The SEO Guys :: Web Design & SEO

One of the fastest way to minimise your chances of web business success is to use a Content Management System (CMS). There are a number of open-source CMS products, such as phpWS, Mambo, Plone, Drupal, Geeklog, Siteframe, and phpNuke etc and a plethora of proprietary CMS products espoused by individual web design companies as the answer everything from lack of HTML knowledge to rapid shopping cart deployment etc.

Expressing this in simple terms, its said that possibly as high as 80% of online purchases are made from leads generated by search engines. CMS systems place a huge handicap on achievable Search Engine rankings. meaning there is a direct, immediate and practically insurmountable conflict with business aspirations. There are multiple reasons for this.

Duplication of Content

Search engines loathe duplicate content. In the average CMS, there are numerous common design elements, images, HTML and/or JavaScript code blocks etc, which are portrayed across ALL sites using the same system, and this is not a good thing.

Many CMS systems make it hard to impossible to generate unique page Title, Description & Keyword meta-tags, meaning all pages can look identical in search engine results. Many CMS systems do not permit you to assign keyword-rich image names, or apply unique and specific image ALT tags, and the page file names are usually not directly controllable. Few CMS systems allow you to easily add anchors on specific pages, and to link to those anchors from other pages. All of this translates into losing you valuable search engine optimisation opportunities.

Shared IP Addresses vs. Unique IP

Proprietary CMS systems usually go hand in hand with a “total package deal” that includes web design, web hosting and CMS. The hosting is invariable on a “shared server” meaning your site has the same IP Address as all other sites on the server.
Should a situation occur Where another site or sites are offering very similar or identical products and services, there is a potentially serious conflict of interest which the web design & hosting company will probably not advise you of! The first site is highly likely to be given priority rankings and treatment by the search engines, and all subsequent sites are highly likely to be consigned to oblivion as Search Engines will probably regard them as “duplicate content!” So two or more “Christmas gift shops” on the same “shared server,” or two or more “human resource consultants” face a problem they will be blissfully unaware of. Having a unique IP address assigned to your site is far more sensible!

Usability

Open-source CMS systems are written by geeks and nerds, for other geeks and nerds. It is painfully obvious that none are written by people with the faintest understanding of search engine optimisation, or an awareness of the old adage “form follows function.” As for “usability testing” there is no demonstrable evidence that any research and science has been applied to either the user or the administration interfaces! Unfortunately, the same criticisms can be levelled at the commercial CMS systems on offer.

CMS and Being Held To Ransom

In terms of the proprietary CMS systems, you are also seriously at risk of being captured and held hostage by your web design company, because they now “own” your site and you cannot easily escape without sacrificing your total investment. In this respect, use of CMS demonstrates a complete lack of business risk analysis. From that point on, you can also be systematically milked like a cash cow for every amendment, change, edit etc that they carry out on your behalf! Believe me, it happens every day… and I’ve seen people charged $90 for a simple edit that took me less than 2 minutes to implement!

CMS Saves You Money?

Yeah, right!!! The overheads of managing a CMS are usually far in excess of managing a conventional site. Content percentage-wise, most sites actually change very little, and the majority of pages are static and do not change at all. CMS is total overkill for the average business site.

Stand Out from the Crowd, Don’t Join It!

To succeed on the web today, you need to be a clearly unique entity, with original content, properly organised, logically described, and all pages must be optimised for a set of specific keyword phrases that accurately describe your products or services. Anything less is a compromise, and is to YOUR business detriment. A CMS system has a direct, negative impact on almost all desired outcomes - from minimising business risks, improving search engine rankings and prompt return on investment.

Another SEO Article by;

Ben Kemp, aka The SEO Guy (nz)

Web: www.comauth.co.nz

Email: SEO@TheSeoGuy.co.nz

Contact us for a Free SEO Site Review….

One of the advantages touted by blog proponents is the ability to use your blog (and/or other blogs) to automatically add “fresh” content to your site. Search engines like regularly updated content, and will get in the habit of dropping in to see whats new!

However, as you will have quickly discovered if you’ve had a go at this already, getting the content flowing is somewhat tricky. Everybodys talking about it… but nobody’s saying hey, you can do it this way!

It depends a little on how your site is constructed. For normal people (read non-technical types) who are intent on good search engine rankings, you’ve probably had the good sense to build your site in HTML. That actually makes it a litle bit harder! It just seems that all the web-geeks out there use PHP or similar arcane web construction processes, and of course they make this stuff look easy. However, us normal people can be left sucking air a bit…

RSS to HTML - to use JavaScript or not?

There are quite a few JavaScript RSS to HTML applications available - some free, some at modest cost. My advice? Don’t go near them! The problem with JavaScript here, as in any other area, is that the search engines will simply skip right on by that section of your page. Yep, that’s right - a complete waste of time if you are trying to deliver “fresh” content that a search engine spider will find and index. 

RSS to HTML - use a hybrid PHP solution?

Nothing worth having comes easy… but hey, you know that already! Until someone comes up with a better/easier solution, you are going to have to get your hands dirty with code! What I found, after a day of searching down dead-ends, was a nifty little application called CaRP. Its a PHP-based tool, there is a free version, and it actually works! An example is midway down the page at The SEO Guys site where I’ve extracted and displayed a blog & directory feed from my own site, plus a third feed from an external site.

Achieving this took an hour or so - uploading CaRP, installing a MySQL database for it, running the configuration file, and tweaking settings to display the feed as required. A small block of PHP code must be installed in the HTML page where you wish to display the feed. Execution of PHP scripts within an HTML page has a couple of requirements.

- First, your Hosts server must be configured to allow this.
- Second, you will have to edit (or create) the .htaccess file in your site’s root directory and add a small block of code that allows script processing for your site. This can be configured as site-wide, or for a single page only.

CaRP allows multiple ways of customising the way feeds are displayed. For a start, you can set global formatting to apply to all feeds from within the config file. E.g. you might want to set a default font size on channel titles, and a different size on text within items. You might also want to change the total number of items displayed per listing, and set all links to open in a new window. (Recommended!)  

Then, within the individual HTML page where you specify the feeds to be displayed, you can add different formatting attributes to different feeds. In the example above, all site feeds are displayed as a bulleted lists.
  
For a closer look at the PHP code that achieves the current display, details of .htaccess changes, and for the download location of CaRP etc, go to the following page - RSS to HTML via CaRP

The CaRP application has good documentation, which you will probably have to read… yes, when all else fails, read the instructions!

Good luck!

SEO work for your blog is no different to search engine optimisation on your main site - youve got to work at it. Ok, so you’ve created your nice shiny new blog, and you’ve been adding high quality postings containing lots of useful information on a regular basis for a few weeks (or months)… whats next?

Review Your Blog

First, take stock of your blog’s set-up, and make sure its ready for debut;

1. Do your postings have some relevant key word content in the headings? If you’re intending to improve your overall ranking across search engines, remember to “optimise” the pages just as you would any other page of your site. Decide on the keyword phrase you are targeting, make sure its used in the heading. Make sure its highlighted in the body text, particularly in the first and last paragraphs.
2. Do your postings contain a “clickable” link or two back to your site? By this I mean a “proper” link in the format The SEO Guys Blog and not just your plain URL. To build traffic, you want to make it easy for people to get to your site!
3. Does each posting contain your “Author Details Panel” that credits the articles and postings to you, including your (clickable) site URL information? Make your links open in a new window - thats a kind gesture to those who’d like to return and finish reading the original page…
4. Have you made a statement of your copyright constraints, if any? Perhaps you should encourage people to copy and distribute your blog content, providing the Author Panel remains intact? That would be the best way to ensure widest distribution, and the consequent proliferation of valuable 1-way links back to your site!

Blog MarketingYou will probably want other people to read your blog in order that they may appreciate your literary genius, right? But of course, nobody know where its at yet, so you’ve got to give it some publicity. The first step should be to add a prominent link to it on your own web site, or sites - pretty obvious, you’d think? However, in all the excitement, that is sometimes overlooked!

More importantly, if you want it to start generating lots of nice new incoming links, and generating serious traffic increases, you’ve got to actively “market” your blog to the places that blog readers go… and “Where is that, pray tell me do?” I hear you say…

Well, the ping services you’ve added earlier are all well and good, but due to the volume of spam and garbage postings, some discipline had to be installed into the blog process to exert some control. Your site is no doubt “pinging” a variety of servers each time you create an entry. However, before any significant transfer activity takes place, you will have to front up and formally register yourself and your blog with as many of those services as possible.

The process is analogous to submitting to a normal search engine or directory, and pretty much for the same reasons. In some cases you may be asked for a reciprocal link - not too much to ask for the favour about to be rendered to you. In other cases, a “donation” might be requested. Before handing over the cash, have the sense to check the Google Page Rank of the site… its got to be high (6+) to be worth it!

The challenge is finding all these blog directories… so we’ve added a category on our Directory especially for links them, see; Blog Directories By the time you’ve spent a day working through the 150+ directories accessible from the various links, you’ll be in good shape to get that traffic counter ticking along. Your postings, and the consequent “ping” to the various services, should now have your content distribution flowing right along!

Good luck!

Have you considered Article Writing as an SEO Tool to boost your Google Page Rank? No? Not at all?

Well, imagine for a moment a community that brings content providers (authors) together with content users (websites) to provide the content sifters (search engines) with the results desired by the content seeker (web surfers).

The web surfer savours the content appetiser and clicks the link to go directly to more content provided at the author’s web site - thus completing the circle. Along the way, everyone’s requirements are satisfied;

• The web surfers gets the information he/she required
• The search engine has relevant results to display
• The websites has good content to offer
• The author becomes known as an expert and gets more visitors, more sales, and more success…
• The author’s web site receives a decent Page Rank boost from all the new links

Perhaps THIS really IS Web 2.0!!!

Click HERE for a more detailed look at Articles as an SEO Tool…