CSS – on the surface – is a very simple web-based language that uses common syntax and phrases that make it simple to customize elements in a variety of aspects.  Digging deeper into the language, however, can reveal lots of formatting issues, redundancies and code errors that can cause your CSS to not perform as well as it should and this is what will separate the CSS professionals from the novices.  Here is a list of several of the most common big mistakes that can appear in CSS code along with some solutions for replacing the errors and making sure your end result checks out.

Use Hexadecimal, Not Names

Being lazy is not an admirable trait in CSS and can lead to code incompatibilities and inconsistencies.  For example, each browser may read your color codes differently when using “red” or “blue” than when using “FF0000” or “G5Y7F3”.  In order to guarantee the colors displayed through your CSS scripts are being displayed exactly how you wish, use a color sheet or hexadecimal generator that gives each color a specific, uniform definition.  Using traditional color names can add extra code that increases the overall file size of the script, which is another reason to avoid its use.

Avoid Redundant Properties

To give an example, let’s say we have the following two elements: #element-1 and #element-2.  Both elements have the same attributes (font-style, color, margin, padding) but in a poorly written example of CSS, we may still see these elements separately.  By combining the elements into something like this: #element-1, #element-2, followed by the common code, you can give both elements the same attributes with roughly half of the code, which simplifies the code’s readability and decreases overall file size.  This comes in handy when having to make changes and will save you tons of time in the long run.

Eliminate White Space

For clarity and ease of use to the human eye, many coders will leave chunks of white space separating important elements so that quick changes can be made and errors can be spotted easily.  After the code has been finalized, however, you will want to eliminate these white spaces in order to have successfully reduced the file size to the smallest amount possible.  Yes, even these spaces take up valuable file space and when speed is everything, you want to have your CSS code as compacted and minimized as possible.

Use Validation Tools

Finally, once you have made all of the optimizations and corrections you can see and think of, locate a CSS validation tool to confirm whether or not your code is properly written and executed prior to deployment.  One of the ways you can check this is by using Pingler’s CSS Validator Tool, which will let you know whether or not your code meets the validation standards set forth by the W3C.  Simply upload the code to the web, direct the CSS Validator tool to the URL of the code and it will inform you whether or not said code is up to par.  It doesn’t get much easier than that.

Search engine spiders, also known as crawlers, consist of scripts or programs that when used by search engines, go out and collect information about publicly-accessible web pages.  These spiders are solely responsible for collecting information – including content, keywords and meta data – and use this information to index your site and rank it against other web sites for any given search query.  There are multiple types of spiders that are designed to scan and engage in specific functions and acts, each contributing to how any given search engine views your site.  By understanding what these spiders are doing when they happen upon your website, you will be better equipped to know how to use these spiders to your advantage.

Selection Spiders

Selection spiders are the most basic form of search engine crawler and are typically what we think of when the word ‘search engine spider’ comes to mind.  As these spiders crawl the web, they are primarily looking for web pages that have not been indexed yet and from there, proceed to add these sites’ data and information to the specified search engine.  These types of spiders will also look for any major changes to already-indexed pages and may apply the update, depending on the rank of the page and the exact commands of the spider.

Re-Visitation Spiders

This form of spider is tasked with the exclusive job of doing what some selection spiders do: visiting already-indexed pages to determine if any major updates or changes need to be applied to the search algorithms.  Re-visitation spiders and crawlers are predominantly useful for larger sites and blogs that have constant content being added and need continuous updates in order for that content to be viewable by users of search engines.  Re-visitation spiders will check any given site at a frequency that is calculated based on factors pertaining both to the specific search engine and the site itself.

Polite Spiders

These form of spiders work in many of the same ways as other spiders do, with the main difference being that the spider alternates data gathering between multiple websites in order to prevent excessive bandwidth consumption on behalf of the bot and to prevent the bot from crashing due to certain scripts being ran on particular sites.  “Impolite” bots will often ignore specifications made by the site (robots.txt file is one example) and will end up wasting bandwidth or crashing the site (the bots can also be crashed by ignoring the commands of the site and being tricked into a “spider trap”).  Polite bots gain their name from being considerate when it comes to bandwidth and an individual website’s specifications.

What Are Spiders Seeing?

If you are curious as to what data search engine spiders are collecting about your website, then you should try out Pingler’s Site Spider Viewer, which allows you to insert the URL of any primary, secondary or tertiary webpage and see the same information that spiders are collecting about your website.  This tool is perfect for anyone who wants to see or revise the information being collected about their website.

We all know how important it is for our websites to maintain a constant flow of traffic.  With many websites now monetised and functioning as income earners for their webmasters, it is vital that traffic continues to flow in a positive direction. What many webmasters fail to accomplish with their creations is a design that will continue to accumulate traffic, rather than just maintain a steady influx of visitors.  The following four tips will give you greater insight on how to change up your site’s routine to bring new faces in and help you expand your reach while also maintaining your existing base of visitors.

Advertising Opportunities

It has never been easier and cheaper to gain exposure through advertising and there are a variety of avenues in which you can advertise your site and all it has to offer.  Programs such as Google AdSense allow your site to appear at the very top of relevant search results and can give you access to customers, clients and visitors that you never would have found otherwise.  Since ads on search engines often appear indiscriminately near the top and look very similar to normal search results, there is a higher chance that a searcher who sees your ad will click on it without thinking twice about it.

Networking Exposure

Making valuable connections on other sites is a great way to boost traffic and increase your site’s exposure.  Whether you add your site to favourites such as StumbleUpon or Digg, or use social networking services such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote your site to friends and followers, reaching out to new faces will ultimately give your site additional traffic.  Other areas to consider boosting your “network” are blog comment sections and on-line service/product listings such as Craigslist (if your site offers services/products).  These venues are the equivalent of free advertising and in many instances will provide permanent backlinking.

Reciprocal Links

Rather than viewing fellow sites that offer similar access to content and services as your competitors, try viewing them as potential friends and drivers of traffic.  By agreeing to reciprocity in the form of links, visitors to each site will have access to the other site (in this case, you or your partner’s site) and each site will benefit from this strategy.  You retain all of your original traffic while adding some new traffic from the partnered site.  This strategy works well but each site should play host to just one link/page for reciprocal links as any more can actually cause search engines to downgrade your ratings.

Proper Indexing

When it comes to being found, one of the best ways is by having proper code and HTML-compliant pages that are all linked together in some form.  Any page that does not have a direct link from another page on your site is subject to not being indexed, giving you a lesser chance of the site being discovered in any specific search result.  A great way to see how many of your pages are indexed is the Pingler Search Engine Saturation Checker; simply put in your URL and the tool will scan search engines to locate which of your pages are indexed and discoverable via search engines.

As competition for search engine rankings increases and more and more websites see the light of day, search engine optimisation has become more important than ever in the last few years.  Many business owners rely on organic traffic (traffic based on search engine positions) to generate traffic which in turn has the potential to turn into customers.  But whilst doing your utmost to optimise your content and build links to your site have you ever stopped to think about whether your HTML code is optimised?

Optimised HTML Code

Unless you personally designed your website from scratch it is highly likely that you have never seen the code behind your website.  Whether you use a theme or paid someone to design your website for you, you have placed all of your trust in them to ensure your HTML coding is optimised to a good standard.  Unfortunately many web designers do not optimise HTML code as they tend to focus on the visual and functional aspects of the website instead which obviously also needs doing.  However it can severely hamper your SEO efforts if your textual content is bogged down by excessive structural code.

Why is Optimised HTML So Important?

Regardless of any efforts you have made to improve your search engine rankings, if your HTML code is not optimised correctly, your site will not receive a good page rank position.  In order to rank your website effectively the Google Spiders need to effectively crawl your page to find out what your page content is about so that they can then index it.  Websites that are full of un-necessary coding can stop the search engine spiders from doing their job correctly as the more code that is at the top of a page the less importance a search engine spider will place on the content below it.

Think Of Your Readers Too

Have you found that your website consumes a lot of bandwidth?  Or maybe you’ve just discovered your customers are complaining about how slow your website loads?  Both of these things can also be due to un-optimised HTML code.  If you’ve noticed a high bounce rate on your site you may want to check your page loading time and see whether this could have anything to do with it.  Most visitors won’t wait around for a website to load so instead of visiting your website they will visit that of a competitor.  Luckily though, if your slow website loading speed is down to your HTML coding you can do something about it.

Check Your Code

If you think the HTML code on your website may be un-optimised the first thing you’ll need to do is check it.  You can use the Pingler HTML optimizer tool to do this.  Simply enter your website’s HTML coding and the tool will attempt to optimise it as best as possible.  Alternatively you could follow HTML optimisation tutorials online or hire a website designer who is skilled in HTML optimisation to do the hard work for you.

An .edu domain can’t just be bought outright by anyone.  These domains are reserved primarily for educational institutions located throughout the world.  In order to buy an .edu domain the owner of the website has to be accredited by an agency working for the Department of Education in the US, and elsewhere around the world other stringent policies are in place to ensure that .edu domains continue to be credible.

High Quality Backlinks

It’s a well known fact that high quality backlinks are essential in an SEO campaign and .edu links are the ideal links to try and get hold of in an SEO strategy.  It is thought (although it hasn’t been acknowledged by Google) that .edu links hold a lot of weight in the search engine rankings, and so getting a link from an .edu site is, if this theory is correct, highly beneficial.  Even if special accreditation isn’t given to .edu backlinks we can be sure that these sites are still credible and hence are worthy of including in a backlinking strategy due to the stringent process that a webmaster has to go through in order to purchase an educational domain.

It’s Not as Easy as It Sounds

If you’ve been focussing on building backlinks for a while you probably think you have the hang of things.  Guest blogging, forum signatures, blog commenting etc.  It is easy (if tedious) to gain backlinks from “normal” sites however the process isn’t so simple when it comes to educational domains.  .edu domains are renowned for being incredibly hard to get backlinks from as the webmasters of these sites won’t just link to anybody.  In fact their stringent policies have led to .edu links becoming known as the “holy grail of link building” and, well, it’s not hard to see why.

Are .edu Links Still Valuable?

When focussing on building .edu backlinks to your website you are probably wondering whether the time and effort that you are putting in is in fact worth it.  What we do advise everyone who is looking for .edu links to do is focus on sites that are in a similar niche to yours.  For example, if you run a sports website try and get links from an .edu sports domain.  Google has said on numerous occasions that the more relevant the link is, the more authority it is given when determining search results.  If you focus on random .edu sites you will have similar results to when you focus on random .com websites and the webmaster of the .edu site may also dismiss your link as spam.

Check Your Competitors

If you’re still not sure whether it’s worth the effort, why not check to see what your competitors are doing?  By using our .edu backlink checker tool you can enter the domain names of your competitors and see how many .edu backlinks they have.  If they have a few, you should look into getting some yourself in order to increase your search engine ranking.

If you have a website, whatever its purpose, you want it to be seen.  Whether it’s a blog you write for fun, an affiliate marketing site you use to make money, or a commercial site for your business, it’s not doing you any good if nobody knows about it.  In the bad old days, people used to remember site URLs and your domain name really mattered, but in the Google age, people generally access the sites they visit not by typing in a memorized URL and navigating to it, but by running a search or clicking a link they find on a page they’re already using.  This is why search engine optimization is more important now than ever before.

Knowledge is Power – and Analysis is Crucial

In order to optimize your site for the major search engines, you first need to know what kind of position you are currently in.  The site stats you get from tools like Google analytics only tell part of the story.  Sure, you can see how many visitors you’ve had, and where they are regionally, but when it comes to analysing how many potential visitors you might get in future, you really need to analyse how well your site performs on the search engines.

Link Popularity – What Does It Mean?

One important factor when it comes to bringing visitors in to view your site, is how many links to it are generated by the main search engines.  While Google is the most important because of its huge market share, it is also worth analysing for Yahoo! if you can, a lot of people still use its other features like mail and news, and while they’re there, they can be using it to find links to your site too.  Backlinks are a critical part of SEO, and getting an indication of how popular your site is in these terms can help you assess how well your site is performing, and make any necessary tweaks to your approach.

How to Test Your Domain’s Link Popularity for Free

Generally, you will want to know the link popularity for your entire domain rather than any given page on your site, because this gives a fairer indication of how well you are doing.  One individual blog post you have up on there may not be faring that well, but if your site itself is bringing in the eyeballs then you can rest assured that your overall SEO strategy is sound.

To find out the link popularity of your domain, use Pingler’s free, easy to use link popularity checker.  All you have to do is enter the address of any domain you want to check, and click continue to run the analysis.  To make sense of the results, why not compare yours to sites you know are doing well, and see how you measure up.  Used in conjunction with some of our other helpful SEO analysis tools, the link popularity checker can give you a great insight into how your site performs on the web.

When you run a website, it can be easy to get a little bit obsessed with the stats relating to it.  In the early days of posting a new blog post, you probably can’t help refreshing the stats at least every two minutes for a while afterwards to see if your tweets about it or links to it are doing their job.  If you think you have a spot of web related obsessive compulsive disorder, or want to analyse how well your site is doing for more sensible and professional reasons, your PageHeat ranking is another thing you can check and try to improve.

What is PageHeat?

PageHeat tracks and ranks millions of sites from all over the web, using things like search engine results, traffic, overall popularity, and many other factors to determine its results.  Its exact algorithms aren’t publicly known, but it uses data about sites from a lot of sources to come up with a rating on a 0-10 scale, with 10 being the most popular and effective of sites.  A rating of zero generally doesn’t mean that your site is awful and everyone hates it, but rather that it isn’t on PageHeat’s index yet.

Why Should I Care What PageHeat Thinks?

PageHeat can be a good guide to how well your SEO strategy (if you have one, and you know you should) is working.  On its own, it isn’t the ideal thing to base your view of your site’s success on, but it is definitely worth checking your PageHeat ranking as part of any overall SEO analysis you are doing on your site.  It can also be enlightening to see a different and new statistic if you do most of your analysis using Google stats.

How Can I Find Out My Site’s PageHeat Ranking?

So now you’ve heard of this intriguing PageHeat tool you are probably itching to know how your own website stacks up, right?  Well, happily your friends here at Pingler.com can guide you on this journey of discovery, with one of our range of excellent and free site SEO analysis tools.  Simply click here to visit the PageHeat Tool Checker, enter the URL you want to check the ranking for, and click continue to see your score.  Use it as many times as you like.  Check your friends’ sites’ scores and call them up to gloat that yours is better.  We encourage it.

My PageHeat Ranking Sucks.  What Can I Do About It?

If you didn’t get the results you were hoping for, or you did, but you still want to make it better, you are going to need to work on your SEO.  PageHeat looks at both your SEO and your popularity and traffic, but popularity and traffic on the whole, are only ever the result of good SEO.  Run some further analysis on your site (we have plenty of stuff that can help you) for a deeper insight into where your site may be lacking, and revise your strategy.  Maybe you need more content, or a better approach to keyword usage.  Maybe you need more links to your URLs dotted around the web.  There is always remedial action you can take, but analysis is always the first step.

If you have been designing websites for a while it’s likely that you already know what a UNIX timestamp is.  If not, it’s likely you haven’t got a clue which is why we at Pingler will hopefully be able to give you the lowdown about UNIX and why it’s useful.  We will also give you some information about the UNIX timestamp converter tools.

What is a UNIX Timestamp?

Simply put, a UNIX timestamp is a way of storing a specific date and time on your website.  The timestamp itself is made up of a ten digit number which represents the number of seconds that have passed since midnight on the 1^st January 1970, UTC time.  The reason why UNIX timestamps are used by many webmasters is because they can represent all time zones at once.  For example, a UNIX timestamp of 1296001734 can represent both 6.28pm on the 25^th January 2011 in London, 11.28am on the 25^th January 2011 in New York and 5.28am on the 26^th January 2011 in Wellington, New Zealand.

Why are UNIX Timestamps Useful?

The best thing about a UNIX timestamp is that your website visitors can see your website in real time rather than the time zone of your website’s server.  Timestamps are often used on forums that are used by members in locations throughout the world but they can be used in other occasions too – such as for recording when a member logs into a website or recording the time and date a blog post was published.  This is great news for many webmasters for example for those who run a blog in the UK but predominantly want to attract American readers.

UNIX Timestamp Converter Tools

There are a variety of tools online that enable webmasters to convert UNIX timestamps into readable format and back again, and there are a variety of reasons why you may want to do this.  Maybe you want to decipher an unreadable UNIX timestamp or maybe you just want to make sure that your coding is correct.  We at Pingler have our own UNIX Timestamp Converter Tool which is completely free to use.  All you need to do is input your UNIX timestamp and click continue.  Our software will tell you the UTC (or GMT) from your timestamp information.

Things to Keep in Mind

UNIX timestamps can be integrated into a variety of different coding applications but there are a few things that you should keep in mind.  Whilst UNIX is one of the best ways to show your reader’s real time no matter where in the world they are, the timestamps do have their limits.  It is expected that the 32-bit form of the timestamp will cease to function on the 19^th January, 2038 due to the seconds exceeding the ten digit code.  Many webmasters believe that this will cause a variety of websites to crash however it is thought a 64-bit code will be in place well before then.

Most websites are set up with the aim of selling goods or a service but if no-one can find your website you will never reap the success that you dream of.  Choosing the best keywords and key phrases for your site is one of the most important things that you will do as a webmaster as this is the not only a great way to increase your site traffic but it is also the best way to increase your targeted traffic.  The more targeted your traffic is, the higher your conversion rate will be.

Think Before You Start

The reason why many new webmasters fail is because they don’t have the first idea about keyword optimisation and its importance in an SEO strategy.  If you are thinking about starting a website for the first time, your keywords and key phrases should be one of the first things you consider so as to avoid having to edit all of your content at a later date.  The sooner you decide on your keywords, the sooner targeted traffic will find your site, and the more natural your keywords will appear in your articles.  You can always tell when someone has edited their content to include keywords at a later date and it’s not always successful.

The Keyword Suggestion Tool

There are a variety of ways to complete keyword research but if you are new to keyword optimisation and don’t have the money to pay for an expert to help you, your best bet is to use a free keyword tool.  We at Pingler have a Keyword Suggestion Tool which is very simple to use and can give you a few ideas concerning which keywords to target.  All you need to do is enter your keyword into the search box, for example ‘baby toys’ and you will then be presented with a selection of keywords that are related to this targeted keyword.  The Pingler Keyword Suggestion Tool discovers keyword suggestions from a variety of sources including Google, Yahoo and Wordtracker to help you compile a list.

What Next?

Once you have compiled a list of keywords, the next thing you need to do is find out how much competition each keyword has.  The Google Keyword tool can help you with this.  All you need to do is type in your chosen keyword and the tool will tell you how many people search for your keyword each month and how much competition there already is on the web for this search term.  Ideally you want to be looking for highly searched keywords that are relevant to your site and have very little competition; but keep in mind that it is possible to appear on the first page of Google for any keyword if you implement a good SEO strategy.

When writing content for your website you need to include your keywords naturally and be wary not to spam.  A keyword density of 2-4% is recommended for most webpages.  You should make sure that your content is unique and not copied from anywhere online too unless you want to risk being blacklisted.  When your content is published and your keywords are in place you can then focus on backlinking strategies to further increase your page rank.  Good luck.