Archive for the ‘The Basics’ Category

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Vertical Measures Website Move, Update & Blog Integration (part 3 of 4)

Friday, December 5th, 2008

Welcome back!  This is the 3rd part of the 4 part series on moving our website to a new hosting company, redesigning the verticalmeasures.com website and integrating this blog linkbuildingbestpractices.com in to the new website so they are all one site.  

Under ConstructionLast week we talked about why we chose WordPress as the platform for the entire project and we showed you what the raw theme looks like that we are modifying to meet our design and functionality needs.  This week I will share some of the specific action items we indentified, problems we encountered and decisions we made to ensure we have a user friendly site and our excellent search engine rank is not negatively affected by all the change. Our hope is that with the new platform and the blog integration we will see better search engine results and PR when the dust clears.

Give your opinion and get some exposure!

First things first…with the exception of a few tweaks here and there we would like to get your feedback on the new design and colors we choose.  Although our team is busy updating and revising content we have settled on a color and design and invite you to take a look on the temporary development site.  Here is the link: [link removed] Again don’t pay too much attention to the content, just tell us what you think of the design, colors and layout in a comment below.  If you suggest something we love and implement we may mention you and/or your business in our 4th and final post next week after the site is live!

Road map to moving the site:

Here are most of the steps we identified so far to accomplish the goal:

  1. Review current content and decide on what pages will be included on the new site and which ones wont as well as which pages need to be revised.
  2. Identify the pages that will be considered the main pages available from the primary horizontal navigation
  3. Patty Adams was given the responsibility of writing new content and updating the old content
  4. Chose a WordPress "theme" and have the team vote on it
  5. Set up the new hosting account and install the current version of WordPress
  6. Add to the database the tables verticalmeasures.com uses so there will only be one database for the entire site
  7. Install and configure any plug-ins needed for the blog or site
  8. We used the awesome Xenu Link Sleuth to get a list of all the URL’s from the old site to make sure we dont miss anything. It also shows us any broken links.  We’ll be running it against the new site to check for broken links also.
  9. Add any widgets and widget content to WordPress
  10. Update the 404 template page with custom content to make it more user friendly for our visitors.  We considered Google’s new 404 page helper script but I decided against it because it could take our visitors offsite and it allows Google to change the content of the page at will.  Instead I added our site search functionality to the 404 page, a link to our sitemap and a link suggesting they email us for help.
  11. Forms: We have 2 primary forms on the site. The contact us page and the (now Orange) inquiry form on the right sidebar.  Although we could use the cFormsII plugin to quickly and easily add the forms we wanted complete control of everythng from the look and feel to the functionality and user experience so we developed our own forms and processing functionality.  In additon we implemented a new free captcha system by Simon Jarvis.
  12. Design the header graphic for the new site, (we unanimously agreed the old one was outdated) and we didn’t like the color of the default clouds.
  13. Decide on, purchase and customize the main feature images that fade in and out on the home page.  You’ll also notice we went with a straight arrow in the main black feature section versus the half circle that came with the template.  That was Arnie’s excellent idea.  We think that minor change made a huge improvement to drawing the eye to the messages.
  14. ORANGE?  After much debate our Link Manager Eli (pronounced "L + E") suggested orange for the Inquiry form.  The fact is it’s all over the web lately and we think it works well with the blues.  I wont share how many different shades of Orange we tried before picking the current one but it was easily double digits.
  15. 301 Redirects: This is a BIGGIE…Since many of our pages currently rank very well with the search engines we have to make sure to transfer that link juice to the new site. We have to create a 301 redirect for every page from both sites to the new corresponding page on the new site. All totaled there are about 200.  Tedious but critical.  We are about halfway done.  Once we make the switch we will be testing them also to be sure there are no 404 errors.
  16. Meta Tags: cant forget the extremely important meta tags!  They all had to be transferred from the old pages to the new pages.  Kaila Strong handled that task.

There are more steps involved (and I know I am missing some we have done) but that is basically where we are right now so I will save the rest for out final post next week.

Once again I encourage you to click the link above or here: [link removed] to our dev site and give us some feedback via comments below on the new design, layout and colors. 

We will be taking the new site live some time in the next 48 hours so wish us luck!

Vertical Measures

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Posted in Business, Education, On-Site SEO, The Basics | 4 Comments »

Meta Tags Enhance Your Link Building Efforts

Monday, November 3rd, 2008
Meta TagsMeta tags can help improve your placement in search engines and can increase quality traffic to your web site.  Unfortunately, unless your website developer has a fundamental knowledge of search engine optimization, or you have an SEO professional review your site, many websites lack some of the fundamentals needed to enhance your site and increase traffic.
Even those who have a basic understanding of the importance of meta tags may not do everything required to optimize your site. Creating effective meta tags is a lot of work. However, the long term payoff is well worth it, especially in your link building efforts. Even with the most effective link building campaign, if your meta tags are not well-written for your specific web page, you can undermine your link building efforts. Search engine optimization success relies on these two factors to work together for ultimate effectiveness.

So what does your website meta tags need to have in order to garner the best results? Below are a few tips and guidelines for your website:

Title Tag.  Each page should have its own title tag.  Try to use 5 to 8 small to medium sized words and include one complete incidence of your keyword phrase.   This is important to all three of the major search engines and is what normally shows up in the listings displayed on the search results. Title tags for all of your webpages are extremely important. Make sure each is unique to the page on which it appears.
 
Meta Description.  Start this tag with an incidence of your keyword phrase and then produce a short 15 – 18 word sentence clearly describing your web page. Keep in mind that the description tag is often viewed as the description for any rankings you achieve so it is best to make it as alluring as possible to potential site visitors.
 
Meta Keyword.  Keyword tags have long been considered ineffective and no longer have any importance on Google; however Yahoo does still consider the keyword tag so include it. The keyword tag should start with the main keyword phrase. The maximum size of a keyword tag should be 250 characters, using commas to separate each phrase. Only use keywords that appear on that web page. As with title tags, this is important!
 
Keywords in URL.  Create keyword-based filenames that closely represent the content within the file. Search engines tend to reward keyword-based filenames a small amount – perhaps enough to push past your competition. It’s worth the extra effort.
 
Headings.  Heading 1 and 2 tags should be applied on every page where appropriate to embolden the relevance of the page. In other words, use the page’s keyword phrase within a Heading 1 tag to further enhance the visibility of the keyword phrase on the page.
 
Alt text for images.  Don’t forget to provide appropriate ALT text for each image on your website. Adding an incidence of the keyword phrase or a portion of the keyword phrase is totally appropriate which can add slightly more credibility to your page score when the search engines index the page. 

While meta tags are no guarantee that your site will make it to the top of search engine results, they do serve as a way to offer the website owner the ability to control how pages are described on search engines. Quality link building is quite simply one of the most important activities you can undertake to get higher search engine rankings but with inferior meta tags, your website is working against itself to achieve these rankings.

[tags] meta tags, SEO, search engine optimization, link building [/tags]

Vertical Measures

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Posted in On-Site SEO, The Basics, Tips | 21 Comments »

Link Building Short Cuts

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

link building short cutsDon’t Take Them! 

In business as in life, you’re only as good as your reputation. That’s why it’s vitally important when you’re building links to your website that you don’t take any shortcuts that could damage your business’s reputation or affect your rankings with the search engines. What’s just as important as getting links for your site is that those links appear relevant to anyone visiting the site.

Creating organic links are important for many reasons. One of which is so spiders or bots sent out by the big search engines like Google and Yahoo will crawl your website and index your site for key terms/phrases. These bots use links to travel from one website to another.  It is also important to have links back to your website from sites that are constantly updated with new content. Sites such as Performancing.com have content from professional bloggers updated daily and the site itself has many links pointing to it. Linking on this website or others similar to it, back to your own website can potentially increase your rankings and crawling frequency.

The process of link building is so important, consequently there can be an enormous temptation to take some short cuts to try and leapfrog up the search engine rankings. It’s possible to do this, but it can backfire on you. The link building process is not just about quantity any more, it’s about links from as many high-quality, relevant sites as you can. Linking from sites with high page rank, or with relevant content are seen as good links and certainly given more importance than spammed links. Not long ago you could artificially build spammed links to your site for the purpose of SEO – but that rarely works today.

For instance, you are able to build links quickly, with spamming programs. Or, for a price, some companies will build hundreds or thousands of links back to your site. Instead of moving up in the Google and Yahoo rankings, your site could get penalized, or even de-indexed altogether.  The major search engines have become very good at spotting spammed or worthless website links.

When it comes to building links, steady & honest wins the race. The main things to remember in link building are to be ethical, create a good reason (content) for others to link to you, and try to build links for traffic. If you are looking for a quick way to build links don’t get wrapped up in the hype that some spamming companies promote. Remember, if it seems to good to be true it is!

Know any short cuts that actually work?

[tags] link building, natural links, Google, Yahoo, performancing.com, high page rank, black hat SEO, spamming [/tags]

Vertical Measures

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Posted in Link Building, The Basics | 10 Comments »

What’s the Next Google Smackdown?

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

We all know it is coming.  We all wait with great anticipation.  We all hope it doesn’t hit someone we know.

And we can all guess at who it is going to nail (or benefit), what changed in the algorithms, where it is happening first, when it will occur and why Google is making the changes.

Is it the 30, 90 & 950 penalties?  Something similar to last October?  Or will it be more PageRank carnage?

What’s the next Google Smackdown going to be?  When will it happen?  Any educated guesses out there?  Let’s hear from you!! 

[tags] google smackdown, google penalties, pagerank carnage [/tags]

Vertical Measures

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Posted in The Basics | 12 Comments »

One Way Link Building Techniques

Thursday, August 7th, 2008
There’s no doubt that link building strategies improve a website’s link popularity and search engine ranking, and one way link building can be one of the strongest weapons in your link building arsenal. It’s also the most difficult type of link to achieve. After all, you’re essentially striving to get a link to your own website from other sites without any reciprocal action on your part. You aren’t giving them a link in return, so you have to really strive to develop those one way links.
 
There are several ways to develop a one way link building program that can work for you. Try each one and see how they work – a combination of several is your best bet. Over time you’ll figure out which ones are giving you the best results.
 
Blog Posts – This involves getting respected bloggers to write about you or your website. In addition to the benefit of having the topics discussed by recognized “experts,” often they will link back to your website within relevant text with an appropriate anchor text link. 
 
Keep in touch with bloggers and website owners relevant to your industry and send them newsletters, announcements and emails that will get them interested. Occasional products they could review are also a great way to get them on board. Remember, it’s a small price to pay for them to write a feature piece about your product or service.   The biggest advantage of a contextual link is that it tends to stay in place longer than many other links. When it’s an integral part of a particular article rather than simply a random link, it isn’t going to “drop off” as part of a shift in link building strategies. It remains as long as the post remains. 
 
Press Release Marketing – Press releases are a marvelous way to increase the visibility of your website. They get your news and information in front of a potentially limitless audience through targeted distribution. A properly written and distributed press release can reach hundreds or even thousands of online outlets in a matter of days, increasing the profile of your website and providing incoming links from every site that carries the story about your business. The traffic it drives to your site will be equaled only by the increased rankings you’ll see.
 
Article Marketing –  Article marketing actually provides two benefits: it gives you contextual links back to your website and it allows your site to become the authority on a given topic. Because those who read articles you’ve written on a particular subject are generally following a link because they are already highly interested in the topic, traffic to your site will convert better than typical search traffic. It’s crucial that you provide articles that are informative, nut just fluff, and that you place them on high quality sites that are respected. 
 
Blog Comments – Commenting regularly on relevant blogs can be a great source of traffic and links for your websites. In fact, a couple of SEO companies have recently proven that links from blog comments can be pretty powerful. The key is to make sure the comments are professional and related to the original posts. General comments such as “Hey, great post. I agree completely!” will be ignored by most readers because they’re transparent attempts to attract links. If you provide thought-provoking commentary and helpful suggestions, however, you’re adding to the value of the blog and readers will want to follow your link to learn more.
 
Bookmarking – Getting your site noticed on sites like Furl, Simpy, De.licio.us, StumbleUpon and others that rate sites for their quality and interest can lead to impressive as web surfers visit and vote. Be sure you’re bookmarked on these popular sites for lots of incoming links.
 
Directories – Directories are pretty straightforward – steer clear of those that will accept everyone one and look for those that have editorial reviews. The more discriminating the directory site, the better the ranking you’ll get by being associated with that particular directory. If the directory has particular standards you need to meet and a review process before you can be accepted, it’s a good sign that the directory is a respectable one.
 
Videos – YouTube and other sites allowing you to post your own videos with links back to your site are great ways to increase traffic to your site. These days there’s no predicting what videos will go viral, and short “how to” videos are an excellent way to educate viewers and build trust.
 
Social Media Marketing – On Google’s own webmaster forum social links were recognized as a valuable source for inbound links – you can’t find a much better advocate for the validity of this source of incoming links. Because of the informal, social-based nature of this form of marketing, search engines tend to trust these links. Place content on sites like Facebook, MySpace, Squidoo and other social networks for instant links. These sites give you lots of leeway on the type of content as well – you can blog, provide social commentary, write humorous essays…there is a wide range of things you can do on social media sites, so be creative.
 

By working with these eight ways to create incoming links, you can develop a solid one way link building strategy that will promote your website across a wide variety of online media and place you solidly in the page rankings.

[tags] one way link building, link building, link popularity, blog comments, press releases, social media marketing, directories, article marketing [/tags]

Vertical Measures

Posted in Link Building, The Basics, Tips | 68 Comments »

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