These are just some random tips/advises that I give to you that will make your making a Google Page easier and quicker. I keep adding them as I encounter certain things that I consider might be beneficial to others.
- Never link to your e-mail
This has two main benefits. The first oine being the fact that e-mail harvesters would not be able to get your e-mail and you would avoid tons of spam. And the second being the annoying process of opening MS Outlook, or another mail handling program. This is very annoying, at least for me and it is of great help when there is a contact me form. I have one too: click on the "suggestion and recommendation" text in the footer to see mine.
- Keep all the custom HTML used
Make a simple text file with different headings and the HTML for each of those things. This is very useful since you would not have to search for the HTML of a certain part of your page over and over again. It would allow you to have a consistent design, and a quick page making process. I, for example, have the navigation and footer in a file that I keep constantly open while editing my pages.
- Backup your ENTIRE site
You can backup your entire site by installing "ScrapBook" extension for Firefox. Then navigate to your site, and select the "Capture page as" from the ScrapBook menu. Then select all the file types that you have in your site, select 2 - 3 links, and then go to Capture. When another window shows up immidiatly pause the capture process. The go to filter and select only the domain that is your site. Then resume the capture. That will capture your entire page. You can view it later by pressing Alt + K, not sure what it is on a Mac. All your files will be captured. However only the files that you ahve lkinked to on your pages will be made availble.
- Increase your Google page rank
Go to this site and check your page rank. The higher it is the closer to the first page your site will be when a keyword related to your site is searched. Your rank can be increased by exchanging links with pages of similar content that have a high page rank. Contact me and we could do link exchange. My current page rank is three and I am working on improving it.
- Opening pages in new windows
Open links to external sites in new windows. You can do that by simply adding a target="_blank" insiede the <a href tag. This will open pages in a new window and your page will remain open as well. Do this when you want to open an external page while you want the user to still stay on your site.
- Make a folder specificaly for GPC
If you should listen to any advice give here it should be this one. I really don't know what I would have done with all my files that I found specifically for GPC. A single folder for your webpage will save you a lot of work in case that you deleted something accidentaly, or if you planned to add something but forgot. Put all the stuff relating to the your site here and you will save your self a lot of work. You will not have to look for the stuff that you need again, and again, and again.
- No need to generate a sitemap
Now Google pages have autimatically have sitemaps. This is both good and bad. Firstly it is good since then you do not have to make sitemaps manually and complicated things when submitting to search engines. While I must stress that sitemaps are good for search engines this is a potentially dangerous feature of GPC. When someone acesses your sitemap it gives the listing of ALL your pages as well as all the files that you have uploaded. The only way to avoid this is to hide your page in the site settings. However this makes your site not availbel to the public. What everyone should do,, if you have potentially important files uploaded is make a site with a name that is hard to guess and keep all your stuff there. If you are using GPC only for hosting, hide your page, or better yet use some other hsoting provider like BOX.net