Cascading Style Sheets

You need to learn these for yourself, otherwise i would not be helping you really. doing it yourself is the best way. your doing a class right ? well, remember, rome was not built in a day!

We found phoenixwebexperts.com through some business friends - we don't live in Phoenix but way up in Wisconsin and we recycle tires. We know nothing about internet and had them quote a new website for us. What I liked about them is they asked us a lot of questions and didn't treat us like idiots since we don't know anything. They asked what we needed and actually pointed out ways for us to save money. I think the site looks great but you can check it out yourself - gotjunktires.com

The more important part of our discussion with them was around getting business to our site. The biggest fear we had was that we build a nice website but nobody comes to see it and we don't have an ROI on the spending. They discussed how to build the site to make the search engines understand our business and then did the search engine optimization work noted in the question post. You will find us on the first page of google, yahoo, and other search engines for key phrases like "wisconsin tire disposal, wisconsin tire recycling, and others so that you can see for yourself. The results, we've had a new customer come to us about every other day through the website which is a lot in our industry and a huge ROI. We would recommend phoenixwebexperts.com for web design and search engine optimization and wish you luck!

You really do not have to take a course of SEO in order to have a basic understanding of what SEO can do. Here’s an article from Google which is self-explanatory:

The most effective way to advertise on the Internet is
to first set up a website and publish its domain name
on major search directories such as Google.com,
Yahoo.com [at http://www.google.com/addurl/?…… and
MSN.com since 85% of Internet shoppers rely on these
search directories to provide them with goods and
services. In a sense, these search directories are a
very large Internet Yellow Pages.

Nevertheless, should your website or opening webpage
fail to contain “generic” keywords, then anyone using
such “generic” queries will not be able to discover
your website. Your domain name [URL] of your website,
in a sense, will be invisible, undiscoverable.

You may want to consider some simple algorithms which,
when observed and committed in designing of a website
with placement of various critical metatags that can
surely achieve a high search engine presence and
increase Internet traffic to your website. These
metatag strategies work well with published webpages
at Google and Yahoo.

Design: Should you create an extensive Flash-based
website, make sure to fill-in the property entries
such as the Title, Description and Keywords. Failing
to do so, leaves no hard HTML or ALT resource that can
be readily indexed by search robots. Also consider the
Internet audience and their incoming setup. For
example, if they are on analog/dialup, Flash webpages
take too long to load up and therefore analog users
will likely lose interest and discontinue entering the
Flash site. On the other hand, anyone on hi-speed DSL
lines, will welcome Flash pages which load quickly. So
before designing a pure Flash websitge, ask the simple
question, “Who’s my end user – is he on dialup or
DSL?” And if you had to choose between these two users
for maximum marketability, then select analog users
since 80% of most resident users are still analog
Internet subscribers and pure HTML designed webpages
is best for them.

A non-Flash-based website which relies on hard text,
is far easier to be indexed by search robots. Limit
the use of stylized text saved as .gifs since as a
graphic, they are not indexable by search robots.

Avoid use of frames since any number of search robots
are unable to properly classify textual material.

Placement of Metatags:

A ranking or search order does take place with Google
and Yahoo and it begins with the “Title” metag which
should consist of no more than 65 characters separated
by commas. The “Title” should describe in generic
terms, the goods and services, followed by a location
from which the resource is located, i.e., city, state.
The placement of a domain name which is not generic
within the “Title” is not appropriate, unless your
domain name is a major recognizable brand name.

The second metatag is the “Description” which is
usually 25-30 words to form a complete sentence which
best describes one’s goods and services.

And the very last category – “Keywords” are also
somewhat limited to 15-16 words which can be plural
and compound in nature. Again, avoid multiple entries
which could be mistaken as “spamdexed entries” which
is defined as the loading, and submission of
repetitive words into a particular metatag category.
“Spamdexing” when discovered on a webpage and reported
to Google’s spamreport.com can result in the
elimination of your website from their search
directory.

Good luck!

It is important to know your keywords. If you have a product that you sell on your site, ask five friends what they might search for on google/yahoo to find it. Take those different keywords and optimize your page with them.
Also work on your meta tags. Here is an article on how they work: http://www.richkahmer.com/meta-tags.html

You don’t really need any particular system to do web development. Any plain text editor is sufficient. If you want to use DreamWeaver, it is available on Mac and Windows, and does not require any major system resources.

I strongly disagree with the comments supporting Frontpage. This environment is not at all suitable for complex business applications, and it is no longer supported by Microsoft.

For more complex business applications, you’ll need several things – all of which are available for free on most platforms:

An editor. A plain text editor is a good starting place, but a dedicated programmer’s editor like Aptana is much better. It provides support for all the major HTML, CSS, and JavaScript codes, and can help you with your syntax and structure. Free at http://www.aptana.org

Several browsers. You need access to many browsers to see how your page look in each one. For development, the browser of choice is Firefox, because of its standards-compliance, reliability, and extension support.

Browser extensions. Your life will be a lot easier if you install several extensions to firefox: HTML Validator is like a spell-checker for your code, Web Developer toolbar has dozens of great features for web developers, and Firebug is an incredible page debugging tool.

A development server. High end business sites will require databases and programming. You’ll want to set up a local system for testing. XAMPP contains everything you’ll need.

A web server. Apache is a popular and powerful free web server. It’s used on many commercial environments.

A server-side programming language. PHP is the most popular free language, but Java and ASP.NET are other good alternatives. The programming language will allow you to add interactivity to your sites.

A database system. Most complex problems involve data. You’ll need some kind of database storage mechanism for this. MySQL is a popular free choice.

All these tools are included for free on the CD-ROM for my book.
Please check my site if you have any other questions…
http://www.aharrisbooks.net

WEB DESIGNING
DESIGNING SECTION
PHOTOSHOP
FLASH
CODING SECTION
DREAMWEAVER

I have been coding HTML for about 6 years. Started with Notepad as my editing program. Have recently decided to take some formal instructions in coding HTML and CSS. Notepad is the ONLY editing program permitted for the class. So it is back to Notepad.

However, years ago after doing 2 web sites I finally started using HTML-Kit, a free program from http://www.htmlkit.com/ It will require that you know something about HTML tags and code structure.

There is no software that will produce for you professional appearing web designs right out of the box. It will become necessary for you to learn HTML, CSS, Javascript, php and perhaps more.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As a marketing strategy for increasing a site’s relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site’s coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Other, more noticeable efforts may include adding unique content to a site, ensuring that content is easily indexed by search engine robots, and making the site more appealing to users. Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and may remove them from their indices.

The initialism “SEO” can also refer to “search engine optimizers”, terms adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term “search engine friendly” may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, URLs, and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

Ron

Search Engine Optimisation (seo) is an ongoing thing. You can never know everything there is to know about it because it is constantly changing.

However, that being said. What is changing is the way people are always trying to ‘cheat’ the search engines. Find out the exact way each of the search engines weigh the page against keywords.

What you need to do is take a middle line, dont try and beat them all, just try and keep them all happy.

Keyword loading, hidden text and god knows what else are severely penalised these days and some engines will even go so far as to check your site twice. Once to see what they see as a search engine and again to see if that page matches what they see when they look as a user. Sure fire way to get your backside kicked ;O)

You will spend a lot of time on search engines yourself looking up “seo” to keep up with whats going on.