Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Web Site Improvements, New Options
The SWET Web site has changed greatly in the past year. Many of the changes have been aimed at making the site easier for our all-volunteer staff to maintain, but a good many also make the site easier to use. Some of the new features are introduced below.
Content Management
The content from the original SWET Web site has been incorporated into a content management system that helps make it easier to publish new content. To date, this system has been used mostly to announce SWET events and to republish articles from the SWET Newsletter, but it also enables us to develop content unique to the Web site. With this in mind, the Web Committee is soliciting proposals for articles of interest to professional writers, editors, and translators that can be featured on the site. If you have ideas for stand-alone articles, continuing features or columns, or other content that would likely be of interest, please contact the webmaster. Guidelines for contributors are available online at www.swet.jp/contribute/write-for-us.php.
Search Engine Optimization
In our ongoing efforts to make the site more accessible, we have taken several steps to increase our search engine optimization (SEO) so that we are near the top of the list that Google, for instance, serves up. Conforming to the technologies standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is one important step in that direction, because for search engines standards-compliant sites are easier to index than noncompliant sites. (You can learn more about Web standards at the W3C site, www.w3.org/.)
Why, you might ask, would any site choose not to conform to the standards? The answer is simply that Web standards are a recent development. Unfortunately, most older Web browsers have a difficult time interpreting the new standards, mostly because they were not developed with these standards in mind. Sites whose audience uses older browsers often employ noncompliant code in order to cater to that audience. In SWET?s case, the logs of visitors showed that approximately 98 percent of our audience uses modern, standards-compliant browsers, so for this and other reasons we decided to embrace standards in order to reap the SEO benefits.
Another important step in improving the SWET Web site?s SEO is ensuring that search engines understand where to look for content. Overly long, complex URLs can throw search engines off track, with the result that the content located at those URLs goes unindexed. Recent efforts to rewrite all the URLs on SWET?s site to make them search engine?friendly have had measurable effects. Take, for example, John McCreery?s article on Japanese advertising that appeared in SWET Newsletter No. 101 (May 2003). Since its recent publication online (at www.swet.jp/articles/list/100_0_7_0_C/), it has consistently ranked among Google?s top five listings for ?Japanese advertising.? (Look for the rankings of John?s articles to climb as more of them are added to SWET?s Web site.) Our SEO efforts are aimed at raising the prominence of both SWET content and SWET contributors on the Web.
Mailing Lists
SWET has long enjoyed the benefit of active discussion lists like SWET-L, but the Web site now offers SWET members and friends the option of subscribing to an announcements-only mailing list designed to keep subscribers informed of both upcoming events and special news. There is only one of these broadcast-only mailing lists at the moment, but more can be created if needed. To subscribe to the announcements list, please visit the SWET Mailing Lists page at www.swet.jp/about/lists/. SWET members can also use this page to subscribe to the Steering Committee and Newsletter Committee lists.
RSS Feeds
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a means of making content available broadly. In the footer of nearly every page on the SWET site, there is an orange button labeled ?XML?: it links to SWET?s RSS feed. By supplying this link to a news aggregator, or news reader,* you can have excerpts of SWET content delivered directly to your desktop. (With the right tools, you can even incorporate the SWET feed into your own site!) The RSS feed is updated automatically every time SWET?s Web site is updated, so subscribing to the RSS feed is a sure-fire way to keep abreast of the latest SWET information.
Incidentally, because the RSS feed is written in strict XML syntax, search-engine spiders can very easily parse it, and this enhances our SEO efforts. XML is not intended to be read by browsers (it is marked for news aggregators), so do not be surprised if clicking on that link causes seemingly unformatted information to be displayed in your browser window.
I have touched on a few of the areas in which the SWET Web site has changed, but?as with all Web sites?the SWET site is ultimately a work in progress. The site will continue to grow and incorporate new features over time, but the primary goal of all these efforts is to make the site a more valuable resource for SWET members. The members of the Web Committee take this responsibility seriously but also note that advances in technology create responsibilities for our users, as well. In particular, it is worth noting that many of the changes described could be implemented only through adherence to W3C-established standards. For users, this implies a responsibility to use a standards-compliant browser (which could be the subject of a separate article). Our visitor logs indicate that almost all our visitors are using compliant browsers, but if you are unsure about yours, or if the site does not appear as you think it should, please let us know. We will be happy to help you make the best use of the SWET Web site. After all, that?s what it is there for!