Archive for the Category ◊ Search Engine Optimization ◊

Put your visitors before the engines

In my last article I published a list of “TEN DO’s” from the 1998 edition of “Web Publishing for Dummies”, today we review ten things the authors thought you should NOT do. You might be surprised, as I was, that all ten are still applicable today.

The great thing about this book (if you ignore references to CompuServe, Prodigy and GeoCities) is that it was written before the search engines moved to the front of everyone’s mind. The information presented is primarily focused on creating a better experience for your visitors, and that is something that we should all be working towards.

Take a moment or two and review this list – did I miss anything? more…

You want your WordPress powered site to rank well, right? Like most site owners you have probably read dozens of blogs, and more “Top 10 SEO tips for WordPress”, or perhaps “Must Have WordPress Plugins” posts than you care to remember. The only problem is that many of these articles just say you have to install the plugins, not how to use them. I’ll admit that I am as much at fault as anyone else. Here’s the problem; while some plugins require little or no configuration, and even less on-going attention – All in one SEO pack is not one of them. Miss a check box or ignore a field and you could be doing more harm than good – your site rankings could drop faster than Wile E. Coyote holding an Acme umbrella.

This post will be updated from time-to-time when there are significant updates to the plugin.  Items that are new to this post will be bolded.  Additionally, I’ll mark items that could be detrimental to your rankings with a caution sign.

Updated on 6/1/2010 – The version currently being covered is 1.6.11.

Version 1.6.8.2 contained some unknown updates so that it was compatible WordPress.2.9, also the developer introduced a “pro” version that is available for purchase.  As far as I can see the there are no functional differences between the two versions.  The pro version seems to intended for use by hosting companies and consultants who do not want the donation request displayed on the configuration pages of their clients’ sites.

Version 1.6.11 adds an language update, some bug fixes and code optimization.

I am disappointed to say that the author of this tag seems to have less and less time for answering questions and communicating with the millions of people that have made his tag so popular.  As a former web application developer, I know first-hand it is a time-consuming and seemingly thankless job.  I cannot fault the author for wanting to make some money with a “pro” version.  However, I completely disagree with how he has done it.  Monthly charges for upgrades is, in my opinion, crazy for this software.  I donated before the pro version existed, and I am sure that many others would gladly pay for this wonderful tag if not for the monthly fees.  According to the WordPress.org plugins directory, it’s been downloaded more than 5,000,000 times.  Lets all send him a dollar so we can get rid of the monthly fees and he can hire a team to maintain the tool while he sits on the beach…how about it folks?.

Visit the SEO pack creator’s page for a reasonably complete change log.

All in one SEO Pack Configuration – site settings

more…

I joined the U.S. Navy in the fall of 1984, arriving at boot camp in April of the next year.  Shortly after getting settled into the barracks, there was a pretty common joke that I heard from a lot of my fellow recruits;  “How do you know when your recruiter is lying to you?  His lips are moving!”

I’m growing concerned that pretty soon people will be thinking the same thing about SEOs.

What if you were number 1 and nobody searched for you? Are you still number 1?

A while ago, I wrote about how to hire an SEO, and more recently about what questions you should be asking about your web measurements.  Both of those should help you become a more intelligent SEO shopper.  I’ve stumbled upon the site of Austin SEO company that made me realize there is still more you need to know in order to protect yourself from the snake oil salesmen. more…

With SEO, like life, it’s about the questions you ask, not the answers you get.

Not long ago, I was dropping some shirts off at the cleaners.  I had noticed that a few of my buttons were cracked and broken.  I asked the young woman working the counter if they repaired buttons.  She simply replied “No, we don’t.”  I was puzzled, I thought all cleaners did this – now I would have to either find a new cleaner, or repair them myself.  But then, possibly sensing the building frustration on my face, she added; “We can replace the broken ones if you’d like.”  What? I was dumb founded.  How could this woman be so clueless as to not understand that is what I had meant?  It seemed fairly obvious to me that I didn’t actually expect them to be sitting back there with a tube of crazy glue repairing the buttons.  Then it occurred to me, I had asked the wrong question.  Even worse, I had expected them to interpret what I asked into what I meant.

What’s your reason for asking the question?

Before you ask any questions, you have to have a qoal – or two, or 10.  What is it you want your Web site to do?  Guess what? Tony Robbins and all the other self-help dorks have something to teach us about SEO.  If you can’t measure it, it’s not a goal.  It might be interesting, but it’s not a goal. more…

Frames used to be cool

If you’ve been surfing the web for more than a few years, you may remember the days when seemingly every Web site was constructed using frames.  I built more than a few of those myself.  On the surface they seemed to be an ideal solution to many of the problems both coders and marketers had with non-framed sites.  For coders it meant you didn’t need to copy your navigation, headers and footers into every single page – saving you lots of time.  For marketers, it meant that your menus. logos and other branding information was always viewable by your site’s visitors, no matter how much scrolling they did.  In the days of Yahoo and other directory pages, it was a perfect way to build pages.

Then came the next generation of search.  Instead of relying on human provided data to build a huge list of web pages, these new search indexes used “robots”, “spiders” and “crawlers” to automagically navigate the internet.  Following links, they located pages and read their content dynamically.  This is when using Frames become a bad way to build pages.

more…