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How to Find Your Best Domain Name

Filed Under: Webdesign

After a long time of inactivity on this Blog, I just got started again.
Coming back to you while setting up a new WordPress website to write some stuff about finding your best domain name.

First of all, did you do your homework on finding the right keywords?
You will need them in this process, or not :-)

You see, there a two ways to go about this domain name searching, one is to incorporate your main keyword in the domain name, like -SEO for instance.
The other one is to look for a domain name that is short and sweet and easy to remember.

Using Keywords in Your Domain Name

The best option, of course, would be to have both… like wordpressseo.net which is short, easy to remember and contains the two main keywords Joomla and SEO.
Problem with this now would be that WordPress is more protected than before and the use of WordPress in a domain name should be approved by the Automatic.

This is just an example of how you need to think about using a brand name in your domain URL.
Amazon for instance and Google will contact you and start asking you to give that domain name to them since they are the holders of this registered trademark.
So be careful if you want to do that, or get permissions first!

Better is to look for a domain name that is simple and gets the right idea and stickiness to it, like alledia.com (now Joomlaschak.com) which is short, sounds good an is through its website content is now seen as one of the best sources for Joomla SEO.

As you can see, there is no Joomla and no SEO in the domain name itself, it is the content that works to boost its visitors and rankings in the SERPs.

Google doesn’t care much about domain names Yahoo and Bing.com however still give you some points for having keywords in your domain.
I have a website about Network Documentation (I am an ICT Manager in my Daily work…)  and it used to rank nr one in Bing.com and nr three in Yahoo, just because of the domain name….

I checked Google as well, but could not find it n the first 10 ! pages… so I need to do a lot of work there (it’s a now a WordPress site and I am still learning SEO for WordPress as I go along)

Did you also see the main competition? and yes, networkdocumentation.com was already taken so they have a head start on me.
For my own domain name, I had to do a re-inclusion request at Google, since it was a spam site before I got it.
So here is a tip: if you have found a nice domain name and it is free! (check that first with your hosting provider) go to www.archive.org and use the “Wayback machine” tool to see if it was used before and how it looked like. That is how I found out why I couldn’t get it into Google at all in the first place.

Short and sweet Domain names

You could also do some brainstorming sessions to get spunky names or if you are trying to build a brand on the Internet use that brand name.
Like Alledia or Hummerbie as a simple example.

Just make sure the names are short and use a good keyword rich title for your website since you now want people to use a link to you with the keyword you target.
Mostly they will use the title of your site to create a link. So for this Blog, you could link to Joomla SEO Blog but you also could use that same link title to link to Joomla SEO Blog ;-)

Use your imagination and you will see how creative you really can be once you start throwing your ideas on a white-board or a piece of paper (electric ones work fine too).

Domain Extensions

A short paragraph on domain extensions or tld’s, you know, the endings of a domain name?

There are a lot of them and it looks like there are going to be even more if all plans as expected.
The best ones for an international market are .com .net .org which are simply the bests tld’s.
But they could be taken and you need to venture out to other tld’s or choose another name.

.info is not that good since some people think if you use that it is a spam site (I wonder why..)
You could also look at some foreign ones like .tv (expensive) or .it but those are just gadget like domains.
.mobi does work very well if you target mobile users.

What works best in extensions is to choose a tld that is locale to the market you want to target.
I use a .nl tld for my dutch web websites and that works great.

In conclusion: look at your competitors and what they use, look at your keywords list and be creative in finding that domain name that works for you!

P.s. If you have some great ideas on how to ease this process, don’t hesitate to throw them into the comments.

Holiday Thinking and Optimization

Filed Under: Joomla Seo, Optimization, Search Engine, SEO, Webdesign

I got back from a short Holiday a few days ago.

You might have the same problem I had to get started again with work and business, and getting through ton’s of E-Mail.
Not even all off them where spam.. but there where some nice ones that made it OK.

One of the Things I did on my vacation was to read a book.. yes I do sometimes, especially if you have NO Internet connection on you holiday address.

But was it relaxing, yes and no, the reading first was somewhat hard to get into the subject, but once the basics were done, the good stuff showed up.
And now I have to work on the subjects and insights I gained… so should you!

It was an eye opener and pleasing to read as well, this book will definitely by my site if I am going to evaluate my sites and that of my customers.

But there where also some chapters that luckily confirmed my ideas and give not only insight in how to make a site more usable for the visitors, but also for search engine spiders!.

What book? Well of course the book that does make you think!

Is your website Search Engine Friendly or already Search Engine Optimized?

Filed Under: Joomla, Joomla Seo, Optimization, Search Engine, SEF, SEO, SEO Optimization, Webdesign, WordPress

I like Joomla, Drupal, WordPress and Typo3, all Open Source Content Management Systems.
But which ones are Search Engine Friendly? Or are they Search Engine Optimized?

To be honest, Joomla in the latest version 1.0.12 is not Search Engine Friendly, the new Beta 1.5 version is much more Friendly from a Search Engine Point of view.
For the current version you have a lot of work to do before its Friendly enough.
Drupal and Typo3 are already more SEF, and WordPress is the easiest to work with if it comes to creating and using a Search Engine Friendly system.

So Joomla is the worst at the moment, but I love it because its so easy to work with from a content creation point of view.
Besides that, there are a lot of free components, modules and Plugins that can help you in making it SEF.

Search Engine Friendly and Search Engine Optimized 

Did you notice, I never said any of them being Search Engine Optimized…
That is because I totally agree with Joost van der Valk in his post on Search Engine Friendly vs Search Engine Optimized

Also the post that inspired him by Joe Dolson is a great read on the topic of SEO versus SEF, which in turn was written as a reply to a post by Stony de Gruyter.

Then Gary of Phoenixrealm wrote a Post on Content Management Systems and SEF and SEO to point to the make sure that your CMS of choice should be Search Engine Friendly.

But just a Search Engine Friendly Content Management System doesn´t mean its Optimized!
Some Buro´s think just making your site SEF is enough to make it Optimized… no way..
As Joost pointed out, Optimization takes a lot more effort then just making a website completely search engine friendly.
Optimization is in the details, in the little things and learning from tracking and evaluating your changes and there effects.

Search Engine Optimization is delicate work and you need a lot of knowledge to get the job done.
Its also not a static one-time effort, it takes a lot more than just that to get good ranking and stay on top with your results.
So why waste the SEO´s time to make a site Friendly?

Educate the designers and Site builders

Just make sure that your site builders and designers have a basic knowledge about Search Engine Optimization to get the best results if your have to hire an Professional Search Engine Optimizer!

The basics are not that difficult to learn, like the comment op the post of Joost by Ruben Timmerman mentioning that a web developer should know that the title tag of each page should be into the H1 tag.
It should be basic knownledge of your designer on how to work these things into there designs.

There are companies out on the web promoting there SEO Services who don’t have a clue what SEO really is.
I have seen some websites from “Search Engine Optimization” firms that are so NOT optimized that I would never give them that part of business..

But the main thing is, looking at those content management systems that they all use templates.
Templates designed by Professional designers, who have no clue about Search Engine Optimization.

So its not just the developer that needs to be educated, please focus on the designers as well!
They are the ones that can make the efforts of your Optimizer much easier, by already creating Templates that need little to no work the make the site Search Engine Friendly.

Not only for Joomla, Drupal and Typo3 websites, but also for WordPress, as there are some Themes that need to be worked at to make them Search Engine Optimized…
And as Joost pointed out, those are just the simple mistakes that need to be corrected to make you website Optimized for Search Engines.

Do You like to Cheat and Love Jack Daniels?

Filed Under: Optimization, SEO, Webdesign

As You might be working on your customers new website, checking the Coding and Colours to fit, you sometimes need some fast update for your knowledge.

You knew there was some code to do that special kind of thing that would work great on the new website.
But what was this again? something like.. or.. no, that’s not it..

What I like to do at those moments, late at night, working on this nice problem, is to get a Glass of Jack Daniels.

And now? Now you have to love Jack Daniels even more …

Please check out this great help he is providing on Cheating with the “Jack Daniels Cheat Sheets”.

And If you are not intressted in coding, you should.., check  online-marketing-for-beginners

P.s. Keep the sheets close at hand, you will need them soon..

Why I love Opera

Filed Under: Optimization, SEO, SEO Optimization, Webdesign

No, I don’t mean the music of an Opera, although I sometimes like to listen to one or two…, no, I mean The Browser!

Do you use Opera to check your website, how it looks and responds to another browser?
Cool right? And fast to, but there is more to Opera than you see at first Glance.It’s a Great tool for Checking your Search Engine Optimization.

And its now Free as well, back in the “old”days you had to pay for it, but that’s long past.
Download Opera if you don’t already got it and try some of the nice features I will describe here for you.First check the author part dropdown list of what you can do when checking your website.

Check it in a text browser form, it will strip away all eye-candy and exposes what a search engine spider sees.

Opera as text browser

Check your site for Accesiblity, to make sure everyone can read the site, or have it read by a program!

Opera SEO view
And there is much more, try all these nice options and see wat works for you and your website.
O yes, where to get it!

Just follow the picture on the right……
Or just go to www.opera.com
Have Fun and Learn

Home of the Opera Browser

Tools to check your website Search Engine Optimization.

Filed Under: Joomla Seo, Optimization, Search Engine, SEO, SEO Optimization, Webdesign

I recently run into some great tools I would like to share with you.

Maybe you have heard or used them before, so this is a reminder ?

You can use these tools on-line and check several things that can go wrong with your site…
I found several on mine…

First : http://www.octagate.com/service/SiteTimer/

Just checking the loading times of each element of your page, images or external links that slow down your page loading time. (Thanks to www.Alledia.com Blog)
This one could bring you to redesign your website layout or, in case of Joomla, finally get an Search Engine Optimized template..

Second: http://www.seoegghead.com/tools/what-is-hosted-on-that-ip.php

To see what other domains are running on your shared web hosting server…
Very interesting finds… to see which high volume traffic site is eating away your download time.

Third: http://www.instantposition.com/seotest.php

Basic check on Server, Title Tag, Meta Keywords Tag and Meta Description Tag…
Nice layout of the score, and with advice if you got some things wrong.

No, I won’t tell you for which website the score below was …

Seo Test score

Fourth: http://tools.seobook.com/general/spider-test/

Just to see what the Search Engine Spiders see, so you know that you have lot of work to do on your SEO Copywriting (Read www.copyblogger.com)

Of course there are a lot more out there to play with !
These are just my favorites at the moment….. lets see how fast you can change my mindset on these tools!

If you have any other Free on-line SEO tools, please post them in the comments for us al to learn more about the websites we build.

P.s. With all these tools you have to keep your own mind as the basic guideline to what works best for you and your website.

Working your Images into Search Engine Optimization

Filed Under: Joomla, Joomla Seo, Optimization, Search Engines, SEO, SEO Articles, SEO Optimization, Webdesign

Now everybody likes images, right…
Sometimes an image can make a better impact on your visitor then just text.
But what on earth have Images to do with SEO?

Images and SEO

Look at the images you use in articles on your website.
How did you put them in there, and what else did you do with it?

Some people don’t think that what I am going to tell you is worth all the trouble…
I think you should work on providing the best content on your site for everybody, and make the most of it to get your site into the search engines.
Both can be accomplished by optimization your images and the use of them.
But first things first.

Naming your Images.

If you incorporated some images into your site, did you just uploaded your pictures from your camera, or what you received from your client?

Or did you rename them from DSC20071302.jpg or IMG_12548.jpg to something more meaning full like Keyword-Included-fits-the-picture.jpg
And please use – instead of _ for your picture names…

If you did the later, you have one point up from the rest of many websites.

The benefit not only goes to getting an extra keyword into your page, but its also much easier for the Search Engines to index your images on keywords searches.

Yes, people are more and more using these image based searches from Live.com, Yahoo and Google.
So you might get some of your visitors from there, although they might not be the real target visitors for your website… unless you have a website with mostly images..

Optimizing you images

If you have images makes sure the have the right size for your website.
That means that, if you have an image that is 1600×1280 pixels you should not squeeze it into an 540×320 box…, yes I know people do this all the time.

The image has to be loaded completely before it is rendered to the size you want it to display.
If you make the images in the actual size you want to use them, you have a much faster loading page then if you let a browser do it.
(A great free tool to do this irfanview, which give great result in maintaining sharpness)Software for Image optimization

The use of .jpg, .png or .gif depends on what type of image you want to use.
That is mostly a matter of trying several setting.
My choice for pictures is .jpg for icons and stuff its mostly .gif
Ground rule for me is: If there are a lot of different colours in the picture I use .jpg otherwise .gif

Putting in the Image Tags

Now you have come to the fun part….

If you place images on you website, I also depends on to tools you use to make those pages.
Some of the tools you use on creating webpages, or online wysiwig editors do assist you in putting in the right tags and parameters.
For Joomla you might find the JoomlaFCK editor to be one of the best.

Otherwise you have go into the HTML coding to place them.
Here are the three key parameters for your images:
– Size
– alt tags
– title tag

Always give the size height=” ” and width=” ” tags with your images !!
This way the browser you are using can reserve space for the image while loading it, in the mean time it will bring in the text.
Your visitor can start reading while the image is loaded, so the impression is a fast loading page.

The Alt tag is used for two reasons:
One –  the alt tag is displayed if the user has the image loading function set to off.
Two –  a text based browser will show the alt tag instead if the image itself, just like a “normal” search engine spider would look at the content of your page.

Title tag is what is shown as info tip when you hover over a picture, thus providing also more information to your visitors.

A complete image tag then can read like:
< img title=”title tag” alt=”alt tag” height=”96″ width=”128″ src=”http://www.itmentor.nl/images/stories/articles.jpg” / >

Things not to do with Images and SEO

Here are a few pointers on what not to do if you are optimizing your images for SEO.
– Don’t use meaningless pictures, they should fit your topic.
– Don’t stuff you picture naming full of keywords
– Don’t stuff you “alt” and “title” tags full of keywords !! it will be noticed, provide meaning full descriptions.
– Don’t use large pictures if its not necessary.

Wrapping it up:
Use that littly extra time, just a few seconds to implement this for every image you use.
Make sure spiders can access your image directory by removing the disallow part form your robots.txt file if you have one.

Have fun taking an sharing your pictures !
And if you need inspiration, visit www.flickr.com, tons of great pictures…

Joomla or WordPress? Which one to Choose?

Filed Under: Joomla, Joomla Seo, Optimization, SEO, Webdesign, WordPress

Update! This post will tell you how to use WordPress and Joomla together for better SEO results. If you are looking for some ideas on how to choose between the two, you could read the Page How to choose between WordPress and Joomla!

If you look at these Opensource Content management systems, then people use them for Blogging and Building websites.

Joomla
Now Joomla with al its extensions is great for building a good solid website with all the features you want. And you can bring it to high rankings in the search eninges as well, if you start with the proper technical improvements.

Templates in Joomla make it easy to get a good layout for the site, and you can find lots of good free Joomla templates. For a good business website I suggest you look for a good commercial template based on a Table less design with external css files.

WordPress
For Blogging you cannot beat WordPress, especially if you do the right setup, making the permalinks work right the .htaccess file and set the options to /%postname%/. Creating posts and giving it the special keyword tags is really easy.

Templates for WordPress are also very easy to obtain and to implement. Besides that…Google loves WordPress Blogs

My advice?

Use them both!!
Setup your main site in Joomla! and start working on the content, create good quality content.
In a sub directory, or a subdomain, install WordPress and start blogging, using the keywords you also use for your website.

WordPress with its create SEF functions and categories will bring you traffic, this traffic reflects to your main domain.

And with the content on your main website, you work to keep your visitors captured and make them come back.

Yes, I know there is a great Component to integrate WordPress in Joomla from j-prosolution.com (Site is no longer available, but a great Premium replacement that can be Found on corePHP) and I use it also on my website www.pathos-seo.com  And if that is not enough, they even use it for the news via blogs on http://www.joomla.org/ !!

Still I like the separate installation better, because there are more features I can use for Search Engine Marketing and Viral marketing.

In my short experience with combining them that the combination of Joomla and WordPress are a killer combination for getting High Search Engine Ranking!

Beginning Joomla!: From Novice to Professional WordPress Complete: set up, customize, and market your blog

Sitemap.xml standard like Robots.txt for Google, Live and Yahoo and Others

Filed Under: Joomla, Joomla Seo, Optimization, SEO, Webdesign

If you think the big three Search Engines cannot work together, just read this post

Google, Yahoo and MSN Team Up for Sitemaps.org 

So I went ahead and checked out http://www.sitemaps.org/
The protocol is just one line of of the Google sitemap, just the definition line is different.

Now I have several sites, including a recent one.
Since that has not much visitors yet, I decided to run a test there :-)

Testing the new Sitemaps protocol.
It is a Joomla based website with the Open-Sef component.
For You who don’t know this component, it has a build in Google Sitemap XML creator.

I generated the file which I now have named sitemap.xml instead of gsitemap.xml.
The generated file has the google definition, so I needed to change that.

Downloaded the file, changed the protocol header to xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 and uploaded the file again.

Via Google’s webmaster central I did a resubmit to see if I got any errors.

Result: No Errors, It worked straight away.

Went over to Yahoo’s site explorer, which already has a backlink to Sitemaps.org !
Put in the path to the sitemap.xml file in the Feed….
It didn’t give me any errors….

For Live.com I am waiting and reading Live Search Weblog to see how they progress at Microsoft.

Work Sitemap.xml the same way as Robots.txt  

What I would Like most for all of them to do, is working this thing like the robots.txt file!!!!

You Guys and Girls making this a standard, take some of our labour away from saying where and how the file is placed.

Make it a standard crawl !! Instruct your robots to look for a file called sitemap.xml the way they look for robots.txt.

Now that would be really, really Cool.

Robots.txt tells the spider what not to crawl, Sitemap.xml tells them what they should crawl…
Then it would be a real win-win situation and we would even benefit more from this initiative.

Update !! Read Autodiscovery of Sitemap.xml via Robots.txt

Is Google Custom Search Engine a new SEO Tool or Threat

Filed Under: Joomla, Joomla Seo, Optimization, SEO, Webdesign

Google has brought us webmasters a new and exicting tool !

Google Custom Search Engine, with this option you can promote some websites you think should be better found because of the content they have on a the specific subject of your website.

You think they don’t get enough results on that special search term, but you know there content is of high quality and they should be in the top results……

Well, now you can help those website to get into the top, on your own search engine that is…

The process of creating and implementing the Google Custom Search Engine is pretty simpel, leave it to Google to make it work that way.

I even placed it in my pathos-seo.com Joomla website without any problems
And there is also a Tutorial on How to Integrate Google CSE Custom Search Engine in Joomla

So, a new cool feature..
But what is in it for Google?

  1. They get to Us with a new feature we can use, so we give them credit for it , so they create some Goodwill.
  2. Google gets an extra platform from us to place their Adwords Adsense promotionel links, that brings (us* and) them more money….
  3. We provide them with highly rated websites on specifick keywords….they analyse their database and find there are some websites with authority that people put into the sites section of there custom search eninge…social networking on a new level…
  4. The database gives better search results, that benefit us all.

So if your website is stored in the favorites sites section of a Custom Search Engine, does that boost you ranking?
If so, how many links do you need?

How much weight does it get in the long run, and do our Search Engine Optimization technics still bring the same results?

Is it a new factor we should look at as a Blessing, a Tool or a Threat?

* If you have an adsense account and set the right option in your control panel.