Website Design, Search Engine Optimization

Next week I will attend the CMS Expo Learning & Business Conference.  I am a believer in continued education and try to attend a few conferences a year.   I have not been this excited about being a part of a development community since I started developing sites in (dare I say) 1997.  Developing sites with Joomla and WordPress have changed the capabilities of what a business can do on the internet today. With all the wonderful CMS solutions offered it will be exciting to hear from some of the movers and shakers in this field  and learn new tricks to share with you.

CMS Expo is designed for all members of a content management team, from the creators to the developers.  There will be learning sessions that include integration of  Social Media, CSS and techniques for many of the different CMS solutions that are available.  Not only will I become better acquainted with the applications that I am already familiar like Joomla and WordPress, but I will have the opportunity to be exposed to others that I would like to know more about, Drupal and Alfresco to name a few.

Technology is always changing and the website of yesterday or one that was developed a few years ago is being replace with these powerful open source dynamic CMS alternatives. The first steps to developing a website are only the beginning of an ongoing process. The truly powerful and successful websites are nurtured and upgraded constantly.  Don’t put your website in a drawer, open it up, dust it off and let’s bring new life to your on- line presence.  The beauty of CMS for a website owner,  is the ability to update the content without a lot of  technical background.

Glossary:

• CMS – Content Management System
• CSS – Cascading Style Sheet, control over how a web page looks to the user.
• Joomla – Framework, built by a development community or collaborative effort through open source to build dynamic websites.
• WordPress – Framework built by a development community or collaborative effort through open source to build the best blogs and now also has features that can be used to build a website.
• Open Source – Source code that is available to the general public for use for free.
• Blog – short for web log, an online journal that allows for comments and open conversation

This week Google announced two improvements to the organic search results listings.
They are:

• Expanded list of useful related searches
• The addition of longer search result descriptions

The expanded list of useful related searches is at the bottom of the search pages where it gives you suggestions of other searches. Since Yahoo offers it at the top of the page, Google offers the information at the bottom. I guess they figure you have looked through all the listings and did not find what you want, so you might want to try these. This is also good information when you are doing keyword research for website content or blog posts. The example they give is if you search “principles of physics” the Google algorithms understand that “angular momentum”, “special relativity” etc. are related terms that may offer more information. Try it and see what you get.

The second is the addition of longer search result descriptions in the SERPS (Search Engine Ranking Pages). This is interesting, in the code for a web page there are meta tags where a website developer can add descriptions and titles for each page on a website. Now it looks like Google will grab more of that information and list it on the SERP pages. This is for searches with more than three words. This allows the descriptions to give back more information on what you are looking for exactly. I also noticed that some listings may have two lines where others would have four. As people get smarter and more definitive in their searches they will receive better results. This is an opportunity to add more keywords in your web page description.

You may read more about both of these improvements in The Official Google Blog. 

Thinking about starting a blog, updating or need inspiration? Here is a list from Time Magazine of what they think are the top blogs for 2009. I am sure this list will change by the end of the year.

25 Best Blogs of 2009

Is your favorite blog on here? If not what is it?

Yesterday I attended SMX West 2009, SMX stands for Search Marketing Expo. I try to attend a few of these conferences every year for the networking benefits and to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to search marketing. I always return to my office with a few new tricks and insights.

Here is a list from one of the sessions that discussed the 12 most common strategic mistakes that companies or businesses make in their SEO and paid search initiatives. I am going to list them not go into detail.

1. Set measurable goals for a campaign
2. Failing to assign a dollar value to every “conversion action” available on your site.
3. Assessing the success of Search Marketing using solely a Direct Marketing model.
4. Treating SEO as a project NOT as an ongoing process.
5. Making a #1 ranking as your most important objective when it maybe costing you business.
6. Focusing on the big keywords and forgetting about the long-tail keywords.
7. Engaging in Paid or Natural (Organic) Search Engine Marketing but not both.
8. Using YOUR language for search terms and not that of your customers.
9. Optimizing only your web pages and not your other digital assets.
10. Treating your search marketing and other channels of marketing separately.
11. Failing to bid on the search terms that your site ranks highly with in the organic search results
12. Bidding solely on the “branded terms” and ignoring “non-branded terms”.

Let me know if you have questions or experience with any of these. If you are new to search and interested in search engine optimization (SEO) for your website, you may want to attend one of these conferences. The expo is usually free if you pre-register. Session passes are much more expensive.

Google Analytics is a free tool for analyzing the activity on a website. When I say activity I mean where the hits to your website are coming from. Google Analytics (GA) is getting more powerful all the time, the google team is doing a great job of adding new bells and whistles all the time. If you have a business and are marketing your website you should have some kind of analytics tool installed. Since GA is free it makes it very desireable.

Some of the basic information included in GA is:

• number of visits
• number of page views
• pages visited
• bounce rate
• avg. time a visitor spends on your site
• % of new visits
• Where are your visitors located by Country, State and City

But recently Google added some great new features that make it even more powerful than before. What I love is how well it is now integrating with your AdWords Account. These new tools are in beta:

• Custom Reporting for designing your own reports to drill down and get the exact information you need for your buisness
• Advanced Segments make comparisons of different segments of your business, such as visitors that are organic vs. paid, number of visit and what keywords are they using.

Not sure how to use Google Analytics or these great new tools. Below are three videso created by Google  explaining Custom Reporting, Advanced Segments and Motion charts. After watching these brief videos I had a better understanding of how they worked and a real good jump start.  They are short so give them a whirl. And if you have not installed some kind of Analytics tool on your website, make it a priority to better understand how your site is performing.

#1 Custom Reporting in Google Analytics
Learn how to create custom reports in Google Analytics that show the information you want to see, organized in the way you want to see it.

#2 Advanced Segments in Google Analytics
Learn to create and use Advanced Segments in Google Analytics to isolate and analyze specific parts of your traffic.

#3 Motion Charts in Google Analytics
Learn to use Motion Charts in Google Analytics to analyze your data in five dimensions.

Six Points to Get You Started Blogging

I have not visited my blog in three months and when I clicked on the link, I was overwhelmed when I saw the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge. I forgot that I had changed my theme that is how long it has been since I have visited my blog. Where have I been? I am not ignoring my web skills, in fact I have been so busy that I have ignored posting updates on this blog. Now I think it is time to begin sharing some of my experiences.  I have become addicted to the blogosphere and social networking. Once again the web is making it possible for the world to get that much smaller. Find a subject you are passionate about, either personal, social or professional and start blogging about it. It is amazing the comments and people you will meet.  If you are thinking about blogging start now and just jump in and do it, my advise:

• start with a good blogging platform, like WordPress
• pick a subject that you are passionate about, will enjoy writing about or want to learn more
• do keyword research so that your content will be found on the search engines
• get to know your blogoshere, that is the other bloggers that are also blogging about your subject
• social network, if you have never done it before jump in
• analyze what is working, install analytics on your blog and track it.

Happy Blogging!