Site Development

Google dispels the myth that they use the Keywords meta tag. They use the description tag for snippets in search engines results pages, but that’s about it. Great summary by Mr. Cutts.

Google’s Matt Cutts explains what Google is doing to try and communicate with webmasters. No, they are not about to offer a customer support hotline, but they are trying to do a little more. It’s not much, really, but at least they know we want more information and contact- especially if we’ve inadvertently done something wrong. It’s a step in the right direction, to acknowledge the need, I guess.

I recently read this nice article about testing your website. It’s pretty good and I highly recommend it. A couple points i gleaned from Daniel Waisberg, the author.

1. Your site is a laboratory, not a sculpture. Sometimes we’ll have a client that wants their site, or a page to be 100% perfect before it goes live. Sometimes, this is also when their old page is either hideous and SEO and visual cryptonite, or it doesn’t even exist at all. I like to get the new page live as soon as possible, then tweak it as we go.

2. Calls to action. He emphasizes the importance of these on a page.

“Too often calls to action are hidden, by a loaded page with too many graphic elements, by appearing below the fold or by a bad design choice (too small, faint color, or a button that does not look like a button). By improving the call to action and making it prominent on the page, you can sometimes boost your conversion rates drastically”

3. Testing tools:

• Google Website Optimizer
• Amadesa
• SiteSpect
• Autonomy Optimost
• Omniture Test & Target

There are more good tips, but I like these three the best. It’s important to continually be trying to make each page reach it’s maximum potential.

I hear SEO’s and SEO companies occasionally recommend micro-sites, landing sites, splash sites or some version of the same. They hope to create several geo-targeted or keyword-targeted sites that bring immediate success and high placements. I usually discourage such actions as I feel it’s an attempt of SEO companies to simply generate more work for themselves and create a bohemith array of sites that the client would never be able to manage themselves. We encourage clients to build pages on their website, that have the same geo/keyword focus, but keep them a part of the ‘mother ship’. This allows each new page to benefit from the established credibility, pagerank and longevity of the main site.

Rand from SEOmoz recently posting about link value, highlighted one of the principles of search engines that makes this a good idea:

“As you’ve likely noticed, search engines have become more and more dependent on metrics about an entire domain, rather than just an individual page. It’s why you’ll see new pages or those with very few links ranking highly, simply because they’re on an important, trusted, well-linked-to domain. In the ranking factors survey, we called this “domain authority” and it accounted for the single largest chunk of the Google algorithm (in the aggregate of the voters’ opinions).”

I couldn’t agree more. Higher results are gained by creating a new page on the main site, rather than a separate micro-site. Branding  and financial issues aside, this is one of the biggest reasons we at TK cringe when we hear a client tell us a company wants to come in and create a bunch of micro-sites.

It’s been around for a bit, but we’re now using the Broken Link Checker WordPress plugin. It’s a great addition, as it automatically notifies you when a link is broken on your blog or site.  I have it set up to check the site every 3 days, as you can easily have it check your site at set times. You can also manually check it at any time.  Pretty nice addition and super easy to use.

Enjoy!

Matt shares some great advice on No Follows, and how Google is looking at it these day. As you know there has been a lot of chatter about this as Google’s has been a little ambiguous about this over the last 8 months. Now people are getting some solid footing on the topic. They throw in a little SES chatter. Personally, I just read the blog updates, instead of going in person, but to each their own. Anyway, enjoy the short interview with Matt Cutts video segment.

Thanks SEOmoz, and Jen for another good installment.

Found a hot twitter plugin for wordpress. It’s called Twitter Tools and is a compilation of everything you need to keep your twitter updated with blog posts and blog updated with twitter posts. It’s my favorite so far. If you know of any other really good ones, I’d love to hear your suggestions.

I like this video about large eCommerce sites and SEO. Trying to get large numbers of products on a site and still have the site relatively ‘flat’ is a difficult thing. These guys share some good tips on doing it with sitemaps and more. Check it out.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Architecture for Commerce with Dr. Pete from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Open source is getting really fun! Buddypress shows just a sliver of it’s potential.

As an add-on to wordpress, it allows one to quickly create their own social site after a pretty simple install. They can build a community where members can create a blog, chat with other members, build a profile and much more. It’s going to be interesting to see what kind of ideas and destinations evolve from this new (and free, of course) tool.

Take a look- it doesn’t have everything one may want, but it’s a great step in an open directions.

Welcome to your new look and feel! After spending so many years making everyone else look really good online, we decided to show our site a little love. We love feedback, so please let us know what you like and don’t like. Can you find what you’re looking for quickly?

Thanks for visiting…and we hope you enjoy your stay!