Web Design and SEO News and Tips

SEO Consulting from Kingsley Graphics

• October 5th, 2007

I know. You’ve got a wonderful web site offering the best wacky widgets in the universe at prices that are out of this world. There’s just one problem. No one is visiting the site! You type wacky widgets into the search engines and your site is nowhere to be found. Hmmmm….Sounds like your site may need a little SEO (that’s search engine optimization if you didn’t know).

Search engines gather information from millions (perhaps even billions) of web pages and then organize the contents of those pages into a searchable index and then “rank” the pages according to certain criteria–like what words are found in particular parts of the web pages, how the web pages are linked together, how many links from other sites are pointing to the page, etc. Your site may not be ranking very high in these search engine indexes because you haven’t paid attention to this ranking criteria.

That’s where Kingsley Graphics comes in. For a small, one-time fee of $149 we will give your site a thorough analysis (we call it an SEO Consultation) and send you a written report of our findings and a list of recommendations on how to improve your site’s search engine rankings. We’ll analyze the placement of your keywords on your pages, your site’s internal linking structure, overuse of complex scripts that may be confusing search engine spiders. We’ll even analyze the sites of your top three competitors to see why they are ranking ahead of you and what you can do to beat them. We’ll also analyze your keywords to see if there are better ones you should be using. And for an extra fee, we will create a properly formatted XML sitemap and submit it to Google and Yahoo for you.

Our recommendations are based on years of SEO experience and current knowledge of search engine trends–the same knowledge and experience that helped us gain (and maintain) a place on the FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE’S SEARCH RESULTS for a keyword that returns 2,000,000 results!

Check out our SEO Consulation packages today.

Getting Started with Ecommerce

• October 5th, 2007

Starting an ecommerce site or online store may not be as difficult as you think. Of course, there are those “ready-made” online stores where you pay a fairly hefty monthly fee and much of the behind the scenes stuff like accepting credit card payments is all done without any interaction from you. But if you’re like me, you don’t want to pay the hefty monthly fee. And you’d rather have more control over your web site and how it operates than the average “package-deal” online store offers. So if you’re wondering what’s involved in setting up your own web store, here are a few tips.

First, of course, you’ll need some products to sell.

Second, you’ll need a hosting provider. Make sure they offer you a dedicated IP address, as well as database capability.

Third, you’ll need some good, inexpensive ecommerce software to run the backend of your store. You could use a free program such as OsCommerce, but I don’t recommend this as it is unecessarily complicated. Also, with free software, no one is getting paid to support you. I highly recommend EcommerceTemplates. I’ve been using their software on my own sites and on client sites for several years now. The functionality is great and the support is just phenomenal. Prices are around $159, which includes 6 months of free updates. Updates cost just $29.95 per six months after the free period, which you are free to take or leave (though I highly recommend keeping your software up to date). The templates are available for Dreamweaver, FrontPage, and GoLive. There is also a CSS-based version that can be used with any web editing software.

Fourth, you’ll need a payment gateway. Google Checkout currently offers FREE payment processing (no monthly fees and no transaction fees). Other choices are Authorize.net, PayPal Pro, LinkPoint, NetBanx, etc. (all those mentioned work with EcommerceTemplates out of the box, besides several more).

Fifth, you will need a method for performing secure transactions on your web site. Many hosting providers will allow you to “share” a secure certificate, but I highly recommend purchasing your own certificate from a third party such as Network Solutions, Comodo, Thawte, Verisign, GeoTrust or any of several other companies. Just make sure they provide you with a “seal of trust” or “trust logo” that you can display on your site to show your customers that your site is secured using the latest encryption technology. Very often, clicking these logos or seals provides the user with live verification that the site is authentic and safe. This builds customer trust.

And that’s it! Mix these ingredients together and you can have your own fully customizable online store with very few (if any) recurring costs.

And remember, because we use the EcommerceTemplates software on our own sites and on client sites, we can help you with almost any aspect of setting up and maintaining your online store.

Canonical Problems, Duplicate Content, & PageRank

• August 25th, 2007

Here’s a simple problem that can cause major ranking problems on Google and other search engines. I mean simple in the sense that it doesn’t take much effort on your part to fix.

Question: Can your web site be accessed using both the www and non-www versions of your site’s URL? In other words, if your web site address is http://www.example.com/, can it also be accessed at http://example.com/? If the answer is yes, then you need to fix it NOW! First of all, it’s entirely possible that Google could be indexing both versions of your site and imposing a ranking penalty on you for duplicate content, because everything at http://www.example.com/ and http://example.com/ is exactly the same, but they are different URLs (i.e. different sites). You will also be suffering a PageRank dilution because your PageRank is being divided between these two URLs.

A similar problem exists if your home page can be accessed at http://www.example.com/ and also at http://www.example.com/index.html (or index.php, etc.). Google could be seeing these as two separate pages and penalizing you for duplicate content as well as dividing up your PageRank between those two.

Those linking to your site could also be linking to these different URLs, thus dividing up your incoming link juice into several URLs instead of one. NOT GOOD!

If your site is hosted on Linux or Unix running Apache (if you don’t know, ask your host), you can fix all these problems by adding a few lines of code to your .htaccess file. (If your site is hosted on Windows, switch to Linux/Unix right away!).

Here’s the code that will fix almost all canonical problems (a fancy name for what we’ve been talking about) on your site (click here for a text version to copy and paste):

Make sure you replace every occurrence of “example.com” with your own domain name and if your home page is something different than index.html (index.php for instance), make sure you change that accordingly.

Your .htaccess file (if you have one) should be located in the root of your web server. Just open the file in any text editor (NotePad or equivalent on Windows, TextEdit or equivalent on Mac), add the code as described above, and save it back to your web server. If you do not have an .htaccess file at the root your web server, just create a blank text file in a text editor, add the code above, and then save it with the filename .htaccess and upload to your server.

Then watch your search engine rankings increase!

Plugin for Adding Videos to Your WordPress Blog

• August 11th, 2007

I just came across a WordPress plugin called My Video that makes it really easy to post YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, and MySpace videos to your WordPress blog. Just go to the My Video download page and download the plugin file to your computer and then upload it to the plugins folder of your WordPress installation. Next, activate the My Video plugin in your WordPress admin section and you’re pretty much done. If you want to change the size of the video, you can go to “Options” in your WordPress admin and easily change the size.

Now you can add any YouTube (or any format mentioned above) video to your blog! Just write a post as you normally would, and then add the following line of code where you want the YouTube video to show up:

[ youtube ] video reference [ /youtube ]

(without the spaces)

The video reference is the string of letters and numbers which YouTube assigns to each video and can be found in the URL of the YouTube page the video appears on as well as in the information box about the video on YouTube’s page (see image below). Have fun!

How Do I Get My Products into Google Base?

• July 26th, 2007

I’m glad you asked! If you read my previous post about Google Base, you’ve already seen how having your products listed there can dramatically increase your exposure in Google’s regular search results.

Getting your products listed is not difficult.

1. Go to http://base.google.com. If you already use Google services such as Google Checkout, Gmail, or Webmaster Central, you can use your Google Account information to sign in to Base. If you don’t use any of the Google services, or if you simply want to keep your Google Base account separate from your Gmail or other Google stuff, just go ahead and create a new account (you’ll need a second email address if you choose this latter option). Once you’ve created your Google Account, go to http://base.google.com and sign in.

2. Once signed in, you will be presented with a drop down menu asking what kind of items you want to list. Choices include products, vehicles, personals, housing, jobs, etc. Because I sell books and DVDs, I chose products. Choose what best fits your item, or create your own item type. Click Next. (If you want to upload your items in bulk, you should click the “Post multiple items with a bulk upload file” link. This option allows you to provide Base with a properly formatted XML file that contains information about all your products. More about this later.)

3. What happens next depends on which item type you chose. Assuming you chose “Products,” you will be presented with a form where you will enter information about your product, such as price, condition, brand, etc. as well as a text box for a full description (HTML allowed) and also a place to upload a picture of your product. You will also be required to supply other information, such as what payment methods you accept, and when the item expires (maximum is 30 days). Click Preview to see what your product will look like in the results pages, Save Draft to save your product without publishing it to Google’s search results, or Publish to go live with your product.

4. That’s it! Just rinse and repeat for each of your products.

Bulk Uploads
This is the way to go if you have more than about twenty products. If you already have your products in some kind of database, find out how to get your product listing into a properly formatted XML file for Google Base. If you are using a shopping cart for online sales, find out if your shopping cart developer has a Google Base plugin available, or if third party developers have created a mod or add-on that adds this functionality. I use the EcommerceTemplates shopping cart, and Mike Beebe, a third party developer, has created Google Base Product Lister, an excellent add-on to the shopping cart which extracts product information from the database and automatically formats it into an XML file. I then upload this XML file to Google Base and within a few hours all my products are published and searchable not only in Google Base but also in Google’s regular search engine results. It literally saves me hours of work.

Google Base Boosts Exposure, Rankings, Sales!

• July 10th, 2007

If you operate an online store or otherwise sell products on the internet, you need to know about Google Base. Formerly known as Froogle, Google Base is an online catalog of products and services for sale over the internet. The BEST thing about Google Base for you as an online merchant or advertiser is that, unlike Yahoo Shopping and other product sites, it’s TOTALLY FREE to list your products! Plus, it can sometimes double, or even triple your exposure on Google’s search engine. Consider this example:

I operate an online store that sells books and DVDs at www.kingsleypress.com. I also operate an eBay store. I submit my product catalog to Google Base every 30 days and have recently added my eBay store inventory to Google Base through what they call the Store Connector, a small piece of software that takes my eBay store listings and plugs them into Google Base at the push of a few buttons. What could be simpler?

What happens next will blow you away! One of the products I sell is a DVD called “The Tanglewood’s Secret DVD.” If you type this into Google’s search engine, you’ll find that I have no less than FIVE positions on the FIRST PAGE of Google’s search results (see screenshot below). Wow! See what I mean about increased exposure?

In the screen shot below, which I took a few minutes ago right from Google’s search results, you’ll see I’ve pointed out and numbered each of my listings in the search results:

Number 1 is my eBay listing through Google Base.
Number 2 is my online store listing through Google Base.
Number 3 is my organic search listing (pulled from GB into regular search listings).
Number 4 is my regular organic search listing.
Number 5 is my secondary organic listing.

That’s a total of FIVE chances I have on that one page that someone will click through and buy the product from my online store as opposed to someone else’s.

In another post I’ll give you some tips on how to get started with Google Base.

Whatever Happened to ImageReady CS3?

• June 12th, 2007

If you’re a web designer and you’ve upgraded to Photoshop CS3, you’ve probably already noticed a glaring omission: ImageReady is no more! I had noticed this, but my curiosity hadn’t driven me very far in finding out where or why it’s gone and what Adobe was planning to replace it with. But then tonight I was reading Scott Kelby’s blog and he linked to an Adobe Technote that explains it all.

Most of ImageReady’s core features have been included in Photoshop CS3. As the above technote explains, you can find the Animation palette under the Window menu as, surprise surprise, the Animation palette. ImageReady features that are NOT available in Photoshop CS3 can apparently be found in Fireworks CS3, which comes as part of the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Bundle (or whatever they call it).

So if you’re used to jumping in and out of ImageReady and you were wondering where it had gone, don’t despair: Adobe has you covered.

Hands-on with Adobe Creative Suite 3

• April 2nd, 2007

March 27th saw the biggest ever software launch in Adobe’s history. I always get excited about Adobe software launches, and this was no exception. One of the first things I did that day was go to the ASN site and see if anything was available for download. It was! Sitting there waiting for my grubby paws was a pre-release version of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium. I downloaded and installed it on two computers (yes, Adobe does allow you to install and use a single user licensed copy of any of its programs on no more than two computers).

I’m extremely happy to report that CS3 runs fine on both my home G4 dual 1ghz MDD and even better on the company’s G5 dual 2ghz. Hardly anything in the way of crashes, bugs or lock-ups to report so far! (I did repair permissions on both machines after installing, but that’s standard procedure after a major software install).

The programs I was most interested in checking out were the new versions of InDesign and Dreamweaver (I’ve been using the beta preview of Photoshop CS3 for weeks now). InDesign just keeps getting better. At first I didn’t like the totally new interface (standard across InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator) with docking “panels” (where are my side-docking palettes! I thought), but the whole concept has really grown on me and I’m staring to actually prefer them over the old palette system! Wow!

What I like most about InDesign CS3 so far are the new effects, and the fact that you can apply these effects independently to different parts of an object. So for instance, if you have a text box, you can easily apply a stroke that has 90% opacity, a fill that has 75% opacity, and text that has 100% opacity. Other effects, such as feather, drop shadow, inner glow, outer glow or bevel & emboss can also be added to any part of the object or text independently. Now that’s what I call cool. And it’s so easy to do with the new Effects panel–which is much like Photoshop’s layer styles panel in appearance.

And did you catch that I just mentioned you can now do Bevel & Emboss, Inner Glow, Outer Glow etc. right in InDesign? Wow! These affects are sometimes inferior to those found in Photoshop, but for many purposes they’ll be all you need.

So what about Dreamweaver CS3? To be honest, I haven’t used it too much yet, but I hear it has all kinds of good stuff. I did notice that it previews CSS layouts better than Dreamweaver 8. And it seems to be just as stable as its predecessor, which is something I really appreciate. Maybe I’ll post more on the new Dreamweaver in a week or two when I’ve been able to put it through its paces a little more.

The Energy Pros Gets Facelift

• March 3rd, 2007

The Energy Pros are a coalition of contractors, manufacturers and builders in Indiana and Kentucky who are working together to educate the public and passionately promote building energy efficient homes. Recently we changed the color scheme on their entire site and put in place a really cool navigation system of sliding panels. This navigation is very search engine friendly as it uses text links in unordered lists–very easy for search engines to find and follow. The magic all happens with some nifty CSS and Javascript.

Why Isn’t My Site Showing Up in Google?

• February 26th, 2007

If your site isn’t showing up in Google’s search results, I’m going to help you find out why and tell you what to do about it.

First of all, though, let’s find out for sure whether or not your site is in Google’s index. If your site doesn’t come up when you type in your company name or your site’s topic it may be that your site just doesn’t rank well for the words you typed in. To find out for sure whether your site is in Google, run this simple test. Type the following into Google’s search box: site:www.mysite.com, replacing mysite.com with your site’s domain name. Also try this without the www. If Google knows about your site, it will return a list of all pages from your site that it has indexed. If no results are returned, your site is not in Google’s index. This blog post is for you!

Possible reasons why your site isn’t in Google:

1. Google simply hasn’t found your site yet. There are two main ways that Google finds out about your web site: you submit your site to Google, or Google finds your site from an incoming link on someone else’s site. To get your site quickly into Google’s index, the best way is to have someone link to your site from a page that you know is being indexed regularly by Google’s spider, googlebot. On it’s next spidering trip, googlebot will follow the link to your site and start exploring and indexing your pages. If you don’t know of anyone who can give you such a link, just submit your site to Google using a Google Sitemap.

2. Google has banned your site. There are a number of reasons why Google sometimes bans sites from its index. The main reason is that it considers your site to be “spamming” its index. If you know that your site has previously been listed by Google but has disappeared from their index, it could be that your site has been banned. If this has happened, contact Google to find out if and why your site has been banned, correct the problem, and wait for Google to re-index your site. Alternatively, you could start your site from scratch on a new domain name and submit/link to your new site to get it indexed. The disadvantage of the latter method is that Google favors older domains and your new site could get sandboxed for anything up to two years.

3. A third possible reason for your site not being in Google’s index is that Google’s spider is having technical problems indexing your site. It may be that it can get no further than the home page. Make sure you are using text links (rather than Javascript or Flash) so that googlebot can easily move through your site.

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