Hat tip to Matt, who points us to Full Code Press, a 24 hour contest to build a Web site for non-profits; the idea is cool in itself, yet gets way cooler when you realize the organizing committee is comprised of Australians and New Zealanders.

The event will take place in Australia on August 18, 2007; entries close June 29.  For more information visit the Web Industry Professionals Association Incorporated (Australia) or Webstock (New Zealand).

A common question, with a simple answer:

Google can only crawl and index Web sites that the Googlebot can see.

The very next question is: How do I know whether the Googlebot can see my site?

From Google’s Webmaster Guidelines*, pay particular attention to the first technical recommendation:

Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.

Lynx is licensed as open source, which means that it is free.  You can either download Lynx v2.8.5, or if you don’t want the hassle of downloading and installing it, just use a Lynx viewer; you type in your URL and voila – it shows you what the Googlebot can see.

If you are a little more techie and want Lynx on your machine, Tech Republic have written a cheat sheet that includes 20 of the most useful Lynx keyboard shortcuts.

* Site owners: Don’t be put off by the title “Google Webmaster Guidelines” as they are not just for webmasters, they are for Web site owners too, and they are written in simple English.

If you have a site, whether you are in charge of it or contracting it out, you need to make sure it adheres to the basic guidelines; if it doesn’t, your site can be penalized by Google and the other search engines.  And, reading the guidelines is a lot simpler (and smarter) than trying to get your site back into Google once it has been penalized.

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Although many of these sites require that you have your own URL, e.g. blogwell.com instead of blogwell.wordpress.com, all of them offer lots of other useful information. Best of all – they are free.

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I was recently given the opportunity to speak with Adam Lasnik, Google’s Search Evangelist about search engine optimization, and it started me thinking about title elements and meta description tags; specifically, just how important is it to get the words right?

When you search on Google, the two most obvious things that come back are the title of a Web page, and a brief description of it. Most people will easily recognize a result from a search query.

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Harvey Norman, a household name in Australia, is a franchise that retails products for the home and office.  Its diverse product line and quality of merchandise allows you to completely furnish your house or office with one visit, should you want to, and, if you know it exists. 

By all appearances, Harvey Norman is a successful company; from a search point of view, not so much.  Let’s take a look at their site.

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