innerHTML  is a common way to return the value of an html tag.  I was recently working with an AJAX / JQuery application and all was going well.  However, the <strong>innerHTML method wasn’t returning anything with a textarea tag.  All of the other values were coming through just fine with the identical code.

Somewhere in the recesses of my memory I had recalled running in to this in the past (probably blocked out due to the pain!).

Anyway, a quick look on line and I remembered that innerHTML doesn’t work with Firefox.  To return the text in a textarea tag, use the <strong>value</strong> reference instead

use this—> var myText = document.getElementById(‘myTextArea’).value;

Happy Coding!

<a href=”jquery.slider.menu.zip” target=”_blank” >Download Example</a>

Number One:
Take the time necessary to do a careful and in depth research of all your keywords and key phrases for your site on the services, or products you are trying to sell. Remember, optimizing a site without knowing your keywords is like driving a car in a dense fog!

Number Two:
Make a complete sitemap of your site. Having a well-designed sitemap will ensure that each page of your site gets properly indexed by Google and the other search engines. Also, make sure that your sitemap file is directly accessible from your homepage and is located in your root directory.

Number Three:
Great link building is highly important to any great SEO. Once you have developed your site and SEO the next step is to get your site “linked to” from other sites. This can be done in a number of ways. You could add a link on your Facebook page, your LinkedIn page, any other site you may have developed, word of mouth to other webmasters, or having such good information that other websites find you and add your site as a favorite on their site. This list could go on and on but these are just to name a few.

Number Four:
Make sure you write a descriptive title tag of what each page of your site is all about, and make sure they are all different. Search engines use the information contained in that title tag, compare them to the text on that page and rank it accordingly. The short description in your title tags will also help your users.

Number Five:
Write the main text on your page using the same keywords contained in your title tag. If you are working on a page with a title called “New T-shirts” then be sure that those important keywords are repeated at least two or three times in the main body of your text, without sounding repetitive. Search engines will rank your page higher if they see a keyword repeated a few times on a page, and will help them better adapt to your site. However, don’t go ‘overboard’ on this, because if you increase your keyword density too much, some search engines might think you are trying to cause spam.

Number Six:
“Attention to detail,” Google takes hundreds of factors into account when ranking web pages and you should too.

Number Seven:
Be Patient with your results:  there are no bad rankings, only opportunities for improvement.

Number Eight:
Use text beneath content such as images or videos.

Number Nine:
Continually use data from Google analytics for example to analyze the impact of SEO techniques.

Number Ten:
Be aware that each and every page on your site is a potential customer entry point.  “Think out of the Box”

Don’ts of SEO

Number One:
Submit your website once to the search engines and then wait for at least six weeks! Don’t use software that automatically submits your sites on a weekly or monthly basis, since it might penalize you in the long run. Search engines use automated crawlers or spiders to regularly index your site, so you don’t need to submit more than once.

Number Two:
Don’t try to submit your site to every search engine you can possibly fine. There isn’t that many search engines in the first place. There are only a handful of serious search properties you should submit too, and they are used by 99% of the people looking for information. Don’t waste your time or your money and only work with the serious search engines everybody uses.

Number Three:
Don’t hire anyone that says SEO isn’t important.

Number Four:
Don’t hire just anyone to create your website. This is one area you want to spend money and ensure that your web presence is attractive and strong.

Number Five:
Don’t believe promises that you can get any guarantee of being number one on the first page of any search engines. There is no such thing as guaranteed number one placement and it happens to be one of SEO’s biggest myth and misconception. It’s always good to ask for referrals and don’t be afraid to ask what techniques your would-be SEO firm uses to achieve a good positioning for your site. Make sure they aren’t using any unethical practices and that they fully respect and implement all the major search engine’s rules and guidelines.

Number Six:
Don’t just assume your website will become successful without SEO.

Number Seven:
Don’t overlook blogging. The benefits, if done right, are endless!

Number Eight:
Don’t use Flash when HTML can achieve the same end user experience.

Number Nine:
Don’t panic when your rankings take a dive.  Rankings fluctuate up and down all the time. (Remember number seven in the “Do” List.”

Number Ten:
Don’t put your content in pop-ups.

The purpose of search engine optimization (SEO) is to boost a Web site’s traffic to a particular website and to outdo the competition when it comes to who is displayed first in the list of search engines. This is accomplished by the use of a large number of tools and the knowledge of SEO in itself. In the 21st century it’s not enough to add Meta tags and do search engine submission of your site to search engine indexes. No, SEO involves much more than that. The key first step of a good SEO is to build a content rich site.  If you have a website but you don’t have alot of info to display to the world wide web then really what good is it? Search providers look at your website the same way. Most site owners bypass this step because of a combination of the following reasons.

They believe it is too complex to do.

They forget about it

They don’t know they need to do it.

But let’s all face the facts here, in the world of web 2.0 if you are a web site owner and you are not doing SEO, your website is destined to become extinct from search engine or so far down the list people may never find your site.

How To Select Keywords

First, you must brainstorm for keywords. Make a long list of keywords you would want to use to find your own site. Then you go one step further than that and select key words that you would expect web surfers to use to locate your site. For example if you are a bakery in a small town or city you might what to include the name of your town or city along with the types of breads and any areas that you may deliver to. Doing this can provide necessary information so that search engines such as Google might decipher what city or town you live in and properly collect relevant information on your business.

Insert your keywords

It is important that your page title tag be as descriptive as possible of what your  page is all about (About 10-12 words generally). Use of these keywords correctly can sometimes be the key to making your SEO a bulls eye target for Google and other search engines. Another good idea is to create two and three word phrases. This is important for search engines that do not reference Meta tags, which I will explain later. You want to use these phrases over and over. The more you put your keywords out there the better off you are. Just don’t be too aggressive with this because you can be tagged as a spammer, and be blocked all together. Which would destroy the whole point of your SEO efforts. Some search engines take site descriptions from within the page, not from the Meta Description fields.

To use Meta Tags, or not to use Meta tags?

In the past there has been a lot of discussion about the use of Meta tags. Depending on the search engine they can be used or they might be skipped as not important to be use as a indexing source.  Take Google for example, when Google indexes websites the crawler will take links, header information , and the body information of the website as a higher indexing source then meta tags. Granted Google will use meta tags it’s just that they are not taken as serious as the other sources mentioned. MSN, ASK, Yahoo, and many more search engines on the other hand do take meta tags seriously, so be sure not to exclude them. As a rule of thumb you can never hurt your website SEO by using meta tags, It will only hurt you by not using them. Another Indexing source that you will want to make sure you don’t forget or exclude would be alt tags. Alt tags are taken very seriously when indexing images when speaking of any search engine.

So just how do you submit your website to a Search Engine?

The Mother of all questions! Now that the grunt work has been completed you are left asking yourself “how do I submit my articles to search engines?” It’s like a 3rd grader completing a test and submitting it to the teaching waiting in agony to see the end result. Your first item on the list is to determine if you are submitting a general website or a WordPress website to a Search Engines. Why, Because the way in which you submit each of these types are completely separate from each other. For this article I’m going to talk only on general websites. Submitting WordPress websites is a whole other animal that takes a article in itself…which you can anticipate I will be writing about. So, with that said you are going to need to create what is called a sitemap. A sitemap is exactly what is sounds like, a map of your site. This single file in itself can navigate search engines around your site like a GPS does. A site map can help you get further up the list because it allows search engines to better decide what is on your website and place your website accordingly to what web surfers are looking for.  The next step is to create a robot file.  A robot file tell search engine what to search and more importantly what not to search or index on your website. Once you have completed these steps you will want to create a Google account that includes Webmaster tools. With this wonderful tool you can create your website and submit your sitemap and robots file to Google. When submitting to MSN, Yahoo, and many more you do not get a webmaster tool provided by the indexer. For indexers such as MSN, Yahoo and many more you have to still do it the old fashion way, and hope the indexer or crawler sees your sitemap file (placing important files such as sitemaps and robot files on the root of you directory generally helps this problem). Submitting to other search engines can be done with the following links:

 For Yahoo see:

http://www.search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

For MSN see

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx

From this point it’s fairly straight forward as far as the basics are concerned. Given two days to a month or so for each search engine submission to be indexed in each major search engine you soon discover you website in Goggle and other search engines.  If you do not show up (as can at times be common), then resubmit and check the status of your Google Webmaster tools account. If you continue to miss the search engine ranking results you desire, then go back and review your keywords and how you have used them, increasing or decreasing the keywords until you have the results you are looking for.

As quoted by Bruce Clay, “It may take a few weeks for accepted search engine submissions to actually become effective with the major search engines. In some cases, it may take several submissions before you get registered. Considering that the Web is growing at an exceptional rate, it is a wonder that any search engine can keep up at all. Keep trying to get indexed. Visit the search engine that you care about most and see if you are registered by searching for your URL.”

As always I appreciate your interest in WordPress-studio.com and please check back all the time as I plan to submit more and more articles about SEO including: The do’s and don’ts of SEO, Google Analytics and SEO, Being a Business and using SEO, Using Google Maps and using SEO, and many more.

PHP 4 and MySQL 4 End of Life Announcement

I think it’s probably the handiest little tool I’ve had in a long time. It’s a color finder. Basically, you open the application (very, very small) and then drag over the color you want to find the values for. It gives you the hexadecimal and rgb values of the color. It also has a little past icon so you don’t have to go back and forth getting the color values.

Totally free and very small – this one belongs in the “gotta get this” category. Anyone who works with website design – especially in website make overs – will find this little gadget invaluable.

If you have a free application you would like reviewed, drop us a note and we’ll take a look.

A lot of coders pull their hair out over these two wordpress functions.

The answer is that these two functions will only query one time per page build. If it’s been used elsewhere to determine the current page, it has to be reset with the wp_reset_query() function first.

if (is_front_page()){
do something here….
}

wp_reset_query();//add this ABOVE the query
if (is_front_page()){
do something here….
}