airfares cheap discount flights">
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
META MEDIC
MULTI-META-MAKER
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
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
CNET WEBSERVICES
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
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
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:
HTML HELP
BOBBY
WATSON
About The Author
Michael Southon is the author of the popular new E-Book,
Ezine Writer!.
Discover the #1 Secret of Ezine Marketing - More Traffic, More Sales.
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