Web standards. Some of you may know exactly what they are and some may have no clue. I like to think of them as a sort of coding practice for any website project. Those of you in the industry have all heard of separation of structure, layout/presentation, and behavior. Most of the time this just means your structure is contained in your (x)html, layout/presentation in your CSS, and your behavior in your javascript.

I am going to list some of the benefits and hopefully anyone from a site owner to a developer can take something from this.

Makes maintenance a breeze

I have worked on too many sites with inline styles or even styles declared in each individual html file and the maintenance is almost NEVER easy. The Find and Replace tool is not perfect so the time it takes to make a site wide change is exponentially larger than if it would have been created with web standards in mind.  This gets especially painful when there is a mess of javascript as well. So to website owners, you could save a lot of money in web maintenance if your site is developed following web standards.

Search Engine Optimized

Because search engines spiders use content when determining where a site should fall in search engines (as well as a handful of other factors) it would make sense that the majority of your (x)html should be content. When you have all sorts of CSS (layout/presentation) and javascript(behavior) mixed into your code it makes it that much harder for search engine spiders to grab all of your good content. Another piece of web standards would the accurate use of (x)html tags. You would be surprised how many sites still do not use header (h1-h6), strong, and appropriate list tags (ul, ol, dl).

Faster Page Load Times

When you separate your code in separate files you can greatly increase page load times. For example just yesterday we recoded a single page that had javascript, html, and css all mashed together into 2 clean files. Our xhtml was cut from 167 lines down to 46 AND our css file was even a few lines smaller. Turns out the javascript was not even necessary thanks to css hovers. The load time decreased almost a full second through a cable modem page load (3.04 seconds to 2.1 seconds). This might not seem like a big difference but imagine someone trying to view this page on a DSL connection or worse still, a dial-up connection!

Sites Look Good Across Multiple Browsers

Now this is something I am seeing more and more and it’s not always the easiest to show someone. First of all ALWAYS bring a laptop to any client meeting that has multiple browsers functioning on it. You can always send screenshots but it is much easier to see it in action. What many people do not realize is that unless coded properly, web sites can look completely different on different browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc). Not only that but they can look completely different on the same browsers of different versions (IE6 and IE7 almost NEVER render pages the same with the same code the first time you test it). By coding with web standards you run the least amount of risk when looking at your site across different browsers and browser versions. I am saying that coding with web standards will give you the same results on every browser? Of course not but it is a step in the right direction and makes troubleshooting your code much easier when it’s laid out properly.

Hopefully you were able to get something out of this. If anyone has anything they’d like to add go ahead and comment away. Web standards are always evolving and have greatly helped CWS in its successes over the last 2 years.

So many individuals and small businesses out there have taken the plunge into the online world.  In a perfect world once you launched your website your phone would start ringing off the hook with, “We found your company online and would love to do business with you!”.  However we do not live in a perfect world and this does not happen as often as we all would like.  So this post is to get some of you up to speed with some simple SEO tips that you can apply to your own sites to get a little more traffic, generate a few more leads, and ultimately a few more sales for you businesses.

1. Get listed as a business in the major search engines – Google Maps Local Business Center, Yahoo Local, MSN Local Listing Center
2. Write meaningful page titles – This is actually high under-utilized.  I see too many sites’ page titles that read “<insert company name here>” and that’s it.  This is the perfect place to take advantage of geographic and keyword targeting.  For example CWS wants to appeal to the entire Lehigh Valley for web design so our page title reads “Connected Web Solutions – Lehigh Valley Web Design – Establish your Web Presence”.  You can be as specific as you want as well.  Also think of the competition.  If one of your competitors is established and ranks well above you for specific search terms (just do a Google search for your desired terms and see who comes before you) try something a bit different.  Think of synonyms for searches if you have no chance of catching them:  footware instead of shoes, autos instead of cars, etc.  Pair this with Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools and you have a formula to start ranking higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
3. Use header tags properly – These are some of the most highly misused tags in (x)html.  Do NOT use header tags because you want larger text.  That should be done via CSS.  Use header tags for actual headers and titles.  Importance is placed on these header tags with <h1> being the most important to <h6> being the least.  I like to think that all of these are more important than the <p> tag as well.  That being said the order and frequency of these tags are taken into consideration as well.  It should work like a pyramid with 1 <h1>, 2 or 3 <h2>, 3-5 <h3> tags, and so on and so forth.  These are not exact numbers but this way you can order your importance quite easily.  Also remember to go in order!  Do NOT place <h2> tags before an <h1> tag!
4. Separate your code – I see too many websites with bloated code.  This is usually because of WYSIWYG editors but this can be remedied.  Keep your xhtml in 1 file, your CSS in another, and your Javascript in another.  This makes site wide changes a lot easier and is also a ton easier for the search engines to spider.  So remember xhtml for Structure/Content, css for Layout/Design, and Javascript for behavior.
5. Generate Links to Your Site – To increase your Google Page Rank (which will also increase your search engine replacement)  and traffic you must get other sites to link to you!  I do not mean jump on every link exchange you can find but use your previous relationships.  If you do a considerable amount of business with a company why not ask them for a link to your site in exchange for a link to theirs!  Primary example, we work with a realty firm and a housing developer.  They do work together so we asked both parties if they would mind linking to each other.  Neither had a problem and the mutual link ended up helping them both, not only in terms of getting more traffic but increasing Page Rank as well.  Or if you have an interesting news item or press release see if you can get a local paper to link to it.  This has happened with some of our soccer sites that are having tryouts or tournaments.
6. DO NOT BELIEVE COMPANIES THAT WILL GUARANTEE YOU A #1 GOOGLE RANKING! – Be careful not to be fooled with SPAM emails saying that companies will guarantee you a #1 Google ranking for keywords.  These are SCAMS!  What could end up happening is you paying a company a considerable amount of money to rank #1 for a search term that is way too long and irrelevant.

There are a handful of other things that you can do to improve your search engine placements but these are some basics that everyone should know about.  There are entire companies that are dedicated to strictly search engine optimization.

If you wish to learn more about the subject, check out Amazon and just type in SEO.  You will find tons and tons of books on the subject but be careful not to get one that is too old.  The field is changing constantly a book from a couple years ago will probably not have too much relevant information and might even have tips that will now HURT your rankings.  I recommend Search Engine Optimization – by Kristopher B. Jones and Building Findable Websites – by Aarron Walter.  Two great books with tons and tons of great tips.

If you would like an SEO evaluation of your site don’t hesitate to contact us!  While we do not solely focus on SEO we make it a large priority in the development stages as well as offer advice through the life of the site to keep it competitively ranked.

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