Adriatico's Blog

You will need a few tools for your work. I have provided them on the CD that comes with this book. Please resist any temptation to use tools from elsewhere. They will be excellent when you have gained confidence and fluency with programming. However, their complexity will overwhelm you while you are struggling to learn to program. It is enough to try to do something new without also trying to do it in an unnecessarily complicated environment.
You also need something to manage these tools with rather than having to remember every detail for yourself. Programmers use things called IDEs (Integrated Development Environments), which are rather like carpenters’ workbenches. Those that come with commercial compilers, or even the free ones that are used by experienced programmers, have a multitude of options that will simply get in your way and lead to confusion. (No differences here, then; professional work environments are rarely suited to the newcomer.)
So I have chosen a very simple IDE written and maintained by Al Stevens. He calls it Quincy and it provides just what we want: enough to work with but no frills to get in the way. If you have followed the instructions for installing the software you will have installed Quincy somewhere on your system (perhaps on the C drive, but possibly somewhere else; I have my copy on my E drive). You should have an icon of a cat’s face on your desktop. Click (or double-click, depending on how your system is set up) on it to open Quincy.

There are some things that you need to do every time you prepare to write a new program. I am going to walk you through them this time with images from my screen to help you. Until you get used to it, come back to this section each time you start a new program and follow through these steps.

• Create a new project Select ‘‘Project’’ by double-clicking on it (or click and select ‘‘OK’’). Type ‘‘my first program’’ (get into the habit of giving descriptive names to projects and other files) in the Target name box. Use the browse button to find the sub-directory. You should find that in the directory called ‘‘tutorial’’ on the drive where you installed the tools from the CD. When you have found it, left click the OK button in the browse dialog box. Check that the ‘‘Type of Build’’ selected is ‘‘Console application’’.
• Set the project options Select the ‘‘tools’’ menu and choose options. You should see the image at the top of the next page. Make sure that the boxes have been selected as in this image. Then use the browse button beside the Includes box to find the sub-directory called ‘‘fgw headers’’. That should be one of the other sub-directories in the same place. Click OK in the browse dialog and then click OK in the Options dialog box.
• Get the special libraries Much of the programming you will be doing relies on two special files. Do not worry about exactly what they are; they contain resources that one of the programming tools will need. You have to find these two files and include them in the project. Click on the Project menu and select ‘‘Insert Files’’. You should then use the drop down menu in the dialog box to find the fgw headers sub-directory. You should then see something like this (the exact file list may be different, but the two important files fgwlib.a and libgdi32.a should be there. (If they are not in the sub-directory, your installation from the CD is faulty. Copy the contents of the fgw headers directory on the CD to tutorial\fgw headers.)
• Save the project Go to the File menu in Quincy and save the project.

Here are the continuation of my post about SEO Guide, Tips and Tricks.

• Put your keyword phrase at the top of the HTML: More than just the first paragraph, you should try to move your content towards the top of the HTML document. And that includes your keyword phrase.
• Put your keyword phrase in alternative text: Images are a great place to put your keyword phrase – in the alternate text. This is a way to add your keyword phrase into your document without being repetitive to your readers. But be careful not to overdo it – as you don’t want to appear to be keyword stuffing. That could get your site banned.
• Increase the font size of your keyword phrase: Search engines understand that fonts that are larger than the standard font size on the page indicate text that is more important. Use CSS or the font tag. Apply font size changes to headline tags as well.
• Format your keyword phrases to stand out: Use <strong> and <em> where appropriate to make your keyword phrases stand out. Search engines can read those tags, and will recognize that text that is emphasized is often more important than the surrounding text.
• Write a descriptive meta description: Search engines use the description meta tag as the description in their index. So it’s important to describe your pages accurately. This helps customers find your pages, and search engines to index them.
• Link to your page from within your site: Links are important, and linking from one page to another on your own site is a very easy way to get links. They aren’t as important in search engine ranking as links from external sites, but they do help. If nothing else, they help the search engine spider find all the pages on your site.
• Periodically check your outbound links for pagerank: Whenever you add an external link on your site, you run the risk that it changes from the site you linked to into a link farm or “bad neighborhood”. By periodically checking the PageRank of the external sites you link to, you can remove links that have gotten bad. This will help you make sure that your page’s credibility is not reduced by who you are linking to.
• Link all major images: It’s important to always link images because people click on images. And search engines value content that has been linked. The key is to always include alternative text, so that the search engine has text to rank. Any image that your customer can see on the page should be linked.
• Keep your pages up-to-date: Pages that are regularly updated are given priority over pages that are older and ignored. But you should do more than simply fix typos or make small changes, regular, extensive updates are more effective than minor updates.
• Keep your pages close to the root directory: The higher your pages are in your sub-directories, the better they will rank in search engines. This is because pages that are listed right off the root directory are typically more important than pages that are found four or five levels deep in the site.
• Use the meta keywords tag and include your keyword phrase: Meta tags are a very popular way to improve search engine results, but the fact of the matter is that some major search engines don’t use them at all, and others only use them a little. It won’t hurt to include your keyword phrase and any secondary keywords in the meta keywords tag, but don’t expect it to work wonders.
• Use your keyword phrase in your Meta description: Most search engines use the Meta description field as the description in their search results. So it’s important to have a good description. Including your keyword phrase in the Meta description tag is one more place that the search engines can see your keywords. This isn’t a magic bullet, but it is a good idea.
• Set your language meta keyword: If your page is in a language other than English, you should set the language meta tag so that search engines (and other user agents) know what language it’s in. Most search engines have other ways of telling what language the page is written in, but they do use that tag, and it could help you rank higher in searches in that language.
• Optimize for a few secondary keywords: Once you have a keyword phrase, you can choose one or two other keywords to optimize for as well. But be careful with these – make sure that the density of your secondary keywords is no more than 1-2%. Any higher and you risk confusing the search engine and diluting the power of your primary keyword phrase.

I will try my best to post another related SEO guidelines on my following post.