Cranial Soup

How can you rank well on search engines, without fussing with SEO?

2010-07-02T16:07:00.002-04:00

If you want to rank well on search engines without fussing with SEO, then pretend it's 1995 and there are no search engines that will list you, because you can't afford the high fees for inclusion.

Now, how are you going to, in an ethical way, make people want to visit your site, stay awhile and explore, come back often, and share what they find with others?

Your site should work well and not be broken.

Make sure all links to pages on and off your site actually lead to where you want them to.
Make sure you don't have broken images.
Make sure the content loads correctly in all the major browsers.
Make sure your pages adhere to W3C standards and they validate.

Your site should be designed for people.

Make sure your template is pleasing to the eye and not painful to look at.
Make sure it has good navigation and is easy to discover and find the content your site has to offer. Good use of sidebar links to important stuff. Links to similar content pages on your site.
Make everything within 2-3 clicks of the main page.
Break up huge amounts of text with related images to help the eyes stay focused where they should be,
Your site should load fast. Use real thumbnails for your images and not just merely resizing with HTML.
Don't overwhelm people with ads.
Remove spam promptly.

Your site should invite people back.

Give your visitors multiple ways to be notified and access new content (RSS feeds, email subscription, follow on Twitter, a Facebook fan page.) Make sure new content reaches them wherever it's convenient to them.

Your site should encourage sharing.

Make sure you don't use frames. Every page should have its own unique URL that shows in the address bar.
Use Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Google Reader/Buzz buttons.

Your content should be unique and of high quality.

Don't copy other people's stuff, write your own.
Check your spelling and grammar.
Put thought into what you write.
If you post YouTube videos, add some unique commentary that doesn't exist anywhere else on the web.
For every sentence you quote from another source, write 3-5 of your own. So if you quote 3 sentences, you will have to write 9-15 to balance it. Don't quote in every article. Don't quote any more than what is necessary, less is much better than more.
If you are supplying information, make sure it is complete, accurate, and up to date.
Write about stuff people will care about enough to want read it. Don't write about what you had for lunch unless your a restaurant critic.
If your site is a blog, link out in every article to quality related content. Linking out to pages on other good blogs has the bonus in that it may earn you a trackback link on that page, or at the very least attract the eyes of the author of that blog who will stop by and check out who is linking to him.

Interact with your visitors and make them feel important.

Allow commenting and respond to comments as soon as humanly possible.
Give your visitors a means of contacting you privately, either by supplying an email address or a contact form.

Spread the word.

Become a highly respected member of a large community with similar content.. Put your link in your profile and signature. If people respect you, they will click the links.
Reach out to blogs by reading and participating in discussions. Never leave a "nice post" comment. Put some thought & work into your responses. You want to catch the attention of other readers and the bloggers themselves, and make them ask "Wow! Who is this guy?" so they will click your name and visit the site it links to. Always make your comments increase the value of that bloggers page.
Participate on social media sites and interact with people in a positive way. Get conversations going. Again, you want to make people ask "Who is that guy?" which will lead to them checking out who you are (your profile) and where you came from (your site).
Find an ad network that gives away free advertising. (I happen to really like Project Wonderful, personally)

If you do all of the above, quality inbound links will happen on their own and between the fact that others think high enough about you and your site to write about it and link to it, combined with having a great site, structurally, that makes it easy for spiders to find your content, you will get the ranking in the search engines that you deserve.

Above all, be patient, work hard, and don't engage in any "evil tricks". Good ranking does not happen overnight.

Online HTML Editor

2007-10-11T14:19:00.004-04:00

Sometimes you have the need to create a quick page for a specific purpose. And it would seem a bit silly to purchase an expensive HTML editor for just the occasional page. And you really don't feel like downloading & installing an application that you won't get much use from.

That's where this nice little editor comes in. It's simple to use and packed with tons of nifty features that you would expect to find in a desktop application.

This is the best free online HTML editor I have found that wasn't associated with some sort of web hosting.

Features:

Page Properties:
Interface allows you specify page title, background color, foreground (text) color, upload a background image from your computer and apply a watermark to the image so that it doesn't scroll, and upload a background sound file.
Find & Replace:
Search your page for text, tags, and images and automatically replace all with something else.
Highlight
Use this tool to "highlight" (specify a background color for) selected text.
Hyperlinks
Click to easily convert text to a hyperlink and apply hyperlinks to images.
Insert Images
Browse to locate an image file on your computer and upload it to your page.
Table Wizard
Easily insert and customize your tables. Specify number of rows and columns, alignment, border size, cell padding, and cell spacing. Tables aid in the layout of your page.
Insert Bulleted Lists
Insert Numbered Lists
Insert Horizontal Lines
Form Wizard
Step-by-step wizard helps you to create and insert simple forms into your web page.
Insert Text Fields and Text Boxes
Easy Text Formatting
Format your text by selecting font face, size, color, bold, italic, and underlined via familiar word processor type buttons.
Paragraph Formatting
One click aligns all left, right, or center.
Button Wizard
Easily insert buttons anywhere on your page!
MORE

Whatever isn't covered by the features in this editor will most likely be covered by their other online tools, listed on the right side of their page.

So no more excuses...go make that web page you have been procrastinating about!

http://www.creatingonline.com/webmaster/html_generator.htm

Online Privacy Policy Generator

2007-10-11T13:41:00.002-04:00

Constructing a privacy policy for your website can be a complicated task, but it doesn't have to be any more.

With this generator it is as easy as checking off some boxes and filling in some blanks.

They give you the choice between generating an HTML page which you can just save, or emailing you an HTML or plain text copy.

http://www.the-dma.org/privacy/creating.shtml