Permalinks

When you set up your blog the first thing you should change is the permalink structure. If you start to post content before doing this you will have some URLs that are not very well optimised and it will be more hassle to change them down the line. You will find the permalink section under the Settings tab on the left of your screen.

I prefer to user the custom structure of /category/postname/ for which you would enter /%category%/%postname%/ in the custom structure area:

If you would prefer to just show the /postname/ then just type in /%postname%/.

Category Base

For some reason WordPress adds in a directory named “category” at the start of this permalink structure.

There is no reason for it to be there it just adds unnecessary length to your URLs. Fortunately there is a quick and easy way to get rid of this. There is a plugin called WP No Category Base that requires no setting up, you just install it and it removes it for you.

Creating an XML Sitemap

XML Sitemaps are a great idea for all sites from an SEO perspective. They help search engine spiders easily find a list of all of you content and make it easier for them to get it indexed. This being WordPress there are of course a wealth of plugins that can assist you in this task. The one I use is called Google XML Sitemaps. After you install this plugin you will notice there are quite a few options in the plugin settings area. Most of these are fine left as they are but there is one part you may wish to customise:

If your site has multiple authors you may want to include the author pages into your sitemap. You would generally not want to include archives and tag pages as this may result in duplicate content issues.

Pagination

There can be some issues with certain WordPress themes when it comes to category pages and even the home page. If they have “previous page” links at the bottom of the page to see older content this can create an issue for the search engine spiders. If you have a lot of content then the spiders will have to crawl through all of these pages to get to your earlier content. In some cases they may actually stop after a certain number.

To solve this issue there is a plugin you can install called Pagerfix which makes your pagination look like this:

This provides far more links to the deeper content for the search engines to follow and so makes it easier for them to find it.

Related Posts

Linking to related posts is a great way to of increasing your WordPress SEO capabilities, as with the pagination plugin above it also helps to get your other content indexed by the search engines. Linking to articles of a similar nature will help to build the relevancy of your post too. There is once again a bunch of plugins that will perform this task admirably, my personal favourite is YARPP. It searches through your posts database to find posts around the same subject and adds links to them at the end of your post.

These are just some of the ways you can make your WordPress blog more SEO compliant (I feel another series coming!). They are quick, easy and relatively painless to implement and can provide you with real benefits. Maybe next time I will look a little deeper into how WordPress functions at a core level and see what SEO improvements could be made there.

WordPress SEO – Helping Your Blog Rank Higher is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

There are a number of steps you should take before you even consider actually moving anything. They will help you to make sure you have all of your bases covered and that no pages slip through the net, inevitably a few will but you’ll be able to catch them quickly and fix them.

Pages

Get a full list of valid URLs from your current site. You can use a crawling program to do this such as GSiteCrawler or Xenu. I prefer Xenu for this as when you have your list of URLs you can use these to test the redirects of your new site. First you should crawl your site with these settings:

Then click on more options:

You should then export the URL list to a .CSV file and re-import that list back into Xenu using the “Check URL list” option. Set the crawl depth to 0 and uncheck “treat redirects as errors” since the entire list should be redirected and re-run Xenu. If you find any errors then those pages have not been redirected correctly.

Links

You should perform some checks or run some reports to find out the most valuable links that are pointing to your site. This will enable you to contact the webmasters containing those links so you can ask them (politely) to update the link to point to your new domain. This is preferable than relying on 301 redirects as some link value is lost and a simple email could resolve that. If you cannot get the link changed or the webmaster does not respond then a 301 redirect of that page (which you should have done anyway) is the next best thing.

Redirects

Redirects are a crucial part of the site migration process. Ideally your 301 redirection strategy should have been planned out long ago especially if you are changing your URL structure. If you are just changing the TLD of your site (for example .net to .com) you are not facing as many problems.

You should not do a blanket redirect from your old site to your new site. This is where you 301 redirect every page from your old site to the home page of your new site. While this is a sure fire way to avoid any 404 errors it is not ideal from a user point of view and it will also not pass any search value to the relevant pages on the new site. A page-to-page redirect strategy (where each page on the old site gets redirected to the corresponding page on the new site) is a far better way to go even though it will be more work. Chances are there will not always be a matching page on the new site in which case redirecting to the old page to a new page with similar content is the best option.

If your sites URL structure is changing dramatically then you will need to outline the general URL construction at the varying levels of your site e.g.

/[CATEGORYID]/[PRODUCTID]/?id=[X] should redirect to /[CATEGORY]/[PRODUCT]

Your development team should then be able to go through and construct pattern matched redirects using wildcard values to catch most if not all of your potential 404 errors. The pattern will differ for each level of your site so it is key that you understand your structure at each level.

Testing

It could be advisable to test your migration strategy by moving the contents of one directory first. This will limit the damage if you have made a few slip ups and will allow you to make the necessary changes before moving the rest of your site. When you have moved the test files use a 301 redirect to tell the search engines that these files have been permanently moved.

Once this is completed, check to see that the pages you have moved over are showing on the search results with your new domain (you may have to wait a little while depending on how often your site is crawled).  When you are happy that everything has gone how you planned then you can begin moving over the rest of your files and hopefully will not encounter many issues.

Site Migration – Avoiding Problems is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

Choosing a Domain Name

When you set out to buy a domain name there are a couple of things you should look at before taking the plunge:

Branding

A “brand” is more than just a combination of hyphenated keywords (I would avoid such names). These sorts of domains have no branded value and people are most likely not going to remember your domain name. They also lack a sense of credibility.

It is a lot easier to build links to a branded domain name. Users and webmasters tend to take these domains more seriously than keyword-keyword-keyword.com, which tend to appear a little spammy. Often links to these sites get rejected or refused because they are frequently associated with low quality content.

Having a branded domain name will give you the advantage of being easily recognisable and easier to remember than your non-branded competition. If your domain name is short, catchy and unique then you have an increased chance of users remembering you and your company and typing in your domain into their address bar.

There is a downside to having a branded domain name however. You have to work that bit harder to get your name out there. Unless you have a substantial marketing budget no one is going to search for you as they will not automatically associate your name with your services/products.

Happily there is a way to get the best of both the branding and the SEO side of the coin.

Ranking Factors

From an SEO standpoint having a keyword in your domain name is a good idea but you need to turn this into something you can brand.

Using a formula such as keyword + term can yield great results. You simply take your keyword and add another word to the end of it; many companies have employed this tactic to great effect (SEOMoz, Travelocity, Flightsdirect, etc.). Generally people will have to include your keyword when linking to your site as it is part of your domain name plus your domain retains an element of unique branding.

This method of choosing a domain name also has another benefit, it creates intuitive domain names. When a user first hears or reads your domain name they should be able to make a pretty good guess at what it is you do and what type of content they will find when they visit you. This builds an element of trust when the user does pay you a visit and finds what they expected to find there. You may also see a better CTR in the SERPs with an intuitive domain name.

Here are a few tips I like to keep in mind when considering what domain name to choose:

• Keywords – When you first start the domain process you should already have a list of the keywords most important to your business. Once you have this list you can begin to think of things you can add to those keywords and see what works for you.
• Make the Domain Unique – Choose a domain name that is not spelt like or sounds similar to an existing website as this can really set you back in terms of recognition. Always do your research!
• .com or .co.uk domains – If you are serious about your business then you should only invest in either of these two TLDs. They are given more weight by the search engines than many of the other TLDs plus sites are seen to be “genuine” by users as other TLDs can indicate a lower quality website.
• Shorter is Better – Shorter names are easier to remember and easier for users to type in. They also afford you more room in the SERPs for your URLs.
• Avoid Hyphens and Numbers - Both hyphens and numbers make it harder for you to verbally tell someone your address. They also make your address harder to type into browsers.

If you do your research before you begin the domain purchasing process and follow these guidelines you should be able to save yourself a lot of heartache later on. If you make a mistake when choosing your domain the chances are you are going to have a lot of work on your hands further down the line.

Domain Names and SEO is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

A Little History Lesson

Back in around 2000 Google would update its index once every 30 days (before then it was once every four months!) but there were certain events that made it clear this was no longer sufficient. Events like September 11^th made it clear that freshness and real time results mattered. Many news websites went down due to the demand and Google decided to show the cached versions of these pages to meet the demand.

In 2003 Google introduced the Incremental Indexing System which would crawl 10 percent of the web and update the index every night with what it had found. This update was called Fritz and would crawl the web in batches. Whilst this system was constant, all pages in the batch had to wait until the entire batch had been completed before they could be added to the index.

How Caffeine is Different

Caffeine is intended to better deal with the ever expanding and evolving internet. The new system is constantly crawling the web but instead of having waiting for it to complete other processes, as soon as it indexes a page it will process that page through the entire indexing system and add it to the index. This has already resulted in a 50 percent fresher index than before.

“With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before – no matter when or where it was published.”
Carrie Grimes – Google Software Engineer

What This Means for Search Engine Optimisation

While Google’s index hasn’t got significantly larger at the moment, Caffeine will certainly make that possible. The web is ever expanding and with the new indexing system taking up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adding new information to that at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day, it’s going to need significant storage capacity.

Head of Web Spam at Google, Matt Cutts, said that, “Caffeine benefits both searchers and content owners because it means that all content (and not just content deemed “real time”) can be searchable within seconds after it’s crawled.” He also added, “It’s important to realize that caffeine is only a change in our indexing architecture. What’s exciting about Caffeine though is that it allows easier annotation of the information stored with documents, and subsequently can unlock the potential of better ranking in the future with those additional signals.”

This indicates that Caffeine is not a change to Google’s algorithm. It does mean that if Google decide to take into account a different metric or field of data in the future (one that Caffeine now gives them the ability store) they will not have to build new code to take advantage of it. So while Caffeine itself mat not directly affect rankings, it could impact on them at a later date.

Google Caffeine – New Search Index Completed is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated so please leave on our YouTube page and we can bear any comments in mind for the next presentation. If you would like to talk to Mike or any of our team about improving conversion on your website or you would like a copy of the presentation please contact us. Alternatively you can get a copy of the presentation at slideshare.net.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Ecommerce Expo North – Mike Andersons Keynote Speech is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

Google reports that at present one in every thirteen search queries results in a map being displayed in the SERPs and since it’s estimated that there are 300 million searches performed a day, that’s a slice of the pie I wouldn’t want to miss out on.

Now if you don’t already have a listing set up then you are going to need to create a Google account (unless your company already has one for adwords or analytics) and then submit your business for free at the Google Local Business Centre.

There is a good chance however that Google will already have your company listed especially if you have added your business to other directories or done some online promotion. Google aggregates information from a wide variety of places and may well have created a generic listing for your company with some limited information. If they have it is essential that you claim this listing as being your own. If you fail to do this and start afresh you run the risk of falling foul of business listing hijacking. The concept behind this is relatively simple, it involves another company claiming your listing, changing the phone number to their number and taking leads and clients that should rightfully have been yours.

Before I go into some tips for creating a good local listing it is important to note that you should use the same information on all of the sites and directories you add your business too, this is one area where duplicate content is a plus! When I say duplicate I mean the company name, address, phone number, services, all of these things should be consistent across the internet. The reason for this is that Google prefers to see the same information about a company when it crawls other sites on the web. People have attempted to manipulate the listings in the past and no doubt will in the future so Google is always looking for signs of foul play.

Optimising your Google Local Business Listing

• Company Name: You should use your official business name but it’s important to make it clear what you do. If you can do so and it will add value why not integrate one of your primary key words into your title. For example, your company name is Joe Bloggs and you sell men’s clothing so Joe Bloggs Menswear would be an ideal title.
• Company Address: Ensure the business address you put in your listing matches exactly the address you display on your website and the address used on any other sites. Be as descriptive as possible and spell out commonly abbreviated words like street and avenue. The reason for this is Google can display your company in an approximate location if it’s not sure exactly where you are so be sure the location is plotted accurately and correctly. You can also make corrections using the “fix incorrect marker location” area in the listing editor.
• Company Description: You can use up to 200 characters here so you will want to provide as much information about your company and the services it offers. It would also be a good idea to get some of your keywords into the description but it is worth bearing in mind that this content is designed for humans so it will need to read well. Google also has guidelines about keyword inclusion in business listings so caution is advised.
• Company Phone Numbers: You should add all of the phone numbers that your company has into your listing. If you have a separate line for enquiries and one for the main reception then listing them both will only help your users. It is worth bearing in mind that 0800 numbers do not indicate a geographic area so be sure to include your local dialling code phone number. You can still add your 0800 number but make sure your local number is your primary number.
• Web Pages: You should of course connect your business listing to your company’s URL but you’d be surprised how many listings do not display one.
• Company Categories: These are incredibly important so choose carefully! Google will suggest some categories for you and these may be great but it is important to add some of your own and test how different categories will affect your listing over time.
• Custom Fields: The only limit here is your imagination, so long as you play by Google’s guidelines. Be creative, upload coupons, voucher codes, seasonal rates, sale information, special offers, anything you think will benefit your prospective user and drive traffic to your site.

While relatively simple and frequently overlooked, Google Local Business Listing is a really great way for your potential customers to find their way to your site. With above the fold real estate in the SERPs becoming harder to come by it is an excellent option for getting targeted traffic to your site, and best of all, it’s free!

Google Local Business Listings – Optimisation and Tips is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

Adding an Expires or a Cache Control Header

There are two aspects to this rule:

• For static components you should implement a “Never expire” policy by setting far future Expires header
• For dynamic components use an appropriate Cache-Control header to assist the browser with conditional requests

Site designs are becoming increasingly content rich, this means more images, scripts, stylesheets and flash on the page. A user visiting your website for the first time will have to make several HTTP requests but by using the Expires header you can make those static components cacheable. This will significantly reduce unnecessary HTTP requests on any subsequent page views (depending on your content). Expires headers are most frequently used with images but they can and should be used on all components.

Browsers utilise the cache to minimise the size and amount of HTTP requests, this makes web pages load faster. The purpose of the Expires header is to define the amount of time the browser should store the component in its cache. This is an example of a far future header, it tells the browser that this response won’t go stale until May 19^th 2015.

Expires: wed, 19 May 2015 09:00:00 GMT

If you are running an Apache server you can use the ExpiresDefault directive to set the expiration date based on the current date. This example sets the Expires date 5 years from the time of the request.

ExpiresDefault “access plus 5 years”

One thing to keep in mind is that if you decide to change a component that you have used a far future header on you will have to change the name of the file otherwise anyone who has visited your site before will be shown the previously cached version.

Flush the Buffer Early

When a users browser requests a page, it may take anywhere from 200 to 500ms for the server to put together the HTML page. That may not seem like a long time but the browser is sat idle while it waits for this data to arrive. In PHP there is the function flush(). This allows you to send the partially ready HTML response to the browser so that it can start fetching components while the server is busy putting together the rest of the HTML page. The benefit of this is mainly seen on busy backends or light frontends.

An example of it use would be to flush right after the HEAD of your page because the HTML contained in the HEAD is generally easier to produce so it allows you to include any Javascript or CSS files for the browser to start fetching while the server is still processing the rest of the page.

… <!—css, js –>
</head>
<?php flush(); ?>
<body>
…. <!– content –>

Avoid Empty Image src

Although it seems like an elementary mistake, images with and empty string src attribute occur more frequently than you might think. They can appear in two forms:

1. Straight

<img src=””>

1. Javascript

var  img = new Image();
img.src=””;

Both of these forms have the same effect; the browser makes another request to your server. While different browsers deal with this issue in different ways the results are the same. It overloads your servers by sending a large amount of unexpected traffic, especially if you have a page that gets millions of views per day. Plus it wastes server computing cycles by generating a page that will never be viewed.

In HTML5 there has been an addition made to the description of the tags attribute to instruct browsers not to make an additional request if the string is empty.

“The src attribute must be present, and must contain a valid URL referencing a non-interactive, optionally animated, image resource that is neither paged nor scripted. If the base URI of the element is the same as the document’s address, then the src attribute’s value must not be the empty string.”

Hopefully browsers will not have this problem in the future but at present no such clause exists for <script src=””> or <link href=””>.

Website Optimisation – Part 3 is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

Reduce the Number of HTTP Requests

80-90% of end-user response time is spent on the front-end (page-layout, graphics, text, scripts, stylesheets, Flash etc.) and most of this time is spent downloading the components that go into making up the page. If you can minimise the number of components you can in turn reduce the number of HTTP requests needed to render the page.

You can reduce the number of components quite easily by simplifying your page design but do you really have to compromise on appearance to gain faster response times? Well, here are a couple of techniques that mean you shouldn’t have to.

Combining Files is a great way to cut the number of HTTP requests. If you have numerous scripts then why not combine them into one single file, you can do this with CSS too to create one single stylesheet.

CSS Sprites is the preferred method of reducing the number of image requests although whether it will be beneficial to you will depend on how your site is built. You can combine your background images into one single image and use the background-image and background-position properties to show the required image segment.

Minimising the number of HTTP requests in your page is definitely the place to start your optimisation efforts, it is the most important factor in improving performance for first time visitors. Since around half of your daily visitors come to your site with an empty cache making your site faster for these first time visitors is essential for a better user experience.

Use a Content Delivery Network

How close a user is to the server that delivers your content has an impact of load times. If your content is deployed on numerous servers in different geographic regions it can be delivered from the server nearest the user and improve response times. But how do you go about this?

Remember that 80-90% of the end user response time is spent downloading the components of the page. Rather than trying to tackle the daunting task of redesigning your application architecture, it’s far simpler to start off by dispersing your static content. This will achieve a greater improvement in response times and is made easier thanks to content delivery networks (CDN).

Some of the larger internet companies own their own CDN but it’s more cost effective to use a CDN provider of which there are many to choose from. For start-up companies and private web sites a CDN service can be relatively expensive but as your audience grows larger and becomes more global steps should be taken to ensure all of your users receive the best experience possible.

Put Stylesheets at the Top

Moving your stylesheets to the <head> portion of your document gives users the impression your page is loading faster. This is because putting stylesheets in the <head> allows the page to render progressively.

The reason behind wanting a page to load progressively is that you want the browser to display whatever content it has as soon as possible. This has the most impact on pages with a lot of content and for users with slower internet connections. When the browser loads a page progressively items such as the header, the navigation bar etc. all serve as visual feedback for the user who is waiting and this improves the overall user experience.

Putting stylesheets at the bottom of the page stops progressive rendering in most browsers. These browsers block rendering to avoid having to redraw page elements if their style changes. This leaves the user to look at a blank white page.

Put Scripts at the Bottom

The HTTP/1.1 specification suggests that browsers download no more than two components in parallel. If you happen to serve images from multiple hostnames then you can get more than two downloads to occur in parallel. The problem caused by scripts is that they block parallel downloads. While the script is downloading, however, the browser won’t start any other downloads, not even on different host names

It’s not always easy to move scripts to the bottom of your document. If, for example the script uses document.write to insert some of the page’s content then it cannot be moved lower in the page. Usually in these situations though there is a workaround that can be implemented.

I could go on, there are a lot of other ways you can further improve your sites performance (I feel a third instalment may be necessary) but these are some of the main points that will really make an impact in your users experience.

Website Optimisation – Part 2 is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

Pingdom Tools

The Pingdom Full Page Test is a great tool for checking single pages. It loads a complete html page including all files and scripts (images, css, javascript, rss, flash etc.) that would need to be loaded to view that page in a browser.  It generates a report of the loading time of the files needed as well as the order that they are loaded and their size.

This is great for identifying slow loading internal files or external scripts but does not provide any recommendations on performance issues or how to improve performance so it leaves the analysis to you but you’re not scared of a little work are you?

YSlow

YSlow is an extension to Firebug which is an add-on for Firefox that can aid you in your performance optimisation efforts. It gives the page you have open in your browser a score from A to F that is based on Yahoo’s performance rules. This tool was used by Yahoo internally and has been available for some time now.

You get a list of 22 criteria that YSLow analyses and you can click on any of these to see a breakdown of the tools findings and an explanation of the score. Each of the 22 criteria is linked to documentation on that rule and contains information on how to improve your performance in that area.

There is also a tab within YSlow called tools, this tab has a list of programs and tools that can be used to improve loading times. They range from css compressors to image compressors as well as javascript and css minimisation.

Google Webmaster Tools

Whilst Google Webmaster Tools is very basic and provides very limited information it can give you a great idea of whether you are heading in the right direction with your optimisation efforts.

The graph format makes it easy to get a grasp of whether the changes you’ve made are having a positive impact on loading times. I would also expect there to be an upgrade to this area of webmaster tools coming soon. With site performance becoming more important it would make sense that Google would give webmasters and site owners more stats and information to allow them to make improvements.

I personally feel that the sooner Google employs the performance factor across the rest of their data centres the better, because it will be the users who benefit. In the extremely competitive world of search engine optimisation companies and site owners will use every trick in their arsenal to improve their rankings and if a new algorithmic metric of site performance is introduced then optimisation will occur and faster sites make for happier users.

Website Optimisation – Time to Get Up to Speed? is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.

Here is a list of the companies in attendance on the day:

Straight
Bella Di Notte
Bettys
CSS
Direct Golf
Northern Parrots
Lights 4 Fun
TTS
Pondkeeper

After registration and quick introductions the day kicked off at 9:30 with Renee’s presentation which was about on and offsite SEO. Topics covered for onsite SEO included a breakdown of the common terminology used in this area and an overview of the ranking factors that determine the quality of a page or website. This was split into 13 key areas weighted by importance to give companies an idea of what to tackle first when optimising their site.

The offsite SEO section started out with how to develop a list of relevant keywords for your business and which of these words you would target based upon search volumes, margins, seasonality and budget. Renee then moved on to talk about the many aspects of link building and developing an ongoing strategy. Such things as how to assess your current position, analysing your competitor’s backlink profile, anchor text and the link title attribute are all important factors in link building and how incorporating this information into your own strategy is vital to the success of your offsite SEO strategy.

After a short coffee break it was over to James Clarke who was there to talk about all aspects of website copywriting. He started by giving five rules for copy, theses were:

• Site architecture matters
• You should be able to skim read copy and still get the point
• Use simple clear words
• Keep copy consistent
• Curb your enthusiasm

James then went on to discuss varying design rules for copy such as legibility and using bold and underlined wording to attract attention as well as the importance and benefits of brand positioning. He also raised some great points regarding the differences between creative and commercial writing and how best to put your copy into a marketing context.

After lunch Dan Coxen-John was up next with a very interesting presentation around analytics and usability.  He began by outlining the four ways to increase a company’s online sales; these would be the main topics he would be discussing:

• Landing page optimisation
• Focusing on mini-conversions
• Boosting online customer lifetime values
• Low cost usability testing

Dan went on to explain the best ways to make improvements to the above areas through analysing analytical data, looking at user metrics and using split and multi-variant testing to optimise landing pages and other areas of your site.

To wrap the day up there was a series of website challenges with the attendees being split into groups to put into practice what they had learned throughout the day. The groups were given a website and had to assess all of the aspects discussed during the seminar and come up with ideas of how best to go about improving SEO, design, usability and conversions with the team who came up with the best ideas receiving a wonderful prize!

All in all it was a very productive day, everyone who spoke brought some great information to the table and raised some great points with the feedback received from the attendees being incredibly positive. The attendees took away a wealth of information about small and even larger changes they could make to their websites, how big their impact would be and how best to prioritise them.

Catalogue Exchange Leeds 2010 – Round Up is a post from WMpS, your one stop digital agency.