Increase the Readability of Your Web Pages with the Right Font

You do a search on web readability and you will come across Jakob Nielsen, the controversial “usability consultant.” Like that of many “Internet Gurus,” Nielsen’s philosophy for attracting and converting web visitors is simple: have worthwhile content and assume that the web reader is lazy and selfish.

But just one look at his site, and you wonder if anyone would bother navigating through his stuff. His content is noteworthy, as he’s one of the best known authorities on the differences between web and print reading.

The point about Nielsen is not that his site is ugly, but how that affects the readability of his site. Like a lot of online marketers who sell how-to seminars and books, he’s a not a “big picture” kind of guy.

Old Hollywood star Cary Grant said it best: “It takes 500 small details to add up to one favorable impression.” Although content is most important, other factors should be taken into consideration for a worthwhile site: design, layout, and branding.

There is one element in which content and design intersect: font choice.

Don't Commit These 5 SEO Sins

Because of the long and hard nature of building up SEO for a website, some developers may feel the temptation to cheat a little. Sure, a shortcut here and there may be forgivable, but a few SEO tricks may not only just backfire on you–they can get you into legal hot water. Below is a list of SEO tactics that we suggest you never try.

1. Hidden Text
Sometimes, an SEO consultant or developer may put a list of target keywords in the same font color as the background color. This invisibility cloak does not fool search engine spiders. It will be viewed as spam and will not help you in SEO endeavors.

2. Microscopic Text
The same goes for text that appears in tiny point 1 font sizes. Those same finicky search engine spiders will ignore text in super-small sizes. The whole point for search engine indexing is to place worthwhile content at the top of the search engine result pages. Who on earth would want to read a website that is filled with invisible or hard to read text?

3. Keywords in Comment Tags
Remember our post about the nofollow tag? Well, search engines do not index comment tags as well, so there is no point in packing them with target keywords. You’re better off writing meaningful blog posts and comments in order to drive traffic to your site.

4. Pagejacking
Pagejacking is essentially copying someone else’s content and submitting it as your own on your website. It may be tempting to do this with winning content that ranks highly in search engine results, but this is one practice that will definitely get you into trouble. It counts as copyright violation, and you can expect to hear from someone’s lawyer if you’re not too careful.

5. Cloaking
Now, here is a practice that might actually work, unlike gimmicky keywords in hidden text or duplicating content. However, it is a highly controversial SEO technique. Cloaking is when you submit search engine optimized pages to SEO spiders, while serving web users with content-worthy pages. This way, you do not have to worry about creating content that is both optimized for search engines and appealing to readers. This method does bring a bit of success to some websites, but we urge you to caution for a couple of reasons.

For one, all the big league search engines have declared these types of pages to be spam. Officially, you shouldn’t be doing this as it is slightly dishonest and goes against the search engines’ attempts to bring web users with qualified content. But more importantly, a search engine may come up with an algorithm or device that will successfully weed out the websites that use this process. And then from there you would have to start all over again.

In conclusion, it is best to go in for the long haul and generate content and tags that are pertinent to your subject or interest. Although SEO typically takes a while before reaping rewards, it remains one of the best ways to reach out to new consumers.

Don't Commit These 5 SEO Sins

Because of the long and hard nature of building up SEO for a website, some developers may feel the temptation to cheat a little. Sure, a shortcut here and there may be forgivable, but a few SEO tricks may not only just backfire on you–they can get you into legal hot water. Below is a list of SEO tactics that we suggest you never try.

1. Hidden Text
Sometimes, an SEO consultant or developer may put a list of target keywords in the same font color as the background color. This invisibility cloak does not fool search engine spiders. It will be viewed as spam and will not help you in SEO endeavors.

2. Microscopic Text
The same goes for text that appears in tiny point 1 font sizes. Those same finicky search engine spiders will ignore text in super-small sizes. The whole point for search engine indexing is to place worthwhile content at the top of the search engine result pages. Who on earth would want to read a website that is filled with invisible or hard to read text?

3. Keywords in Comment Tags
Remember our post about the nofollow tag? Well, search engines do not index comment tags as well, so there is no point in packing them with target keywords. You’re better off writing meaningful blog posts and comments in order to drive traffic to your site.

4. Pagejacking
Pagejacking is essentially copying someone else’s content and submitting it as your own on your website. It may be tempting to do this with winning content that ranks highly in search engine results, but this is one practice that will definitely get you into trouble. It counts as copyright violation, and you can expect to hear from someone’s lawyer if you’re not too careful.

5. Cloaking
Now, here is a practice that might actually work, unlike gimmicky keywords in hidden text or duplicating content. However, it is a highly controversial SEO technique. Cloaking is when you submit search engine optimized pages to SEO spiders, while serving web users with content-worthy pages. This way, you do not have to worry about creating content that is both optimized for search engines and appealing to readers. This method does bring a bit of success to some websites, but we urge you to caution for a couple of reasons.

For one, all the big league search engines have declared these types of pages to be spam. Officially, you shouldn’t be doing this as it is slightly dishonest and goes against the search engines’ attempts to bring web users with qualified content. But more importantly, a search engine may come up with an algorithm or device that will successfully weed out the websites that use this process. And then from there you would have to start all over again.

In conclusion, it is best to go in for the long haul and generate content and tags that are pertinent to your subject or interest. Although SEO typically takes a while before reaping rewards, it remains one of the best ways to reach out to new consumers.