Have you been trying to learn some HTML and CSS on your own? If you’re going to skip the whole “college” thing (not recommended), here are a few cool tutorials I’ve found on the internet to help get you started.

CSSJuice

W3Schools

HTMLCodeTutorial

CSSTutorial.net

EchoEcho.com

SEO, it is the life blood of which most traffic will visit your site. Let’s face it, you’d have to be very lucky to purchase a domain that people are going to physically type into an address bar. Most of your traffic will be coming from people using a search engine, specifically Google. That’s why making your site is Search Engine Optimization/-ized (SEO) is the most important step when starting out.

So, how can you make sure that your site is SEO, and that it is showing up in search engines. Most of the steps to becoming SEO are quite simple, and only require a few steps. The most obvious, and one where you could go and stop reading is hiring a SEO firm.

If you’re trying to save money though, and want to take a crack at SEO yourself; I have some useful tips.

First, you want to make sure you have a relevant title, with plenty of keywords in it. Your title is text you see in the title bar, or the top bar on the top-left section of your browser. JQuindlen has a self title, with a simple description ‘Web Design Solutions’. You can make it longer than that, but I recommend that it not get all that complicated.

The second step of improving SEO on your site, is using ALT, and title tags for links, and images. When Google “indexes” a site, meaning they search the internet looking for sites that have relevant words on them.  So, the more relevant words you can have apparent on your site will help your chances of your site being indexed higher on Google.

When it comes to getting a higher viewing from Google, another key step is improving your “Page Rank”. When someone types in a search into Google, they’ve said that there are over 200 factors that are used to show results. One of them that they specifically have mentioned before is ‘Page Rank’. This can be a really simple part of your optimization, or one of the hardest. Increasing your page rank is all about making sure your site is being linked to by other sites. If your site has a larger community, then you have a better shot at having people link to you. But at the same time if you have a large community, it’s harder to obtain a larger Page Rank. Your basically trying to become the biggest fish in the pond. The smaller the pond, the less likely someone will throw their hook in, but you stand a better chance of being caught. It all sounds very confusing, but in essence you want your site to be featured  as much as possible.

SEO can be a tough problem to solve. Even the so called “experts” aren’t always successful. Google keeps a tight lid on their practices, so a lot of times you’ll have to use trial and error to find what works, and what won’t. Good Luck.

“Walk a mile in a man’s shoes” should be the saying that should be continually running in your head. When you’re making a site; if you’re making it for money is never about you. Because you like the design, doesn’t mean that others will and they’re what your website should be all about. Trying to understand the everyday internet browser is a daunting task that even the most respected experts still struggle with.

Here are a couple of tips to help you keep the user in mind when creating your website:

- Have distinct, large if possible visual cues on your site. When people first load up your site, you want to make sure they know what it is within the first three seconds. So be sure and have a nice header image, with the title of your site. Be sure there is a distinct site description, and the benefits of your site.

- Use people you know to test your site. Friends, family, should all be used as test subjects when creating a site. You can also use complete strangers if you’re out going enough. But anyway you do it, testing a site’s functionality is very important.

- Keep your site as small as possible, while still providing plenty of useful information for the internet user. Balance is the key.

- Use some of these visual cues for your site navigation:
meta description, meta keywords
advanced site search engine
Site map
Alphabetized Index

So, keep these tips in your head when creating your website. Hopefully if you follow them you’ll see some increased page views.

When it comes to browsing around the internet, it’s all about speed. When someone sits down at their computer, all they are thinking about most of the time is finding what they want, as fast as they possibly can. So when one of these internet surfers comes by your site, you want to make sure that it loads promptly. Once it loads you want to make sure that the site can quickly be navigated around.

In terms of loading speed, what you will want to pay attention to most is your images. The first things you’ll need to decide upon is just how many images your site will require. Although images make a site prettier, you really want the last amount as possible. The less images, the faster your site loads; hence the more people are apt to browse through. Once you’ve decided on how many images you want for your site, then you must make sure that the images are optimized.

Image optimization is a pretty easy process. Basically you’re deciding on the balance between ‘quality & size’. A good general rule is to try to keep most of your images below 30 kb, although this range could increase depending on site content. Another good way to save on size is to use thumbnails. Where you’ll have smaller images, that if clicked on will open up the full image in its own screen.

As for simplicity, the best way to make sure people stay at your site is making it easy to navigate. Don’t use fonts that might be artistic but are hard on the eyes. Don’t use hidden menus, or alot of rollover menus, but if you can make them simple enough then they should be ok.  The cliche’ but always true simple applies to sites like any other business, “keep it simple, stupid”.