Website Usability Testing

If you want to evaluate your web site for usability, check this web site out:

http://www.usabilityeffect.com/testcenter.html

It is a very nice site that will help you figure out where you need to improve the design and usability of your web site.

-Bill

http://www.goldenwebs.biz

Keep Everything 2 Clicks Away

When designing your web site, make sure that anything within your site is no more than 2 clicks away. It's all about easy navigation. Think about how your site is organized and tweak it to make it as efficient as possible. This also helps to optimize your site for search engines.

-Bill

http://www.goldenwebs.biz

Using Google's SiteMap

I know...three posts in a row having to do with Google. ___ ;-) ___ Anyway, have you checked Google's SiteMap out yet? SiteMap is a way for Google's web bot to more easily spider your web pages and it also provides a site map you can use on your web site. I found a .PHP program that will generate the XML file needed for uploading to Google. Google offers a method, but I could not get it to work. If you are interested in this, let me know!

-Bill

http://www.goldenwebs.biz

About Google PageRank

There is some talk that Google's PageRank is a bogus gauge of where your web sites ranks in the Internet world. That may be true ... or not. So why risk it? One way to check your PageRank is through this web site:

http://www.freelance-help.com/google-ranking-report/pagerank-checker.php

You can place the page rank checker on your own site with Javascript provided by them. Give it a try!

-Bill

http://www.goldenwebs.biz

Checking your web site in Google

Some of you have asked how to check Google to see if your web site is there and properly cached. To do this, go to Google and type cache:www.yourwebsite.com . This will display the most recently cached image of your web site. The commmands for MSN and Yahoo are similar so you can check those out as well. Get checking

-Bill

http://www.goldenwebs.biz

Get spidered every day!

When is the last time you were visited by web bots from either Google, Yahoo, or MSN? If your site is set up properly, you should be able to work up to daily visits from the search engine spiders! Let me know if you want all the details!

-Bill

http://www.goldenwebs.biz

Text as image files

One way to have a nice presentation with the font *you* want is to put your text into image files. The problem with doing this is that the text is no longer searchable by web bots. A search engine query of one site resuted in nothing but the word [image], over and over again. Be sure to think this through and be sure you have relevant, keyword text that is searchable!

-Bill

http://www.goldenwebs.biz