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Mail @ YourNew.com - Web design, Web hosting, Search Engine Placement, and Internet Marketing Newsletter
Welcome to "Mail @ YourNew.com". This Internet marketing publication is a great way to keep up-to-date on Internet changes, as well as changes here at YourNew.com. If you have an interest in Internet marketing and search engine optimization, we welcome you to subscribe to this mailing list.
In previous articles I have discussed how to make pages load quickly. The easy part about writing an article on load speed is that the objective is obvious to everybody ... to load your pages as fast as possible. Navigation is far more subjective to opinion. The overall objective is easy, "make your site navigation simple and intuitive". So, what does that really mean? One person's intuitive navigation is another person's nightmare.
A good website navigation scheme will not likely gain you a compliment from a visitor, such as "Hey, I just visited your web site, the navigation was great" (however, I have seen this, too). A bad navigation, on the other hand, will definitely get a response. Although, you will not likely hear from this visitor, as they have gone far away into cyberspace, and your site was long forgotten.
A good website navigation scheme will not likely gain you a compliment from a visitor ... A bad navigation, on the other hand, will definitely get a response.
It is impossible to design a good Web site without first designing a navigation system that your visitors will use to find their way around. In fact, it is so important that regardless how many visitors you have, you will never get them to see what you want them to see with bad navigation. A site's navigation structure is a major factor in whether it will prosper or fail.
I drew my first animated computer graphic in my 7th grade computer class. In the following 18 years, I have come to love computer animation and graphics. As hundreds of my sites reflect, I have learned how fun a navigation structure can be. However, before even considering the appearance, neat graphics or text on the site, I consider where to place the most important area that my client wants (and needs) visitors to see.
To explain this, try drawing circles on a piece of paper to represent the important parts, and then draw lines between them to represent links between them. Determine whether it should it be a direct path or should they link through another page first? Change the circles around until you have each main part of the site sensibly positioned with the best possible links between them.
Imagine a college campus for a moment. Have you ever noticed the tracks in the grass between buildings (this analogy also works well with livestock trails to the pond, for country folk like me). In this instance, you have a clearly defined path that people (or cows) use to go where they want to go. Some builders do this intentionally. They leave grass for a time, and then they come back to build sidewalks wherever the grass was worn by foot traffic. You cannot avoid creating links when you create your site, but you should know exactly where your visitors are going and ensure that they, and other new visitors, find a simple path to get there. You should use a comprehensive statistic analysis program to find out. Once you know where your visitors are going, you can improve your navigation by placing links in the best possible locations.
Graphics add a lot to a Web site, but text leaves a lot more room for links. When you write about a specific topic, product or service on a page, include a link within the text. Never assume that the reader will just go and find it. You should also add text links so even your visitors with text-only browsers will know where to go.
Once your visitor has figured out your navigation scheme, don't change it. Repeat the same navigation on each page. Use the same text in the same color at the same location.
Finally, a visitor will have a hard time knowing where to go if they don't know where they are. Therefore, you should clearly identify each page in a fashion that your visitor can quickly locate. This can be in the form of a large page title or a small tag. The key is to make it obvious and consistent from page to page.
I am a great believer in artistic expression. The Internet has provided more people with the opportunity to express their artistic skills through Web design than nearly anything in history. Other aspects of a Web page can be as unique and elaborate as you like but don't forget ... the navigation is the component that will make it work, or fail.
Smart is right! It took a lot of ingenuity for Microsoft to find their way into adding their own links on your Web site. That is exactly what you will have in a couple of months when Windows XP is out in full force.
You may have seen something similar with other products like Personal Agent (formerly known as Flyswat) by NBCI, but nothing like this. What we are talking about is a mass-marketed product that will add links to specific words and phrases within pages of your site. That means, for example, if you were selling furs and mentioned a "Blue Fox", you may get a link to an article by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) about poaching of the Blue Fox.
If you are like me, you have put blood sweat and tears into your work. It is hard work, writing (or finding) the best content and images, then formatting it perfectly so that the reader gets the exact message you want to convey. If you don't know this work first hand, then you may have paid somebody (like YourNew.com) a handsome fee to handle all of this for you. Either way, the last thing you want is to have a new operating system released that will put graffiti all over that hard work. It sounds horrible, (and it is) but this is what will happen very soon if you don't know how to stop it!
Microsoft actually plans to piggyback their own selected content on top of yours. The technology of their products (such as Internet Explorer and the Office suite) will scan web pages and documents for keywords and phrases known to Microsoft. Any of these that are found will be underlined with a special purple zigzag to show that they are "smart tags".
Microsoft Smart Tags are "OPT-OUT" technology rather than "OPT-IN". This means that unless you know how to stop it, you will have Smart Tags on your site soon.
So, how do you stop it? If you want to avoid Smart Tags, you must add a meta tag in your HTML that tells the browser that you do not want them. Here is the line to add in the HEAD of each of your pages. Simply select the entire contents of this box and paste it into your HTML.
For more help, including Microsoft Smart Tags, be sure to check out our "Meta Assistant". If you don't know what a meta tag is, and how it will help your site to be more visible, here are a couple of articles you shouldn't miss!
Meta Tags 101 - Plain English explanation of meta tags, and how they will help you.
With the Microsoft plan to integrate all of the worlds' databases into one large database called "Dot Net", it is chilling to imagine what could happen next.
Is it just me, or do others get a chill at the thought of the power "Big Brother Bill" holds? Don't get me wrong ... I don't want Bill to get this and think I am in a shooting match! It just frightens me to ponder what a man so ingenious and powerful could do if he ever got mad at the world.
Let's just look at his net worth for a second. It is right around 50 and a half billion now. That's a lot of bucks for a guy 8000 times his age! Allow me to put this into perspective: YourNew.com is based in the Kansas City area, which is estimated around a million population. Should Bill choose, (doubtful) he could hand each person in the metropolitan area a crisp $50,000 bill and still have millions to retire on. That can finance an awful lot of chaos!
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