Free SEO: A real example for English and translated web sites.

Search engine optimization can’t be guaranteed, and there are not 100%-proven set paths for succes, so if someone is promising “unreal” results, those promises are for sure just that: unreal. The reason behind its “uncertainty” when it comes to results, is mostly the different algorithms between search engines, the competing sites doing also SEO, so on and so forth.

However, there are techniques that you can put in practice to make things better, and if all the stars align correctly, yes, you can be on the top positions in a couple of popular search engines. For that you can hire an expert, which might cost you a bit, you can get a book, or you can read this article, take some ideas and try to do it yourself.

So let’s get started and let’s use a real example for this exercise. Let’s make sure you are full of patience because you will need a lot of it:

Site: http://www.djjc.com/thecave.php (this is one of the podcasts hosted by DJ JC, where they speak about sex, not as in porn, politics, sports, current events, music, and a lot more. It is in Spanish.)
Current position: as of 03.03.09, the path/site doesn’t show up in the top 48 page results of Google.
Goals: when the word “podcast de sexo” is entered, the site should show up in the top 10/20 positions in Google.

Why would I want to deal with “sexo” as an example? Just because it will give us so many ambiguos results, that is a great example to learn how to also do filtering and remove the “garbage”. At the end, you don’t want just traffic, you want people really interested in listening to a podcast that deals with the mentioned subjects.

03.03.09: KEYWORDS. PROGRESS: NOT IN THE TOP 48 RESULT PAGES.

Here is a list of the current keywords:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”the cave,podcast,numero 1,mejor,latino,
sexo,politica,humor,musica,deportes,relaciones,amor,amistad,consejos,
problemas,latin,spanish,español,espanol,castellano” />

http://googspy.com will help us determine if there are more keyword terms we should take into consideration. I don’t see anything relevant yet. Since you don’t really want to add porn-related terms, here is where your filtering kicks in. Just remember, you don’t want just traffic, you want potential listeners.

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ will also suggest more keywords. I have replaced “sexo de podcast” by just “sexo“. I have noticed that I should add the words “gratis,oral,relatos” to my keywords, which are relevant to the podcast.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal is Google’s own tool. I will add “rss” to my keywords.

My keywords now are:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”the cave,podcast,numero 1,mejor,latino,
sexo,politica,humor,musica,deportes,relaciones,amor,amistad,consejos,
problemas,latin,spanish,español,espanol,castellano,gratis,oral,relatos,rss” />

NOTE FOR TRANSLATED WEB SITES: sometimes a literal translation of keywords won’t make sense in the market you are targeting. For example, car in Spanish for Latin America would be auto or carro. But in Spain might also be coche. So when deciding your keywords, you will have to also have in mind your target audience.

03.04.09: TITLE. DESCRIPTION. VALIDATION. PROGRESS: NOT IN THE TOP 48 RESULT PAGES.

My title looks like this:

<title>Jose Cotes (DJJC) :: The Cave</title>

The <title> field has become very important when it comes to positioning. Some sites, probably even Google, don’t use anymore the keywords. So let’s add a bit more information here, without making it deceiving.

I will add (Sexo - Humor - Vida) as it is the real name of the podcast. And I will add the word podcast to it.

My new title is:

<title>Jose Cotes (DJJC) :: The Cave (Sexo - Humor - Vida) :: Podcast</title>

My description looks like this:

<meta name=”description” content=”Podcast de sexo, politica, musica, humor, relaciones y mucho mas.” />

It looks ok to me, but I will add the word gratis (free) as I learned that is a popular keyword for people looking for podcasts. Also, I will add the word vida, and change the order of the description, just to make it consistent with the title. My new description will be:

<meta name=”description” content=”Podcast gratis de sexo, humor, vida, politica, musica, relaciones y mucho mas.” />

Since there is not an ultimate meta tag checker, you will have to use a combination of http://www.scrubtheweb.com/abs/meta-check.html and http://www.submitexpress.com/analyzer/.

I have learned that my title is 2 characters too long. There are problems with relevancy of the title, description and keywords, but I will fix those later. There is not a robot meta tag. Let’s add one.

Here is how my <head> section looks like now:

Now let’s go to http://validator.w3.org/. Here I will validate the whole html file and make sure it is fully compliant with standards and browsers. This make take a lot of time if you were not carefull enough creating your pages, but it is totally neccesary. Also, you might have to know a bit about html, xml, css and standards to fix the errors.

03.06.09: CONTENT. SITEMAPS. ROBOTS. PROGRESS: NOT IN THE TOP 48 RESULT PAGES.

Here is what the actual page looks like now:

Besides the archive section having some of the subjects talked about in some of the shows, if you land in that page you don’t have an idea on what “the cave” is about. So, we will have to add an “about” section to the page. That text will also be parsed by the search engines.

Here is the page modified:

Let’s create a sitemap of the entire site (http://www.djjc.com). Why? Because some search engines look for those when checking your site. In a nutshell, the sitemap will tell the search engines what the main page is linking to, change frequency, priorities, etc.

Go to http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and generate your sitemaps. Save and upload all the files generated (5) in the root of your website.

Now on to Robots: robots.txt will tell the search engines what to list and what not to list. For this site I want all listed but the class and members directory. The class, because it only has code in it. The members because it is a password-protected directory. My robot.txt will look like this:

Save and upload to your root.

03.26.09: SUBMIT. PROGRESS: IN 2ND RESULT PAGE!

Yes you read right! The page is now in the second result page! So, we are all set with Google. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. But let’s make sure we submit this page to the rest of the sites, if we have not already done that.

At http://www.seoconsultants.com/search-engines/ not only we have a list of the Top 10 search engines, but they also have a direct link to the submission sites for each one. So go there and submit to all of of them.

Install PHP on Windows XP

For those of you wanting to run/test PHP code on your own machine, or on a machine on your local network, this one is for you. First off, you would had to have installed the Internet Information Services (IIS). If you have not done so, please go here.

1. Let’s install PHP Version 5. Go here: http://www.php.net/downloads.php#v5. Dowload the file called PHP 5.2.6. installer. As of this writing, that was the latest stable version. It can be called different, but just make sure it is the installer. Run it.

2. Click on Next. Click on Accept and Next. Change C:\Program Files\PHP\ to just C:\PHP\.

3. Select IIS CGI. Cick on Next. On “Choose Items to Install”, for now let’s leave all as is. Click on Next. Click on Install. Click on Finish.

4. Download this file, right click->save as -phptest.php- and save it to this path: C:\Inetpub\wwwroot. Open your browser and type the following: http://localhost/phptest.php. You should get something like this:

5. Done. But I will add some steps so this computer can be seen within your local network and not only within you local box.

6. Go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel. Click on Windows Firewall.

7. On the Exceptions tab, Click on Add Port… Name: HTTP, Port Number: 80.

8. Click Ok. Ok again. Now open a browser in another machine within the network and type the following address: http://machinename/phptest.php (machinename should be changed to the name of the computer hosting the web server and php).

Install a Web/FTP Server on Windows XP

In case you want to test you web site on your own computer, before publishing it to the web, or need to ftp files to your own personal box, you will need a Web Server or an FTP Server. By default, Windows XP won’t install its Web/Ftp Server, so let’s add the Internet Information Services (IIS), which contains a Web Server, an FTP Server, FrontPage Extensions, SMTP Service, etc. Remember to have the Windows XP’s installation CD at hand.

1. Go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel. Click on the Add or Remove Programs icon.

2. On the left pane, click on Add/Remove Windows Components. The following window will pop up.

3. Click on Internet Information Services (IIS). Click on Details… Customize it with the services needed. Click Ok. Click on Next>.

4. Windows will ask you to insert the CD. Note that this CD needs to be the one used to do the original Windows XP installation. Click on Finish.

5. Open a web browser and type this address: http://localhost/. You should get something like this

6. Done. Now you can add a scripting language, i.e. PHP, a database, i.e. MyPHP, and you can set up an environment on where to test out complex sites.

Website/HTML Pages for the iPhone and iTouch

Tools: Dreamweaver 8.

With all the fuss about Apple’s device, I decided that it was a good idea to have an iPhone/iTouch accessible site of my main site, djjc.com. I need it to look good in portrait or landscape mode. Let’s remember, the iPhone’s portrait resolution is 320 width by 356 height, and its landscape width is 980 pixels.

1. Let’s create a new page. File –> New –> Basic page –> HTML. The DTD can be left as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Click on Create. Now File –> Save and name it index.html.

2. Place the cursor after <body>. Insert –> Layout Objects –> Div Tag. Click on New CSS Style. The Selector Type should be Advanced (IDs, pseudo-class selectors). In Selector: type this #iphonecss.

3. Save as iphone.css. Click on Box. Width: 320, Height: 356. Un-check Same for all under Margin and on Right and Left select auto. Click Ok and Ok.

4. Go to Modify –> Page Properties. Under Appeareance I will select my Page Font as Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif. Size:12. Text color: #FFFFFF. Background color: #000000. Left, Right, Top and Bottom margin all set to 0.

5. Now click on Title/Encoding. In Title i will add my site name: Jose Cotes (DJJC) for the iPhone. On Encoding select Unicode (UTF-8). Click OK.

6. After <meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″ /> add the following: <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=320″ />.

7. Start adding the content. You can create more styles for different content, graphics, etc. Check the following links for CSS Support in Safari: http://developer.apple.com/internet/safari/safari_css.html, and here is Apple’s reference library for Internet & Web: http://developer.apple.com/referencelibrary/InternetWeb/idxWebContent-date.html.

8. Upload your files to the server, and test it here: testiphone.com.

Selecting the right colors for your print or web design

One of the most important and hardest part of your design, whether is print or web, is to select the right color combinations. Well, Adobe is giving us a free online tool that will ease the process: http://kuler.adobe.com/. Also, check this tool for another alternative of your vision: http://www.cemp.ac.uk/colours/.