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…

Am I a Web Publishing Dummy?

I was somewhat startled to discover a copy of “Creating Web Pages for Dummies (1998)” on my desk this morning. The book promises I’ll be able to “Create Dazzling Home Pages – In No Time!” I’m still not sure who put it there, or what they are trying to tell me, hopefully that mystery will soon be solved, and hopefully they were thinking I’d get a laugh from it and not that I’d learn something from it. As I glanced at the table of contents, it did generate a grin or two – there’s a whole section devoted to geocites. However two chapters stood out more than the rest “Ten Web Publishing DO’s” and “Ten Web Publishing DON’Ts.” I just knew these tips from the early days of the web would create some laughs, so I flipped ahead and looked at the lists. I could not have been more wrong. Why I was wrong is connected to the fact that there is something very important to note about this book – the ONLY mention of anything search engine related is this brief definition:

Search engine: Web-based services that help you find things you are looking for.

Why is that important you ask? Because this book was written before web designers/developers thought that getting attention from Google was more important than giving visitors good content. The fact that the authors were concerned with content makes both of their lists still (mostly) accurate. Below is the list of ten “DO’s” along with my comments about how they may (or may not) apply today.
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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

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I’ve had my iPhone for about six months, and I’m always amazed by the wide range of apps available for it.  From the flat-out silly, like “fart machine” to those much more useful like Tweetie and Fandango.  It seems that no matter what your interest is, there’s an app for that.

I spent some time recently scouring the app store looking for tools that might be useful for those who want their sites to rank better on the search engines, for people interested in buying domain names, reviewing web statistics or monitoring the health of their web servers. more…

Are you struggling to rank well in a competitive industry?

I know,  I know. Who isn’t?  Video can help.

I’ll assume you have completed an SEO site audit looking for ways to improve your on-site optimization and are seeking out quality back-links to improve your off-site presence.  If not, well, video can still help – but you REALLY need to make sure you do these steps too.

Video has long been known to rank well in the search engines, and thanks to universal search its done even better in the last year or so.  If you are not familiar with universal search, in a nutshell it means that Google (or the other top engines) search all of their indexes for possible results to your query and return the top entries for web, news, video, images and local on one page.  Getting your content returned by more than one of these indexes GREATLY increases the likelihood of your link(s) being clicked. Web video is one of the easiest to create and get indexed.

How do I get my web video ranked? more…