I thought I would write today also after realizing that this website was ranked on the first page of Google for the keyword “SEO Tactics” which is the main keyword I am going for right now.  It gave me some incentive to buckle down and write this while I watch some American Idol.  Anyways, here we go…

I want to talk a little about link building.  Actually, not a little – a lot.  Link building is a huge portion of SEO.  Actually, it is the biggest, along with content writing.  Basically, if you want to see success, make sure you are targeting the right keywords, and point enough quality links to your site in the right spots and you should be fine.  However, what are the main link building methods?  I am going to discuss each method here a little, and then hopefully do a “Link Building Post Series.”  I think it is such an important topic that we really need to spend some time on it.

Here is a list of the main ways to build links in which I personally use (well, most of them).

1. Directory Submissions
2. Do Follow Blog Commenting
3. Forum Linking
4. Article Submissions
5. Link Bait
6. Strategic Partnerships
7. Link Buying
8. Grey/Black Hat Methods

Directory Submissions – These are online directories in which you can post a link to your website.  These work with some success, however a lot of directories need to be submitted to, and the success rate of actually getting in the directories aren’t great.  However, they are good to keep your links diversified.

Do Follow Blog Commenting – Some blogs will allow you to comment on their site and actually receive link juice for your URL.  Wordpress is defaulted to have no-follow blog comment links, so blogs need a special plugin to do it.  A lot of blogs will start out with doFollow, and then quickly take it off after receiving so much comment spam.

Forum Linking – Forums are great places to get links.  If there are any forums you submit to regularly, you usually will be able to put a link in your signature.  Every time you comment, you build another link.  Forums are usually spidered often and bring in good link juice.

Article Submissions – This is one of the best ways to build links.  Article submission websites allow you to post an article about a particular topic, then post a few links as well.  That way, you get great links that come from content related to your site.  The downside is, in order to be successful, you need to write on a regular basis.  The quality of links though are great.

Link Bait – Link Bait is content, or tools, or something that is going to give someone a reason to put a link to your site.  Popular link bait includes quizzes, and website tools.  After taking an online quiz, you might have something like “Here is code to post on your website to show results.”  A tool might be a website counter or a mortgage calculator or something like that.  These post a link back to your site.  Link Bait can bring in tons of links if the content is unique and useful.

Strategic Partnerships – If you are building a website that can help another company, try to set up a strategic partnership in which they add links to their site.

Link Buying – Buying links is definitely not recommended since Google doesn’t like it, and you can get your site penalized if you do.  However, buying links can be a good way to get lots of links quickly, or getting links with high pagerank.  Link prices can range for a few dollars, to several hundred, all depending on quality.  If you choose to buy links, make sure you know what you are getting into, and how much you should pay.

Grey/Black Hat Methods – I will discuss these at a later time, but there are many methods of link building that allows a lot of quality links to be built in a short amount of time with little effort.  I have seen success with these methods, so I will share a few of them.

Again, I will get further into these methods going forward, including specifics.  Also I would love to see comments for what anyone else uses to build links.

What happens when you decide that you need a new domain for your website?  Perhaps your website has been penalized (shame shame).  Or, perhaps you realized that your domain could be better if it had a few more keywords.  Whatever the reason, if you decide to just scrap your current domain and start another, you need to do it right or you will shoot yourself in the foot for SEO.  The reason for this is because the search engines have all of your pages indexed with a certain domain name.  Not only that, but all of the links to your site are (you guessed it) using your domain.  You don’t have to start over however.  There is a way to move your entire site without skipping a beat.

The way to do this is with 301 Redirects.  A 301 Redirect is a protocol used to tell the browser (and search engine spiders) that your site has been permanently moved to a new location.  This protocol is set in your .htaccess file.

For those who don’t know, the .htaccess file basically controls everything that happens with your server.  Before loading your website, the browser will look at the .htaccess file first to determine if it needs to do anything special – like redirecting your website.  301 Redirect aren’t the only functions of the .htaccess file.  For a full tutorial, view this .htaccess tutorial.

The code I am going to give you below needs to be inserted into the .htaccess file, which is usually in the root of your website files.  If you don’t have one, you can easily create one by using your favorite HTML editor (my favorite is Notepad++).

Moving Your Entire Website from One Domain to Another

Copy the following code into your .htaccess file and change the domains.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.olddomain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

What this code does is redirects both instances of your old domain (from www and non-www) to the new domain.  Once this code is uploaded to your server, your site will be moved in its entirety.  For example, if you have www.olddomain.com/FAQs, it will redirect to www.newdomain.com/FAQs.

How to Redirect Individual Pages from One Site to Another

Sometimes you don’t need to just redirect the entire site, but individual pages.  I recently did this for a client who had built their website originally with really poor not SEO friendly URLs.  Their new site (because of me) had great keyword rich URLs.  If this is your situation, you will need to redirect your pages individually, however there also is a function to redirect entire folders to a single page.

Here is how to do this in your .htaccess file.

Start by turning your Rewrite Engine on with this code

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

In order to move a single page, use the following:

redirect 301 /oldunfriendlyurl.html http://www.newdomain.com/very-friendly-url/

You will need to do this for each page.  However, if you don’t have a want to redirect an entire folder to a specific page, use this code:

redirectMatch 301 /oldfolder/ http://www.newdomain.com/newfolder/

With this code, any URL inside of /oldfolder will automatically be redirected.

Changing Your Domain with Google

Finally, you need to tell Google that your old domain is no longer in use and you want your search results to load your new domain.  Luckily for us, Google Webmaster Tools has a built in feature to do this for us.

1. Create a Google Account and visit http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools.
2. You need to verify both domain names with Google Webmaster Tools (this will be easier if you don’t setup the 301 redirects yet).
3. Open up the Webmaster Tools for the old domain.  Click on Site Configuration and then on Change of Address.  From here, you will be able to select from a drop down list your new domain name in order to initiate the change.

This process might take a few days, but once it is complete, Google will now have your site pulling the the correct results and showing your domain name.

I have decided to make some very generalized customer profiles and how I like to deal with them.

The “I already know everything about SEO” SEO client.

This client feels that they know everything that they need to know about SEO, which makes them very distrusting when you do things other than what they know to be true.  I have had clients that thought that the most important thing was high PageRank inbound links, in which they didn’t care about their content.  I have had clients that only cared about META optimization, and cared very little about link building, keyword stuffing, or adding new content.

How to Manage Them

• Don’t hurt their ego.  They feel like they know just as much as you do about SEO.  We want to keep them feeling good about themselves.
• Explain to them that SEO is a full package of different elements.

The “What am I paying you for?” SEO Client

This client knows that SEO as a “concept” is important, however they know nothing about what is.  They have little concern about keyword research, timetables, or generally staying in contact with you.  If they do call, they will ask you why they “cannot find themselves in Google.”  For example, I had a client a year ago who was paying for the lowest package selling different kinds of coffee.  He wanted to be ranked on the first page for the keyword “coffee.”  These clients have no idea what keywords you are targeting.  They will also have no idea how long SEO takes.

How to Manage Them

• Explain what SEO is and what it generally entails.
• Make sure you both know what targeted keywords are expected.
• Explain that SEO is a long term process and they need to be patient.
• Give them things they can do to help (write content, write blog posts).
• Show examples of good rankings you have for clients.

The “How long will it take to be #1″ SEO Client

This client wants you to tell them exactly when they should see themselves ranked on top.  Unless you are Google, this isn’t possible.  All you can do is perform SEO to your ability and search engines take care of the rest.

How to Manage Them

• Never guarantee rankings.  If they demand a time frame, give yourself a generous window of when you expect to see decent results.
• Discuss realistic ranking goals.  Some keyword phrases cannot be broken into without a huge budget and lots of time.
• Point to past clients and the time their website saw success.
• Reassure the client you are doing all you can to get them ranked.

The “Why is my PageRank not increasing” SEO Client

This one absolutely bothers me, not just because I get it so often, but because it shows a great lack in understanding about what is important.  PageRank actually has very little to do with actual rankings, however it is a good indicator that you are going in the right direction with your website.  PageRank also updates just 2-3 times a year.  If you study some of the most popular key phrases and check the PageRank of the top ten sites, you will usually notice a large spread from PR 0 to PR 7.  That should show you that it is more important to optimize for keywords at not for PageRank.

How to Manage Them

• Explain that Good Rankings trump PageRank every time.
• Explain exactly what PageRank is and what it indicates.
• Show clients with awesome rankings and lower PageRank.

Hopefully this will help SEO’s better deal with their clients, and also give notice to SEO clients to give your SEO’s a break.

Because of the open source-ness of Wordpress, many developers have built plugins to make SEO easy for even the newbie search engine optimizer.  I have compiled a list of my favorite SEO related Wordpress plugins in order to give you a tactical SEO advantage for your site.

This list is in no particular order.

1. Askimet - One of the first things you will notice in starting a Wordpress blog is the amount of spam comments you receive.  If you are like me, sometimes you will receive hundreds of spam comments a day.  This can be quite annoying, and you will spend much of your time deleting these comments instead of working on your site.  This is where Akimet comes in.  Askimet has a database compiled of spam websites.  When this plugin is enabled (You will also need the Wordpress.com API Key) Askimet will automatically delete your spam comments for you or give you the ability to review them before deletion.  This plugin doesn’t really relate to SEO tactics, but it does come in handy.
2. All In One SEO Pack – After you have done the keyword research for your website, you’ll want to modify your title tags and meta tags.  The All In One SEO Pack is a plugin that will give you the ability to modify these information easily.  In the plugin’s configuration (found under settings) you’ll be able to modify the title tags and META tags for the website, as well as create title tag structures for the rest of your pages.  You will be able to set up rules for how this information will be displayed for posts, category pages, and tag pages.  Also, this plugin will give you the ability to give unique META and Title information for each page individually.  You will also be able to add your own META content that, for example, can be useful in Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics.
3. Google XML Sitemaps - An important part of SEO is the ability for the search engines to find each page on your website and crawl it.  That is why the Google XML Sitemaps plugin in so important.  This plugin will automatically generate an XML sitemap and automatically update it as you add content to your Wordpress website.  You will be able to give your sitemap specific perimeters to determine how often each page is crawled.  Import this sitemap into Google Webmaster Tools and then Google will know the exact contents of your site at all times.
4. Homepage Excerpts - Homepage Excerpts is a recent plugin that I have added to my arsenal of SEO plugins.  You can see the effects on the home page of this website.  Instead of including each entire post on the homepage, this plugin will give you the ability to post just a set word amount as an “excerpt” of each post.  Not only does this clean up the home page and make your older posts more visible, but it also mitigates the search engines penalizing your site for duplicate content.
5. Sociable - This plugin will automatically add links to the bottom of your posts to the most popular social bookmarking websites.  From here, you or your visitors will be able to easily share your posts on Digg, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, and any other social networking website you choose.
6. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – At the end of each post on your website, a unique algorithm will automatically detect your related posts and display a list of them.  This will really help out your website’s inter-linking as well as keeping related content together that not only the search engines, but also your users will find useful in navigating your site.
7. Simple Tags – I actually just found this plugin today, and love it!  Simple tags gives you the ability to control all of your page and post tags.  If you need to change tags site-wide, this can do it.  It also gives you the ability post additional content based on what tags are used as well as automatically create tags based on your content.  I am still learning more about it, but see its huge potential so far.

Get these plugins setup on your website and you will be well on your way to seeing success for your SEO with Wordpress.  I will continuously add to this list as I find more useful SEO plugins.  Do you have any others you like to use?

For those who don’t know, Wordpress is a powerful blogging software (or platform) which makes creating and maintaining a weblog extremely easy.  However, not only can it be used for blogs.  It can be used as a CMS (Content Management System) to build an entire website.  Some of you might have heard of similar platforms such as Blogspot or Typepad, however neither of these has a candle to the power and ease of Wordpress.  Since discovering Wordpress, I have used it religiously to build all of my own websites as well as clients’ websites as it is easy for me and they to modify content, change the site design, and in my most importantly, gain SEO rankings.

But what makes Wordpress such a powerful SEO tool?  In the next several posts, I am going to make the case for why you should build your next website in Wordpress and how to make it as Search Engine Friendly as possible.

I am going to try to break this down into several sections, including powerful plugins, link building techniques, and basic strategy inside the Wordpress engine itself to make the search engines (and everyone else) find your content and drive traffic to your website.

In this initial post, I would like to just talk about the barebones Wordpress platform.  The latest version can be downloaded at www.wordpress.org and installed on any Apache server.  After installing and logging into the Wordpress Administration section for the first time, there are several SEO features we need to activate.

First, go to Settings > Permalinks

Permalinks will allow us to modify the URLs of our website pages to make them more search engine friendly.  For example, the default setting would create a URL like the following:

http://www.jeffashby.com/?p=123

We can create a custom structure that will give us the name of the post instead.  I like to add the category and post name by using this code: /%category%/%postname%/

http://www.jeffashby.com/wordpress/the-wonderful-world-of-wordpress-seo-part-1/

This creates a keyword rich URL that is not only more helpful for search engines, but also more helpful to visitors of your website.

Another cool feature about the Permalinks is if you actually go into a post that you write, right below the post title, you will be able to modify the URL of each post anyway you want.  That is enough about permalinks.

Second, try going to Settings > Privacy.

This will give us the option to enable or disable search engines from viewing your website.  You might be thinking “Why would I ever want to disallow crawlers from my site?”  The truth is, when your site is in development, it is a good idea to now allow your content to be added to the search engines.  In many situations, you might have development content that gets indexed that you don’t want indexed (and it is sometimes hard to remove indexed content).  Just make sure that when your page is done, go back and switch the search engine crawlers back on.

Lastly, I want to talk about pinging.  Go to Settings > Writing and scroll to the bottom where you see Update Services.

One of the amazing features of Wordpress is that it has the ability to call spiders to your website.  Once you create a new post or page, Wordpress will send a message out to the different search engines and content websites and basically say “Hey, there is new content on my website, come check it out.”  This is called pinging.

In this section of the administration, we can add a list of different websites that we want Wordpress to ping other than just the default websites.  Currently this is the list I use:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://zing.zingfast.com

http://zhuaxia.com/rpc/server.php

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://www.zhuaxia.com/rpc/server.php

http://www.xianguo.com/xmlrpc/ping.php

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://www.weblogues.com

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.snipsnap.org

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.popdex.com

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/ping.php

http://www.lasermemory.com

http://www.imblogs.net/ping/

http://www.holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/

http://www.feedsky.com/api/RPC2

http://www.catapings.com/ping.php

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsdominicanos.com/ping/

http://www.blogroots.com

http://www.blogpeople.net

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://www.a2b.cc

http://weblogues.com/RPC/

http://weblogues.com/ping/

http://wasalive.com/ping/

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://topicexchange.com

http://thingamablog.sourceforge.net/ping.php

http://syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPingExtended.doz

http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx

http://rpc.wpkeys.com

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://rpc.twingly.com

http://rpc.technorati.jp/rpc/ping

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2

http://rpc.reader.livedoor.com/ping

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080

http://rpc.britblog.com/

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.bloggerei.de/ping/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rcs.datashed.net

http://r.hatena.ne.jp/rpc

http://popdex.com/addsite.php

http://pingqueue.com/rpc/

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://pingoat.com/

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc

http://ping.wordblog.de/

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.snap.com/ping/RPC2

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.namaan.net/rpc

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.kutsulog.net/

http://ping.feeds.yahoo.com/RPC2/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.fc2.com/

http://ping.fakapster.com/rpc

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.blogs.yandex.ru/RPC2

http://ping.blogoon.net/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogg.de/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://packetmonster.net/xmlrpc.php

http://newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://newsblog.jungleboots.org/ping.php

http://mod-pubsub.org/ping.php

http://mod-pubsub.org

http://lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://imblogs.net/ping/

http://holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/

http://hamo-search.com/ping.php

http://fgiasson.com/pings/ping.php

http://feedsky.com/api/RPC2

http://effbot.org/rpc/ping.cgi

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://catapings.com/ping.php

http://bulkfeeds.net

http://blogupdate.org/ping/

http://blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://blogsnow.com/ping

http://blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://blogsearch.google.us/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.tw/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.sk/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.se/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ru/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ro/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.pt/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.pl/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.nl/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.lt/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.jp/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.it/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.in/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ie/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.hr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.gr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.fr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.fi/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.es/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.de/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.vn/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.uy/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.ua/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.tw/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.tr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.sg/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.sa/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.pe/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.my/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.mx/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.do/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.co/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.br/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.au/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.ar/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.za/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.ve/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.uk/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.th/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.nz/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.ma/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.jp/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.it/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.in/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.il/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.id/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.hu/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.cr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.cl/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ch/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ca/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.bg/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.be/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.at/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ae/ping/RPC2

http://blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://blogpeople.net/ping

http://blogoon.net/ping/

http://blogoole.com/ping/

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://blogdb.jp

http://blogbot.dk/io/xml-rpc.php

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blog.goo.ne.jp

http://blo.gs/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping/

http://bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://bitacoles.net/notificacio.php

http://bblog.comping.php

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://audiorpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.co.jp/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

You could probably find more than this, but this is a pretty good list.  You can just copy and paste this list into this section and Wordpress will do all the work in order to get more spiders looking at your content.  With JeffAshby.com, I am at the point where I can submit a new post, and less than 5 minutes later, it is already indexed into Google.  This is just an example of the power that Wordpress can give your website in terms of SEO.

This information is a good opening to some of the powers of Wordpress.  In the next post, I am going to discuss more about important plugins that are crucial to your SEO success.

I wanted to share some of the research I have done just in case any of you out there are in need of an eCommerce platform and you have the knowledge and resources to build it yourself.  I have looked at a number of popular solutions, and I wanted to give you my opinions on each one as well as the SEO capabilities and ease of use.

The eCommerce solutions I tried were OScommerce 2.2, OScommerce 3.0 Alpha, Zen Cart, OpenCart, Magento, and CartStore.

OSCommerce 2.2

I used to be a big fan of OSCommerce until I had a project in 2006 that ended up being a nightmare.  The file structure is really heavy, the template system isn’t that great (in that you must edit individual files to get the same look and feel throughout the site, and the plugin system (called contributions) require you to go through the code file by file and make changes.  This became a huge problem when I wanted to use several SEO contributions and some of them clashed with each other.  If you have enough PHP knowledge, you can get OSCommerce 2.2 to do anything you want it to, but it isn’t that simple or user friendly.  The SEO contributions they do have will allow you to rewrite URLS, rewrite titles, load analytics, and anything else.

OSCommerce 3.0 Alpha

The team at OSCommerce has been working on a new version of the engine which seems a lot more streamlined and straightforward.  I really like the feel of the site and the code is much smaller.  I would have used this engine, however this 3.0 version is not compatible with 2.2 contributions.  There are no SEO contributions yet for OSCommerce 3.0 which was a deal killer for me.

Zen Cart

I had problems getting Zen Cart installed on both my local server as well as my web server.  From what I can tell though, it did seem to be a decent system which could do basic SEO functions (URL Rewrites, META rewrites), however the template system was complicated, and the look and feel of the admin didn’t seem quite right.

Magento

It took me a day to get Megento installed on my server.  This file structure is so incredibly huge that it actually took me over an hour just to delete from my server.  There are also a ton of bugs in this, that even after I got it running, it broke a day later.  Magento does have a ton of features, however their template system seemed really difficult to use and their admin was a lot more complicated than it needed to be.  I would stay away.

OpenCart

I really liked OpenCart.  It was simple, fast, and looked great.  Templates were easy to create.  It also had the SEO functions that I required.  I would have used OpenCart, except for the fact that they didn’t allow me to accept offline credit cards.  My mom likes to get the credit card information herself and enter it into her gateway, and OpenCart has no plugin for storing credit cards.  If that feature doesn’t matter to you, and you have an online gateway, then definitly check out OpenCart.

CartStore

I ended up using CartStore.  CartStore is actually built off of the OSCommerce engine, however it seems like the creators built in every conceivable plugin that someone would want to use.  The SEO functions are automatically built in, as well as a fancy CMS which no other shopping cart system I tried had.  The template system is very simple (just a little CSS), and the look and feel is great.  This store has the ability to not only track customer and orders, but also vendors and also tracks affiliates.  It also has a place to add your Google Adsense and Analytics code.

I will be using CartStore as I go forward and build a new crafting website.  I will give periodic updates on my progress, as well as my SEO ranking progress.

I would also like to mention that if you are interested in shopping cart solution that you don’t have to host yourself, and has a ton of great features and it is SEO friendly, check out Magellan Commerce.

According to Google’s Webmaster Blog

Google doesn’t use the “keywords” meta tag in our web search ranking.

Google employee and general SEO spokesman Matt Cutts released the following video:

According to Matt Cutts, Google (and most other search engines) did use META Keywords several years ago as a factor in search engine rankings.  However, SEO Spammers realized this and would spam the META keywords with unrelated keywords or even competitors keywords in order to manipulate their rankings.  This has been done away with.  Those of us out there looking to rank for specific keywords will have to use legitimate methods.

Does this mean that the META keyword tag is completely worthless?  No.  I actually happen to use it a little.  Many ranking report programs will automatically pull META keywords from the website and use those to check for rankings.  I will add my keywords for just this purpose, even though they have nothing to do with rankings themselves.

Image pulled from http://www.dynamixwebdesign.com

1. Flash

   Avoid building your website completely in Flash.  Search engine spiders cannot read flash content just like they cannot read content from images.  Many developers don’t realize this as they build a visually appealing website.  A small amount of flash is okay as long as there is a text version of the content as well.  In the SEO world, content is king.  If content cannot be read, it is isn’t worth much.

2. Text as Images

   Just like Flash, your website will have considerable SEO content issues if you embed important text in images.  Make sure important content is inside the HTML, as it is the only way it can be read by the spiders.  If you must use images, make sure to use the ALT image attribute to give some description to the image.

3. Frames

   I have been programming websites for over 12 years now, and in my honest opinion, frames are lousy HTML elements and shouldn’t be used.  However, since I started learning SEO, I have found that frames can spell disaster for ranking a website.  Content inside a frame or an <iframe> is loading from a seperate source, and therefore cannot be crawled by the spiders.

   This can especially be a problem for real estate websites who usually frame in their MLS listing from a separate source.

   If you already have a website with frames that you want to SEO, the task will be very long and difficult to move that content to a frame-less site.

4. Splash Pages

   This is one of the most common problems I have seen when trying to SEO a website.  Splash pages usually have very little content (many times it is actually flash) then facilitates the user entering the website.  The first page the search engine spiders see should be the most important.  A splash page usually doesn’t have much navigation and basically just creates an extra barrier for the spiders.  If your splash page is flash, there is no way for the spiders to find the rest of your site as they cannot read flash.  Please…Please…Don’t use a splash page.

5. Menus that Cannot be Spidered

   Flash menus look cool, but they cannot be followed by the spiders.  Your navigational menus are the most important highway for the crawlers, keep them open and able to be followed.

6. Too much AJAX

   Many web developers like to impress website visitors (and perhaps increase site functionality) by adding AJAX to the website menus and navigational tools.  Search engine spiders will have a difficult time crawling the dynamic content that is loaded in AJAX.

   Another problem of AJAX is that the URL doesn’t refresh when content changes on the website.  This means there aren’t unique pages on the site that can be easily linked to.  This will greatly disadvantage your viral marketing.

   Keep AJAX to those elements of the site that don’t have to do with navigation or loading of separate pages.  Only use it for smaller elements.

7. Non-Friendly SEO URLs

   If your website is built with a CMS, or is otherwise dynamic, you’re URLs will also be dynamic.  This means your page will pull a query in the URL to determine which content to load.  Using your CMS, or the URL rewriting functionality of the .htaccess file (more on that some future post), you will be able to make your URLs SEO Friendly.

   Instead of the dynamic url of: www.domain.com/?a=123
   You will have SEO Friendly URLs of: www.domain.com/page-title

   This will not only help your search engine rankings (keywords in your URL are always a great idea), it will also increase the user experience on your website.

8. Keyword Stuffing

   META tags used to have more importance in search engine rankings, however due to spammers and keyword stuffers, they are not as important.  Actually the META Keywords are completely ignored by the big three search engines.  Keyword stuffing is loading your title tags, meta tags, and content with too many keyword phrases that either aren’t relevant to the site, or make the content unreadable (due to high keyword density).  Keep your keywords within moderation, and remember to write for the user, and not for the search engine.  You will find higher rankings this way.

9. Poor Anchor Text

   Anchor text is the actual text that someone clicks on to enter your website.  When you are building links, avoid anchor text such as “Click Here” or “Find Out More.”  Anchor text is used by the search engine as one way to find out what your site is all about.  Build links with anchor text that is keyword rich.  Instead of “www.jeffashby.com,” try “SEO Strategies.”  That way, you will rank better for those terms.

   Also makes sure to vary your anchor text with a variety of targeted keyword phrases.  The last thing you need is to get marked as spam by the search engines because your anchor text is all the same over hundreds and thousands of links.

10. Not Using ALT Attribute

    All important images you use should have an ALT attribute used.  This text will describe what the image is to the search engine spiders who cannot see the content of your image.  This gives another method for the spiders to see what you site is about and will supplement the other content on the site.

    Also, properly using ALT text will help ranking your images in the search engine’s image search results.

For those who aren’t familiar with HTML, the title tags can be found in the website source code header between the <title> and </title> elements.  This is shown at the very top of the browser as well as the click able text in the search results.

Here are the most important points when it comes to writing awesome title tags that will give you the best rankings and click through rate.

1. Limit Title Lengths to 65 Characters
   Why 65 characters? Because that is what Google’s limit is. If your title tags are longer, the rest of your title will be cut off and replaced with a “…”. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, and other search engines have experimented with longer text. Just make sure everything that is important is in that first 65 characters.
2. Use Targeted Keyword Phrases
   The bulk of your titles should consist of 2-3 keyword phrases.  Generally, these terms should be in the first and second positions of the title.  If you can, use longer keyword phrases instead of shorter phrases, as you will have a higher click through rate.  For example, instead of having “Potted Plants | Potted Trees | Ashby’s Green Supply,” try using “Potted Plants and Trees | Ashby’s Green Supply,”  This looks more natural as well as optimizes your website for two phrases while cutting down on characters.  An important point to mention is this only works when your page is relevant to both phrases.
3. Branding Your Website
   Using your website’s name is extremely important in the title.  Not only will you rank well for your website name (which is always a good thing) but you will build authority for your website with the search engines as well as with visitors.  It is also likely that your website name will include important keywords which is an extra plus.  Add your website name to either the front or the back of the title.  I prefer the back, which gives more importance to the keywords in the front.  Once your site becomes more popular, you might want to change this.
4. Use a Separator
   When you are separating your keywords and website name in your titles, always use some sort of separating character.  Many websites use the “|” symbol (sometimes known as the bar, or pipe).  I have also seen hyphens “-”, arrows “>” or commas “,”. You could actually combine them in certain circumstances.
5. Target the User
   When creating title tags, put yourself in the shoes of the user.  If you were to search for a given phrase, what text would you click on?  If your website is informational, use more descriptive titles based on the information you have.  If your website is for users to do some sort of action (purchase, download, leave information), make sure the title reflects that this can be done on your site.
6. Repeat Titles on Website
   An important strategy for title tags is actually using the titles on the website.  If my title is “Buy Potted Plants | Ashby’s Green Supply,” then use the term “Buy Potted Plants as the headline of that website.  Do this preferably in the H1 header tag.  This isn’t only valuable for keyword density for the SERPs, but also will improve conversion rate for those users who have clicked through.
7. Keep Consistency Throughout Your Website
   Once you have decided on a method, stick to it.  There is nothing worse then having different title tag methods for each page on your site and having the search engines confused.  Users will also become familiar with your title tag structure, in that your page will be easily recognizable when they see your website in the search results.

This is a pretty good list, but is there any suggestions that could be added?

To start, I’m just going to name off as many keyword phrases that come to my head.  I say the word “phrases” because one word terms generally are more difficult to rank for, and many people aren’t searching for one word terms such as “patterns.”

To start, I’m thinking about using these keywords:

craft patterns
christmas patterns
christmas craft patterns
holiday patterns
holiday craft patterns
animal patterns
animal craft patterns
quilt patterns
cute patterns
adorable patterns

There.  That is a good list.  I just named off everything that came to my head.  Another good strategy would be to look over the site for keyword phrases already being used.  This is a brainstorming session, so take anything and everything you can think of.  Another good tip would be to look at your competitor’s website.  View the source code and find the META Keywords section of the code.  This section should be a good representation of what keywords your competitor is looking to rank for.  This spy work can really help you against the competition.

Once we have the keywords, we are going to use one of my favorite SEO tools, the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.  I’m going to copy and paste our list into this tool (making sure to keep ‘Use Synonyms’ checked) and sort the results by Global Monthly Search Volume.  This gives use the following:

What this tool does is tell me what the search volume of the terms I entered in are, as well as other terms I might have missed.  We always want to use the Global Monthly Search Volume, because it has an overall look at the keyword instead of just by the month.

From here, I will take all of the relevant results and list them in an spreadsheet along with their monthly search volume.  I am throwing out all the free patterns (these patterns aren’t free) as well as many of the quilting keywords (we don’t sell a lot of quilts).  The next step is to take the Google volume of each phrase by searching each phrase in Google.  I then take the Google volume and divide that by the search volume to find a ratio.  I then sort the keywords by ratio from smallest to largest.  For my example, here is the results I have:

This gives us a somewhat scientific method in finding a nice combination of search volume and search competition.  The most ideal keywords will be those with a lot of searches and little competition for those keywords.  However, the keywords we decide to use also are based on the resources we have for future SEO work.  If you have the resources to put everything you can at this website, then you might as well use the keywords with the most search volume because the effort will eventually pay off.  If you want to see rankings right away, then you should choose the keywords with lower Google volume.  For example, the keyword “primitive craft patterns” would be a good term because it could get ranked for quickly and it does have 1300 monthly searches.  Think about getting the 1st result in Google for this term in the next month or two.  That would mean 1300 people finding your website and reading your title and description.

In this situation, I like to focus both on some long phrases as well as the short phrases, and match them up.  For example, I really like the term “primitive craft patterns” as well as just “craft patterns.”  What I can at first is focus my efforts on just “primitive craft patterns” and rank for that quickly.  While I am doing that, the term “craft patterns” will be helped and we should see some traction on that keyword because of the similarity.  Once we rank well for “primitive craft patterns,”  I can drop “primitive” from my SEO efforts, and I already have that head start on my main term of “craft patterns.”  I can do this same thing for my other keywords such as “christmas craft patterns” or “christmas quilt patterns.”

Finally, I find it is a good idea to pick maybe three or four actual keyword phrases.  We only have so much space on the website, and we don’t want to dilute our SEO resources over many keywords.  I will use the rest of this list though.  I always need a good amount of keywords to track rankings.  As we start to gain traction on our main keywords, we should see success on those longer keyword phrases.

I hope this guide will be helpful to all of you as you get started on your next SEO project.  I will update this guide as I learn better techniques and find out new strategies.