Software - page design
I use Dreamweaver
MX to design my pages. I was lucky and was bought this by my work
costs more than I can afford. However there is no need to spend
large amounts. Next down the ladder is Microsoft's Frontpage,
which I had once, but I never liked it. Dreamweaver gives control
over webpages but Frontpage seems to be fighting back all the
time. Netscape browser has always had the free Composer which
I used for many years and is good enough for many a site. These
3 are what-you-see-is-what-you-get editors, in other-words when
you put it on the screen, that is what it should look like on-line.
All three have an FTP tool in order to upload your pages to the
internet. Also there are many HTML editors (the code used to make
the pages) but this is hard work for a beginner. FTP tools can
be used seperate from the design software and there are any number
for free on www.download.com
Software
- image editing
I use Photoshop Elements 2.0 to fiddle with images. You don't
really need Photoshop though unless your site is image driven
and there are plenty of graphic tools for free, it really depends
how much you want to do to an image. Unless your site is about
picture quality there is no need to have large images and high
quality. I use Photoshop to knock them down to a quality good
enough for the web. There are little programs which can do this
for you free at www.download.com
so you don't need a heavyweight package for this job.
Meta Tags
Often overlooked are meta tags.
This is two lines of code in the head section of your HTML at
the top of the page. Even if you never look at the HTML code of
your pages again it is a good idea to put meta tags in. Put simply
the meta tags will be what a search engine first looks for on
your site and although engines like Google can get along find
without them it is still better to make sure what Google will
see.
This is the meta info from this page you are currently looking at:
All meta tags should be put between the HEAD tags.
Meta Tag: Keywords is not just a selection of what you think the page is about, those keywords must appear in the body text of the page. Google Ads seems to pickup these keywords and adjust the ads to suit, but more than that is is what you want visitors to your site to put into the search engine. Also single words are ok but better to narrow your search a bit. If you type in FREE is a search engine you get millons of pages in your results, however if you type FREE FLEXOLEGS and your site is about FREE FLEXOLEGS then the chances are your site will be the first entry in a search. Therefore concentrate on multiple word keywords. It also makes sense to have a lot of body text, these sites which are flashy and sparse present no information to search engines. Try to put as many of the keywords into your body of text on the page.
Meta Tag: Description is as it says a description of your site, don't make it another list of keywords but type it in English. When your site shows on a search engine this is the description that is most likely to show. Try to put a few of your keywords in, but don't overdo it. Both the Keywords tag and Description are your door to let more people in, so the more variation that is there the wider the door.
Meta Tag: Title is another description of your site and will head your entry at the search engine. Dont make it too long but do try to have something of the site there. Remember also that if someone bookmarks your page this will be the entry in their bookmarks and more likely than not they will edit what you have already put in order to make it look nice in their bookmarks, I try to make this an easy job for them so they see my bookmark clearly in their favourites.