Google SEO Starter’s Guide

Google have released a “SEO Starter’s Guide” PDF document designed to help web developers understand how to improve their website’s ranking in Google.

“[The guide] covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics.”

The PDF can be downloaded here. And here’s the original article from Google.

Over the last few months I have seen the issue of website accessibility become a much more important consideration to my company’s clients whenever we are building new websites. DDA compliance is no longer just a buzzword, it’s something clients request as an essential requirement. As such, it’s getting increasingly important for Web Developers to consider screen readers as they develop their web pages.

One useful tool for building screen reader friendly web pages is Fangs – a Firefox 3 extension that creates a text version of what a modern screen reader program would read.

I would strongly recommend that every web developer downloads this extension and gives it a try - you may be extremely surprised at the results and find that the accesible website you just built isn’t actually that accessible after all.

Robert Kieffer has released a new tool for testing JavaScript code performance.

JSLitmus is designed specifically to allow you to quickly and easily write a JavaScript test, run it on any modern browser, and document the result.

By including the JavaScript file and a single line of code per test, loading the page in your browser will give you access to the test suite. By hitting the run button you will get a break down of each test, together with a graphical chart showing the results. You can, of course, use the testing suite in different browsers to see how your code performs in them all.

Want a demo of the tool itself? You can try it out on the JSLitmus homepage.

The Internet Explorer 8 team have been busy - not just preparing the final release of the version 8 browser, but busy writing some very useful articles for CoDe Magazine detailing exactly what’s new in Internet Explorer 8 and what it means for us web developers. The following articles are well worth a read:

• What’s New in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2?
• Making Your Web site Compatible Across Multiple Versions of Internet Explorer
• Introducing Compatibility View
• Create Your Own Web Slices
• Accelerators in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2
• Developer Tools in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2
• Better AJAX Development with Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2
• AJAX Performance Measurement Methodology for Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2
• Performance Improvements in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2
• Secure Coding with Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2