When it comes to submitting my websites to search engines, I only ever use 4:

• Google
• MSN
• Yahoo
• dmoz (open directory project)

(Ask.com is another good search engine, but their method of site submission involves creating a sitemap and I’m creating a post on sitemaps soon.)

All other search engines worth mentioning use either one of the above, or all of the above, for example AltaVista and AlltheWeb both use Yahoo to get their information from, and Dogpile, Metacrawler and WebCrawler are all meta-search engines which combine results from the 5 major search engines listed above.

I personally only ever search using Google because for me, it’s the best. Sure, other people may well prefer Yahoo, or MSN etc, but from a web designer’s point of view, I can’t see any professional building a website and NOT submitting it to Google and because of that I can’t see any point in using anything else.

After all, I’m using Google for AdSense, Adwords, Analytics, Blogger, Bookmarks, Checkout, Google Mail, iGoogle, Local Business Centre, Maps, Web History, Webmaster Tools and Website Optimiser – it’s just so much easier for me to do everything under one roof.

Anyway, on with the post…

Submitting a site to Google.

To submit a site to Google takes 5 easy steps:

1. Click the following link: http://www.google.com/addurl/
2. Fill out the full address of your website in box 1 – ‘URL‘
   (making sure you include the ‘http://‘ before it)
3. Add a small description in box 2 below – ‘Comments‘
   (I use my website’s tagline for this)
4. Read the CAPTCHA text and enter it into the box below
5. Finally click ‘Add URL‘

That’s it. All done. Your site has been submitted to Google and they will take care of the rest. As with all search engines, you only ever need to submit the top level page from your site, i.e. Home page or Index page, the search engine will then crawl the rest of the pages with their robot or spider to create a full index of your site.

Submitting a site to MSN.

Submitting a site to MSN is very similar to Google:

1. Click the following link: http://search.live.com/docs/submit.aspx
2. Read the CAPTCHA text and enter it into the box below
3. Fill out the full address of your website in the box below
   (making sure you include the ‘http://‘ before it)
4. Finally click ‘Submit URL‘

Submitting a site to Yahoo.

Submitting a site to Yahoo is very similar to both Google ad MSN with the exception that you have to sign in with your Yahoo ID:

1. Click the following link: http://search.live.com/docs/submit.aspx
2. Click ‘Submit a Website or Webpage‘ which opens up the text field for you to enter the URL
3. Fill out the full address of your website in the box below
   (making sure you include the ‘http://‘ before it)
4. Click ‘Submit URL‘
5. Sign in with your Yahoo ID to confirm

Where Google and MSN both use CAPTCHA to stop spam, Yahoo takes security one step further by taking you to another page where you have to sign in with your Yahoo ID. If you don’t have a Yahoo account, signing up for one is simple enough, you’ll just have one more email address to remember.

Submitting a site to dmoz (Open Directory Project [ODP]).

Dmoz is not a search engine, but submitting your site there is equally as important as Google, MSN and Yahoo.

Dmoz stands for ‘directory.mozilla.org’ which was the original domain name of the Open Directory Project (ODP). In short, it is a structured directory of millions of World Wide Web links which are submitted, checked and maintained by humans. The subject of dmoz/ODP really deserves it’s own post, which I will do later in the year, but for now all you need to know is how to submit a site to it:

1. Click the following link: http://www.dmoz.org/
2. Choose your category
• Click the correct top level category
• Click the correct sub-category
• Click the correct sub-sub-category* (explanation below)
• Click the correct letter for your websites name* (explanation below)
• Make sure your website is not already on the list
3. Click ‘Suggest URL’ (link at top right of page)
4. Read guidelines
5. Fill out form:
• Enter URL (making sure you include the ‘http://‘ before it)
• Enter Title of site
• Enter site description
• Enter a valid email address
• Enter CAPTCHA text
6. Click ‘Submit‘

It is very important that you are accurate with your choice of category for your website, any errors can mean a lengthy delay. With the thousands of sites waiting to be approved, editors can only work on their specific category, so by the time yours gets to the top of the pile, if it’s in the wrong category it will have to be passed on to another editor and that means right back to the bottom of the next editors pile so what should take weeks can end up taking months.

As an example, when I entered Worcestershire Web Design to dmoz, I chose the following category / sub-categories:

• Computers
• Internet
• Web Design and Development
• Designers
• Basic Service
• letter ‘W’ (for Worcestershire [web design])

It may seem a lengthy process compared to the search engines URL submit methods, and it is, but it is important and will be worth it in the long run. Search engines don’t give you PageRank, the dmoz Open Directory Project does.

Related information and links

What is CAPTCHA?

Dmoz help page: http://www.dmoz.org/help/submit.html

I hope you found this information useful and I welcome your comments.

If you have any specific questions related to website development, please email me or post a comment.

Worcestershire Web Designer

Part of this topic is covered in my post Why does alt-text not show up in Firefox? which deals mainly with images, but the subject deserves it’s own post as using titles on links will help robots give links (and text) a higher priority when it comes to ranking the content of your web page.

As explained in my other post on alt text which you should read first, alt text is for browsers that have images turned off or for people who use screen readers and gives a brief description of what the image is, whereas the title text is what is supposed to be displayed when you hover over an image (or word, or link, or whatever you want to title), supplying additional information.

The confusion between alt text and title text is that Internet Explorer displays ‘Alt Text’ when hovering over an image, and all the good browsers (like Firefox, Chrome and Safari) don’t. Instead, the good browsers only display ‘Title Text’ over images.

How to ‘title text’ your links and text.

Try hovering over this link: www.worcestershirewebdesign.co.uk.

Now try hovering over this word: here.

The code for putting title text over a link is:

<a href=“http://www.worcestershirewebdesign.co.uk” target=“_blank” title=”Using title text over links“> www.worcestershirewebdesign.co.uk </a>

and the code for putting title text over normal text is either:

<p title=”Using title text on words”>here</p>

or:

<span title=”Using title text on words”>here</span>

NB: the <p>…</p> tags will start a new paragraph, as they are paragraph tags, and the <span>…</span> tags will allow you to title-text a word within a sentence.

The code above is in xhtml but works fine in plain, old fashioned, boring html (and if you are still using html, WHY?)

And now the benefits of using title text on links.

Our internet friends, the robots, sometimes have a hard time working out what is relevant and what is not on your web page. They take a good look at the meta data for the Title, Description and Keywords, and most of your page ranking comes from those three, in that order. Then your tags H1, H2, H3 (and so on) come in to play and finally your content.

You may have heard the expression “Content is King“… well it is. After looking at your meta data, tags etc., it is the uniqueness and relevance of your content that makes search engines sit up and take notice.

The robots don’t actually understand what you write, they’re robots after all, and artificial intelligence is still sixteen years away, but what they can understand is what you do to your content to make it stand out. They know what BOLD is, they know what ITALICS are, and they sure know how to read TITLE TEXT.

All of these tell robots that “Hey!, This text or link is just a little bit more important than all the rest.”

Will using Title-Text on links make your website jump from a PageRank 0 to a PageRank 7 overnight? Not in your wildest dreams!

What it will do is get you in the habit of doing the right thing for your website. As with most other methods of Search Engine Optimisation (or Optimization as my spell checker keeps nagging me), any gains are strictly long-term. With the Millions of websites and Billions of web pages out there, any slight edge your website has over it’s nearest competitors could mean the difference between hitting page one or page two of Google for a particular search query… and that difference is huge.

So using title text and other SEO techniques now could pay dividends for the future.

A final word of caution – don’t overdo it.

Robots may not be intelligent, but they can spot someone abusing SEO techniques a million miles away.

Related information and links.

Why does alt-text not show up in Firefox?

I hope you found this information useful and I welcome your comments. If you have any specific questions related to website development, please email me or post a comment.

Worcestershire Web Designer

Some of the best website designs I’ve seen in a long time are available through www.morethanatemplate.com, a site we have just built which specialises in high quality, professionally designed web templates and themes. They include full Flash sites, dynamic Flash photo galleries, xhtml/css templates, blog templates, e-commerce templates, branding and design.

In addition to selling such fantastic designs at affordable prices, there is full 24-7 live chat support available, as well as lifetime email and ticket system support. Although all templates at morethanatemplate.com are completely customizable, we at Worcestershire Web Design would gladly customize your website for you for the same low price we charge for our regular website designs.

Professional Web Templates from morethanatemplate.com

www.morethanatemplate.com offer website templates, themes and resources for the following: (Descriptions for each type of template are shown below)

CRE Loaded, Drupal, dynamic Flash photo galleries, Flash intros, full Flash Sites, Joomla, Magento, Mambo, osCommerce, PHP-Nuke, PhpBB, SWiSH, xhtml/css website templates, WordPress, Zen Cart, Corporate Identity branding, icon sets and logo templates.

Drupal Themes

Drupal is a free open source modular framework and Content Management System (CMS) written in PHP. It can be used for many different types of websites, ranging from small personal blogs to large corporate and political sites.

View Drupal Themes from www.morethanatemplate.com

Joomla Themes

Joomla is a free open source content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla one of the most popular Web site software applications available.

View Joomla Themes from www.morethanatemplate.com

Mambo Themes

Mambo (formerly known as Mambo Open Source or MOS) is a free software/open source content management system (CMS) for creating and managing websites through a simple web interface. It is easy to use and has attracted many users because of this.

View Mambo Themes from www.morethanatemplate.com

PhpBB Themes

PhpBB is a free open source Internet forum package written in the PHP scripting language. The name “phpBB” is an abbreviation of PHP Bulletin Board. No matter whether you are skilled at programming or not, our phpBB Themes are easy to deal with. They can be fast and easily customized and installed.

View PhpBB Themes from www.morethanatemplate.com

CRE Loaded Templates

CRE Loaded is an ecommerce system and provides excellent solution if you want to start an online business. It allows you easily add, change and administer the items that you sell, upload product images, text descriptions, and graphics, process credit card payments, set up special pricing and more.

View CRE Loaded Templates from www.morethanatemplate.com

osCommerce Templates

osCommerce templates make an excellent choice for a web version of your shop or store. Our large selection of osCommerce skins provides you with a lot of attractive designs. They include osCommerce web templates for online book, gift, jewelry, etc. stores.

View osCommerce Templates from www.morethanatemplate.com

PHP-Nuke Themes

PHP-Nuke is a web-based automated news publishing and content management system based on PHP and MySQL. PHP-Nuke themes are design skins for websites created with the help of PHP Nuke. You may choose the PHP Nuke theme you like, and change the design of your website within minutes.

View PHP-Nuke Themes from www.morethanatemplate.com

Zen Cart Templates

Zen Cart is a free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart software. The ecommerce web site design program has been developed by a group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants that think ecommerce web design could be and should be done differently.

View Zen Cart Templates from www.morethanatemplate.com

Magento Themes

Magento is an open source ecommerce system with excellent online shop maintenance capabilities.

View Magento Themes from www.morethanatemplate.com

WordPress Themes

WordPress Themes are pre-made designs for WordPress websites or web blogs. We have a large range of high-quality professionally designed themes which have great functionality and are easily easy installed. Our WordPress Themes look great, are simple to customize and are will give your blog or website a professional appearance.

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XHTML / CSS Website Templates

Our website templates, as well as our flash templates and other products are ready-made web designs, that can quickly be used be for your high-quality website. All of our templates are completely customizable and ready for immediate download.

View XHTML / CSS Website Templates from www.morethanatemplate.com

Flash Templates

Flash templates are pre-made web design products that are basically standard website templates enhanced with Flash technology. All of the Flash templates below are of the highest quality and each and every Flash template from our collection can be easily customized in order to meet the unique requirements of your project.

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Flash Intros

A Flash Intro Template is a template of a presentation movie that is usually used to represent a website or product. The main benefits of Flash intros is that they only need a small amount of customization before being ready to use directly in your project.

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Dynamic Flash Photo Galleries

A Dynamic Flash Photo Gallery Template is an easy and powerful tool for setting up and running a gallery of images on your Flash website.
It’s basically a Dynamic Flash site with a Photo Gallery section added. The Gallery can be edited via the convenient admin panel which is in its turn conducted as a usual .SWF file. All texts on the website are edited from a .TXT file just like texts in any other Flash site. The Flash Photo Gallery may be modified either from a text file of through a comfortable admin panel (in case your hosting provider supports PHP).

View Dynamic Flash Photo Galleries from www.morethanatemplate.com

So you’ve built your website, optimised it for search engines, sorted out your affiliate marketing and put your site live on the web. Someone comes along, sees your fantastic new site and decides that your well chosen affiliates are worth having a look at.  They click the link, make a purchase and you get that well earned 10%.

Well not always…

There are people who just strip the affiliate ID from the link so that you earn 0% but worse still, there’s software out there that can maliciously strip your affiliate ID and replace it with someone else’s so that when your well intentioned customer makes a purchase, your hard earned cash goes to someone else.  Sometimes the customer’s computer may unknowingly have the software on it, but other times the affiliate site itself might have been hacked.

So what can I do about it?

Protect your affiliate link. There are various ways to do this and I will discuss 3 here, but my personal favourite is using a PHP redirect.

In the three examples below, I’ll use the fictitious site and affiliate link of:

http://www.imaginarysalescompany.com?ref=joe99

www.imaginarysalescompany.com is the site, and Joe99 is the affiliate ID.  In all cases replace this link with your own affiliate link.

Option 1) PHP redirect.

Copy the following code into notepad or similar, remembering to change the link with your own affiliate link:

• <?php header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” ); header(“Location:http://www.imaginarysalescompany.com?ref=joe99“); ?>

Save the file as php-redirect.php to your computer (the filename is not important but the extension .php is)

Upload the file to your own website

Then instead of using your affiliate link like this:

• <a href=”http://www.imaginarysalescompany.com?ref=joe99” >my affiliate link text</a>

Link to the php redirect file instead like this:

• <a href=”php-redirect.php” >my affiliate link text</a>

Your website must have PHP enabled for this to work, most websites do but if you are unsure, contact your web host.

Option 2)  Java script redirect.

Copy the following code into notepad or similar, remembering to change the link with your own affiliate link:

• <HEAD>
  <SCRIPT language=”JavaScript”>
  <!–
  window.location=”http://www.imaginarysalescompany.com?ref=joe99“;
  //–>
  </SCRIPT>
  </HEAD>

Save the file as java-redirect.html to your computer (the file name is not important but the extension .html is)

Upload the file to your own website

Then instead of using your affiliate link like this:

• <a href=”http://www.imaginarysalescompany.com?ref=joe99” >my affiliate link text</a>

Link to the java script redirect file instead like this:

• <a href=”java-redirect.html” >my affiliate link text</a>

Option 3) HTML ‘meta-refresh’ redirect.

Copy the following code into notepad or similar, remembering to change the link with your own affiliate link:

• <html><head>
  <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”>
  <meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”0; url=http://www.imaginarysalescompany.com?ref=joe99“>
  </head>
  </html>

Save the file as html-redirect.html to your computer (the file name is not important but the extension .html is)

Upload the file to your own website

Then instead of using your affiliate link like this:

• <a href=”http://www.imaginarysalescompany.com?ref=joe99” >my affiliate link text</a>

Link to the html redirect file instead like this:

• <a href=”html-redirect.html” >my affiliate link text</a>

Are there other redirects available?

Yes. There are more variations of the above redirects, all with subtle differences, and there are also .htaccess redirects but these .htaccess redirects only work on Apache servers and if you mess things up you could block access to your website so always do a complete back up before trying to change .htaccess files.

You should never need to use anything more complicated than options 1 or 2 above for a simple redirect although option 1 requires your web host to support PHP, which most do.

Related information and links.

unsure how to link to a URL? visit w3schools.com for a full explanation.

I hope you found this information useful and I welcome your comments.

If you have any specific questions related to website development, please email me or post a comment.

Worcestershire Web Designer

I recently installed Firefox, but every time I previewed my website, hovering over the images produced no ‘alt text’.  It worked fine in Internet Explorer so why not Firefox?  Was something wrong with it?

It turns out the opposite is true, it is Internet Explorer that’s wrong for showing alt text in the first place.  Alt text is text information equivalent to the image’s content or function. It may be used when a human or a robot may want to use text instead of an image, or for people who view pages in text-only mode, or who are blind or visually impaired and use screen readers or for people who just turn off images. The alt-tag is an alternative for that image, hence the name.

Let’s see an example using my company logo:

The code for this is:

<img src=”http://worcestershirewebdesign.co.uk/blah…/blah…jpg” alt=”Worcestershire Web Design – quality, affordable websites” />

(I’m using xhtml in this example, but html works the same)

If you hover over this image in Firefox, Safari or Chrome, no alt-text appears, but switch over to Internet Explorer and the alt “Worcestershire Web Design – quality, affordable websites” appears.  Why? read on…

So what should ‘alt-text’ look like anyway?

Using the above example with my browser’s images turned off and as you can see, the ‘alt‘ text is displayed where the image would have been if I hadn’t have turned it off.

So how do I get the alt-text to appear in Firefox?

Apart from turning your images off, you don’t – you use a ‘title-tag’ instead.  Title-tags are the correct way to get text information to appear on screen when hovering over an image with your cursor, not alt-tags.  Title-tags are coded in the same way as alt-tags, but you just change the word ‘alt’ to ‘title’.

Using the same example as before:

The code for this now is:

<img src=”http://worcestershirewebdesign.co.uk/blah…/blah…jpg” title=”this is an example use of title text” />

If you hover over this image in Firefox now, the words “this is an example use of title text” appears.

So which tag is correct, ‘alt’ or ‘title’?

Actually, you should be using both just be aware of the different uses.

• Alt text: shown in place of an image to give people the equivalent of what the picture was, taking into account if the image has content or has a function (a photo of a horse shows content, a link-button image has function)

• Title text: shown to give an image, text or link some title text

Using the same piece of code again but this time with both alt and title tags:

<img src=”http://worcestershirewebdesign.co.uk/blah…/blah…jpg” alt=”Worcestershire Web Design – quality, affordable websites” title=”this is an example of title text”/>

Are there any other uses for title text?

Plenty. Try hovering over this word: here.

Now try hovering over this link: www.worcestershirewebdesign.co.uk.

The simple code used for getting title text to appear over a word is:

<p title=”Use title text on words”>here</p>

and again for a link:

<a href=“http://www.worcestershirewebdesign.co.uk” target=“_blank” title=”Or you can use title text over links“>www.worcestershirewebdesign.co.uk </a>

Many thanks to Florent V. for correcting some errors that were originally on this page.

Related information and links.

There is an excellent article on the appropriate use of alternative text at WebAIM.org which goes into much more detail. Definitely worth a look.

Not using Firefox yet?  download the latest version for free at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Latest W3Schools figures show 47.5% of people now use Firefox http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Figures from other sites show different statistics on browser usage so you may also want to check out: http://gs.statcounter.com/

I hope you found this information useful and I welcome your comments.

If you have any specific questions related to website development, please email me or post a comment.

Worcestershire Web Designer