Case Study: Website Rebuild and Search Engine Rankings
Fasteners Direct is an Auckland-based company specialising in supply of fasteners & hardware to the construction, building & engineering industries. Their old website was static HTML pages originally done in MS Frontpage, but which basically contained a lot of picture and not much text. We were asked to carry out an SEO Review on 24th Feb 2009, and as part of that, pointed out that the old site really would benefit from need updating.
Managing director Andrew Benton agreed and gave us the go-ahead to rebuild the website in a WordPress CMS so they could easily add / edit content as required. The additional ability to use the blog aspects of WordPress to create news, DIY articles, product reviews and distribute newsletters etc is also a consideration…
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- We also needed to address the following issues;
- Lack of incoming links / lack of keywords in Anchor Text
- No robots.txt file
- No custom 404 Error Page
- No sitemap.xml
- Duplicate Titles, Descriptions, Keywords
- Etc etc..
Case Study: Extreme Website Makeover with SEO
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by the nice folks at Flexiscreens® in Tasmania. The site had been live for years and had previously been generating good business. However, things were in a downward spiral, not helped by the global economic downturn. They needed help;
- their HTML website was looking old and tired
- other people had stolen their content and were getting better rankings
- their site’s visibility had slowly diminished
Flexiscreens - the tired old website
- Lack of incoming links
- No relevant keywords / phrases in link anchor Text
- Dduplication of Titles, Descriptions, Keywords
- No use of H1, H2 in page headings, and poor keyword targeting
- 1st paragraphs not targeting specific keywords
- Overly long pages
- Text hidden in DIV’s containing blatant keyword spam
- No sitemaps / robots.txt / 404 Error page handling
- Etc!
The plan put forward included keyword research, link building submissions, rebuild into a WordPress CMS, full Search Engine Optimisation on all pages, and attention to all the serious issues noted in the review.
A ‘Baker’s Dozen’ SEO Tips for WordPress
- How to Cook Up a Traffic Storm on Your WordPress site!
As a general rule, from an SEO perspective, bear in mind the most fundamental issue. Google loathes duplicate content! Google is trying to index and categorize the billions of pages on the web and calculate each page’s relevance to specific search queries. Therefore, to have any chance of attaining appearance in Top 30 SERP’s, pages must be accurately described…
Keep in mind that Google is an entirely automated text indexing system doing its absolute best to deliver the most relevant content to its core users. Those core users are NOT website owners!!! Google’s main focus is on its search customers. If you want your website to get noticed, you’ve got to assist Google et al in every way possible, by accurately describing your own content.
Make it clear and unequivocal what each page is about. Ensure it is original content, properly described, and easily accessible…
Apparently, there are over 200 elements that Google assesses as its trying to calculate a page’s relevance to a specific search query. Individually, some of them are almost insignificant. Collectively they add up to prominence or obscurity! The thinking man understands that the more elements you get right, the higher the probability of appearance in Top 30 SERPs. Here’s a dozen of the primary indicators of unique content to an SE spider;
1.) URLs:
Precise control of every page URL, carefully using primary keywords / phrase. Use Permalinks wisely!
2.) Title:
70 characters limit. Accurate, carefully using primary keywords / phrase. The single most important element for every page!
3.) Meta Description:
150 chars limit. Accurate, carefully using primary keywords / phrase. By default, its used verbatim in Google SERP’s. Its very important to write a catchy phrase incorporating primary keyword phrase, one that impels viewers to click on it!
I always use All In One SEO because I’m a “content control freak” and want to make sure every word is in the right place. Dynamic meta-tags are better than no meta-tags – but the ability to manually input as many elements as is possible is what makes the overall difference to SE Rankings… Read more
A Rose By Any Other Name May Smell as Sweet – But Do YOUR File Names Stink?
File naming is an element of SEO that most people pay little attention to, yet its a crucial issue for two key reasons;
Search Engine Page Results
When a reference to one of your pages shows up within a SERP, there are 3 important cues that can entice a visitor to click the link and visit your site. In order, they are Title, Description and URL – or page file name. Why not give yourself every possible advantage when competing for visitors, by providing accurate and readable file names? It might well be the final push that slides the mouse pointer in your favor.
Search Engine Rankings
Equally, when search engine spiders are mapping your site and trying to figure out what on earth its all about, giving them some accurate information in every possible area would seem like a smart move, right? Keywords in file names are important, and they do make a difference. It might only be one of 100-plus elements in a search engine relevancy algorithm, but the more places you can tick off as being perfect, the better!
The Reality Check
Oddly enough, few people actually do this! Most file names are either a model of brevity, acronymic, cryptic or just plain gibberish! That’s a bit like driving with the handbrake on… Read more
Blogs for SEO – How to Get Started
Implementing a Blog (weB log) is an excellent way to steadily increase the the depth of content on your site in an easy and efficient manner. There are numerous benefits, because a Blog, if properly used, enables you to;
- distribute new information to clients and prospective clients
- efficiently increase site content by rapidly adding new material
- provide “advertorial” material to other sites
- increase links to your site as your Blog contents are disseminated across other sites on the ‘net.
- increase “deep link” count to internal pages e.g. www.yoursite.co.nz/your-blog/archives/articles/Your_Tips
- increase traffic as people find extracts from your Blog, and come looking for the source
- increase your credibility as people find lots of useful, up to date information on your site
Utilising a Blog as a business enhancement tool is far superior to a newsletter. There is minimal trouble to get a blog up and running, but make sure you host it on YOUR site. You have the choice of establishing a “hosted’ blog on www.Wordpress.org and other Blog software services, but the greatest benefits will be accrued if you get it up and running at www.yoursite.co.nz/your-blog/
Software
In our case, we’ve used Wordpress (www.Wordpress.org) an Open Source application that not only has all the required “bells and whistles” but is easy to install, set up, and manage. It has an excellent “web browser” interface that means you can add new material from your desk, or from home. Hell, you can even configure it to accept and post incoming emails from yourself!
There are some basic system requirements – your (Apache) server must support PHP, and MySQL databases. These days, that’s level of technology is available on most “basic” level hosting packages.
Installation
If you’ve got cpanel hosting with Fantastico, you can do the Wordpress installation in a few minutes because the installation scripts are probably pre-installed already for you! If not, it might take a little longer, but the Wordpress guys take pride in the “5 minute install” concept. It is really easy – even if you’ve got to download the application, unzip it, upload it to your site into it’s own directory, add a new MySQL database, add a user, start the configuration file and insert the database / user /password details into the configuration file, it should be up and running inside 30 minutes. Be a good idea to read through the “Read Me ” file before you start… the instructions are clear, concise, and in a logical and coherent order! Pity all documentation was not like that! 
Configuration
With Wordpress, there are a handful of system settings to consider once you’ve got your blog operational. Of these, I’d say the three most important are as follows;
1.) Options / Writing / Update Services
The setting for the automatic update services, where blog search engines, directories and news feed services are “pinged” each time you add new content. By default, Wordpress includes a few services, some of which will in turn update other services. However, you will probably want the widest coverage possible, and to extend that list to include all known services! Takes a little longer to process a new posting, but means you get the best overall result… and that’s what its all about! There is a list of possibilities you can copy at www.comauth.co.nz/ping-page.htm
Copy and paste the ones you want to use into the “Update Services” panel at bottom of this page; www.yoursite.co.nz/yourblog/wp-admin/options-writing.php and choose Update Settings to add them permanently.
2.) Options / Permalinks
As they put it; “By default WordPress uses web URL’s which have question marks and lots of numbers in them, however WordPress offers you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your permalinks and archives. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links.”
From an SEO point of view, we’ve chosen the numeric options so that our URL’s not only look sensible, but the Search Engines will be also be able to navigate them. However, getting this arcane bit of trickery to work requires you to implement the supplied “mod_rewrite” in your .htaccess file… if your are developing a glazed look about now, just bear with me a little longer!
The .htaccess file is a dangerous area to be playing in, as a mistake in this file can render your site inaccessible – until the Host Company’s support guy sorts it out for you – usually by renaming it! How do I know so much about this shit? Well, it happened to ME!
You should have installed your blog into its own directory, which minimises the potential problems substantially! Wordpress provides the correct “mod_rewrite” code in;
www.yoursite.co.nz/yourblog/wp-admin/options-permalink.php – its nasty looking stuff, as you can see below;
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /yourblog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /yourblog/index.php [L]
- So, choose the Custom Option /%category%/%postname%.html is good…
- Copy it into a text file – e.g. open Notepad, paste the code in.
- Save it as htaccess.txt in your local copy of your site
- Choose Update Settings in Wordpress Options / Permalinks
- Use FTP to upload htaccess.txt into your BLOG directory - Please, NOT your root directory!
- Using your FTP application, rename the htacces.txt file to .htaccess
Open your Blog, browse around it and (hopefully) not only will everything be working, but the URL’s will now not have any of those dreadful &, ? or = thingy’s embedded in them. If its not working… the Wordpress support forums offer rapid response times to such teething problems. However, you should at least be able to access the Blog directory with your FTP client and rename .htaccess back to htaccess.txt and bring it back to life while you await a response from the Wordpress forum.
3.) Categories
From an SEO perspective, its important to develop a good Category Structure, because the category names are going to be embedded as “tags” in all your Blog posts, a little like the concept of the “keyword meta-tag” and this will help define and describe your content, especially in and
Content
Now that you’ve got the basics sorted out, start populating your blog with some quality content. I recommend writing it in an HTML editor such as FrontPage) and making sure it’s spell-checked as you go. Once you’ve got it formatted the way you want, go to the Wordpress / Write / Write Page and paste it in. Add the Title, select your Category/s from the right menu, and click the “Save and Continue Editing” button. You will then have a preview of your article in the lower section of the page. Double-check the formatting, and when you are happy with it, choose “Publish.”
Blog Search Engine’s and Directories
Once you’ve got some content built up over a couple of months, you will then want to get serious about getting it distributed to blog search engines and directories… So, in the next article we will outline how to go about this process.
