WordPress creates keyword-rich URL strings

A URL string is the address at which that particular page resides. For instance, the URL string for this page is: http://blueskydesigns.blueskycolorado.net/2010/09/17/how-wordpress-helps-your-search-engine-ranking. You want your individual page URLS to be very keyword-rich. The search engines love that! You might have noticed some websites, especially those that are database-driven, will spit out very confusing and hard-to-remember URLs, such as http://www.mycompany.com/34567/index.cfm?id=5. That URL does not tell the search engines very much, because there’s no real words, much less keywords, in it. So, there’s nothing for the search engines to index or grab onto to help decide how to rank your page. In contrast, a web page with a URL of http://www.mycompany.com/products-for-the-home/wickless-candles will do much better in the search engines because it’s full of keywords. If someone typed “wickless candles” into Google, which page do you think would have a higher chance of being returned in the search results? One with the exact keywords that were being used in the search, or a URL with numbers and question marks? WordPress automatically creates web page names based on the headline of your page. You can even have the headline say one thing, and the URL string say another. For instance, perhaps you want the headline on your page to say “Wickless Candles,” but you want your URL to be “/products-for-the-home/wickless-candles.” Once you understand how important the keywords are to your search engine ranking, you will be able to write better and better URL strings for your pages.

WordPress knows what the search engines are looking for

There’s a hierarchy of things that search engines find most important and WordPress is built to cater to those things. For instance, the headlines on a page are very important to the search engines. Headlines serve to bring attention to the more important pieces of your content, right? So, to help make your headline stand out, you might bold your headline. However, there is an actual HTML tag, called the Headline tag, which should be used for headlines. It comes in different sizes, with H1 being the largest and H6 being the smallest. The search engines look for these headline tags as a way of knowing what content is important and relevant to the search being performed. Therefore a page with “Wickless Candles” in a headline tag will look more relevant to the search engines than a page with “Wickless Candles” simply bolded. WordPress knows this and encases all your page headlines automatically in the Headline tags. Likewise, when you create sub headlines to break up your content, you can use the WYSIWYG icons in the WordPress CMS to highlight the sub headlines and also give them a headline tag (although sub headlines should always be smaller than your page headline).

WordPress optimizes your images

There are several things the search engines look for and “see” when they detect images on your page. One is the actual file name, such as “mycompany.jpg.” So, it’s beneficial to name your jpg something with keywords in it, such as “wickless-candle-company.jpg.” Your WordPress media library allows you to add title tags, alt tags and captions to your photo. This provides more opportunities to add keywords to your page. For instance, an image with a file name of “wickless-candle-company.jpg” could have a title of “wickless candles for your home,” an alt tag of “wickless candles, home decor” and a photo caption of “Wickless Candles in 100 scents for your home.”

The code for that image might look something like this:

<img src=”wickless-candle-company.jpg” title=”wickless candles for your home” alt=”wickless candles, home decor”>

You see how much better the search engines are going to like that image rather than if the code was simply: <img src=”photo2.jpg”>

WordPress gives you absolute control to add all these very useful tags to your images.

WordPress has powerful SEO plugins

A plugin is a “component” designed specifically for a certain task. There are thousands of them for WordPress. There are many plugins for search engine optimization that provide additional functionality to what WordPress already offers. For instance, the All-in-One SEO pack provides the ability to change your title tag, meta keywords and meta description for every page of your site. This is huge! The reason is that the search engines look for pages with the most relevant content for the search that was just performed. So, if someone typed “Holiday Wickless Candles” into Google and every page of your website was titled “Wickless Candles, Home Decor,” you’d be missing the boat because none of your pages have a title with the word “Holiday” in it. You may have content on a few pages that uses the word “Holiday,” and maybe you even have a headline that uses the word “Holiday,” but title tags are very important as far as the search engines are concerned. So, instead, on your holiday candles page, imagine having the ability to enter the page specific title of “Holiday Gifts, Wickless Candles, Home Decor.” Now the search engines will recognize your content as even more relevant to the search that was performed. The SEO plugin for WordPress lets you change the information search engines look for on every page, which provides you a greater chance of ranking better with the search engines.

WordPress uses style sheets and templates

In the old days, static HTML websites had all the programming, tables, rows, columns, font faces, font sizes and colors all mixed together on one page. You might have had 125 lines of programming and instruction on how the website was supposed to look and maybe only 7 lines of actual content (which is what the search engines really care about). WordPress makes use of the more modern method of building websites, which is to separate your programming from your content. So, style sheets are stored on the server that tell the web page what color the background should be, how big the headline should be and what font face it needs to display. The templates then “call” the style sheets into the picture. The templates also separate out your programming from your content. What’s left is a little bit of code to call in these templates and style sheets and a lot of content, which is what the search engines are looking for anyway. It’s basically just cutting the fat to get to the meat.

WordPress provides an amazing array of tools designed to help you rank better in the search engines. You’re already ahead of the competition if you use your WordPress tools wisely! Need help with SEO tools? Contact Blue Sky Designs!

Your email is hosted on an email server, which is separate from the server that hosts your website, in most cases. Your email server has a name for incoming mail and outgoing mail. For instance, it might look like this:

Incoming: pop.emailserver.net

Outgoing: smtpout.emailserver.net

These are the settings you need to set up an email account in your email program, such as Outlook. You can have a POP account (email is sent to an account that has its own username and password) or an Alias account (also called Forward account, and this email address does not have its own username and password, but instead simply forwards to another email address). For instance, you might want “info@xyzcompany.com” to simply forward to “yourname@xyzcompany.com.”

There are two ways top access your email.

• Go straight to the email server using your browser, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. Most times you are provided with a “remote” access to your email. When you log in this way you are accessing your email server directly. This is how Gmail works, for instance.
• Download your email from the server to your computer using Outlook or another email program.

When someone sends you an email, it goes straight to your email server and sits there until you either view it using your internet browser, or download it onto your computer. In your email program, such as Outlook, there is a setting that asks you how many days you want to leave messages on the server. If you set it to 30 days, your email will sit on the email server and be accessible for 30 days. Then it will disappear. If you have it set to delete once it’s been downloaded, then once you download it using a program like Outlook, it will be deleted from the email server. The common misconception about email delivery is that email sent to you comes directly to you and does not pass Go and does not Collect $200 dollars. In actuality, emails go directly to the email server and then your computer downloads them from there. Emails remain on that server for as long as you tell them to. This is how you are able to download email on multiple computers. If you have a laptop and you click “Get Mail” it will download everything on the server since the last time you checked email on your laptop…yet those emails will remain on the server so you can later download them on your desktop (as long as you have it set to remain on the server for a certain amount of days). So if you ever delete something accidentally in Outlook. you can go straight to the server and see if there.

The remote email server is also very useful if you are traveling or don’t have your laptop and want to check your email. You can login to see  and respond to your email and then it will still be there waiting on you to download it when you get home!

1. The web company registered the domain name using their account and the business owner’s name is no where on the domain registration. This is a real problem. Many web designers register a client’s domain name on the client’s behalf, but never put the client’s name anywhere on the registration. This means the client has absolutely no control over the domain name. You may wish to  transfer the domain name to a more attentive web host but now you can’t because you can’t initiate a domain name transfer because your name is not on the ownership record.
2. The web company failed to renew the domain name or the monthly hosting fees and now the website is down. Again, there’s not much you can do about this if you cannot reach your web company.  One solution is to hope that the domain name comes back up for sale and you can purchase it again.
3. The client can’t access the company website and the company needs access to the database or the files (and the web company is not responding). Once again, the web designer is the only one that has control over the actual physical content and website files in this situation.

How do you avoid these situations?

The only way to avoid getting yourself into one of the above mentioned sticky situations is to register your domain name yourself and pay for web hosting yourself. In the old days, most web companies hosted their clients’ websites on their own web servers. Nowadays, with the affordability of web hosts such as BlueHost you don’t need to be at the mercy of the web company. Sure, many web development companies make a lot of their monthly income from hosting their clients’ websites themselves, and although many are professional and can be trusted, there are many who can’t be, and you’ll find yourself in one of those three situations as a result.

I recommend that my clients get their own web and email hosting and register their domain name themselves. This prevents your domain name from getting hijacked by an inattentive web company. It’s easier than you think. Go to a reputable host, such as Bluehost and sign up. Purchase your domain name (usually $9.99-$12.99 a year on average) and sign up for a web hosting account (usually $5-$15 a month). This way your domain name and your web site will be under your control. You will need to provide your new web designer with access to that account, or at least name them technical contact on the domain name, but that does NOT give them control over your domain name. This is YOUR account and you have to approve any changes made to the domain name or hosting.

What’s the difference if you host my website versus someone like Bluehost or GoDaddy?

I work with clients all the time who have their own web and email hosting accounts. However, I can certainly host websites for my clients who do not want to take on that responsibility themselves. The difference is simply this: If you host with Bluehost or Godaddy, when you have a problem with your website or email, you contact them. If you host your site with me, you call me with any problems. It sort of depends on who you want to deal with if/when things go south!

No matter who hosts your website, make sure your domain name has YOUR name and contact name on it so you don’t lose control. Most content management systems (such as WordPress) provide you the ability to backup your site’s database on a scheduled basis. For instance, you can schedule a backup file to be emailed to you or saved to your server. This covers your content only. If you want to backup the actual page files, you would simply need to download your files from the web server every so often so you know you have the most recent version. This can be done by logging into your web host’s account.

Here’s a sample of what your domain name record will look like:

Domain Name Registration Sample (click for larger version)

As you can see, you will have four contact names on your domain name: Registrant, Administrative, Technical and Billing. Let’s break those down:

• Registrant – The domain name owner’s name.

• Administrative – Whoever will handle or authorize any changes to the account, such as when you want to transfer a domain name to or from this account.

• Technical – This is typically your IT person, web designer or server tech. This person will handle DNS configurations and other technical information. This can also be the owner’s name.

• Billing – This is who will be paying the bills. Perhaps your accounting department is at a different physical address than the Registrant, in which case the billing address would be different.

Please contact blue Sky Designs for more information if you need help on registering a domain name or setting up web hosting!

Who does blue sky designs recommend?

After trying out several web hosts in the past two years, I have decided to endorse Bluehost for your web hosting needs. They provide lightning fast load times, great customer service and competitive prices. For domain name registration, I recommend Godaddy.

Content Management Systems (CMS) changed all that. With a CMS, all your programming is kept separate from your content. Your programming lies within the pages on your server, and your content is stored in a database. The database and pages simply talk to one another and the server serves up the correct page loaded with the correct content, depending on what page the user clicked on. All you needed to do was access your CMS, pull up the page you wanted to change and hit save. The edits were sent to the database and instantly populated on your website.

My website has 146 pages!

Imagine having a website with over 100 pages to wrangle. You’ve got home.html, about-us.html, our-products.html, contact-us.html, and so forth. A CMS means your wsbite has one basic page for ALL those pages and the correct content is pulled onto the page from the database. Now you have one page, instead of 146. It just gets populated dynamically from the database. A lot simpler, right?

Access your website from any computer

No longer do you have to have your website pages stored locally on your computer or company network. A CMS provides the ability to make the changes from your computer anywhere by using a browser to access the “backdoor” to your CMS. So, now when you travel or want to work from your laptop, or need someone ELSE to make the change for you, you just log in to your CMS and make your changes.

Search-engine friendlier

Content management systems optimize your content for search engine results, which means you are more likely to receive a better ranking from Google, simply because you have a content management system attached to your site. For instance, WordPress automatically creates search engine-friendly URL strings, such as “About-Fender-Designs” instead of “index.cfm?id=4556783405-” You can see how that would help!

A CMS provides accountability

A CMS such as WordPress provides multiple  user accounts, so everyone has separate login credentials, and the CMs tracks who logged in and made changes, and to what page. It also provides various levels of access rights. Changes are tracked and all page revisions are stored for easy access. This means if the new hire in cubicle one made a change and it was wrong, you can revert back to a previously saved version with one click.

Draft or Publish?

Sometimes you want to work on adding a new page to your site but you’re not quite ready to publish it. A content management system allows you to work on a page in “draft” mode and publish whenever you’re ready. Your company might have a work flow where one person writes the content and another person approves the work and publishes it to the website upon approval.

WordPress is Blue Sky Design’s choice for a CMS

WordPress does everything I just described and more. Email us today to integrate your website into the WordPress content management system.

Your website may be outdated if:

You can’t update the content yourself. These days, most everyone wants to be able to update their own website. I have heard so many horror stories from clients who could not get their webmaster to return their calls, much less update their site. Or when they did, it took three months before the update was made — even simple text changes. A content management system (CMS) alleviates all those concerns. You’re in charge of your own website.

Another great thing about a CMS is that it keeps your content and your programming separated. The pages on your server contain the code and the database contains your content, which you control via the CMS. If you’ve ever updated your site yourself in Dreamweaver or Front Page you’ve no doubt accidentally deleted a closing tag to a snippet of programming and when you uploaded your page, the page did not display correctly (if at all). Panic sets in and it’s time to call your webmaster for help. And we all know how that typically turns out…so…why not put the responsibility and control in your own hands with a CMS?

If your site’s web pages end in .htm or .html, it’s time you updated your site so that the pages are created dynamically through the CMS. Search engines also prefer when your site keeps the content and programming separate. A CMS will help your search engines ranking!

It can’t be found in the search engines. Ranking well in the search engines is a tricky business. Getting ranked at all, in fact, is a tricky business. If your site is not ranking in the first 50 or so pages of Google, then something is seriously amiss. Does your front page contain mostly graphics or Flash animations? (Hint: if you can’t highlight the text on your page with your mouse, then typically your text is actually a graphic or Flash-based). Search engines can’t index images, so you want your text to be actual text, and you want it to contain as many relevant keywords as possible. Does your Title Tag (what is shown at the top of your browser when you’re on your web page) only contain your company name? That won’t help you in the search engines.

It lacks social networking capabilities. Do you have a Facebook page, Twitter account, You Tube Channel, or a blog? Depending on the industry and target market, not everyone may need all the social media outlets, but it’s a good idea to participate in a few, as a vast majority of people turn to social media to do research and make buying decisions. If you have a Facebook page, your website should link to it and vice-versa. Embed slide shows and videos into your site and contain them on your own You Tube channel, so when people visit You Tube and do a search with your keywords, they can then click over to your website. Facebook allows instant dissemination of information. You don’t have to wait for someone to visit yor website to get the latest news; instead, you serve it up hot and fresh to their Facebook feeds. Same thing goes for a blog…add an RSS feed to your blog and your subscribers get your content updates immediately.

The graphic design features beveled button or flashing text. Ok, this is mostly a joke, but not really. Back in the 90s, when the internet was just a toddler, big flashing buttons and large beveled edges on graphics was the big thing. There are cycles in website design, and sadly, if your site features some design elements that were once popular but aren’t any more, your site is considered outdated, simply based on its design. Things to consider these days, as well, is whether your site looks good on mobile browsers, as so many people are using their smart phones to access the web. Have you looked at your website on a mobile device? Most mobile devices don’t play Flash-based animations. Does your website have Flash on it? You might be surprised to discover it simply does not show up on devices that do not support Flash technology.

Your copyright date is circa 1997. Again, a joke…but seriously, if your content was last updated during the first Bush presidency, then it’s time you did something to freshen up your site. If it’s been a while since your content has been updated, ask yourself why? No time? No one to do the work? A webmaster that won’t get on the ball? Your visitors are going to take one look at your outdated content (your last newsletter was dated 2002, perhaps?) and “run for the hills.” And by “run for the hills,” I mean click away from your site and head over to one of your competitors’ websites.

Your website content needs to be fresh! That’s where a blog comes in so handy — visitors see you have fresh material and are engaged with your website. Even a Latest News area in the sidebar shows that things are happening with your company. Your visitors don’t want to visit a stagnant website. What’s the point?

With a CMS, it’s not that hard to keep your site current. A good design, fresh content, social media interaction, good search engine practices, and a well-organized website all show that your company is current. Take a look at your website today and see if there’s room for improvement in the areas I stated above. And if you need help moving into the 21st century, email Blue Sky Designs.