LT8_Act 4

From this class, I learned that I am very particular. I would spend hours and hours making sure that everything was lined up exactly. Then I would redo it when I found something better. I spent way more time on the details than I should have, but that is just who I am.

LT8_Act 3

Old Classroom Website

I do not have anyone’s page to evaluate, so I took a look at a classroom website I created my first year of teaching. It is so bad. Too many color, too much stuff on the front page, I do not like the layout, you cannot code the site. I could go one forever. It is just a bad site.

LT8_Act 2

I decided not to use the site I created earlier in this course because it was flashed based and users could not access it in their iPhones.
New Classroom Website

LT8_Act 1

This was the most difficult course I have taken. It was by far the most time consuming. I think it is because of how unfamiliar I was with all the different topics. I know how to read a book and write a paper about the book, but I do not how HTML code a site from scratch, so it took me forever. It was also difficult because no one around me knew how to do it either. I do not think advanced we design is for me. I will, however, keep working to improve the site I have created.

LT7_Act5

To increase the accessibility of my site, I changed which site I was using. At first, I was using a Wix, because I liked the streamlined designs, but the Wix was unable to load on many older computers, it also was a flashed-based site. Flash can slow your computer down and cause loading issues. Flash is also not available on iPhones or iPads and with the increasing number of people who have iDevices, I cannot exclude them from accessing the classroom website. I also chose to do this because there is the very simple feature on the iDevices that allows all screen text to be read to the user. This will improve accessibility for those who have a difficult time reading. I have also enabled the mobile option for my site so it changes the layout to an easy to view layout while on the mobile device.

LT7_Act4

I did not do a lot of the SEO techniques. I did ones that I could easily undo because I do not want search engines to find my site. It is a safety issue.

Before the changes
I added a site description.

I added Meta-tag Keywords. These are world that the search engines read to help find your site, but people do not see them.
And finally, I hid my website from all search engines to protect the safety of my students and their families.
After all the changes

LT7_Act3

• What is the most simplistic way of describing search engine optimization to a person who has never heard of it before?
Search Engine Optimization is make your website easy for people to find when they search sites like Google.
• Would the SEO goals and techniques of a small business website owner be different or similar to an educator with a website or a student-generated website?
As an educator, I do not want my site to be easily found by any Google or Yahoo search. My website is for my students and their families only, not for the general public. A small business website is one that could truly benefit from SEO to get people more familiar with their product or service.
• At what point in the web design is it best to learn about SEO? Why?
I think it would have been more beneficial to learn about this before creating the website. If I know exactly what the search engines will be looking for, I can keep that in mind when I create my title, description and meta-tag. If I do it after, I have to go back ad fix everything.
• What are the best SEO techniques? What are the worst or most unethical methods (black hat) sometimes used to achieve search engine optimization? Are there consequences for trying to “trick the system”?
Two techniques that I found to be especially unethical are having hidden text and cloaking. Adding hidden text to your site is putting text on a background that is the same color as the text. Your viewers do not see it, but the search engines read it. Cloaking is making a fake page for search engines to read and when you viewer clicks on the link for your site, they get redirected to an actual site. Both of these techniques sound like good old fashioned cheating. These cheating techniques will work for a short time, but once the search engine catches onto what you are doing, they will no longer carry your site in their index. Cheaters usually get caught.