PRWR628: Website Progress Report 7/24/10

The end is in sight! Although I think my website is coming along nicely, the peer review examinations gave me a number of excellent things to consider as I put the finishing touches on the project. Things that I never would have thought of due to my deep relationship with the Patapsco organization. I also completed one usability test yesterday evening with a friend that has volunteered with the organization on multiple occasions and knows the organization well from a volunteer angle. Although I am pretty much finished with the website now, I will be conducting one more usability test tomorrow with one of the board members for last-minute ideas/notes.

Most of the changes I made to the website were cosmetic. I adjusted header colors to allow for increased scannability throughout the site. I also condensed/combined several of the longer lists as recommended by both of the peer reviews I received and simplified language in multiple locations. I was reminded by the usability test I performed that the EditMe "add a comment" button was still showing up on some of the newer pages I made which I removed. I also added several links throughout to help direct users within the website.

Both the usability test and peer reviews noticed a lack of easily obtainable contact information. It occurred to me that a contact page would make a good navbar/top-level link so I created one with some basic contact information. This lead to one too many links for my liking on the navbar though it was easily solved by moving the "accomplishments" link to a child link of the "about" section. It occurred to me that the accomplishments link felt too specialized to be a main link anyway, so I don't feel that any major problems are brought up by this. I also moved the "membership" link to the "about" section from the "volunteer" section as it felt like a better fit.

Second usability test aside, I only have two more things that I have planned for the website:

• Fixing the banner so that "Friends of" shows up in the title. Also moving/altering the awkward blue-colored tagline.
• Altering the language/simplifying the information in the newly renamed "Historical Restoration" (renamed based on comments from peer reviews) and "Management Plan" section. I'm waiting for my second usability test for that though, as I want to go over some of the specifics with a person that is more familiar with the information.
  

Blog Topic: Search Engine Optimization

While creating an effective website is important, most website creators will also want to generate as many visits as possible. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.

SEO involves making minute adjustments to your website in order to give it an improved presence on popular search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Used properly a website can show up higher on a search engine, vastly improving traffic to the website.

SEO Methods

Keywords

Keywords are words and phrases that define your website. Search engines track keywords when determining the page rank, a variable that determines how high up your website will appear on search engines, of your website. Significant consideration must be taken in determining what keywords will be effective for your website.

Make a list of keywords. Consider a couple of important words or phrases that define your site. Use words that people will search for when looking for your website. Single out a few keywords that you think will work best to place on your website. For example my website for this class is a local environmental group, so “environmental cause” or “Maryland environmental group” are two keyword possibilities.

If you are uncertain if people will use your keyword to search for your website, several keyword tools exist online to give you a detailed report of how often your selected keyword is used. Google’s Keyword Tool is one such example, giving a comprehensive breakdown of monthly hits along with other notable trends.

Place these keywords in your website. There are several locations where your keywords can go. These include:

• Page Title – One of the biggest sections search engines will evaluate to determine what is on the web page.
• Meta Data – Although not as frequently today, meta-tags help some search engines categorize websites. Meta tags are inserted into the HTML of a website and are not typically visible to the viewer. Fortunately several website editors (including EditMe) will take care of this for you if you give them your keywords.
• H1 Header Text – The H1 header is the biggest header and is commonly used for titles and other critical information. As such, search engines like to analyze it.
• Page Content – The main page content should include your keywords. Although it helps to use the keyword multiple times within your page, you should not go out of your way to include it. Unnatural keyword placement results in keyword stuffing and can hurt your visibility on search engines.

Be patient. Search engines won’t instantly pick up on your keywords overnight. It will take a couple of days for engines to register the keywords and integrate them.

Page Linking

Good website navigation does more than just help your user navigate your website; it also helps search engines access your webpage. Search engines use web crawlers to explore your website and pull out searchable information like keywords. Good keyword placement is useless if the search engine cannot access your pages.

Homepage navigation is key. Crawlers will start at the homepage and progress from there to other sections of your website. Pages that are not linked from the homepage or pages immediately linked to the homepage can be easily missed.

Consider linking to similar websites. Known as reciprocal linking, two mutual websites that link to each other will boost rankings on search engines for both websites. This also has the practical effect of increasing traffic to your website from users to the website you link to.

Fun fact: Avid blog readers may be familiar with spam comments, artificially-generated comments from bots with a link to a website that you are…usually better off not visiting. This is a variation of page linking, albeit a rather unethical one.

These are just a few examples of using SEO to increase your search engine presence. The week 9 reading on SEO provides a more comprehensive look at SEO techniques including more specific information on the ones listed in this blog post. There are also a number of books dedicated to the topic.

Perfectly optimizing your website to meet SEO standards can take a significant amount of work. Agencies exist that are dedicated solely to assist organizations and other individuals in making a website SEO-compatible. In addition, consultants serve as search-engine optimizers. If you are a business attempting to construct a high-ranking website, hiring a specialist will make the process much easier. Google offers some useful tips on what to look for in a search engine optimizer.

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PRWR628: Website Progress Report 7/17/10

The website is finally beginning to take form and finish up. I have a few more tweaks and edits that I will be performing tonight and tomorrow. By Monday I hope to have the finished website ready to go in time for the final assignments.

The GoToMeeting with Timothy went well. There were no real technical issues and we were both able to deliver effective presentations in preparation for the video tour assignment. The assignment has given me some additional guidance in some ideas on making my website more scannable as I put the finishing touches on it.

PRWR628: Website Progress Report 7/10/10

Although both the menu and scannability tests revealed a number of potential issues with my blog, I have not yet gotten a chance to correct the errors these tests have revealed. I wanted to wait until I finished developing content for my website before I worked on tweaking it. By doing so, I would be able to avoid needless backtracking.

Now that the content is just about finished, I can focus on both cosmetic updates and addressing issues raised by the tests. Although my website is slowly becoming functional, there are a number of minor edits I need to make to the website in order for it to follow the guidelines set by Reddish and Krug. I will start these edits tomorrow in order to prepare for the upcoming peer reviews.

PRWR628: Website Progress Report 7/03/10

This week had me focusing on content addition. With most of my work involving adding actual content to the pages, holes in the website are beginning to fill in nicely. Although some pages are not complete, and many pages would benefit from some pictures, I am starting to establish the actual look and feel of the website. Comments that I received from _ helped greatly in guiding my content addition, especially in regards to the homepage. I do still need to find a good way of implementing the tagline on the banner however.

Completing the menu report has proven to be quite the eye opener. I thought that my navigation was fairly solid, but the report revealed a number of errors that I will need to correct before I begin to edit and shape the content that I have on the website. Although I have started to address some of the issues brought up by the report, my initial task in the week to come will be to fix the menus before I continue on with the content. I hope to have these issues resolved by the end of the holiday weekend so that I do not fall behind in the main task of reaching 75% content completion.