Well, now that the site has been up a bit and we’ve updated some of the ‘incorrect’ content left over from the old presence, I’ve been able to go in and optimize some of the code. I know this isn’t the best way to work (get the site live, then go back a fix things), however not creating the code myself from scratch has presented some problems. I’m cleaning up some of the cumbersome code and optimizing redundant code, etc. Following is a detailed description of my goals as I clean up the site:

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Wow, when you think of anything that has had a huge impact on the web-savvy community, you’d have to first think of Social Bookmarking. It’s the equivalent of calling all of your friends, relatives, adversaries, acquaintances and everyone else in the world with an internet connection and telling them that you’ve just read a great story, then reading the story to them and letting them offer their comments. However, you don’t have to sit on the phone, coffee in one hand and donut in the other, talking for days on end to get your message out. Social Bookmarking was conceived from the well-known ‘Favorites’ folder on your PC. If you’re saving a page to your favorites, wouldn’t your friends be interested in that page as well? Wouldn’t others? What if there was a way to save all of your favorites with comments and allow all of your friends to see what you’ve saved - and then make comments of their own? That’s the whole notion of Social Bookmarking.

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We’ve begun implementing a new feature for the search results page on the website. This new feature will deliver Featured Results (much like paid-advertising results) at the top of the search page for a specific term.

The problem:

• Our search results are sorted by relevance. That relevance is determined via a database fulltext search. What this means is that the result is given more relevance to a search term based on how often that term

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When writing web content, use the ‘Inverted Pyramid’ technique

There is a profound difference in the way content is written for the web versus content written in papers and research. Web users have become accustomed to scanning through content and if not quickly becoming satisfied with the information, they click elsewhere. Therefore, it is extremely important to employ the ‘Inverted Pyramid’ technique when writing content for the web.

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I received information about an online Search Engine Optimization quiz from an RSS feed in which I subscribe. The quiz is offered by SEOmoz, which is a Seattle based SEO company that also runs an online community of those interested in learning better SEO practices. I was not aware of this company, but decided to subscribe to their feed as I feel they will be offering some great content. Anyway, I took the quiz and just missed the top ranking (SEO Deity) by just a hair. If you have been studying SEO techniques, this is a very challenging quiz and I would recommend giving it a shot.  They offer great feedback on your answers, so you not only find out what you’ve missed, but why.  My results are below:
SEO Master - 89%

Are you an SEO Expert?

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My primary inspiration to develop this quick little tutorial is to aid the members of the College of Education in creating content for the website that is keyword rich. However, this should be useful to anyone that is just beginning with Search Engine Optimization and keyword research. I’ve chosen to use the FAQ format with this tutorial as it is the quickest way to be sure I’ve answered questions that I’ve received regarding writing content for search engine optimization.

1. What is keyword rich?

   Keyword rich refers to content on a web page that is optimized for various keywords. SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) will show results based on a seemingly infinite number of factors [the number of factors of course is finite, but if you’ve ever studied SEO, you understand my slight exaggeration]; one of those factors being the relevancy of a web page to a specific keyword. For example, if someone was to search for the term ‘keyword rich’, the SERP would list pages that had that term embedded in the textual content of that page, as a page title, or in the meta-data.

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This, obviously, is the first post in a blog in which I plan to discuss what is and what will be the new web presence of the University of Oklahoma’s College of Education. Along with this discussion, I’ll also hope to discuss web technologies, Search Engine Optimization and other topics that may be relevant to the site and web development in general.

I guess I should begin by talking about the website; where it’s been, where it is, and where we plan to take it. If you’d like to take a quick look at the site, it is accessible at the College of Education, and you can see a few screenshots at the bottom of this post (both of the old website and the new site).

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