Brain Tree Films: Website Functionality & SEO

As well as investigating and researching web site style, functionality and design I also decided that I needed to find out more about the back end of websites. Also how to make sure that my website was very easy to find in search engines and to track usage etc of it. Below are the areas that I found out that I would need to consider using and implementing into my website.

SEO: Search Engine Optimisation
SEO is basically making sure that my website it optimised for search engines such as Google and Safari etc and is easy to find. When searches are carried out on search engines I obviously want to be at the top of page one of search results. This is not always possible but there are ways that you can near the top of the list based on how Google's algorithms.  For instance this sees you have encoded and labelled your website pages users using and finding your page. Google rate your success through hits/views and content so the more of these you get the higher up the list you go.

• Link baiting is one of these where you go to other sites and message boards promoting your content with a click through link to your website. 
• Using keywords and tags for your website can also do this as it flags up key areas and words associated with your website and worded correctly is used by Google to find out what your site is about. For instance using the words video, film production, promo, corporate etc for my site.
• Alt text is similar to tags or keywords but is the labelling within the code of the website and works in a similar way.
• Headings within the computer code are how key elements of the website are labelled. For instance headers and titles (H1, H2 & H3 in code) can also be used to highlight content to Google.
• Anchor text is when using any of the above it is also important to anchor the text to make Google read it in the best way for Google to find it. For instance labelling every page brain tree films and then the area documentary, music video is back to front. Always lead with the content descriptor first for the search engine algorithm to fins so it would be documentary then brain tree films. 

Types of Script/Language
I am planning on building my website through Wix but I do still need to be aware of the different languages and scripts and how and why each of them can be used. They are each used for different jobs and I will outline these below.

• HTML stands for hyper text mark up language. This is the most common code used for building a web page. It does most of the layout and architecture of the page and basically what goes where.
• CSS is cascading style sheets. This is basically a styling language of coding is used for  all of the design elements and for making the website and user interface look stylistically and graphically interesting.
• Javascript is used for any interactive functions on the website such as passwords and alerts and this functionality. It is not to be mistaken with Java which is completely different.

Landing Page
This is the page that ideally you want the users to land on from their searches. Ideally I want this to be the home page as from here the users will be able to navigate the website. Using all of the tricks above will make sure this happens.

Google Analytics
This is provided by Google for free at a basic level although it does have a scaling cost depending upon the level of functionality you want. Google analytics provides lots of data and statistics on user usage of your website. this may be invaluable for finding out areas of the content on the website that are engaging the users and those that are not as it develops. This is added to your site by adding some code to the website to let this happen.

Responsive Styling
This is where CSS are responsive to the device that users are using to browse. It will responsively adapt the website to the platform that is being used. So it will not show the full site on a mobile phone for instance as it would be unusable. So what responsive styling does is adapt the website to the phone and make it much more usable. The ways of doing this and coding are such tools Bootstrap and Angular JS. This also links to the Mobile Fist Initiative which says that 60% of websites are viewed by mobiles before anywhere else so stresses the importance of  having a website that is usable and functional for mobile phones.