JeffAshby.com

I mentioned in a previous post that I am working on a new website for my mother’s craft website www.sweetdreamspatterns.com.  In order to do this, I have been doing a lot of research this last week about possible open source solutions for this ecommerce website.  The current site was built by myself in 2003 using osCommerce 2.2, which at the time was the only open source ecommerce solution out there.

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.

The SEO community is buzzing with Google’s latest announcement that they do not use META keywords to determine website rankings.  This doesn’t come as a shock to most of us out there who have tried “keyword stuffing” in the past and had no results.

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

I have compiled this list of 10 of the most common SEO mistakes I have noticed over my years of experience. Make sure to avoid these mistakes and you shouldn’t have any trouble getting decent rankings.

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.

In the last post, I talked about how to find keywords phrases that people are searching for as well as the possibility of being competitive for.  The next step in website optimization is one of the most important:  Title Tag structure.

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?

Let’s talk about the very basics of SEO for a minute.  When you have a new site that you need to do some optimization for, what is the first thing that you need to do?  The title of this post gives it away.  You need to research your keywords.  This means, you need to decide on the keyword phrases that you want to rank for, and then use current search statistics to decide exactly which phrases you are going to target.  In order to show exactly how I do this, I am going to give you an example with my mother’s crafting website Sweet Dreams Patterns.  The site still needs to be reworked, however this will give us a good head start on the SEO portion of it.

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.

I just took a quiz over at DarkGreySEO.com, in which they determine, based on you are willing to do as an SEO, if you are a Black Hat, White Hat, or Grey Hat.  And the results?

Dark Grey SEO

Pushing the boundaries to the maximum minus one fraction, your SEO campaign is as hard as it gets without getting in trouble with the law but you’ve probably been in trouble before with Google. You rarely back down when faced with conflict or a challenge.

You don’t like SPAM or SPAMMING however a comment blog SPAM or four is okay. However, you don’t over-do it and rarely use a personally identifiable URL when you get risky.

You’re probably banned from AdSense due to mistakes you make in your early years. You’re hopping on a friends AdSense account because you’re screwed.

However, you’re not banned from AdWords and that’s all you need. With your knowledge of consumer habits combined with your ability to tolerate SEO risk, you’re on your way to a powerful future.

You know that you have to diversify your SEO resources to account for ‘collapse.’ If a campaign goes south, you don’t care because you have 2 more backing it up that have an entirely different strategy.

You are Google’s worst nightmare x 2. The real McCoy. The Genuine Article. The Mr. Smarty Pants of SEO.You have probably received one or more warnings or C&D’s from Google or other companies. You had to break a few eggs to make your omelet. This is how it’s done.Your campaigns are highly refined, targeted, and optimized however you’re not 100% sure from one day to the next if your money-makers are going to get POOFED from Google and then your revenue goes bye-bye. You’ll need to start all over.This is both your gift and your curse for the Dark Hatted SEO.

This is about right for me.  I will talk more about how I feel about Black Hat SEO in the future, however I do not feel an ethical dilemma when it comes to SEO tactics.  If you can use a strategy that doesn’t get caught, in which helps you rank, why not do it?  I will not divulge all of my black hat secrets, however I will get into some strategies that are somewhat less reputable as we go along in our journey.  Anyone can take the quiz and post their results here in the comments.  I am interested to see where everyone stands.

Through this magical journey of SEO, I will have case studies using some of the websites that I currently hold dominion over in terms of SEO. Three of the sites I will mention right now (as well as hoping that some of you will link back to).

Paternity DNA Testing
StrictlyDNA.com is a website that my friend Dan and I built and have continue to work on to bring paternity testing to those who need one. This website is just barely getting off the ground, however we have already seen some success in the pay per click advertising.

Christmas Patterns
sweetdreamspatterns.com is a website I have maintained for my mother for a very long time (I think I started building it in early 2000). The website hasn’t changed since 2003, however my mother has requested me to rebuild the website in order to revamp her business which hasn’t done very much in the last few years. I would like to see her to really well, and I think with such an old domain and a non-competitive niche market, we should see some success. During the process of building this website, I will talk about some of the featured I am adding in order to effect our SEO score a little better.

Portland Oregon Photography
cmemoriesphotography.com is the photography website that I have built for my sister and mother’s photography business. We are already seeing great rankings for the key terms of Hillsboro Photography, however I would like to branch that out a little bit to hit up Portland and other surrounding areas. The site that is up right now is one I built back in January of 2008. My skills have greatly improved since then, and I am currently working on a development site which will revamp the site completely as well as utilize the power of WordPress. I would have had it up months ago, however my sister hasn’t been the best at getting me all the content I need.

SEO Tips
jeffashby.com (this site) is one I would obviously like to rank high for. I am going to do this by giving away a lot of free useful information in hopes that you will like my content and link to it. So…in advance…thanks for the linkback!

I am sure there will be other sites in the future, as well as clients I work on at work.

Also, notice that I used keywords as the link text for the links above. That is one of the most important SEO tips out there (and more on that another day).

So, i’ve been looking for something to do with this website that will give this blog some more attention while actually giving out some useful tips and whatnot. I feel that the most qualified thing I possibly write about would be different SEO strategy. I do work for an internet marketing company as the manager over SEO, in which I am given full leeway in deciding how we go about optimizing the websites of our clients. Since I do new research every day about new strategy, and since the topic of SEO seems to be somewhat popular, we’ll see what happens.

I wanted to share a horrible experience I had with PayPal while I was in the Philippines last month visiting my wife’s family.  In order to get cash, we opted to use PayPal’s ATM/Debit Card since they generally have lower fees and don’t charge a remittance to convert dollars to the Philippine Peso.

For the last two years or so, if I wanted to instantly fund my paypal account (which is impossible to do with a bank transfer)  I would “send” the money to another paypal account, and then from that account I would send it back to the original account.  The money would be added instantly instead of 3-5 days for the wire.

We had let PayPal know that we were going to be in the Philippines and using our account to access money there.

About 2 weeks through my 3 week trip in the Philippines, my second PayPal account went into “Fraud Protection” in that I can no longer send or receive money.  I thought this would be a quick fix, however that is not the case.  There are several options to confirm my account with PayPal, however each option requires you to actually be IN THE UNITED STATES.  We were able to work through this inconvenience because my original account we use the debit card is still fine.

The real fiasco comes at the Manila airport on our way home.  As my wife’s family dropped us off, I gave them my extra Filipino money (In which I didn’t think I was going to need).  Upon checking our bags, I come to find out that there is an extra fee for my wife to leave the country.  I needed to transfer a little more money in order to pay for this, so I found a computer and logged into PayPal.  I found out that earlier that day, they had placed a hold on my main account for “protection” and again allowed no possible way for me to verify my identity.  Again, they already knew we were in another country, and still locked up our account.

Frustrated, with our flight leaving in about an hour, we only had one option – We actually had to beg for someone to give us enough money to pay my wife’s fee.  It wasn’t much money, and we were able to make it back home safely.

As soon as we got home, I called PayPal to get my accounts fixed and to ask them why their system is so crummy.  I let a “specialist” customer service rep know what happened, and told them that it makes no sense that if you are in another country relying on their services, that they should at least give you some way to verify your identity.  She agreed, however there is nothing they can do about it now.

Although they have really crappy service and policies, they did end up saving me some money by not allowing me to get to it.

About two weeks ago, facebook start allowing users to create their own usernames and be able to use this in their profile URL (facebook.com/username).  I thought it would be really cool to get the username “jeff” or “jeffrey,” however those were already taken up by facebook employees (those jerks).  I ended up camping on my computer when they were released and was able to score facebook.com/ashby.

Find Me Here: Jeff Ashby on Facebook.

Also, I started using Twitter for social marketing purposes.  I don’t really see much of another reason for it, except if I am a big time celebrity that would like to control the press written about me.  I don’t have much of a following yet, so even if you don’t have an account, go create one just to follow me.  I also write a lot of interesting things on there, so it is to your benefit.

Follow Me Here: Follow Jeff Ashby on Twitter