Grooming Your Website

I have had my lampwork website for many years, and I am of the nature where I like to be able to perform most of the aspects of my business myself. A couple of years ago I armed myself with 'Dreamweaver for Dummies' and after a great deal of study I managed to teach myself enough of the basics to successfully rebuild my website in Dreamweaver, I then went on to build my jewellery website. I'd like to share with you a few of the things I have learnt along the way through advice from others.


ALT tags are an important addition to your website, they add keywords which aid search engines and it helps those who are on dial-up, if the image is loading slowly the ALT information will let them know what image will appear. An ALT tag is the description of your image, including keywords, which is added after the Image Source info.
e.g. IMG SRC="redfocal.jpg" WIDTH=100 HEIGHT=100 BORDER=O ALT="Red lampwork focal bead with blue spots" This can be added directly to your Code page or if working in Dreamweaver the description can simply be added into the ALT box in the Properties Inspector which will then automatically place it in the Code page.


Another addition which is beneficial to attracting search engines, is a site index included in your website. This is simply a seperate page with text only, listing the links of each page of the website. An example is my site index on my lampwork website.


If you would like to find out if other websites have links to your site, go to Link Popularity and type your website URL into their search box. This is a free service which will show the results in Google, Yahoo and MSN. Of course you can type in any website URL if you are interested in viewing the links to that particular site.


To find where you are ranked with the search engines, go to Google Rankings If you do not have an API Key it is very simple to apply for one, and it will be emailed to you. This will show your ranking on Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.



If you have any questions or wish to add your tips, please do so in the comments.