Web Pages-Understand and Create

Web pages are the fundamental building blocks of a website. A website is simply a collection of linked web pages stored on a web server (see website layout).

There are two aspects to a web page - technical (html, meta tags) and non technical (copywriting and optimisation). You need to be aware of both aspects in order to create good web pages.

It is also important to learn this process in distinct steps. Please don't try to make a well written ,search engine optimised web page complete with logo and site navigation from day 1.

The basic steps are:

• Creating basic web pages
• Look at the html behind the pages
• Examine hidden page elements that are used for search engines
• Adding the navigation and logo
• Search engine optimisation
• Writing good web copy

OK. First things first . Let's start by learning how to create web pages using a web page editor.

 Once you are able to make basic web pages then it's time to examine them in a little more detail. Firstly you need to understand HTML (Hypertext Markup Language).

 It is  not important to become an expert but to have a basic understanding of it's structure. Starting HTML is a 5 part tutorial series for just that purpose.

Now that you can make basic pages and are familiar with the HTML code behind a basic page you need to examine the web page structure in even more detail.

A web page consists of two components.

•  A visible component (what the visitor actually sees)
•  An invisible one (formatting, scripting components, meta tags etc)

Shown here in the schematic

 When examining the web page HTML this is what we see:

The Hidden Web Page Components.

These components are not visible to the web page visitors and are used to provide information for use by web browsers and search engines (meta tags).

They are also normally invisible in most web page editors (in normal mode). However most web page editors have a view source tab which reveals the actual HTML coding and the hidden meta tags, scripts and comments.

Because you need to view the HTML source code itself to see these tags, and in most editors to modify them, they are frequently overlooked. In addition, most editors will enter default information for some of the meta tags.

Editing Meta Tags

As previously mentioned the meta tags are not only hidden from the visitor they are also hidden from the designer as they are not normally displayed by most WYSIWYG web page editors.

 It is however very important that you are able to Edit meta tags and understand which meta tags are common to all pages and which one are unique to each page.

There are two main uses for the meta tags they are:

• Search engines-these include the title, description, keywords and robot tags and are perhaps the most important meta tags These tags should always be used and are discussed in meta tags explained .
• Web page information and control- These are the Doctype tag, script include tags, author tags etc and are covered in Common meta tags.
   

The Visible Web Page

The visible parts of the web page consist of the actual web page content, logo and the website/page navigation. A typical web page is show below:

Web www.build-your-website.co.uk