Search Engine Optimization Tips

Search engine ranking and your web sites traffic are directly influenced by four main areas:

Content, Links, Popularity and Reputation

Content: The more unique, well-versed content a site has, the better it will rank.  Content primarily consists of the text on your site, but also includes images, videos and anything else the users come to the site for.

Links: Mainly concerning inbound links, but also includes outbound links and internal links.  The more, quality, inbound links a site has, the better it will rank.

Popularity: The more people that know about your site the better it will rank and the more traffic you will receive.  Popularity is often measured by the number of inbound links to a site.

Reputation: Popularity alone is worthless without a good reputation.  If a site is known by many to be of poor quality or of little to no use to the users it will not rank well.

First Friday script updated and simplified

NOTE: The latest version of this script can always be found here: http://github.com/PHLAK/first-friday/blob/master/first-friday.php

With this update I have drastically reduced and simpified the code to produce the same results.  I did some rigorous testing of my own to make sure this script will calculate the correct date, but that doesn’t mean it’s bullet-proof.  If you find a bug, please email me so I can fix it.

first-friday.php

 
  // Calculate next Friday
  for ($x = date('d'); $x <= (date('d') + 6); $x++) {
    $timeStamp = mktime(0,0,0,date('m'),$x,date('Y'));
    if (date('w',$timeStamp) == 5) {
      $nextFriday = mktime(0,0,0,date('m'),$x,date('Y'));
    }
  }
  // Check if next Friday is the first friday of the month.
  if (date('d', $nextFriday) <= 7) {
    $firstFriday = $nextFriday;
  } else {
  // Calculate first Friday of next month
    for ($x = 1; $x <= 7; $x++) {
      $timeStamp = mktime(0,0,0,date('m')+1,$x,date('Y'));
      if (date('w',$timeStamp) == 5) {
        $firstFriday = mktime(0,0,0,date('m')+1,$x,date('Y'));
      }
    }
  }
 
  // Echo next first Friday
  echo date("F j, Y", $firstFriday);
 
?>

Beginers Guide To Search Engine Optimization

The following is a quick list of optimizations that, in my years of web development, I have observed will help increase your sites search engine ranking.  While none of these processes are guaranteed to make your site #1 in Google overnight, I can promise that by implementing all (or even some) of these items, in time your site’s rank will rise.

The following items are clean, honest ways to optimize your site.  I do not condone, nor solicit, any form of “black hat” search engine optimization and frown upon it greatly.  If that’s what you’re aiming to implement, I sincerely hope that Google blacklists your site tomorrow.  Please don’t send me any emails asking how to get your sight listed as #1 tomorrow.

Now, onto the list.

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Calculate the first Friday of next month with PHP

UPDATE: This script has been updated, see: http://www.web-geek.net/posts/2009/02/14/first-friday-script-updated-and-simplified/

While developing phx2600.org, I ran into a slight dilemma.  The PHX2600 meetings occur once a month on the first Friday of every month, and we wanted to display that on the site.  However, it was becoming a tedious chore to change the date once a month manually.  So, being the automation addict I am, I thought, why not write a script.  So one night I hammered out the following script that will calculate the first Friday of next month:

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Creating Dynamic Menus with PHP and CSS

Want to pep up your web page with some dynamic menus? Here’s a simple solution that only requires a few lines of PHP and CSS.

UPDATE (11/1/08): Simplified the header code and edited the syntax of the list element echo code.

The PHP

Add the following to the top of your page (before the DOCTYPE or HTML tag).

< ?php
  // Get current page file name
  $page = basename($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]);
?>

Then add the following to your menu item where you want the class designation to show up.

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