Jan 31st 09
Posted by vinson in Webmaster Tools & Tips
Webmasters and developers don’t need a whole lot of money to spend on tools in order to work efficiently and be productive. Here is a list of free tools that are useful to all webmasters.
Notepad++
Dreamweaver and such designing tools might have become very advanced in the recent years but I am still far from satisfied with them. I prefer to do the coding with a simple text editor and be in total control of the code and not end up with unnecessarily long code. Recently I discoverd Notepad++ which has the few bells and whistles that are desired by hard core programmers such as code highlighting, Regular Expression Search/Replace support, capability to extend functionality with plugins and nice depository of contributed ones. Worth your attention.
Filezilla
If you are like me and don’t use WYSIWYG editors to do your HTML/CSS designs then you are probably need or are already using a standalone FTP client to upload/download files to and from your server. Filezilla is a free tool that I have been using for some time and has not failed me. New version 3 has lots of new features, if you are FTPing stuff often maybe you should check it out.
Xampp
XAMPP is an apache server distribution that integrates php, mysql, phpmyadmin and a bunch of other great open source projects into an easy installation. It can be used on production servers to host one’s sites but I mostly use it locally to code and test my html/css/php projects. Its easier to develop locally because there is no need to upload files on servers everytime, and only upload when your project is complete. It can be installed on Windows/Linux and lots of other platforms and if you are serious about developing you should get it installed in your computer and start playing with it.
Google Analytics
Google analytics is a free website statistics package that anyone can easily integrate into their website in a few minutes. Analytics once installed on your website it gathers data and presents you with reports about which sites your visitors come from, what country they live in, how long they stayed on your site, which pages were more popular and a whole lot of reports that you will likely not need another statistics package for you site. Those statistics are vital to the progress of any site in order to understand a site’s audience and find things that might need to be improved. You can create as many analytics accounts as you like (unlimited number of sites) as long as your total pageviews don’t exceed the monthly allowance of 5 million.
Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is not only a great browser to surf with. Firefox was build with extensibility in mind and has given developers a way to extent its functionality with add-ons. Add-ons can enhance the capabilities of Firefox and enhance the browsing experience. There is a whole lot of add-ons in the Mozilla repository that can help you with task such as bookmarking, searching, social interaction, developing, news reading, downloading to name just a few categories. Some of the following favorite tools of mine are actually Mozilla Add-ons. Its definetelly worth your attention.
SeoQuake
Seoquake is a Mozilla add-on that was created with the SEO professionals in mind. It will help you gather important statistics about a website or web page with the touch of a button. Such statistics include PageRank, indexed pages, google backlinks, Cached date etc. One can also extend it/configure it to gather other important statistics from online services not already included in it.
Firebug
Firebug is yet another Mozilla Add-on; a webmaster tool that can help you understand and debug your javascripts. It has so many bells and whistles that I am thinking of devoting a whole article on it. I will just mention the features that I use myself; Inspecting and editing HTML and CSS on the fly, debugging and running javascript on the fly, monitor network activity but there are many others. Here is a video tutorial I recently found that will help you get started with firebug debugging
Gimp
Gimp is an open source image manipulation package that can help you with photo retouching, image composition, format conversion and animations among other things. Its not likely to replace adobe photoshop any time soon but its a free alternative that has found many followers and through its plugin architecture promises to built the only image manipulation tool you will ever need. Some of its features are presented in a way of a presentation but nothing can convince you better than to actually install it and try it on your own.
Drupal
Drupal is a content management system much like wordpress but a lot more extensible. WordPress is a good CMS (content management system) for simple sites and even though it has many plugins to extend its capabilities I would not recommend building anything other than a blog with it. Drupal on the other hand was built in such a way to be extensible. A programmer digging in its code will appreciate its flexibility, code quality, and modular design and simplicity for writing a new module. Drupal is was build from the ground up a tool for building community sites, and as a result it has many features to support such sites but it is also capable for supporting standard websites. Its learning curve is quite steep but it pays off in the end. Worth more than a look from you.
Jan 30th 09
Posted by vinson in SEO
There is one important factor to remember whenever you are involved in improving the organic rankings of a website, and that factor is time. One of the most common questions I receive as an SEO is “How long till I start to see results?” This article is dedicated to anyone who has ever asked that question.
It doesn’t matter what industry you are involved in, or what techniques you follow, in all cases you will be a prisoner of time. In the vast majority of cases search engine rankings don’t come over night.
Regardless of the scope of the SEO campaign you are undertaking, you will have to wait for results. It doesn’t matter if you are undertaking a massive link building & social media campaign combined with extreme content development – you will still have to wait for those results. Just how long you need to wait however, will depend on a large number of factors.
In this article I will discuss some of these factors and give a few scenarios to help you gauge how long you may need to wait to start seeing results.
Factors to Consider
How long it will take for rankings starts with a few key factors:
How optimized is your site before SEO?
If your established site has no optimization in place at all, and has navigation that is blocking search engine spiders, sometimes opening the site up can result in a rather quick turn-around for results.
How many inbound links does your site have?
If you have an old site with no links this will add to the time you need to wait. If you have a number of links already, Google will probably be in to check out things within a week or so of updating.
How new is your website?
A brand new site with no links has to wait. Google may find you, but probably not. If you do nothing, your site may never be indexed – you must get a few links, and an XML sitemap if you want to stand a chance with a new site.
How flexible is your site?
If your site utilizes a content management system, how flexible is this system for customization? If your current back end will not allow for SEO based changes, this will drastically slow down your ranking progress.
How competitive is your target phrase?
This is huge. The more competitive a target phrase is, the longer you will likely have to wait, and the more links, pages, and fresh content you will probably need. Picking a target phrase that has searches, but modest competition is your best bet to get started. As long as your “dream phrase” is relevant, you can go after the bigger fish once your site has some links, content, and has started to find its place on the map.
Is your site positioned to be able to compete?
Take a look at the top 10 sites for your target phrase. If on average the ranking sites have 10,000 inbound links and 1000 plus pages, and your site has 7 links and 12 pages, you’re likely doomed. You don’t need to match the numbers of the top 10, but you do need to be in the ball park. If the top 10 is littered with all the big guys like Amazon, eBay, and the dreaded Wikipedia, you might just want to consider reevaluating your goals. If your site is not in a comparable position with the rest of the top 10 then you need to either step up your efforts in order to compete, or plan on waiting a very long time.
Jan 29th 09
Posted by vinson in SEO
You may be wondering how you would determined blogs which are dofollow and which ones are nofollow. Because as you visit sites that has a high pagerank and it is related to your site you may want to comment on a blog but you aren’t sure whether they are do-follow or not.
If you have your own hosted WordPress blog, and you have not installed a plugin to disable nofollow, then chances are very good that your blog is NOT do-follow.If someone else installed your blog, or you just want to verify that your blog is nofollow, if you are wanting to determine if a blog is do-follow, there are a couple of ways to check.
Remember, do-follow blogs really refer to the comments left on the blog. So you need to check the comments on a post to determine if the blog is using the html nofollow attribute.
The easiest, and quickest way to check do-follow, is by using the Firefox browser and the SEO for Firefox extension.If you don’t already have it, install the SEO for Firefox extension – get the extension here.
SEO For firefox will automatically highlight links with color red if it is nofollow. Like this example “Jim Spence” also commented but the link doesn’t turn red because if you will view the source code you will see right beside the anchor text of Jim’s comment is “rel=’external’ which means it is dofollow.
Notice the rel=’external nofollow’, this indicates the blog is no-follow.
If the blog were do-follow it would probably be rel=’external’. Notice the nofollow tag has been removed.
That’s how you determine if a blog is do-follow or not.
Jan 28th 09
Posted by vinson in Webmaster Tools & Tips
Blog commenting campaign is one of the best way to get a backlink of your site to their websites. This is really important because having a lot of backlinks to different blogs which is related to your niche will definitely boost your google pagerank. But blog commenting campaign is not that easy that you think. Because finding dofollow blog is the first thing you need to do and it will need enough time for you to collect a list of sites that are dofollow and ofcourse it should be related to your blog.
Lazyjon’s Dofollow Search Engine is a webmaster tool that was created to help bloggers to find dofollow blogs/niches that are related to their site. With the help of these dofollow search engine you can can post comments with these blogs which will helps to improve your site pagerank. In getting backlinks with your site you must also consider the actual pagerank of the page of that site. Because adding your link to a webpage with a high pagerank will greatly increase your rank.
Jan 27th 09
Posted by vinson in SEO
One of the biggest problems on websites, especially coaching websites, is a high bounce rate.
A bounce rate is the rate at which people simply “bounce” off of your website; specifically, your home page. For instance, a person might land on your home page and won’t click further to any other pages.
The impact is obvious. When people bounce off of your site, they don’t spend time or take any action. They don’t subscribe to your email list. They don’t ask for a free session. They don’t buy a product. Quite simply, it’s a waste of your marketing efforts.
The main cause of high bouncing is confusion. Many home pages aren’t clear, aren’t easy to look at or read, and don’t lead visitors to other pages.
A successful home page gets visitors clicking deeper into the website. To do this, the home page needs to ground people and direct them to the next page.
Three things that get visitors engaged are:
1. Pages that download quickly. Slow-loading websites give visitors time to get distracted and/or think your website doesn’t work. It must open up in a few seconds.
2. Professional-looking pages. A professional design says you’re a serious coach. It says a serious effort has been made to help the client; meaning, there’s probably value here. Keep your layout simple. Use easy-to-read fonts; have an easy-to-follow navigation; and use two to three colors that are attractive and appealing.
3. A home page that answers these basic questions: “What is this?”, “Is this for me?”, and “Why should I be here?” Your tagline, website name, home-page copy, and even the choice of words in the navigation can help answer these questions.
Now that your visitor is grounded, he’s ready to continue. Your home page needs to lead the prospect to another page.
The essence of getting people to take action is to know what they want, and what you want. Then devise a next-step plan that’ll help achieve both.
Let’s say you want visitors to sign up for a free session. And, as you know, your visitors have challenges they want to overcome. To get them to move towards this action, you’ll want to lead them onto a page that shows that you understand their situation; that you know where they want to go; that you have a method to do this; and that you’ve helped others like them.
Another example is to invite people to sign up for your email list and grow a relationship, providing helpful information over time.
Whatever the action you want visitors to take, be sure to make that button or link stand out.
The bottom line: confusion and lack of clarity cause visitors to hit the road before exploring your services. Make sure you ground visitors and lead them into your website to build a relationship that ultimately leads them to hiring you as their coach.
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