The decision to consider WordPress as a platform for the entire new site came almost as a no brainer.  It’s the most popular blogging platform on the web and quickly becoming the #1 choice for websites.  If you are not that familiar with WorPress here are the strong points you should be aware of:

1. You can’t beat it for SEO
2. Super easy to set up, configure and customize
3. Built in CMS (content management system) which makes it easy for non technical people to work with the site content.
4. It has a huge community of developers writing useful “plugins”
5. Hundreds of free themes to choose from for design, look and feel
6. It’s free!

Of course the fact that this blog is built on a WordPress platform was part of the final decision in trying to keep the project as painless as possible.  Decision made!  WordPress it is.

Finding a theme/layout

The next thing we did is set out to find a “theme” for our new site.  Since adding new content and updating our old content was part of the plan we wanted to finalize a layout for the new site 1st thing so we could get our team working on writing and moving content.  We were looking for a theme that would work well as a website and a blog. NOT an easy feat!  We searched through all the WordPress.org free themes as well as a number of paid themes until finally finding  iThemes.com.  Believe it or not they had a Real Estate theme we felt was a perfect fit : http://realestatethemes.com/irealestate/ It has a non flash based fading main image powered by as many images as you want and we loved the sidebar “tabber” feature.  It also has a very “website looking” home page and the integrated blog we were looking for as well as a lot of flexibility for customization.   A great bargain at $79.00. 

Before making the purchase we had the staff look at that theme and several others.  It was the unanimous winner so we made the purchase and installed it on the already in progress new site.

We need a plan

In order to pull this off effectively we needed a step by step plan to work off of.  We have to make sure all details are covered and things are done in the correct order or disaster could occur.  We wrote down each step and assigned one of three categories based on at what stage that step will occur. (Pre, Move, Post) “Pre” is the prep stage before the new site goes live and includes anything that will not affect either verticalmeasures.com or linkbuildingbestpractices.com.  “Move” includes steps that will occur once all “Pre” work is finished and we are taking the new site live. “Post” is steps that will occur in the frantic moments after the new site is live and we are seeing everything we didn’t think of! (hopefully not)

In our next post we will talk more about actual action items we indentified, where we are at in the process and some major decisions we have made as far as content and functionality.   Be sure to tune in!

As always your questions and comments are encouraged.

Vertical Measures

Website – More Posts

The time has come to update our company website http://www.verticalmeasures.com however for extra fun we are also moving the website to a new hosting company AND merging this blog (Link Building Best Practices) in to the website so they are no longer separate sites and domains.  We thought it would be cool to document the process in a 4 post blog series so you can follow along, give us feedback and/or ideas and hopefully learn something with us during the process. 

So let’s get started! 

There were several factors and concerns we had about executing the move:

• We do not want to lose our excellent search engine rankings
• We want to update the content and make improvements to increase sales
• We want an updated look and feel  using scalable technologies
• Since many of our pages on both sites rank well in the search engines we want to make sure either the new URL structure was the same as the current one (yeah right!) or that we implement 301 redirects from each old page url to the url of the new page to prevent 404 page not found errors after the move.  This in itself will be quite a task but absolutely worth it from an SEO and user experience perspective.
• The current Vertical Measures website is written in html with a little PHP and a MySQL database.  This blog is based on a WordPress platform (also as you most likely know PHP & MySQL database driven). So how can we merge the two sites without ending up with a website that looks like a blog or a blog that looks like a website?
• Should we hire an outside company to handle the project or do it internally?
• How can we accomplish the entire project by the end of the year as cost effectively as possible?

In our next post we’ll share the answer to these questions and start getting in to the “nuts and bolts” of the planning stage and beginning of execution.

Feel free to leave comments to share your experiences, ideas and tips on the topic or just wish us luck!

Vertical Measures

Website – More Posts

Very often, people who professionally optimize websites for search engines come to a point where they focus exclusively on the big picture of site rankings and the associated link building.  While link builders can’t usually be charged with myopic vision and inflexibility in their methods, sweating the little details isn’t generally on the collective agenda either, especially when trying to promote multiple sites simultaneously.

Many times a new focused strategy or technique may not seem worthwhile because of the huge amount of top-level searching and otherwise time-consuming processes needed to begin the undertaking.  Faced with the option of using tried-and-true tactics for good rankings with the major search players or experimenting with new techniques like social media, niche marketing, local search & directories, and video optimization, many will choose to do what they’ve always done in the past simply because they know they can meet their deadlines that way.

In the long run, though, most seasoned SEOs would agree that experimentation with less-often used sites like local and niche search engines pays off in many valuable ways.  Not only is there simply more “link space” to be had by promoting a site across local search engines and other sites specifically devoted to the same vertical markets, but the act of using them for research brings up results that would otherwise remain hidden if the major search engines and common site tools are the only methods used.

Pushpins on the Map

Regardless of the global nature of the Internet, geography still plays a huge role in determining which sites get listed where.  For example, a site that has a local store and doesn’t sell their products online has no choice but to focus their web marketing on local search engines and directories, since almost all potential paying customers have to be in their city.  Using local directories for an example like that makes sense, but it makes equally good sense to use local and niche search engines and directories for a website that does every bit of their business online; it simply gives them another avenue by which to be discovered, along with precious links from generally decent and respected sites.  In addition, there are a few local business sites that don’t seem to care if the business is actually local, which means that there are some free backlinks to be had from them.

Social Connections

            By now it’s no secret that social media plays a large and steadily increasing role in many aspects of web marketing.  From the search engine side of things, they’re valuable in all the obvious ways:  Social networking platforms are often popular, regularly updated, and respected sites with an enormous amount of unique and (somewhat) organized content.  Therefore, all the normal bookmarking, voting, and commenting techniques apply well to this arena.  Beyond that, though, there’s an added benefit to having one’s content on a social media site:  A huge potential audience.  Of course, depending on what exactly is being promoted, there may not be a huge user response to whatever you’ve contributed on social sites, but that really doesn’t matter so much.  It’s great when other users are really excited about something that they’ve been informed about through the network and begin to interact, because it draws search engine attention.  If it’s at all possible, it’s wise to submit humorous or valuable content that only subtly resembles marketing material.

            By exploring the furthest reaches of the web and even some places that seem less than worthwhile, one’s SEO efforts will be improved tangibly.  Furthermore, the link builder who takes the time to do this research will certainly be exposed to different opportunities that would remain hidden if working exclusively within the confines of their historical precedent.  Make sure to stop back at this blog tomorrow for part 2 of this post, where we will take a look at some niche search engines and examine their usefulness for optimization and research.

Vertical Measures