Optimizing Your Web Site for the Search Engines Using CSS and JavascriptWritten by Michael L. White Copyright © 2003-2004 All Rights Reserved.
Two of greatest techniques to come along for web site refinement are cascading style sheets (CSS) and javascript navigational menus. In this article, I want to show you how to use both of these to ease strain of site maintenance while defending against at least two problems with using javascript menus. CSS can make web site maintenance much easier by consolidating a site's style and appearance attributes into one central file which can be edited alone and yet affect look of entire site. Just as wonderful, one javascript file can accomplish a similar effect with your site's navigational menu by making it available to every page on your site through a single line of code per page linking that page to javascript file. By removing all this CSS style and javascript code into two separate files, you will clean up your web pages' textual content, thus making it easier for search engine spiders to crawl and index your site and more effectively rank it according to your actual textual content. These are definitely two techniques worth implementing. Here are examples to show you how this is done. First, here's how your web page incorporating both CSS and navigational menu javascript file should look: <HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Your Page Name</TITLE>
<LINK TYPE="text/css" MEDIA="Screen" REL="stylesheet" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/your_css_file.css" rel="nofollow">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV ID="center">
<H1>Your Page Name</H1>
Your page's textual content goes here.... </DIV>
<DIV ID="left">
Your navigational menu is inserted here from your javascript file using following line of code. See next example for sample code for navigational menu javascript file.
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="javascript" TYPE="text/javascript" SRC="http://www.yourdomain.com/your_nav_menu_file.js"> </SCRIPT>
</DIV>
</BODY>
</HTML>
Now, here's how your navigational menu javascript file should look:
<!--
document.write('<a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/your_web_file1.html" rel="nofollow">Page One</a>'); <BR>
document.write('<a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/your_web_file2.html" rel="nofollow">Page Two</a>'); <BR>
-->
You can add as many menu items as you need, so you get picture.
Finally, here's part of code in your CSS file which gives your site table-like look without high-maintenance, cluttered effect of HTML TABLE code:
...other CSS code, such as font style, etc., can precede following segment.
The #left and #center blocks of code below correspond to left and center columns on your web page. You can also add a #right and #top column and section, respectively, if you so desire.
#left
{ position: absolute;
top: 0px;
left: 0px;
width: 220px;
padding: 10px;
margin: 5px;
background-color: #f2f2f2;
}
#center
{ top: 0px;
margin-left: 230px;
padding: 10px;
}
| | Google Local Search And The Impact On Natural OptimizationWritten by Rob Young
With advent of Google Local, a service that helps Web users find local businesses by typing in a search term and a city name, many questions arise concerning its impact on Natural Optimization.Google Local tracks down local stores and businesses by searching billions of pages across Web, and then cross-checking these findings with Yellow Pages information to locate local resources Web users wish to access. In addition to local business listings and related Web links, Google Local also provides maps of desired region and directions made available by MapQuest. This makes Google Local convenient for Web searchers and extremely useful for local businesses, if their sites are optimized for local-searches. If not, some businesses could be missing out on a tremendous increase in local site visibility and traffic. Case-in-point: The Home Depot, whose Web site features its own Store Finder with zip code-accessed location listings. Type "Home Depot" into Google Local and while a list of local stores appears, no related local landing pages come up. In fact, none of related Web links even direct Web users to Home Depot's home page. Most large sites that have retail stores have a search feature or "enter your zip" option. Google and other Search Engines will never be able to index this content. For retailers looking to increase sales and traffic from their Web sites, this could prove to be a big problem. The Home Depot is not alone. Countless other large and small businesses alike do not have city-oriented pages accessible through local search sites. Many are not listed in top 15 return results for related keywords for Google Local, despite their location in immediate proximity to search location. Google Local ranks listings based on their relevance to search terms user enters, not solely by geographic distance. This means that unless your site has a city and/or county-oriented landing page for each location, Google will not be able to access your contact page, no matter how relevant your site is to a search term, or how close you are in geographic distance.
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