77 Web Solutions

Google recently announced that it now allows people to create and manage a profile page. This feature displays a link with minimal contact information and photo (if you add a photo to your profile) at the bottom of the Google search results page when someone “Googles” your name.

For example, if you search for “Scott Quarterman” you will now see a link to my profile page come up at the bottom of the search results page.

Why is this important you ask?

Well, it’s another opportunity to get a link back to your website, and it allows you post any personal information about yourself that you would like others to see. It also includes links back to other profiles you may have on social networking sites such as Linked In, Facebook and more.

How do you  get your own Google Profile?

It’s very simple and quick. Simply, go to the Google Profile page and follow the instructions. Within a few minutes you’ll have your own Google Profile to show the world when they “Google” your name.

There is also a minor attempt by Google to make this feature “social” by allowing you to share certain parts of your profile with people you know. Frankly, I’m not sure why anyone would want this feature.

I see this as one way to control what personal information the world sees about you when you are “Googled”.

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Recently, Google announced that it was extending the sitelink functionality for listings beyond the first listing.

What is a Google sitelink you ask?

A sitelink is a list of page links that may or may not be showing up below your Google search results listing. If your website is number one on a search result page, chances are your listing has sitelinks showing. Below is an example of the sitelinks for the NASA.gov page.

What’s new with Google sitelinks?

Now Google will be displaying a row of three or four page links below your website description row and above the website URL row. These links will go to the top pages in your site that Google deems appropriate.

What does this mean for my website?

If your website shows up in the top three positions of a Google search results page you will now get additional exposure to deeper pages within your site. This was not available previously unless your listing was in the top spot.

What if you don’t want a page showing in your sitelinks?

Simply sign in to Google Webmaster Tools (if you don’t have a Google Webmaster Tools account create one immediately) and go to the Links/Sitelinks page and click the “[Block]” link next to your listing. Find out more about managing your Google sitelinks.

If you need help getting your website showing up in Google search results please contact us.

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Having properly formatted URLs (filenames for pages on your website) will help search engines such as Google crawl your site more efficiently and will help visitors understand the content within the site.

What are some good practices to creating search friendly URLs?

1) Use keywords in your URL. Be sure the keywords are relative to the specific page and that users are searching for these keywords.

For example (shoe store example): http://www.yourdomainname.com/shoes.htm

NOT: http://www.yourdomainname.com/ae98653lksdfuoir908.htm

If your website dynamically creates URLs for your pages (some content management systems do this), be sure to rewrite these URLs as they are posted to your web server.

2) Use multiple keywords words. Be as descriptive as you can when creating the URL, without having too many words. Of course make sure it’s relative to the content of the page.

For example: http://www.yourdomainname.com/green-shoes.htm

3) Separate words with a dash. Search engines like Google prefer that you use a dash (“-”) between the words in your URL and not an underscore (“_”). And do not put words together.

For example: http://www.yourdomainname.com/green-shoes.htm

NOT: http://www.yourdomainname.com/green_shoes.htm

NOT: http://www.yourdomainname.com/greenshoes.htm

4) Create a simple directory structure. This means create a relatively flat folder structure in your website. Don’t make the search crawlers keep going deeper and deeper into your directory structure.

For example: http://www.yourdomainname.com/walking-shoes/green-shoes.htm

NOT: http://www.yourdomainname.com/shoes/walking/small/green/withlaces/green-shoes.htm

Following these simple steps when planning and creating your website URLs will help the search engines crawl your site easier and will help your users better understand what content the page contains.

If you need help creating search engine friendly URLs please contact us.

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Yesterday (April 7, 2009), 77 Web Solutions launched the latest edition of the Fortress Roofing website. You can view the site at www.fortress-roofing.com.

Fortress Roofing came to us looking for a completely new website including a contemporary look and feel, new content, and better search engine rankings.

Their previous site was built using a templated design, had minimal content, and was not ranking very well with the search engines.

We updated their site with a new design and fresh content including; a Healthy Roof Guide to help consumers understand all the details of roofing materials and terminology, a Portfolio to see roofing installations provided by Fortress Roofing, and customer Testimonials from satisfied customers.

If you need a new website design or search engine optimization services please contact us.

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If you’re a small business owner you know that getting your website to show up on the first page of Google search results is critical. Especially, if you have a new website without much traffic.

We recently created a new website for Home and Stucco Inspections in Norcross, GA. They are a small business that specializes in home inspections in the Norcross, GA area. They have been in business for a number of years but have not had a website until now.

We optimized their website for keywords such as “home inspections norcross”.  We also had them add their business profile to Google Local and include their new website address. Within a matter of a week or two their listing was showing in the #2 spot for the keyword “home inspections norcross”.

How do you do this? Well, the answer is very simple and one that anyone can do. Just follow the steps below.

1) Go to the Google Local Business Center

2) Sign in using your Google account. If you don’t have a Google account you will need to create one.

3) Follow the instructions. It just has you fill out contact information about your business. Don’t forget to include your website address. It also allows you to create coupons.

When you’re done filling out all the information, Google will place an automated call to the phone number you have listed on the account to verify the account information. Once that’s done your listing should show up within a week or two.

If you need assistance with any of this please contact us for help.

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The next WordPress and SEO tip that I would like to discuss is permalinks.

Permalinks are not a plugin but a setting within WordPress that will help the search engines better understand the content within your page.

Permalinks are permanent links to your blog posts. By default WordPress produces an “ugly” URL for your post. One that may look like this:

http://example.com/?p=N

The search engines can read this URL but it’s not very relative to the content of your post. They prefer a URL that looks more like this:

http://example.com/category/post-name/

Follow the steps below to activate the permalinks setting in your WordPress blog:

1. Sign in to your WordPress admin site.
2. Go to the Settings section and click on the Permalinks page.
3. Under the Common Settings section the “Day and name” option is selected.
4. Select Custom Structure and enter the following text and click the Save Changes button:
   /%category%/%postname%/

Now you will have “pretty” URLs for the search engines. Which will help the search engines index your posts properly and will help others identify the content of your post with just the URL.

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So now you’ve got a WordPress blog created and you’re ready to share it with the world. What’s next? There are a few must have plugins that are needed to make your blog search engine friendly. Without these plugins search engines such as Google and Yahoo! may not find your blog.

1) All in One SEO Pack Plugin – The first WordPress plugin that I recommend for search engine optimization of your WordPress blog is the “All in One SEO Pack” plugin. This WordPress plugin automatically adds and optimizes your page titles for the search engines for each and every page on your site. It also generates the needed meta tags in the code of each of these pages. What’s nice is that you can override the title and meta tags for these pages if you need to.

This is a “must-have” WordPress SEO plugin that will help with getting your blog pages indexing properly in the search engines. Just click on the link above and follow the installation instructions.

I will post more WordPress SEO tips tomorrow… stay tuned.

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Joomla is a very powerful content management system with the capability to create just about any kind of website. It also has some features that allow you to perform search engine optimization on your pages quite easily. Specifically, you can quite easily edit the meta description and meta keywords for each page (article) within your site.

However, they overlooked the most powerful change needed in SEO – the ability to change the “page title” or the title that appears at the top of the browser menu. This is the text that Google uses (in most cases) to display the link to your page. It also uses this text as one of the factors it weights on calculating importance for the person performing the search.

Here are a couple things that I found that allow Joomla to change page titles for you:

Home page - You would think that this one would be obvious but it’s not. To change the page title on your home page follow these instructions:

• Open your Joomla administration site.
• Go to “Menus” and select your default menu (should have an * next to it).
• Click the default menu item (the one with a star next to it).
• Open the “Parameter (Systems)” link on the left.
• Input your page title into the “Page Title” field.
• Save your changes.

Now you should see your updated page title showing on your site.

All other pages – This is where Joomla swings and misses. All the other pages in your site do not allow for you to change the page title without adding a plugin to do so. Follow these steps to change the page title on all the other pages within your site:

• Download the Tag Meta plugin
• Install the plugin – Go to “Extensions/Install/Uninstall”. You will need to unzip the downloaded file and install the 2 .zip files separately.
• Enter each page that you wish to change the page title – Go to “Components/Tag Meta/Items” and add each page individually.

This method works but is not the most time efficient method. It would be nice if someone allowed us to have a Page Title field in the same place as the meta description and meta keyword fields in the “Meta Data Information” section of each title.

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