Ever since businesses started using the internet, Search Engine Optimisation (S.E.O.) has been constantly evolving to maximise the benefits from online marketing. SEO is a branch of online marketing, focusing on improving how a site is seen in search engines and helping to boost the number of visitors that a web site receives from a search engine. Of course, there are a number of common mistakes made when trying to optimise a site for search engines:

Using images where plain text is more appropriate

This is both an accessibility and SEO mistake for obvious reasons. Search engines cannot read text displayed in images, so using images or backgrounds composed mostly of text, instead of plain text, just for aesthetic purposes can be seen as a mistake. This does not always pose a problem where the text in the image is non-essential, but many designers continue to design a site in a graphical program such as Photoshop, then just splice (cut up and stick back together) in a web browser. The effect is usually not noticeable to an end user, until they try to highlight some of the text on the page and realise it’s an image. For disabled users, e.g. a blind or partially sighted user, the page may be completely unusable as their text-to-speech software will not be able to read out the text in the images, unless alternative text is specified.  Read the rest of this entry »

Whym Web Solutions has been operating for over a year now, during which time I’ve learnt a great deal, and I’ve decided the time is right to create a new business blog. This will be a place to learn about web design, online marketing, search engine optimisation, web hosting, and other internet related topics. Working online in web development is a continual learning experience, and one I hope to share with blog readers.

A bit of background information

I’m Dan Price and I started Whym Web Solutions in July 2007, then trading under the name of Whym Web Hosting. After picking up some basic design skills, I designed the hosting site from scratch using HTML and CSS languages. It was from here that my interest in web development really took off. Since then, I’ve worked on a number of personal sites (some still in the pipeline), whilst also building a couple of professional sites for customers including my local church and Sitting Pretty toilet hire. Read the rest of this entry »