Website Development, Website Design, Website Hosting, eCommerce and Search Engine Optimization in Bigfork, Montana

Archive for the ‘Usability/Accessibility’ Category

Writing & Formatting Web Content

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Writing for the web is different than writing for print. Web users are in a hurry and prefer to scan pages and digest smaller amounts of information.

Here are 10 best practices for writing and formatting content for the web:

  1. Use Upside-Down Pyramid Style
    Just like newspaper writing, add the most important info up top because there is a good chance readers will not read the whole page.
  2. Keep Content Concise
    Web users are impatient so get to the point!
  3. Use Simple Language
    Because users are scanning your pages in a quick manner, unnecessary jargon and uncommon vocabulary can slow the user down or even turn them away. Also remember you have a large audience of various education levels, so it is best to keep language simple for all to enjoy. (more…)

Avoiding Blacklisting while Maintaining Good SEO Policies

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

Google is currently the most popular search engine in use (responsible for over 60% of web searches [1]). This means the amount of traffic your website gets largely depends upon your Google rank.

In order to improve their rank, many websites look into Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is the practice of structuring a website to increase its visibility to search engines. Keeping SEO in mind while building your website can improve your rank as well as improve the general user experience on your website. Many of the things a Search Engine is looking for—from well structured content highlighting keywords and phrases, clearly defined text links, and the use of header tags—will make it easier for users to scan through your page and find what they are looking for as well. Good SEO tends to overlap with W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines which means increased accessibility to people with disabilities [2]. (more…)