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WordPress SEO & Website Design

Our website design service provides an all inclusive solution for businesses of all sizes. Built around WordPress, an open source website design solution, we create professional websites that are eye catching, functional, and search engine friendly.

What sense does it make to have website and a killer portfolio that isn’t search engine optimized?  Google, Bing, and Yahoo could care less about your pretty photos and web design.  They care about things like alt tags, file names, keywords, and hundreds of other really, really boring tech things.  Understanding those “boring tech things” might bring you new success.  Misunderstanding them could help to put you out of business.

What is Search engine optimization (SEO)?

SEO is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to your website from search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. via “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results in search engines. The theory is that the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and so on.

The following ten tips are those that we think are either often overlooked or common mistakes.  This is not a top ten list.

10 simple tips to get your business noticed online:

• Content is the best optimization. Any type of optimization is effective only in combination with high quality and unique content. Ideally, the text contains keywords that highlights the overall theme of the post.  The content should be understandable and readable. Use your keywords wisely. Text should be written primarily for visitors, not for search engines.
• Exchange backlinks with other relevant websites relating to your topics and with high authority websites (websites with high page ranking). Also link between pages within your website, but do this with caution and only if it’s relevant.  Don’t link every page to each other.
• Think of a good name for your image files. Google also draws images in the calculation of the ranking. Google displays both text and images on it’s search results page, drawing on relevant images contained in the post itself, which are linked to the corresponding page. Implement keywords of a specific subject in your file name, instead of DSC1234.jpg use Tennis-Andre-Agassi-New-York.jpg if you have a picture of Andre Agassi in New York for example. Don’t forget to use the alt tag and title tag for your images, which also provide better usability and optimization for your search ranking.
• Use short permalinks, including keywords. Use an understandable permalink.  Instead of http://yourwebsite.com/page-id?495/ use http://yourwebsite.com/andre-agassi-new-york/. Please note that only the first four words in a permalink are relevant.  Google doesn’t care about any succeeding words in your permalinks.
• Use search engine optimized themes. Some themes use a lot code to create the layout and design. Google will wade through the source code to find the relevant content. The more code you have, the less content and keyword density. Fast performing themes are good for your Google ranking, since the performance of a website is one of two hundred criteria that determine your ranking.
• Create a sitemap in XML format. With WordPress and plugins like Google XML Sitemaps it is a very easy task.  Google has a variety of other useful tools, too, such as Website Optimizer and Webmaster Central.
• Highlight informative content or keywords on your website. Use h1-h6 to highlight headings or subtitles of an article or important sentences. Use the strong tag, too. But please don’t overdo it!
• Add your posts to social networks. But please don’t only promote yourself.  Promote other posts and websites you like.  People will honor your kindness and link back to you.
• Don’t use black hat techniques or mirror html sites. If you try to trick Google, they will find out.  Promise.  Recently, some pretty high-profile portfolio sites were recently punished by Google for such practices.  Being sneaky will do more harm than good.
• Don’t use flash. Flash is virtually invisible to search engines.  Use WordPress.  Period.

Check out these WordPress SEO Plugins. They will make your search engine optimization a lot easier to manage on your WordPress site.

1. SEO Rank Reporter

2. All in One SEO Pack

3. SEO Ultimate

4. SEO Content Control

5. SEO Friendly Image

6. SEO Smart Links

7. Google XML Sitemaps

8. Platinum SEO Pack

Conclusion

These WordPress plugins will give your WordPress site a complete Search Engine Optimization overhaul. Installing them and getting to understand each plugin’s inner workings may take some time, but it is worth it to know how each plugin can benefit your site. When used correctly, your content will be more visible, potentially attracting additional more targeted traffic.

Search Engine Optimization NY

A Question I get from customers all the time is, "How come we don't rank well for _____ ? ", or " I want to be number one for transmission repair". Depending on your business ranking well for your most important keyword is not necessarily going to do you much good. That is where good keyword research comes in.

SEO Westchester |  SEO NY

Let's take as an example an auto repair shop. Obviously "Auto Repair" is going to be a popular keyword, in fact it gets 1.5 million broad searches per month. Being number one for that term would be great, you would see hundreds of thousands of visitors refereed by search engines. But what would that get you in the long run? Well it wouldn't get you very much. Those searches are from all over the country. if your in New York what good would it do you to have a visitor go to your site looking for auto repair, while he is in California? The short answer is it would do you no good. In fact it can in a way hurt your sites ranking. If thousands of people visit your website and leave immediately that hurts your bounce rate and Google may come to believe that your site is not so relevant to the keywords that brought the visitors. That's not a good thing.

My answer to those customers is to rank for long tailed keywords, those are keywords that are a little long, but they are much more exact, and therefore bring in a much more targeted group of visitors. For instance if that same auto repair shop targeted the key words "auto repair shop NY", "Auto Repair Bronx", or "Auto Repair NY" they would be looking at a much more targeted group. The people searching for these terms are looking for an auto repair shop in New York, so they want to find your site and therefore will be more apt to view different pages and in the almighty Google's eyes that increases the relevance that they believe your site has.

Now those phrases don't get as many hits as "auto repair" obviously, but the results will  be much better. Especially when you talk about ROI or return on investment. The amount of time, money, and resources that it would take you to reach the first page of results for the long tailed keywords is a fraction of what it would cost to make page 1 for the much broader phrase, and that's even if it's possible. There is a good chance that you can keep trying until your ready to retire and you may never get page one for certain words.

So basically you need to be careful what you wish for and do a lot of good keyword research before you target any words. as I always say the best tool to use is Google's own keyword tool. It's free and the stats come straight from Google.

Keyword Research is the most important part of your Online Internet Marketing Campaign.

Another big problem with a static website is the navigation. When you need to add another navigation button to introduce a new section or category to your site you generally have to rebuild the entire navigation system for the whole site just to accommodate the new section. For this reason alone a content management system like Joomla makes much more sense to use.

Joomla is a powerful yet easy to use CMS with a massive community building extensions and always helping out novice users in the forum. It is one of the most popular website building platforms available. But what is an open source content management system?

Open source software can be described as software that is developed by peer-based collaboration and generally released as open-source software. Open source software is usually free from licensing fees associated with commercial software.

Good open source software like Joomla is developed and constantly improved by highly skilled individuals volunteering their time to work together for the benefit of everyone who uses the software. The source code of the software is available for everyone to examine so you can know exactly what you are getting as opposed to commercial software which is not open to scrutiny. Since the software is open many developers can create components and extensions to greatly enhance the functionality of a website. Commercial software can be very expensive to achieve the same capabilities that good open source software like Joomla affords you.

A content management system for a website is a system whereby the HTML for the pages is created dynamically by scripts run from the server as needed. You don't have multiple HTML pages sitting on the server waiting to be viewed. The content of the website is stored as text in a database and is separate from the design. This gives you the ability to create and manage much more content faster than you possibly could using static pages. You can also change the design of the site without disrupting the content and even have different 'themes' or looks for different parts of your website. Adding sections and categories along with new navigation for your site is simple. You can even reorganize your site's content handily and all content is searchable. Content management systems like Joomla allow users to add and edit the content without needing to know HTML or have technical expertise in Web design.

Joomla is a powerful yet easy to use open source content management system to build websites. It is one of the most popular web site software available. But what is an open source content management system?

Open source software can be described as software that is developed by peer-based collaboration and generally released as open-source software. Open source software is usually free from licensing fees associated with commercial software.

Good open source software like Joomla! is developed and constantly improved by highly skilled individuals volunteering their time to work together for the benefit of everyone who uses the software. The source code of the software is available for everyone to examine so you can know exactly what you are getting as opposed to commercial software which is not open to scrutiny. Since the software is open many developers can create components and extensions to greatly enhance the functionality of a website. Commercial software can be very expensive to achieve the same capabilities that good open source software like Joomla! affords you.

A content management system for a website is a system whereby the HTML for the pages is created dynamically by scripts run from the server as needed. You don't have multiple HTML pages sitting on the server waiting to be viewed. The content of the website is stored as text in a database and is separate from the design. This gives you the ability to create and manage much more content faster than you possibly could using static pages. You can also change the design of the site without disrupting the content and even have different 'themes' or looks for different parts of your website. Adding sections and categories along with new navigation for your site is simple. You can even reorganize your site's content handily and all content is searchable. Content management systems like Joomla! allow users to add and edit the content without needing to know HTML or have technical expertise in Web design.

Making your website look great is so easy with Joomla! There are an abundance of professionally designed themes, many are free, that you can use with your site. Themes can be used as is or even modified to give your site a unique look or conform to your graphic brand as needed. The money that you save on development of a website by using a system like Joomla! can be put into graphics and content for your site.

Joomla SEO has also improved greatly in recent version updates. SEO used to be a chore in Joomla but now, Search engine friendly URL's and duplicate content issues have been solved making Joomla SEO a much easier task then it has been.

Best of all, there is a very large and active community of Joomla! volunteers and users willing to exchange information about how to do just about anything that you need to do with your website. So what are you waiting for? Why don't you download a copy of Joomla! from joomla.org. While you are there visit the forums and introduce yourself to the Joomla! community. In just a short time you'll be on your way to becoming a webmaster superhero!

The following is a list I put together of some common SEO Terminology. By no means is it a complete list, but it should help get you familiar with a couple of common terms.

• AdWords
  • Google’s advertising service for displaying Ads of your website as paid inclusion (top of search results or on the right side of the page).
  • More details can be found at http://adwords.google.com
• Alt tag
  • A tag that provides alternative text for visually impaired users (instead of pictures).
  • Search engines may use this text instead of images when they crawl your page.
• Anchor text
  • Anchor text is the visible text in a hyperlink.
  • Search engines use this for ranking your website.
  • Example: SEO Expert
• Backlink
  • Any direct link from another web page to your website.
  • Backlinks can sometimes be known as Incoming Links.
• Blog spam (or comment spam)
  • Posting random comments or promoting commercial services, to blogs, guestbooks, or other publicly-accessible online discussion boards.
• Cloaking
  • Serving a specific page to search engines and a different page to human visitors.
• Crawl
  • When a search engine visits your website then extracts and analyzes your content for search results.
• External links
  • A link that forwards to a website outside the home domain name (third party).
• Filename
  • A file name, including the full directory path. http://domainname.com/acbd-contact-us.jpg
• Internal links
  • A link that forwards to a webpage inside the home domain name.
• Javascript
  • A scripting language that can be embedded into the HTML of a web page to add functionality.
• Link farm
  • A set of web pages that have been built for the sole purpose of increasing the number of incoming links to a web site.
  • This is done in order to increase link popularity and search engine rankings.
  • GOOGLE AND OTHER SEARCH ENGINES HATE THIS PRACTICE AND YOU SHOULD AVOID.
• Meta-tag
  • A special HTML tag that provides information about a Web page.
  • Generally used for search engines to describe your website.
• PageRank (PR)
  • Google’s method to determine a page’s relevance and importance through the quality of sites linking to it.
  • Generally updated only a few times per year.
• Referrer / Referring page
  • When a user visits your website by clicking a link from another website, the other website is called a referrer.
  • Example: Going from domain1.com to your website; domain1.com is the referrer.
• SEO
  • An abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization.
  • To optimize and promote your website in a technique that makes search engines rank your website higher in search results.
• Spam
  • Excessive manipulation to influence search engine rankings, often for pages which contain little or no relevant content.
  • Can result in penalization of a website by search engines.

These are just some of the hundreds of terms used in search engine optimization, search engine marketing and internet marketing in general.

To learn more about common SEO Jargon visit the following sites:

• SEO Glossary
• SEOMoz The foremost authority on SEO ( Besides Google of course !)

Website Design Yonkers |    Search Engine Optimization New York