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Archive for February, 2007

I ♥ You CSS

February 24th, 2007 by Pat

Those that use CSS for page layout, know what I mean. As I have learned more and more about CSS and ways to use it to position page elements and provide unique styling options, (beyond the typical font and link styling) I find myself saying, “why didn’t I use this sooner!”

This afternoon I took my wife out for Saturday afternoon beer and pizza and I proceeded to bore her to tears as I babbled about CSS and how great it was.

Apparently, I sounded like a teenage girl jacked up on Red Bull…and her obvious distaste for my love of geekdom was crumbled by….”What CAN’T CSS do?!?”.

Therefore…I was inspired.

Top Ten Things CSS CAN’T Do:

10. It can’t help (insert friend of family member) with their ‘I can’t get online’ or ‘my email isn’t working’ problem of the day.

9. It can’t make pizza, tacos or melt cheese for nachos.

8. It can’t make DaveN like Digg Nation (Or Google!).

7. It won’t turn off my lights when I clap twice.

6. It can’t discuss my health status with my doctor to ensure that I am healthy enough to engage in sexual activity.

5. I can’t apply it directly to my forehead when my head hurts.

4. It can’t help the sorry ass Front Page site your cousin’s friend built for you.

3. It can’t stop pop-ups or mute background sound files.

2. It can’t keep your competitors from deleting your wikipedia entries.

1. It can’t get me another beer because I have fallen and can’t get up!

What do you love about CSS?

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Little Changes, Big Impact

February 6th, 2007 by Pat

Who doesn’t want more traffic from search engines? Aside from George ‘Miserable Failure‘ Bush, we ALL do!

Gaining more traffic is easier for some than it is others, especially when there is no place to go but up.

Many brand new, and grossly under-performing, websites can make some very simple changes, which can have significant impacts.

First, give each of your pages unique, descriptive titles. Don’t cram them with keywords, but certainly put the primary keywords, pertaining to the page, in there. Far too many websites use the exact same title for every page, which confuses the bots, and even more pages have NO title! A search for ‘untitled page’ returns an alarming 36 million plus pages…there is no excuse. Add a title.

Secondly, clean up your page copy. Make it relevant, coherent and unique from one page to the next. If you have multiple pages, utilizing large blocks of identical content, you are creating duplicate content…a no-no in Google.

Third, make sure your pages link to each other efficiently. A good internal linking structure makes it easier for search bots to crawl your pages and also makes it easier for visitors to navigate your site. Use descriptive link, or anchor, text (the text that is the actual hot link) that accurately, and descriptively, describes the page it links to. Avoid using the proverbial ‘click here’ link text.

There you have it…three simple and easy changes that will assuredly help your search rankings and site traffic.

Get to work!

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