Contents:
Easy Way to Make Sure Google Likes Your Blog Post Descriptions
I’ve recently wrote a couple of posts about writing post descriptions, A Blog Description Google Seems to Like and Your Description Sucks. If you read those, you should know by now that a custom description doesn’t always get used by Google. Sometimes Google just doesn’t care for your description, and uses the content it feels is best for the snippet they display.
Well, here is an easy way to make sure Google is using your description, use Google Alerts.
Google Alerts
If you have an account with Google it’s as simple as logging in and clicking on Alerts. Then just set one up where it searches blogs for your domain or blog title. I have one set up simply searching for Best Web Image. Once a week I get an email from Google with all my posts, and guess what is included with those posts? The descriptions that Google uses in its search results. Don’t see a description you like? Then login to your blog, and make the fix.
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Tags Show What Visitors Like
If you are a blogger, know that post tags could be your best friend when it comes to identifying what your readers want more of. Some of you may initially be thinking that is what tag clouds do, but it’s not. Tag clouds show what the blogger likes, not what the readers like. Having a tag cloud, in my book, is like asking someone to pick a card out of a deck that is manipulated to force a known pick.
Having a list of tags that do not indicate popularity by size or order, offer insight to what your readers really want to see more of. On this site it appears that you want to see more usability tips, web design tips, and Google. The tags have spoken.
Related, Categories, and Post Tags
If you take the time to look underneath this post you will find my blue gray box designed to keep my visitors a little longer.
On top I have a new feature I am very proud of, the Just Posted link. It displays my latest blog post throughout the site. The next is the Related Posts. Using related posts on a blog is a well known feature to keep the visitors a little longer. I used to limit this to just five, but noticed it worked better when I increased the list to ten. This feature sometimes turns into popular posts if I do not have any posts related.
The next part of this is my Category, and my Post Tags links. Using Google Analytics I found gold pouring out from the tag pages. If you have tags displayed on your blog and use Google Analytics, just look up your content and filter for “/tags/”.
I also looked for popular category pages as well, but they just didn’t seem to be as revealing. They were clicked less, and page views after didn’t engage the visitor as much. Post tags however, were very revealing, and it was no shocker that visitors to my website wanted more usability and web design tips. They were not clicking those tags because the words were huge like in a tag cloud. They were clicking them because they wanted more on that topic.
How to Display Tags Using WordPress
If you are not already displaying post tags on your WordPress blog, here is how. First you will need to make sure you are actually submitting the important tags for the post after writing your post. This is found under the heading Post Tags right underneath your category tags in the right column.
The code to insert in your single.php file (your post display page on WordPress) is as follows: <?php the_tags( $before, $separator, $after ); ?>. I personally use: <?php the_tags(”, ‘, ‘, ”); ?> for this blog.
If you are not displaying them now give it a try, and if you already are check out your new resource of killer content ideas.
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Images are In Charge of Your Linking Title
Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer handle the title attribute for images differently. Now before you IE bashers jump on this please take the time to read this to the end. Firefox messes this up as well. Here are some of the problems, and my simple partial solution.
Also, within this post I often refer to the mouse over popup. If you are unfamiliar with what I mean by that, simply hover your mouse over my logo in the top left. Within a second or two you should see a small window display “Best Web Image – Web Usability and Design”. That is what I am talking about.
Image Attributes Put Into Use
If you use this as an example:
<img src=”http://www.bestwebimage.com/bwi125.jpg” alt=”BWI Banner” />
Firefox will display the image, and define the alt attribute as BWI Banner. A mouse hovering over will reveal no information about the image. If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer you will get the image, and a mouse over will reveal the alt text of BWI Banner. This reflects on how IE still (in version 8.0) tries to fix “errors” in code.
Using the alt attribute alone should not display anything on a mouse over, but IE is guessing that the author forgot to include a title attribute for the image, so it uses the alt attribute. What if you don’t want alt text to popup on a hover? Don’t use the required alt attribute? That’s bad news for text browsers.
Make sure you always use the alt attribute with an image. The alt is a W3C required attribute for the image tag.
If you use this as an example:
<img src=”http://www.bestwebimage.com/bwi125.jpg” alt=”BWI Banner” title=”BWI Title of Banner” />
Both FF and IE will display the title attribute on mouse over. Everything worked as planned.
Now the Linking
What happens to the image alt and title attributes when stuck within an anchor, <a>image</a>? I can say this…AAARRRRRGGGG!
If you use this as an example:
<a href=”http://www.bestwebimage.com/” title=”bwi banner link title”>
<img src=”http://www.bestwebimage.com/bwi125.jpg” alt=”BWI” />
</a>
Firefox will use the title attribute of the anchor, as the parent tag should. IE however, ignores the anchor title, and uses the image alt attribute. That simply makes me want to pull my hair out.
Now this is where I go really nuts….
If you use this as an example:
<a href=”http://www.bestwebimage.com/” title=”bwi banner link title”>
<img src=”http://www.bestwebimage.com/bwi125.jpg” alt=”BWI” title=”bwi banner image title”/>
</a>
In this case both FF and IE ignore the parent title attribute, and use the image title for some reason. This is basically why I title this post the way I did. For some reason both browsers, FF and IE, treat the image title attribute with more weight than a parent title attribute. Also, for those of you that constantly bash IE, this makes a good example of FF not handling hierarchy consistently. FF gives priority to the anchor title when the image has no title, but then takes it way when the image does.
Partial Solution
Not happy with how any of this is being handled, I say use the alt and title attribute for all of your images. This will give a consistent effect regardless of browser type. They will display the mouse over popup, and if put inside an anchor tag will display as planned/titled as well. If you don’t want the mouse over popup on an image don’t use an alt or title attribute, but know you are creating accessibility problems for some of your users.
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How Green are Your Affiliations and What Does It Reflect
Doing a little digging around on McAfee’s website today, I came across a pretty cool feature they have for website owners. It can also be used by anyone if you simply curious of how safe a website is.
The service is McAfee’s SiteAdvisor. The service basically reports if the site analyzed has any known problems or complaints. It shows how many times a site has been reported for spam, if it has adware, if it has popups, and items of that nature. What I really found interesting though, was it Green Affiliation report.
Green Affiliation
The Green Affiliation report made by McAfee shows what safe sites that the site tested links to. See Best Web Image’s report. It doesn’t show all sites, but it does give you a pretty good quick analysis.
I found this report interesting because in a way, it really reflects a website. What did I get out of this in regards to BestWebImage.com? I’m not referencing other usability or design sources enough. I tried this for a few other websites that I have, and they had much better “reflections”.
Improving My Affiliation to Reduce the Bounce
Finding this site, and seeing this reflection of BWI turns out to be fantastic timing for me. One of the primary objectives I have for BWI this month is to reduce the bounce rate. By adding more resources I could improve how new readers engage with this site, and reduce the bounce at the same time.
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Popular Posts and Pages on BWI for October 2009
Sometime prior to the 21st of October I had a little DB problem going on with my popular content tracking. At the beginning of every month though, I like to post what the top content was for the previous month before hitting the reset button. So here is the top content for Oct 21st – Oct. 31. RESET!
- How to Order Your Form Fields for Improved Efficiency – A simple how to in using tabindex in your forms. (855 views)
- A Blog Description Google Seems to Like – How I write my meta description tags for my blog posts. (635 views)
- Allow Users to Edit Comments with WP Plugin – A plugin that allows your users to edit their own comments. (633 views)
- Twitter Toolbar (540 views)
- How to Use Google Analytics to Track Your Email Campaigns – Tip on how to use advanced segments to track your email campaigns. Includes links to Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Mail segments. (507 views)
- The Internet is Not the Local Yellow Pages – An explanation to small business owners on how to turn their website ON. (453 views)
- Last Day to Order Web Analysis at the Discounted Price – Reminder that sale is ending on Web Usability and Design Analysis. (443 views)
- Digital Point Forum Down – Before you join the Digital Point Forum, READ THIS. Don’t worry, it’s good stuff. (406 views)
- Manage Intelligence Alerts with Google Analytics – Google Analytics has just added Intelligence Alerts. (403 views)
- Comment Notify Increases Page Views – Adding the plugin Subscribe to Comments was a great addition to this site. It increased page views, and increased my return visitor traffic. It also increased total comments made. (375 views)
- Usability and Design Analysis (331 views)
- How Not to Brag About Zero Comments – How to use the WordPress comment_popup_link() tag, and the comment_number() tag to encourage reader comments. (301 views)
- Creating a Fundraising Website Just Got Easy – BlackbaudNow – Site review of the fundraising service provided by BlackBaudNow.com (262 views)
- 200 Different Ways to Say Your Name – There are a lot of different ways people can search for your company. Here is a list of the ways I know. (257 views)
- Web Hosting and a Martini – Review of service for the hosting company Velcom.com (245 views)
- Google Wants You to Be More Specific – Google wants you to be more specific and structured with your data. (242 views)
- A Years Worth of Data Says My Content is King – Comparing the this year to last I find search engines to be the best source of traffic, and content truly is king. (216 views)
- Heading Tag – A How To – Header tags defined, and a quick how to on how to use them on your website. (204 views)
- Archives (202 views)
- Website Design Contest – Web Design Contest. Free web usability and design analysis, and a chance to win the the site of the month contest. (195 views)
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