Choosing a Site
Domain name significance
As discussed above, your
Domain Name ought to contain your Key keyword. Alphabetic prominence is irrelevant, it is not part of the ranking process. Having a short name is desirable because it is easier to remember, but the importance of that is outweighed by the value of having a descriptive and or keyword name.Hosts
I strongly suspect that most engines are programmed to ignore the big 'Free Listing' sites like GeoCities and Tripod that have mega-millions of pages.
It's no use having the best site in the world if it doesn't ever get read by the search engines. I think it is better to find a smaller host, even if you have to pay a little each month to use the site. A side benefit is that your pages won't then be infested with pop-up or banner adds. I analyzed one such site recently, and the first page was all Java script to do with pop up adds etc., and no useful text at all. Check out the access speed of the site you plan to use, some can stall at peak times.How HTML Code Works
HTML
is a simple programming language that uses "Tags". Web Page-writing programs will write this code for you, so there is little need to learn it, except that you will need to edit bits of it sometimes to make the page behave in specific ways.A Tag looks like this -
<HTML> - Tags used to need uppercase, but the modern browsers seem to be case insensitive.Most tags have a close tag attached like this. A close tag is the same but with a forward slash included
</HTML>. The commonest cause of a piece of code not working properly, is that a closing tag or end bracket > is missing. Be aware that some modern browsers can correct some of your code errors. The consequence of this is that you might see a correct page on your screen when you test it, but another viewer, using an old or different browser might see nothing at all beacause you have left the end tag off a table or something!So the <HTML> tag means that everything from now till you find this tag </HTML> is Hyper Text Mark-up Language, (HTML for short). These tags are the start and end of an *.html file which is called a web page.
The first internal tag used is <HEAD> and it defines all the bits at the beginning that define the page. For instance <TITLE> The Page Title </TITLE> and <META NAME="Description" CONTENT="A description of the page content">. The heading ends with the </HEAD> close tag.
Next comes the <BODY> tag and therein goes all the text, and tags that tell the browser what to do. Like <P> which tells the browser to 'create a paragraph here' and then </P> to 'end the paragraph here'.
Here too you will find tags like this, <A HREF="http://opotiki.com"> Go to Opotiki Page</A>, which is the code for a 'hyper LINK' to another page. This code will show the text "Go to Opotiki Page" underlined as a hyper-link, and when your mouse hovers over it the pointer turns into a hand so that when you click, the browser jumps to the new page.
The body closes with </BODY> and then the page close tag </HTML> is the last thing in the file.
Here is an example of the code for a simple web page -
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Your Title</TITLE>
<META name="description" content="The Page Description">
<META name="keywords" content="Some, Key, Words, and, phrases">
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="PURPLE" VLINK="BLUE" ALINK="RED">
Hello world - and greetings from Me!!!
<A href="http://opotiki.com">opotiki.com</A>
</BODY>
</HTML>
Detailed instructions for writing HTML code are not within the scope of this tutorial. It is generally faster and more efficient to use a Page Writing program.
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