Nov
28
Get Found Now Has A New Look
Filed Under Internet Presence Management, Search Engine Updates | 2 Comments
We are very happy to announce that GetFoundNow.com has been upgraded to a new WordPress system. Now users can comment and ask questions on SEO, WordPress and server technologies like 301 redirects and mod rewrite. This blog will be focusing on Internet Marketing and industry news, while the main Get Found Now website will focus on SEO, WordPress and social network marketing. Feel free to leave comments and ask questions. We work very hard to answer all question promptly and fully. There is also RSS feeds and RSS-to-email newsletter so you can get our latest articles in your inbox.
Get Found Now has been working on social network marketing and SEO for years. We hope to share with our visitors our past and present successes and failures. The process of changing GetFoundNow.com from a static html website to a WordPress system was done while the site was live and took place behind the scenes. When we notified Google of the changes through their Webmaster Tools, it took Google less than a week to cache the new site. This is significant in that Google’s response time has quickened over the last couple of months. They are updating and caching sites at a remarkable rate, I have also noted that their Page Rank updates are happening on a page level almost simultaneously to their major index updates. This is also new behavior. My nest article will break down what Google has been saying publicly and how it will effect our placement. Visit our home page for more information on social network marketing. You might also want to take a look at our new SEO Training Portal SEO BY YOU. It will be up and fully functioning in a couple of weeks. Feel free to leave a comment!
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Nov
14
WordPress and Google - Social Network Marketing Meets SEO
Filed Under Search Engine Optimization, Social Network Marketing, WordPress SEO | 26 Comments
By now you all know that I am a strong proponent of WordPress, and using it along with quality content, is a recipe for success. The only problem that I have with WordPress is its self titled moniker, “just another WordPress weblog”. They are selling themselves short by sticking to the label: blogging platform. In reality WordPress is a very powerful content management system with powerful social network marketing tools and a solid SEO foundation, all things that Google loves. The key to success in Google is three-fold: quality content, inbound links and discussion. WordPress does all of those things, and does them well.
If you already have a website, the best game plan is to add a WordPress system as a directory using a quality keyword and having the directory as close to the root as possible. An example would be companyname.com/keyword/. If your domain already has your main keyword in it, don’t make the mistake of using it again as the name of your WordPress directory. In the unlikely event that you don’t already have a website for your business, then WordPress is a great stand-alone system to get going online. If you have a website, but it is under performing, flipping your site to a WordPress system will give you an incredible boost in the SERPS without taking forever for you to see results. Be clear about this one point though, if you choose WordPress as your content management system, you will have to create quality content on a regular basis.
Social Network Marketing as an SEO Tool
The concept of social network marketing as a powerful SEO tool died before it could become a reality when social networks bowed to Google and nofollowed their users outbound links. The fact is social networks that are related to business can still benefit a website through backlinks, but mainstream sites like Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Delicious, etc. do not pass on link juice. This is an attempt by Google and other search engines to weed out spammers who use social networks to raise their inbound links through spam. On one hand I applaud this, but on the other I find it annoying since I have useful content, but can’t promote it on social networks. The bottom line is that the only way to succeed is to create content that your users will link to. You also need to open discussion on your site through comments. We offer plans that kick start commenting. Even though commenting is pretty anonymous, people still feel weird about being the first person to leave a comment or ask what they feel to be a stupid question. Get Found Now researches your content and asks the right questions that you answer promptly. Once the comments start flowing they snowball into a lot of organic activity that will naturally increase your rankings. It’s like your first high school dance,no one wants to be the first one to be on the dance floor. That is why we have come up with a service that gets the discussion going on your WordPress system. Owning The Discussion and Branding Through SEO is an article I wrote a while back that was inspired by Google’s CEO calling the Internet a cesspool. The thing is, he is right, there is so much spam and weak user generated content out there that it is hard for legitimate websites to compete. Again, it is all about content!
If you have any questions about how to go about writing engaging content, getting discussion rolling on your website, WordPress blog design, or social network marketing give me a call at 866-418-3843 or post a comment below.
WordPress comes equipped with a powerful toolset for social network marketing and SEO. By using specific plugins as well as features already inherent to WordPress, you can set your system up to dominate the SERPS. The first place to start is deciding on which content you want to display to the search engines. There are two place to start with that:
- Robots.txt File for WordPress SEO - the robots.txt file is where you notify the search engines where your sitemaps are as well as which pages, posts or directories that you don’t want the search engines to go. this holds true for all websites, not just WordPress sites. Leave a comment below if you have questions about robots.txt files.
- On Page Meta Robots Tags- there are meta tags available that will control spiders and how they INDEX and FOLLOW both the content on the page as well as the links that are on the page. The truth is this subject warrants an entire post, but for now I will give you a quick overview. I use a plugin called All In One SEO Pack that will control on page Meta Robots Tags for category page, tag pages, archives and all posts and pages. All of those things lead down a dangerous path of duplicate content. You have to choose which content you are going to show the spiders. I am running 2 tests right now. One that is excluding everything but the original post and tag pages, and another one that is showing just categories and the post. The key here is to limit the amount of content shown on tag pages or category pages to just the tile and the first 300 or so characters. Even though that is not how my site is set up, you can see it in action at dtidata.com/resourcecenter where the category test is taking place. I am launching a new site called seobyyou.com where I will be testing the tag theory. I will keep everyone up to date on how the test goes. The initial results are leaning to the tag pages being opened up because there is more potential for keyword benefits because there are so many more tags.The basic game plan for pages that you don’t want spidered is to use the NOINDEX FOLLOW argument in on page meta tags. All In One SEO Pack does that, but you also have to coordinate that activity with your sitemap tool. In other words you don’t want to put archive and category pages in your sitemap and then tell spiders not to index them. This also holds true for all types of websites, you just have to do it manually. Leave a comment below if you have any questions.
Once you have identified what content you want to show the search engines and you have set up your road maps (sitemaps) and stop signs (robots.txt), you have given Google what it wants, an easy way to spider your site!
The next step is to incorporate into your sidebars links out to your recent comments, most popular posts and latest posts. You will have to tweak your files to insure that WordPress is not nofollowing your links from the sidebars into the recent comments, latest posts and most popular posts. The goal here is to show Google that there is discussion going on within your site. By answering comments quickly and giving good information, you will get inbound links, that is a fact.
If you have any questions or would like to set up a FREE no obligation report on your WordPress SEO, call 866-418-3843 or leave a comment below.
Nov
6
PRO Domain Extension Will Weed Out Spam And Rank High In Google
Filed Under Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Updates | 13 Comments
If you have been in the Internet business as long as I have, then you know that domain extensions come and go without making a dent in the rankings of .com and .org websites. The .net extension has performed the best out of all the non dot com domains, but clearly not anywhere near a .com.
Enter the .pro domain extension. I haven’t seen as much talk about it as I expected even though it has been out for months. I suppose that professionals online don’t feel it will crack the dominance of traditional .com’s. The fact is .pro will not only rank high, but has the potential to take rankings away from the vaunted .com domain extension.
Why You Shouldn’t Ignore .PRO Domain Extensions
If you are a professional and have a brick and mortar business, you absolutely must grab your .pro domain. I was astonished to see how many important domains were still available. You must have a business license to keep your domain. If you don’t provide them with a business license along with the licensing entity within 44 days you will loose the domain and they won’t refund the money. Since .pro domains are not available through wholesalers like godaddy, you will have to use Network Solutions or another registrar. You can get a list of .pro registrars here.
Fell free to leave a comment if you have any questions about .pro domains. I have 2 sites that have just been released and will keep everyone updated on their progress. Once they are in the SERPS I will put up links to them.
Nov
5
Google Toolbar Spell Check Problems In WordPress
Filed Under Basic Blogging, WordPress SEO | 3 Comments
If you are like me, you prefer the Google Toolbar Spell Check over the WordPress Spelling Checker. Lately I have found some problems involving Google’s Spell Check and WordPress in visual mode. After I ran a spell check, all the words that were incorrect or that were names that weren’t in the dictionary appeared red with an underline. The problem is that it kept the red lines and underlines immediately after WordPress auto-saved. After I turned the Spell Check off, it made matters worse by adding the misspelled word again.
This was a major pain in the butt. I had to go into HTML view to remove the bad code. Fortunately I found the answer. Below is a graphic that shows how to access all writing tools so you can remove the formatting which will get rid of the red and green lines in WordPress:
WordPress Toolbar Remove Formatting
This will work for those of you that have had this problem, but in the future I suggest that you write your article in Text Pad and paste it in when you are done. My wife wrote an article on Content Writing Made Easy Using A Text Documentthat shows how we prepare content. You can also use the WordPress spell check or better yet FireFox. You can add dictionaries to FireFox and add words that it thinks are misspelled by clicking “add to dictionary” when you right click on a misspelled word.
Leave a question below and we will answer it quickly.