Author Archive
Make the Most Out of Your Browser
Around 1994, the Web browser most preferred by Internet users 
was Netscape. Compared to what users had access to back in 1991, (mostly text and images formed by characters), Netscape was groundbreaking. You could see different colours, images and graphics.
Fast forward 15 years. While a good portion of the population still uses Internet Explorer, Web users have at their disposal a vast arsenal of browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari and the newly launched Flock are some of them.
The pros and cons of each of these browsers would require a long post, but in this one, I’ll concentrate on “add-ons” and “extensions” – tools that may be used to customize Mozilla Firefox to your specific needs. To date, 1,567,123,625 add-ons have been downloaded. Of those, 150,767,009 add-ons are in use (source: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/). Here are some of my favourites:
- Rank Checker: this handy tool is one of my favourites. It allows you to quickly assess search engine results for several keywords, in bulk. An additional option lets you select the regional Google database to inquire (for example, Google.ca, Google.co.uk, etc). Great to keep an eye on your (or your competitors’) search rankings.
- iOpus iMacros: great add-on if you need to quickly visit a number of sites quickly and routinely. This tool works by recording your browsing session, and allowing you to save it and replay it whenever it’s require. No need to always type the URL in a new browser tab, enter username and passwords, etc. It does it all for you.
- Firebug: this is the little bug that could. It comes in really handy when one needs to analyze the HTML code of a page, in the same window where it is displayed. Firebug opens a pane on your browser window, and as you examine each element on the Firebug pane, the corresponding area is displayed in the webpage. It eliminates the inconvenience of keeping Notepad (in a Windows-based computer) or TextEdit (if using a Mac) open to view the source code.
- Read it Later: great tool to help you mark sites that you’d like to visit later on. It keeps a list of these sites, accessible through an RSS feed and through the Read It Later site. Synchronize it with other computers that you use on a regular basis, and you can access this list wherever you are.
So, as you can see above, Mozilla Firefox can be used for much more than simply visiting sites. If you’re an avid Web user or work in the online marketing field, there are many add-ons that will simplify routine actions. Do you have a favourite Firefox add-on or extension to recommend? Leave us a comment!
“The Cautious Seldom Err”: Tips on Hiring a Web Designer
Photo credit: cornflakegirl, via Flickr
Confucius says “The cautious seldom err.” These words can be applied to matters as practical as hiring a web designer or programmer for your next project.
We often hear unfortunate tales from clients who have hired a designer or programmer, only to be left with an unfinished project. There are also those cases when the project was completed, but the designer dodged out of town and left the client without any follow-up support.
With that in mind, we have assembled a list of questions and considerations for you to keep in mind before choosing a professional for your next project.
Some of these points come courtesy of other wise resources (cited below). Others come as a result of years of experience, and our share of heartaches, too.
SEO for WordPress Sites
There’s no denying that WordPress is a platform that makes it easier for companies and individuals to publish, update and manage blogs and sites. However, for all its advantages, there are a few points that count against WordPress, when it is interpreted by search engines. In this post, I pinpoint some of these issues, and how to address them:
Photo credit: Randy Stewart, via Flickr
Potential Duplicate Content
One of the great things about WordPress blogs is that they make it dead-simple for a visitor to find the post that he/she is interested in. The visitor can select articles to read according to category, keywords (tags) and authors. Unfortunately, this means that all posts that are organized by those criteria end up being duplicated in one way or another. For example, let’s suppose that Jane writes an insightful article about Ferraris, and chooses to file that post under the “Italian Imports” category, as well as using the tags “Ferrari” and “Testarossa”, right before filing it under her own author name – “Jane”. Consequently, that article will be found not just in one page, but anytime someone chooses to view posts within the “Italian Imports” category, the “Ferrari” or “Testarossa” tags, or that were written by Jane. Hence you have the issue of several pages containing duplicate text – a “no-no” in Google’s eyes, since it views duplicate content as an illegal attempt by Webmasters to inflate a site’s search engine rankings. These sites often end up with a lower position among search results.
One way to avoid this common problem is to ensure that there’s a large distinction between your tag and category archives. So, as an example, you don’t want to have both a category AND a tag to be called “Italian Imports”. A good rule of thumb is to assign larger subjects and topics as categories, and leave tags for nuances of those topics. So in our example above, we could choose “Italian Imports” and “Ferrari” to be categories, while setting “Testarossa” and “Pininfarina” as tags.
Optimized Description and Keyword Tags
When you publish your WordPress blog right “out of the box”, description and keywords meta tags are not automatically included in your posts. That’s not a bad thing, though. Although keyword tags are not as useful in search engine optimization as they once were, description tags are still used by search engines to decide on how they describe your pages in search engine results. As such, an effective description plays an important effect on whether someone will click on your link among many other search engine listings. You definitely want your words to be compelling and separate your listing from the rest of the pack. Each page on your site should have a unique description tag since, optimally, everyone of your Web pages should be distinct from others. How do you work around this WordPress shortcoming? You need to resort to a WordPress SEO plugin.
Two main plugins that facilitate the optimization of a WordPress site are “Headspace 2” and “All in One SEO“. They both have their own advantages. “All in One SEO” makes it easier to formulate title and description tags for a site, but since the description and title tags that it composes are somewhat automated, this plugin does not grant you as much control on the text on those tags as you might like.
If you’re more of an SEO control-freak like me, and want to be picky about how your page descriptions show up in search results, then “Headspace 2″ may be a better fit. That is because this plugin doesn’t automatically compose meta title and meta description tags – so you can enter copy and keywords that you know are bound to generate the most clicks for you.
Google XML Sitemaps
WordPress sites allow for new content to be added, easily and painlessly. However, as far as Google is concerned, if it is not aware that you have new content on your site, then it’s all for naught. You want to notify Google that there’s new material on your WordPress blog, and one of the easiest ways to do so is by installing a plugin that will automatically generate an XML Google Sitemap for your blog as new content is developed. Some of the many plugins available are:
This is another major step in optimizing your WordPress site which will make it that much easier for Google to take notice of your blog.
PageRank Dilution
Links pointing to someone else’s site from within your own blog dilute your own PageRank. For that reason, you will want to be very specific and strategic about where in your site an outbound link can be counted as an endorsement from your blog (hence helping the landing site’s PageRank) or, in contrast, which areas of your site carry no PageRank value for links posted there. A helpful hint is to add the “nofollow” attribute to any links to which you do not want to give any “PageRank power”.
Because of their social nature, blogs can have a plethora of outbound links. One way to manage how much PageRank juice you want to giveaway from your blog is by installing a “nofollow” plugin, which will enable you to dictate which of your site sections have “nofollow” or “dofollow” tags in their links. As an example, you can choose for all links in your post pages to have a “nofollow” attribute attached to them, while all links in tag archives would receive the “dofollow” accreditation. This plays a part at conserving your PageRank, since you’re communicating to the Google Crawler that outbound links on specific pages are not to be countered as endorsements (which dilutes that page’s PageRank).
For a list of nofollow plugins, check out this link.
SEO-Friendly Permalink Settings
A permalink (an abbreviation of “permanent links”) is the URL that WordPress designates to a blog post, and which is then used by other sites to link back to that article. It’s also the link that you’d email to a friend, or that you’d bookmark, if you desire to access that post a later date.
By default, permalinks assigned by WordPress are neither “human” or “SEO” friendly. Typically, a permalink looks like this:
http://www.yourwordpressbloghere.com/?p=22
Try saying that, three times, fast! Good luck. In addition, an article will be much more conducive to success in search engines if its permalink resembles more my example below:
http://www.yourwordpressbloghere.com/2009/06/why-ferrari-testarossa-rocks
The process to change your posts’ URLs to a better permalink varies depending on the WordPress version that you’re using. It may be as easy as installing a plugin and making any changes through that tool, or it may require some modifications to be made on a server level. Either way, it’s worth the trouble.
These are merely some of measures that can be implemented to optimize WordPress sites. They should be employed in tandem with other basic SEO measures.
I hope this helps you in some measure. Of course, your comments and questions are welcome. Is there a topic that you’d like us to discuss here on the Magnify Digital blog? Send it our way!
‘Til next time,
Guacira Naves
Online Marketing Strategist
@OnlineStrategy
Tags: WordPress, WordPress plugins
The Social Media Cart and the Marketing Horse
On Wednesday night, I attended the Ask The Experts event in which Liz Gaige (one of our SheTeam contributors)
Photo credit: woodsy, via stock.xchng
participated. The event’s goal was to give entrepreneurs a chance to get answers to dilemmas regarding branding, marketing, Web development and social media strategy.
As the night came to an end, I found myself reflecting on how the variety of experts in the panel illustrated the process that should optimally happen as a company ventures into Digital Marketing waters:
Marketing
Liz Gaige was the in-house expert in charge of addressing questions about marketing strategy and planning. As she answered questions from the room, I was reminded of how important it is to have a clear perspective on who your target market and product/offering are, before moving further toward branding, Web development, etc. Once you have identified who your target market is, and that it is indeed financially able to sustain your business, you are better equipped to analyze how your offering differs from the competition.
The wisdom that is gathered up until this point can now be transitioned toward the next phase…
…Branding
As Ryan Thompson expounded, branding is much more than a logo. It encompasses the perception you’d like your target market to have about your company, your offering. That impression is partially communicated through your business cards, logo and other collaterals, but it is ultimately about the mental picture that one absorbs about you – before, during and after a visual, online and print conversation.
Defining your brand is a key point in this process, since it dictates the tone of your communications later on, during the implementation of our next two points…
…Web development and social media strategy
Ideally, all the steps above will have taken place before you delve into Web development and social media strategy waters. The information that you have collected through your marketing and branding journey makes up your corporate DNA, upon which your Web development muscle, bones and cartilage can be built upon. How those muscles get put to use is another story.
In order to achieve your goals, should you participate in a sprint or a marathon? A sprint could be likened to an AdWords campaign – which can be implemented quicker, with faster returns, but demanding more energy up front – where as a marathon would be akin to search engine optimization: you’re in it for the long haul.
Is your offering best suited to be presented through a ballet or modern dance? In the realm of social media, LinkedIn is more formal and structured (such as in a ballet), whereas Twitter has a younger, more casual tone.
The bottom line is that there is an order of events that should take place before you even decide if your company should be “tweeting”, or if it should have a new Web site. Going through the marketing and branding stages is integral for a solid Web development campaign, upon which a successful social media strategy can then be built. So make sure that everything happens in the right order, and that your social media cart does not come before your marketing horse.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, and welcome your questions or comments.
Tags: branding, entrepreneur, LinkedIn, Social Media, strategy, Twitter
Rock Classics and SEO
Photo credit: imaginepaolo
Last week, as my beloved watched a TV special featuring Ron Hawkins amidst rock legends Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, it dawned on me that, just like classic rock tunes, some SEO guidelines never die. Yes, every once in a while Google performs one of its dreaded updates, adding some new rules into what makes sites rank first among thousands of results. However, there are some foundational principles that, though they can be considered “vintage”, should still be followed. Among them we have content, title tags and quality inbound links.
Content
As of late, Google has been improving its Flash-indexing capabilities, but it still encounters some difficulty crawling through Web sites with “special effects”. As far as Google is concerned, text is the best content you could use. Google encounters no hiccups “reading” through a page’s text when it’s plain HTML. Furthermore, when giving some thought to the copy for a Web page, remember to keep it relevant to what your visitors would expect to see, and you’re already ahead of the pack. Think of what your audience would like to read – what message would transform someone from a mere visitor to loyal customer, and use those words on your pages.
Title Tags
A Web page’s title is determined by the text displayed between the HTML tags <title> and </title> in a page’s source code. When a page is displayed on browsers, the title is rendered on the top part of the active window.
In the same way that humans refer to an article’s title to quickly decipher its topic, so does Google “read” a Web page’s title to judge what it is all about. For that reason, make the title descriptive of the subject of the page. One mistake that is commonly made is inserting only a company’s name as the title (“Acme, Inc.”, as an example), instead of what the page pertains to (for example, “Red Widget Solutions for Sustainable Turtles by Acme Inc”).
When composing a title, consider using the keyword that best describes the subject of that page. It will further help such page to rank better in search engine results (although it’s not as simple as that… otherwise, I’d be out of a job), while also increasing the user-friendliness. One caveat is to not overstuff your title tag with repeated keywords. That’s a no-no. It’s as outdated as one-hit wonders from the 90′s. And it’s not poised for a comeback anytime soon.
Inbound links
Continuing with the music hits analogy, just as a track is made popular largely because of the air-time it receives from large radio stations and MTV (or MuchMusic, here in Canada), so does a Web site’s level of success depend on the number of links that are driven to it from important, influencing sites. This has been the case for years, and that’s why professionals in the industry often talk about performing a link campaign when optimizing a Web site. The “one-hit wonder” counterpart to this would be to delve into shoddy practices just for the sake of securing links for a site – such as participating in “link farms” and getting unreputable domains to refer to yours just because of the link that they’re giving you. This will only do you harm. Don’t. Do. It.
What you’ve just read is merely a very light introduction to what makes a site successful with Google, as there are many other factors that go into play. One thing that you can count on is that “flavour of the month” SEO practices usually do fade away, and if not implemented properly, can cause your site more harm than good. Stick to the classics.
Guacira Naves
eMarketing Strategist
@OnlineStrategy
Tags: Search Engine Optimization, SEO
