In the office on Friday, I was talking about web site content, more specifically about links and SEO. I discussed the most basic element of SEO, link text. The link text contains the keywords that Google, Bing, Yahoo et al use to match your search query to their web site. The more links to a page with the same keywords, the higher up the ranks it goes.
So, sounds pretty obvious that you should have searchable keywords in your links. But what do most people do? Well, you mostly see something like “Click here to see…” which to a search engine explains nothing about the target content. If you search Google for “click here“, you get 872,000,000 results, most of which point to Adobe Reader!
So, a very simple tip: Don’t use “Click here” in your link text.
If your link text matches the content of the <h1> or <h2> tag on the target page, you also get a rank boost as these headings telegraph that the content matches the link, making it a trusted link, rather than just spam or “Google bombing“.
It’s hard to underestimate how important SEO is for a web site. With billions of pages now floating around the Internet, if you don’t appear on the first few pages of Google for your targeted search, for all intents and purposes, you don’t exist.
This entire post was inspired by a reader who e-mailed me asking for help. I’m more than happy to help someone who is learning. It makes the whole thing worthwhile.
In May 2008, Facebook announced “Facebook Connect”, a Trusted authentication method so that user’s profiles can be used on other sites. My 2007 article pretty much does what Facebook Connect does for you now, but Facebook have made it much easier. To get started, take a look at the Facebook Connect web pages and more specifically, the single sign-on guide.
A few things of note:
This does not replace your current login system. You still need a user database
People still need to click “connect” and you cannot use general session/cookie information to simply log in without interaction.
Facebook claims it gives you 15% more registrations, so what are you waiting for, get started!
A friend of mine recently bought a HTC HD2, the extra large touch screen Windows Mobile 6.5 phone. He loves it, it’s great for movies and the mobile web, thanks to Opera and other apps built in to the Sense UI.
A friend of his gave him a memory card with a load of programs on it. Whilst on the tube, my friend went through the list and selected a few to install, things like extra dictionaries, radios and the like. By the time he had reached his stop, he couldn’t make phone calls directly from the contacts list, and by the time he was at his front door, text in SMS messages was ten times larger than normal.
This is an issue for “open” operating systems, and especially true for constrained mobile OSs that rely on a small number of core classes. These can have fundamental settings overridden by apps which appear quite innocent at first, but have ramifications across the device if programmed improperly. That’s just the start; all sorts of things can go wrong including the potential for malicious apps to quietly access all of your data and e-mail it to anyone it wishes.
OS makers have now learnt their lessons, sandboxing apps and allowing for limited communication between services using registered links and restricted APIs. This ‘closed’ solution hasn’t limited developers as many expected, most have simply found ways around the solution, often coming up with innovative and novel methods, working with the strengths of the device instead of against each other.
My friend has learnt his lesson too. He’s reset the phone to factory settings and is building the application library up one at a time from trusted sources. He’ll know better next time.
