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Finally get to re-write the GoMinis-Ma website! Throwing out frames (!), messy tables, and inline styles and replacing with lovely, semantic CSS and SEO friendly code (and maybe some fresh window treatments too). Ahhhh, lots to clean up…so satisfying! Google Analytics will be fun to watch.

The checklist (so far):

• Change server default page to index.html.  Remove frame code from all html files.  Replace all references to default2.htm with index.html.
• Remove all CSS (and javascript) that is embedded in the HTML files and place it in an external CSS file.  Google and search engines in general,  prefer “light weight” pages..  The lighter pages are faster to download for users who are browsing the site, as well as for search engine spiders.  This practice also separates content from presentation which makes it easier for search engines to read.
• Add a DOCTYPE HTML statement  to the top of every html page.  DOCTYPE defines the verson of HTML the browser should render the page in.  I‘m specifying the “full” version of the HTML 4.01 Transitional doctype:   . This version ensures that the code abides strictly by the latest standards.
• Make sure all pages have meaningful title tags.  The text inside the tag appears in Google’s search engine results page, as well as in the user’s web browser bar and tabs.
• Add meta description tags to every page.  Shows up in Google’s search engine results page.
• Meta keyword tags aren’t so relevant anymore but might as well ensure all pages have meta keyword tags anyway.  Keywords on each page should reflect the page content.  Reduce Repetition – too many keywords is considered spam by search engines.
• Create h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 graduated size header tags.  Apply to headings that are currently incorrectly enclosed in p tags.  Header tags help to make content more meaningful for screen-reading software and search engines.
• Add meaningful alt attributes to all images.
• Add meaningful title attributes to all anchor elements (links).
• Validate code using W3C markup validation.
• Create GoMinis-Ma Google account and Youtube account.
• Upload GoMinis video to Youtube.  Change video.html to use GoMinis-Ma Youtube video.
• Add external Google Analytics tracking script to every html file.
• Upgrade site navigation menu code to use ul list tags. The navigation links are one of the first things evaluated by the search engines. Change to use semantically correct code.
• Replace table based layout with div-based layout – throughout site  Results in pages that load faster, more flexible code that is easier to maintain.  ….And…..makes the next bullet item ▼ more achievable.
• Breakdown pages of the site into sections (masthead, navigation, body, main content, secondary content, footer) for block-level analysis by search engines.
• Create html template so adding new pages will be easier.

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