WEB MARKETING THAT IMPROVES THE ODDS

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Since you're reading this page, you must be familiar with 'browsing the web'. You have a choice of browsers, the most popular being Internet Explorer (or IE for short) and Firefox.

Firefox has grown in popularity because Microsoft did not update their IE6 web browser for many years. The launch of IE7 has narrowed the gap between the features & security of the two browsers.

There is much 'geek talk' of Standards Compliance. You probably would have experienced some odd behaviours in websites. What works and looks okay in one browser, may look odd in another browser. This is because browsers have not been designed to common standards.

As you can imagine, this is a nightmare for web designers who often have to leave out advanced features because it's simply too hard to get them to work in all browsers. More commonly, designers limit the guarantee of compatibility to the most popular browsers. This means that cool and useful features can be included, but they may not work for the (under 5%) of users that use more obscure browsers.

If you are reading this and have IE6, we would suggest that you either upgrade your browser to IE7 (for XP and Vista only) or Firefox (for Windows 2000, XP and Vista and Mac). This will ensure that you see most sites as they were intended to be viewed, and most if not all features will work properly.

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A Web Page is a kind of document written in 'languages' that can be read, interpreted and shown (this is called 'rendered') in Web Browsers. Of course, the 'document' may include images, audio and video as well as text. The www runs on the Internet, which is a huge network of computers.

Web Pages link to other pages via the World Wide Web (www). These links are called 'hyperlinks', and can be inserted in webpages and emails.

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In the early days of the Internet, web pages were largely 'static'. This means that pages had fixed content that could only be changed by a programmer physically changing the text and uploading the edited page.

Today, most modern web sites are 'dynamic'. This means that each page or elements of a page change automatically ('dynamically') as content is changed or added. It also means that a visitor can choose a 'custom' experience, by calling up only the content that interests them.

This works in two ways. Firstly by the web page allowing a visitor to call up information from a database linked to the page, and secondly by clever programming code that allows visitors to change the way a site acts in a browser.

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'Web 1.0' took little advantage of the capabilities of the web absent in printed publications. Web 2.0 was a term to describe the 'second-generation' of web applications that aim change all that.

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A website is not really of any value unless it can be easily found by relevant visitors. 'Being found' means showing up in search results for a targeted word or phrase (a 'keyword'). Since there are so many websites, it can be a challenge to get a high search engine position (called a 'ranking').

Search engines judge websites based on how relevant the site is to the search being made ( the 'search query'). This relevancy is determined by an automated process called 'spidering'.

Unless the website is set up correctly, the search engine's spider cannot read the code and text and will not be able to list the site. If the site is set up correctly, but the keywords do not have the right count, position or density, the site will not rank highly for the desired search query.

There was a time when adding keywords into the header of each webpage would allow the site to get a ranking, but this was abused by spammers. These days the process is far more sophisticated and any attempt to fool search engines generally gets the site downgraded or even banned.

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It stands for Search Engine Optimization. It's really about making certain that a website's content is relevant to a target audience. Here is more information.

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The importance of search engines depends upon your strategy. If you are able to send relevant visitors to the site through offline marketing (such as advertising) then search engine listings may not be that important. It is also possible to get traffic by using online advertising such as pay-per-click.

For most people, getting high listings in search engines is of crucial importance, since it is the most affordable way to attract relevant visitors.

There are many variations of each search engine. For example, a search in Google.com will yield a different result to a search in Google.co.uk or any other geographic variant. This makes it possible and desirable to target visitors for national or even local markets.