Area 10 [archive] - BUILD YOUR OWN WEBSITE

PART 14

You may well have already developed your own successful traffic strategies, but if you would like to apply the principles used at Project HappyChild to generate traffic (we have *never* paid for advertising) the following information may be useful. These "ways of doing things" have evolved over the last four years on the principle of trying something then monitoring the visitor levels and the stats (specifically *what* was visited) in respect of whatever was changed or modified or implemented, to see whether it worked or not, and progressing on that basis. Some of the ideas may seem very simplistic in the high-tech environment of the Internet today - but the combination of these few primary factors has generated an incredible amount of traffic for the Project HappyChild site.

Some of the concepts have "moved on" since the original pagebuilding guide was written! - but the original pages have been left in place because of the many aspects of site-building which they explain - and I still believe WordPerfect Suite 8 is the best possible introduction to pagebuilding, if you're fortunate enough to be able to get hold of a copy. However if you're already on the pagebuilding path, you may find the fourteen insights below, worth a great deal to you in accelerating traffic levels to your website.

(1) Arachnophilia - http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/ - free (careware) software which allows you to build your website without "frames" - and modify up to 100 pages at once, so you can have similar information on many pages and update it easily. Search engines seem to prefer unframed pages and using "simple pages" ensures that all your inter-site links are on the page itself, making it easier for the search engine robot to index your whole site. Arachnophilia is now being developed to include Java, so download the simple-html version whilst it's still available, from the address quoted.

(2) Free search engine submission - either use a "spidering" program (there are many freeware and shareware ones available) or take the time to visit the big search engines (Google, Yahoo, Altavista, Northern Light, HotBot, Lycos, Infoseek, MSN, AOL etc.] and list your pages individually. Always check that the page you're listing isn't already listed on that engine, first! It's time-consuming but does eventually bear results. The search engine robots will gradually work their way around your site - we have never found the need to "re-submit" the same page and often many of your other pages will be visited by the robots without you having to submit them individually, provided that enough interlinks are in place between the pages within your website.

[3] Meta-tags - Whilst some search engines index the visible content of your page, many will look for your metatags. These should include Author, Date, Distribution, Description, Title and Keywords. Take a look at any of the metatags on Project HappyChild pages - call up the page then "view - source" and you'll see the format used and how the content of the tags relate to the page itself.

[4] Updating - Keeping your site "fresh" for the search engines is important, so that search engine robots which come back to look at your site, find something "new" each time and will keep re-indexing you. Using Arachnophilia to modify your pages en bloc means that you can ensure each and every page "changes" on a fortnightly or monthly basis. Even if the only change is a link to "April" newsletter rather than "March" newsletter, they'll pick up on this. If you don't have anything which needs changing - simply change your "Date" meta-tag to the date you make the change, and re-upload your pages. Using Arachnophilia we can comfortably change over 2000 pages in an hour, so it's not time-consuming. Make a copy of your whole site each time before making major changes, though, just to be on the safe side, in case you block-modify something by mistake.

(5) FTP - The best (shareware) FTP program we've found is Flash FXP, which you should be able to get from www.tucows.com or www.download.com . Once it's installed, all you need to do is drag whole directories (including their sub-directories) from the left over to the right, and the program will build them for you on your hard drive, or update what's already there. Re-uploading the whole site here can take three to four hours - but we simply "drag and drop" and Flash FXP takes care of it after that, re-starting the queue if there's a connection break, leaving you free to get on with other things.

(6) Inter-site links - Always use the "full address" for links within your website (eg <A HREF="http://www.happychild.org.uk/nvs/views/index.htm">Guestbook</A>] i.e. Guestbook. We've found this increases the rating in some search engines - many work on the basis of how many Internet links there are to your page - and if many pages on your site carry the full link address to any given page, this will improve its search engine visibility as well as making your whole site more cohesive.

(7) Graphics - Centralise your graphics in one folder on your site (again using the full http:// address]. Use or design particular graphics to harmonise with particular themes on your site, so that people will come to associate the graphic with the theme it represents - and use the same graphic-link wherever possible on your pages, for a link to a particular area or theme, to enhance recall in the minds of your visitors. Calling all the graphics from the same folder means that when a graphic is called again from another page, it will appear virtually-instantly on the next page [because it will already be in your visitor's Internet-cache]; dually this minimises bandwidth download required, allowing you more visitors within your designated bandwidth allowance. Use "alt tags" for your graphics - some search engines index these, so choose your wording with care, and the text of the alt tags will also be visible to visitors (dependent on their browser choices].

[8] HTML - use "simple HTML" wherever possible. We don't use java (because some search engines still don't like it, apparently) - simplify your page format wherever possible. Use table format for your text, for ease of recognition by browsers - take a look at the source code for tables on the Project HappyChild pages, to see how particular effects are achieved. <TR> is a new line [ ending in </TR> ], <TD> is a new cell [ ending in </TD> ]. The rest will be relatively self-explanatory, with a little time spent in relating the source code to the relevant table.

(9) Visual quality - balance the visual appearance of each page. Use eye-catching graphics (avoid flashing graphics if you can). Pop-ups are simply tacky - use them as little as possible; you want people to remember your page because it's visually dynamic - not because it's full of pop-ups and flashing lights. Quality is everything. Remember not everyone has ADSL - minimise download speed by compressing your graphics, wherever possible.

(10) Static vs. dynamic pages - We've always used "static" pages rather than cgi-generated ones. Firstly because static pages are more straightforward for search engines to list; secondly because if your ISP's .cgi server is down, you don't lose all your page visibility. Generating static pages might seem like a long haul - but if you set up your basic html for a page in Arachnophilia, you can copy the html into a standard word-processing package like Microsoft Works, and generate whatever pages you need by using the "mail-merge" facility combined with the MS Works database. May take you a while to fathom how to set it up, if you're not familiar with databases and mail merge, but once it's in place you can generate endless static pages, each of which can be permanently resident on your site, at a rate of maybe 15-20 pages per hour. And you *know* the html will be correct, on each and every page, if you test the set-up page thoroughly before you begin. Generating your pages like this means you can maintain a particular style within the pages of any given theme, changing your set-up page for a different "look" before starting work on a new area.

11. Cohesion - make your website cohesive by finding a way to link all major areas and themes from *every* page. Allow people to find their own route through your pages by always offering a wide range of items for them to click on. Your website isn't "flat", rather multi-dimensional, like a "sphere" - but your visitors are only going to look at one page at a time (and rarely your main page] so create each page like a "flat section through the sphere", with plenty of links to your other pages, so they can see what else is available everywhere else on your site. Setting this up is complex but you'll experience the benefits, and so will your visitors.

12. Attracting attention - often you may have something you need to draw your visitors' attention to. Why not use a "headline graphic"? Design a simple across-the-page graphic (ideally not a marquee) and include it on all your pages, as we have done at Project HappyChild [take a look at the main page at http://www.happychild.org.uk], with html linking the graphic to a "headline page" which automatically redirects in around 5 seconds to whatever page we want visitors to look at. If something urgently needs to be publicised, all we have to do is modify one graphic and the links from the headline page, and re-upload those two items: and instantly the headline graphic changes on over 1000 pages across the Project HappyChild site and mirrors. Simple - but very effective. Try it!

13. Robots - we don't use "robot instructions" on individual pages - but we do have a simple robots.txt page (with very few exclusions) to encourage search engine robots to browse the site and all its links freely. A robots.txt page might not seem very important, if you don't have areas you wish to exclude - but we've found uploading the robots page to be beneficial for the site as a whole.

14. 404 pages - One of the first major improvements at the site was generating our own "404 page". Not all ISP's allow this - so check first! - but a simple .htaccess file, uploaded to your site and pointing to a specific (selected) page means that anyone who clicks on a broken link within your site, or comes in from an expired page address on the search engines, will reach a designated page you have chosen, rather than simply leaving your site. This can make a stunning difference to your overall traffic levels. Our "404 page" is at http://www.happychild.org.uk/shadow/index.htm - take a brief look. It's in the same format as the main "welcome page" - and has proved very helpful in retaining visitors who might otherwise have gone elsewhere.

The above information is based on my personal experience of what "works" in generating traffic for a website. Over four million visits have accrued in just four years by employing the basic principles described here.

No doubt this combination of "traffic factors" could be "sold" for hundreds of pounds a time. Instead it's given to you freely (though I retain the copyright!) with the request only that if these insights benefit you in any way, you "give back" something by helping one of the Directory Charities or Appeals helping children, featured on the site - and that you tell someone about the Project HappyChild site, or perhaps put a link from your own website, to any page here. Thank you!

Penny

© Penny Rollo 14th April 2002

These notes are copyright Penny Rollo 14th April 2002. You may print them off and/or photocopy them for your own use, and/or give photocopies to other people, but the notes may not be published in any form (including elsewhere on the Internet) without prior written permission from Penny Rollo. If you find the notes helpful, your support for one of the charities helping children in the Project HappyChild Directory or in our Worldwide Appeals area would be welcomed.