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March 15, 2003  
 
Feature Article
How to Boost Your Search Engine Ranking, Part II
Last month, we introduced Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as the best way to improve your site's search engine "ranking" - your position in the search results -  when people search for topics related to your website content.
SEO is conducted in three major steps: Keyword Analysis, Website Modification and Search Engine Submission. The previous column discussed how to perform Keyword Analysis. Now let's look at the process of Website Modification. (We'll also be discussing the details in the Search Engine Optimization forum in the Marketing Your Website category of the Web Studio online forum. Please join us there!)
Step 2 - Website Modification
The second step in the SEO process is Website Modification, which may take you anywhere from a couple of hours to several days to complete. This step involves changes to every part of your site. But don't worry; as with Keyword Analysis, you can do the work in small increments as time allows.
Because of the number of changes, we recommend you perform this step on a copy of your existing site. You can always use the original site to make changes that need to be published quickly but are unrelated to SEO. You don't want to hurry the Website Modification process; it's best to complete the job before publishing the results.
Your Vital Statistics. Before you change your site, you need to take two important measurements - Keyword Density and Page Rank. These "before" measurements will tell you how your site content looks to search engines today, and how they are ranking you as a result.
You'll also want to take several "during" measurements of Keyword Density to see how you are doing during the Website Modification process, and an "after" Page Rank measurement that shows you how much you improved your site's visibility.
Starting to sound like a lot of work? It can be. Just remember that you can't manage what you can't measure. Search engine marketing is a numbers game.
To measure your initial Keyword Density, enter the URL for each page of your site into an online analysis tool (this one is hosted by J. Gaffney Associates and will crawl all the pages in your site). Save the resulting reports, copying and pasting into a spreadsheet or word processor for later reference.
To measure Page Rank, enter each of your ideal keywords one by one into the major search engines. For each keyword, page down through the search results until you find the first listing for your site. (If you don't find your site by page 10, just record "none" for that keyword.) Most engines show ten results at a time, so if you are the 3rd listing on page three, your page rank is 2 x 10 + 3 or 23.
I suggest you enter these numbers into a table, with the keywords as rows and "Before" and "After" columns for the page ranking. This will provide you with precise data on how much you site improves.
My, How You've Changed.  OK, on to the site modifications - it's time to put your Ideal Keywords to work. For this phase, I recommend you work from hardcopy. Print each page of your site, find a comfortable spot away from distractions, and get out your red pen. (Do the printing from your browser so that each printed page includes the page URL.)
Your goal now is to ensure that each of your Ideal Keywords is well represented in as many of the following page elements as possible:
file names
page titles 
meta tags (Web Search Information in the Site Properties dialog)
links to other pages
the first paragraph
emphasis text styles like "heading 1", "bold" and "italic"
image "ALT" text (Graphics Tab of the Object Properties dialog)
 
Each of the above page elements can be seen by your visitors in some way, so try to integrate your keywords smoothly into the existing content.
Note: Google and other search engines detect and punish keyword "stuffing" (multiple repeats in close proximity) and "hidden" keywords (text that is invisible because it's the same color as the background). It's best to avoid these and other tricks. If you're caught, your page rank will suffer dramatically, and your URL might even be "banned" by certain engines. Not worth it.
For each printed page, start with the file name (as shown in the URLs) and work your way down through each of the "page elements" listed above. Mark your changes neatly so that they are easy to read later when you are sitting at your PC. When you are done, make one more pass through all of the pages to see if things you learned later in the editing process can be applied to your earlier edits.
At this point, I recommend you set your work aside for a day. Take a break and come back later with a fresh perspective. You may find that a few more changes are in order.
When your edits are complete, begin making changes to your duplicate site. As you complete each change, mark it off on your hardcopy so you can quit at any time and pick up again at your convenience.
When your edits are in, publish your site to a temporary directory (use Trial Hosting for this) and take another Keyword Density measurement for each modified page. Compare with your original measures: if you hit 3-7% density for each Ideal Keyword, you are good to go.
If your keyword density is on the low side, you may want to add additional keyword-rich headings, a second paragraph that expands on your topic and emphasizes the keywords, or even new images (in order to get the corresponding ALT text).
You may also want to remove text from pages where you are having trouble achieving the desired keyword density. For example, if you have a User Quotes text block on your home page, that text may dilute your keyword density dramatically. One approach it to make it a graphic - visitors can still read the quotes, but search engines can't. Now add relevant, keyword-rich ALT text to the image and you're cooking with gas.
For pages where your new keyword density greatly exceeds the above range, you may want to scale back a bit. No sense triggering a "keyword stuffing" alert!
That's it for Website Modification. You're ready for the final SEO step, Search Engine Submission, which we'll cover in next month's column.
In the meantime, please join us in the Search Engine Optimization forum with your questions, comments and suggestions.

- John Gaffney
J. Gaffney Associates, Inc.

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Did You Know...
…that the WebStudio Document file is your most important website file?
We've seen confusion recently about files you create with Web Studio. It centers on the website and the WebStudio document file. Many aren't aware there’s a "document" file and think the "website" is what they're working on.
Just like Microsoft Word has document files that you create, save, open and print, WebStudio has a document file as well. Word's document file is called a "doc" file because its file extension is ".doc". A file extension is the last three letters appended to file by a program.Web Studio's document file is an "ows" file, a file extension of ".ows".
When you create a new site in WebStudio, you are creating an OWS file. When you choose Save Site or Save Site As from the File menu, you’re saving the OWS file; the document file. It is just like saving a "doc" file in Word. When you open your site in WebStudio,  you open the OWS file. The  File menu commands deal with the OWS file.
Where's the website? The website doesn't exist until you tell WebStudio to create it by choosing Save WebSite to Internet command. Choosing Save Page To Internet and Preview Page creates a single page of your site. The website is made up of many files, not a single one. To create the site, Web Studio takes the contents of the OWS file and creates the files needed for the website. The WebSite menu deals with the website files.
The OWS file is the most important file you deal with in WebStudio. It is where you website's files come from. If you lose your OWS file, you'll have to recreate everything you've done...not a happy time. So, treat your OWS file as you would your most important files on your computer, back it up regularly, back it up to hard disk and to CD.
To backup, open the OWS file and then choose Save Site As from the File menu with a different name.

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President's Corner
This month we're continuing our focus on Online Marketing of your sites. John Gaffney presents part two of his "How to Boost Your Search Engine Ranking" series. Make sure you visit John's Marketing Your Website section of the WebStudio forum. 
We also discuss, in this issue, the Web Studio Document file and how it differs from the Web Site, why you should treat it like your best friend, how to manage the size of your Document files, and how you can optimize your photos from your Digital Camera to insure small document files.
The WebStudio Affiliate Program is up and running now. Remember, you can earn a piece of the action by placing a link on your site that brings people to our site to purchase WebStudio. Send an email to affiliates@webstudio.com to request the Affiliate Information Package. The signup is simple, and there are no costs involved. 

Steve Cochard
President
Back to the Beach Software, LLC

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Site of the Month
Fayette County Veterinary Clinic

Congratulations to "Kokopelli", March's Site of the Month winner! Kokopelli's site, Fayette County Veterinary Clinic, is an example of a very clean visual design, much like a Desktop Published page. The navigation is obvious and accessible. The use of white space (gray space?) as well as the consistent color scheme contributes to the overall clean, classic look of the site. If you want to know how Kokopelli did it, visit the Web Studio Forum and check out the Web Studio Site of the Month Contest section. Kokopelli's  and our moderators are waiting eagerly to answer your detailed questions.
And for those of you thinking of submitting a site, this is a reminder that we're halfway through March - so click here to submit your site now!

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What's New in Web Studio 3
Color Saturation Special FX
Increasing color saturation makes just about every photograph look awesome. This FX, available in the Special FX gallery and in the Photo Correction Wizard, will increase (or decrease) the intensity of the colors in your photos (or graphics). Just drag one of the FX onto your photo. Go to the Color Saturation page in the Wizard and use the slider to make your photo look great. It is really useful for those pictures that are washed out and pale.   

  Before Color Saturation

  After
Autosize Text Objects
Web Studio's text object grows and shrinks vertically as you modify its contents. This is fine for many cases, but sometimes you want to fill a certain amount of space with your text and want to be able quickly see if you have. Select a text object, then choose the Autosize Text Object command in the Format menu.  With Autosize turned off, you can resize the object and it won't spring back to fit its current contents. Then type your text and change styles to suit your available space.
HTML 4.0 OR HTML3.2
WebStudio 2.0 had the option to build sites in both HTML 4.0 and 3.2. Today's browsers can handle 4.0 fine, so with WebStudio 3 that feature was removed. You can now have HTML 4.0 or HTML 3.2.
If you upgraded from WebStudio 2.0 and you had your site set to use both HTML 4.0 and 3.2, each of your pages had an "x" appended to the end of their name automatically. WebStudio 3 no longer adds the "x." 
This may cause a problem if your domain name points directly to a page with an "x" and you upload your site with your new WebStudio 3. You'll see the problem when you type in your normal URL and the page is not found. The solution is to re-direct your domain name to point to the "index.html" page instead of whatever it was pointing to. You hosting provider may be able to help redirect your domain name.

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What's New Online
Web Studio Affiliate Program
We have added two pages for use by the members of our Affiliate program. The first page, http://www.webstudio.com/site/WSAffiliate.asp , contains logos, graphics, customer testimonials and other resources you can add to the page on your site where you sell WebStudio. The second, http://www.webstudio.com/site/info.html ,is a page that you can incorporated into your site that highlights just about every capability of WebStudio. 
Web Studio Resources
We've added to our FAQ's this month. We've added two new categories: WebStudio Techniques and Did You Know. Take a look, and if you've never been to the FAQ pages on our site, you own yourself a visit. There's a ton of great information there you can use immediately. 
International Purchasing
Our international customers will have an easier time ordering products from our website now. We've incorporated all of the countries we sell to and all of the provinces and states in those countries to our address entry pages.
Easier Shopping
We have added a "Continue Shopping" button to our shopping cart page. We always take comments from our users seriously. We're surprised we didn't hear this comment earlier. Once we got the comment we went to the site and tried to put multiple items in the cart and realized we had to get right to work on that problem! 
Web Studio "Wicked Cool Web Authoring" T-Shirts
We don't have many of our T-Shirts left. Come and get 'em, you don't want to miss out! In fact, you can link there right now!
The User's Gallery
Make sure you go to the User's Gallery to see this month's "Site of the Month" as well as other great sites submitted by our users. You can also ask the site developers "how to" questions  in our active online forum. See you there!

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HTML Corner
Why do I keep hearing about Meta Tags and what are they?
Many of our users have asked about Mega Tags. Many don't know what they are but know they are somehow important.
In most cases, those asking about Meta Tags have their importance confused with the contents of the Meta Tags. Specifically, they want to know where to put Keywords and Site Descriptions. These items are placed in Meta Tags if you were writing HTML. Meta Tags are part of the HTML language.
With WebStudio you don't have to worry or know about the underlying technologies of the web, like HTML. You also don't have to know about Meta Tags. What you do need to know is the you can enter Keywords and Site Descriptions into the Site Properties' Web Search Information page.
What you also should know, is that putting Keywords and Descriptions into HTML Meta Tags isn't as important as it used to be. See our Online Marketing series for the reasons why and what to do instead.

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Tips & Techniques
Managing the Size of your WebStudio Document File
Web Studio's document files (OWS file) have been known to get very big. We saw a file that was over 250megs recently. What isn’t well known, however, is that you can slim those files down quite a bit.
The biggest culprit of large OWS files is graphics. More specifically, photographs. The growing popularity of digital cameras simplifies adding digital photos to websites. It’s so easy to take a picture and load it into WebStudio that the problems they can cause aren’t considered. The problem is the memory these pictures use on your site and in the OWS file.
A typical size for a digital photo is 1280 X 960 pixels. That requires over 39 Megabytes of storage space! The cameras typically compress the photos using JPEG compression. With JPEG compression the photo's size drops to around 90k, quite a bit of compression.
When WebStudio reads the file and saves it in the OWS file, it can't use JPEG compression because, with JPEG, the quality of the picture will degrade each time it is saved. That's one of the drawbacks of JPEG files. So it uses a format that won't degrade your photos, but is larger than JPEG when it saves photos in your OWS file.
If you have many digital photos in your site, the OWS file will grow rapidly.
What can you do to help make the OWS file smaller? You can "resample" your photos.
What is resampling? When you make a photo smaller in WebStudio, the program keeps all of the pixels (or dots) that it originally had.  When it creates the graphics for the web, it removes the extra dots to make the picture smaller. However, when you save your document file, it saves all the dots, extras and all. If you resize a photo to 300 X 200 and then resample to remove the extra dots, the photo’s size drops by a factor of 20 times compared to the original! Compressed it is even smaller.
How do I resample? You simply click on the photo in WebStudio. Then find move the mouse over one of  the selection handles on the corners or sides of the photo (the handles are the small black squares). You'll see its shape turns into a double-headed arrow. Leaving the mouse where it is and press and hold down the CTRL key and then click the left mouse button. Its now resampled, the quality of the photo is retained, and your OWS file will be well on its way to a slimmer, trimmer file.
The example we gave at the beginning with the 250 meg OWS file was reduced to 4 megs once we resampled all of the graphics in it.

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