Web Design Training Blog

Today I got the Firefox SEO facility - and wow - its great !

Firefox is a browser - for me, it’s my default browser. They have launched a set of search engine optimisation tools that are incredibly useful. You can get them too by going to the FireFox SEO page. Once added to your FireFox browser, this tool puts a load of really useful data into each search result. You can, for example, check the page rank for any listed website, find out the age of the site (quite an important factor) and find out how many links there are to that site in several of the most important search engines. I am so glad I found this tool.

Somewhere in the region of 80% of all web sites that are veiwed are found through search engines. As a trainer I often ask people to look at a web site and I give them the full web address. I have watched them type the full web address into the search engine box and get to the web site that way, rather than typing it into the address bar of their browser.

Using search engines has become a basic procedure for all users of the www. Search engine tool bars are now widely incorporated into web browsers.

In my experience, most businesses need to be found in search engines. For some businesses, being found in results is mission critical to their business. Some of my clients trade on the Internet and only on the Internet. If they do not get traffic on to their web sites, they do not get business.

Read postings to Google’s user forums if you want to see heart rending pleas from online traders whose sites have dropped out of the top ten.

BTW, I should have said “search engines and directories”, although the majority of users wouldn’t know the difference between them.

Bear in mind that there are many thousands of ’search engines’ on the Internet. But … 90% of all searches are done in under 10% of search engines.

The most highly used seach engine is Google. It carries much more usage than MSN or Yahoo. For many webmasters, getting found on the WWW is about getting found in Google.

A whole industry as grown up around search engines. There are companies who make a living from search engine optimisation of web sites - and that is ALL they do. Many web designers and trainers (like me) include search engine configuration in our work. When I build a web site I build it to be found in search engines. It is not an optional extra. It is not an add on you pay extra for!! It is a standard part of the job.

One of the world’s key web sites about search engines is Search Engine Watch

This website also has a blog.

One of the things we are looking at is whether a blog can improve traffic to a web site.

There has been some discussion recently on blogs having good results in search engines. Linking a blog to a web site might help to drive traffic to it. Something that needs some research.

Blogs can also be linked to web sites - which might be good for their PR (popularity ranking - another search engine optimisation factor).

Will do some research into this and post results to this blog

Well this is not the purpose of blogs - they can be used for many different purposes including just having fun with your friends. But in commerce web work there are those who see them as being a useful tool in increasing rankings in search engines.

Simply speaking, blogs can provide links into the web site you are trying to optimise and can themselves get found and ranked in the search engines.

If your blog gets found then there is a good chance that blog readers will click on links to your web site.

Well that is the theory of it !!

In fact now that blogging has become so well established,  people are starting to write articles about how to write good blog material and how to manage a successful blog.

Its well possible that a blog will do better in search engines than a web site. This is true if entries are written on a daily basis.

Well, I have only just started this blog about web design training.  In a few months time I will know whether it gets more hits than my main web site (web workers kitchen).

Indeed, if that happens, then I will be able to see if our main web site begins to get more visitors going to it.

My visitor stats will show how many people went from the main web site into the blog and vice versa.

What would be great for our  web design training site  is getting loads of links into it from blogs all over the world.

The more links I get into WWK the more PR it will have in the search engines.

Let me point out however that its not just the quantity of inbound links that affects SEO and PR.

Most SEO experts talk about the quality of links and that is mainly about keyword relevance.

Hence, what I need to get is links from other blogs that are about either web design or training. Are there any other blogs about web design training? Well I can go onto the search engines and try to find that out.

More on search engine optimisation