My Website!
- Thread starter Raven Crowking
- Start date
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad
Nice page!
I have a couple of behind-the-scenes suggestions that will help your page get listed with search engines. I do Search Engine Optimization work, and took an exceptionally good course in it, so perhaps this will help you.
Every page needs a unique meta title tag, that is accurate to what will be found on that page, and which contains your most important key words. It should contain 6 to 12 words. It should not repeat any words. It should avoid, if possible, stop words. Stop words are very common words that search engines ignore, like "the" and "and" and "a". I can pull a list of the specific stop words, but you get the picture.
Right now, your title tag is "Home". This is not useful, since your page is not about homes, and there are about a billion websites with the title "Home". Your title should be something along the lines of
<title>Daniel Bishop, author, illustrator, fantasy, science fiction</title>
Every page needs a unique meta description tag, that is accurate to what will be found n that page, that includes all words in your title tag as well as some additional words, and which contains the remainder of your key words for that page. It should be from 12 and 24 words. It should not repeat any words. It should also avoid, if possible, stop words. Something like:
<META Name="description" Content="Daniel Bishop, author, illustrator, fantasy, science fiction, role-playing games, rpgs, Doctor Who, Raven Crowking, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, d20, OGL">
Every page should have a unique meta keywords tag. It should repeat all keywords used in the title and description tag, along with some additional words. Unlike the meta title and description tag, it CAN repeat words and phrases, one time. So, you can use each key word twice if you want to. The keyword tag is not that important for search engines, but it IS record in the data section of search engines, so it can play a role (though usually a minor one). It should be from 0 and 48 words. Something like:
<META Name="keywords" Content="Daniel Bishop, author, illustrator, fantasy, science fiction, role-playing games, rpgs, Doctor Who, Raven Crowking, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, d20, OGL, Dragon Roots, dark fantasy, poetry, review work, essays, unpublished material">
So, as you can see, there is a progression. Your most important key words go in the title (one each). They get repeated in the description (one each), and then added to in the description with your less important key words. Finally, both get repeated again in the keywords tag (can duplicate once, usually more useful for phrases rather than words), with some additional words thrown in there as well.
Now on to the body of the page.
Images should have an alt tag, and the alt tag should be accurate to the image. If you need an image, it should be of one of your key words, which allows you to alt tag it with your key word.
If you page has hyperlinks (and it should), the anchor text is very important for that link. If it is pointing to one of your other pages, it should have anchor text that is the main key word for the page you are pointing to. If you have a page of RPG Game Reviews, the link to that page should say "RPG Game Reviews" and not "Click Here".
Do not have TOO many hyperlinks on your page. I cannot offer an exact ratio, but just know that if you have a long list of links on one side of your page, you will need a lot more text on that page to make up for it, to make sure your page doesn't look like just a list of links.
Your key words should, if possible and natural, be spread out across your page, and not all clumped together. They also do not need to be repeated over and over again (more on this below). I find it's enough usually to just have the keyword phrase one time in the first 200 words, and a second time further down in the body. But, this is highly dependent on the particular keyword (again more on this below).
That covers the most basic stuff for a page. When you are done making these changes, submit your page to google here:
Add your URL to Google
Yahoo here:
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
and MSN here:
Live Search URL Submission
I have a couple of behind-the-scenes suggestions that will help your page get listed with search engines. I do Search Engine Optimization work, and took an exceptionally good course in it, so perhaps this will help you.
Every page needs a unique meta title tag, that is accurate to what will be found on that page, and which contains your most important key words. It should contain 6 to 12 words. It should not repeat any words. It should avoid, if possible, stop words. Stop words are very common words that search engines ignore, like "the" and "and" and "a". I can pull a list of the specific stop words, but you get the picture.
Right now, your title tag is "Home". This is not useful, since your page is not about homes, and there are about a billion websites with the title "Home". Your title should be something along the lines of
<title>Daniel Bishop, author, illustrator, fantasy, science fiction</title>
Every page needs a unique meta description tag, that is accurate to what will be found n that page, that includes all words in your title tag as well as some additional words, and which contains the remainder of your key words for that page. It should be from 12 and 24 words. It should not repeat any words. It should also avoid, if possible, stop words. Something like:
<META Name="description" Content="Daniel Bishop, author, illustrator, fantasy, science fiction, role-playing games, rpgs, Doctor Who, Raven Crowking, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, d20, OGL">
Every page should have a unique meta keywords tag. It should repeat all keywords used in the title and description tag, along with some additional words. Unlike the meta title and description tag, it CAN repeat words and phrases, one time. So, you can use each key word twice if you want to. The keyword tag is not that important for search engines, but it IS record in the data section of search engines, so it can play a role (though usually a minor one). It should be from 0 and 48 words. Something like:
<META Name="keywords" Content="Daniel Bishop, author, illustrator, fantasy, science fiction, role-playing games, rpgs, Doctor Who, Raven Crowking, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, d20, OGL, Dragon Roots, dark fantasy, poetry, review work, essays, unpublished material">
So, as you can see, there is a progression. Your most important key words go in the title (one each). They get repeated in the description (one each), and then added to in the description with your less important key words. Finally, both get repeated again in the keywords tag (can duplicate once, usually more useful for phrases rather than words), with some additional words thrown in there as well.
Now on to the body of the page.
Images should have an alt tag, and the alt tag should be accurate to the image. If you need an image, it should be of one of your key words, which allows you to alt tag it with your key word.
If you page has hyperlinks (and it should), the anchor text is very important for that link. If it is pointing to one of your other pages, it should have anchor text that is the main key word for the page you are pointing to. If you have a page of RPG Game Reviews, the link to that page should say "RPG Game Reviews" and not "Click Here".
Do not have TOO many hyperlinks on your page. I cannot offer an exact ratio, but just know that if you have a long list of links on one side of your page, you will need a lot more text on that page to make up for it, to make sure your page doesn't look like just a list of links.
Your key words should, if possible and natural, be spread out across your page, and not all clumped together. They also do not need to be repeated over and over again (more on this below). I find it's enough usually to just have the keyword phrase one time in the first 200 words, and a second time further down in the body. But, this is highly dependent on the particular keyword (again more on this below).
That covers the most basic stuff for a page. When you are done making these changes, submit your page to google here:
Add your URL to Google
Yahoo here:
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
and MSN here:
Live Search URL Submission
WayneLigon
Adventurer
Very nice.
You might want to look into Visual Web Developer, AJAX and Silverlight. They're free Microsoft tools that contain some very nice image and media controls that are pretty simple to use, so you could have each of those images rotating out in a single box rather than all down the page, so people don't need to scroll down the page to see all the cool stuff. Shockwave player will let you do the same thing.
State of Alabama - Forestry Commission is our main work webpage, and those link bars over on the left are done in AJAX where they slide up and down to reveal a huge number of links while keeping the page real estate small.
You might want to look into Visual Web Developer, AJAX and Silverlight. They're free Microsoft tools that contain some very nice image and media controls that are pretty simple to use, so you could have each of those images rotating out in a single box rather than all down the page, so people don't need to scroll down the page to see all the cool stuff. Shockwave player will let you do the same thing.
State of Alabama - Forestry Commission is our main work webpage, and those link bars over on the left are done in AJAX where they slide up and down to reveal a huge number of links while keeping the page real estate small.
Last edited:
Raven Crowking
First Post
OK, first off....Thanks for the comments. I'll try to update the images so that they flip over, but that's going to take me a bit of time to set up & do.
My website now has its links repaired (meaning that you can click & read some previous works herein).
www.danieljbishop.ca
As always, feel free to let me know what you think.
Daniel
My website now has its links repaired (meaning that you can click & read some previous works herein).
www.danieljbishop.ca
As always, feel free to let me know what you think.
Daniel
Raven Crowking
First Post
Lots of updates, including samples of writing (check out, for example, Ivy and Sorrow, or the poems Java Man and These Stars) and an RPG Design page.
Comments are always welcome.
RC
Comments are always welcome.
RC
Raven Crowking
First Post
Updates to the RPG Design page include previews of
* Normal Men
* Gnomes
* Shaking It Off
* Level Plan
Comments are very, very welcome.
RC
* Normal Men
* Gnomes
* Shaking It Off
* Level Plan
Comments are very, very welcome.
RC
Relique du Madde
Adventurer
Awe... i thought WoTC was teasing us with information on 4e Gnomes...
JVisgaitis
Explorer
Um, Gnome preview? You are an evil evil person...
Irda Ranger
First Post
Will get back to you on the rules, but my first impression is that your page background makes it really hard to read the text. There's really nothing wrong with black Arial 12 on white.
