Website Resolutions
S. Housley

As all of us view the new year, we determine various ways to
improve ourselves. Whether its eliminating bad habits, or
improving quality of life, January 1st is seen as a new
beginning and starting point. Your website too, can use a
new look. Consider taking the website to task with these
down and dirty quick improvement tips for the new year.

New Year's Resolutions for Your Website
Revamp your website. The Internet is evolving at a rapid
pace, and websites need constant maintenance and occasional
overhauls. As the search engines improve their algorithms,
website copy and designs will need to be updated. Here are
some starting points:

Remove Bad Outgoing Links
It is important that you are not linking to bad neighbors.
Broken links give an unprofessional image and wastes a site
visitor. Be sure that all outgoing site links are still
valid, and even more importantly, go where you had initially
intended. Many popular websites are sold by companies with
questionable content. Remove any changed links so that you
are not associated with content that is not relevant to your
products, service or content.

Unique Titles
Confirm each webpage on your website contains a unique title
tag. Not only do unique titles allow you to optimize
different sections of your site for different keywords and
phrases, but also helps search engines direct traffic to
specific pages on your site when specialized keywords are
used.

Optimize Graphics
Optimize website graphics to decrease the website's load
time. A typical web surfer will only remain on a page for a
few seconds. If you do not grab their attention, you will
lose them. Shaving size off of a websites graphic elements
will mean that their eyes are on your website during those
critical seconds.

Update Copyright Notice
A copyright notice should reflect the year the last updates
were made to the website. A current copyright notice tells
visitors that the content is fresh, not stale and outdated.


Clean up HTML
HTML is a markup language and with constant maintenance it
is easy to have a page with an unclosed tag. While some web
browsers make allowances for poorly formed HTML, not all do.
Therefore, it is important that you take a look at the HTML
behind the web page and make sure that it is properly
formed.

Update Meta Tags
Update and optimize meta tags to avoid excessive use of
keywords. While a once popular search engine optimization
technique, stuffed meta tags generally result in search
engine penalties. Update meta tags to be accurate and
concise without redundancy and recurring words.

Automate
If your site does not currently use templates or server-side
includes, it is time to bite the bullet. Spending time now,
by employing server side includes or templates will mean
easier maintenance and updates later. When you change one
item, it will update on all pages of your site.

Links
Increase the quality and quantity of inbound links. Links
coming into your site should be from websites that contain
related or relevant content. Links from related .edu and
.org domains are considered of a higher value than generic
links. Any outbound links, should be directed to credible
websites that contain related content. The relationship and
relevance of links is becoming increasingly more important
in most of the search engine ranking algorithms.

Wrapped Content
Links that are embedded in a paragraph rather than a free
standing, generally are viewed more favorably by search
engines. Consider wrapping links in content summaries.

Size Matters
A website must contain enough relevant content to stand on
its own. Obviously the more the better. However, its not
just about quantity it is also about quality. While size
matters, relevance is equally important. A website should be
able to stand on its own, once affiliate links, and pay per
click advertising is removed the site should still have
value.


Aged Domains
They say with age comes wisdom. Apparently the Search Engine
Gods feel the same about domains. The older the domain the
better it will typically perform. Give new domains time to
age.

A New Years resolution is just a fancy way of saying that
you are committed to doing something. Resolve to improve
your website this year.


About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll
http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing,
publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon
manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a
wireless text messaging software company.