Website Beginners Guide

Learn How to Start Your Own Internet Site & More

Website Clean Up in Progress

Filed Under: SEO, WordPress

I like Yoast.com, not only for the great WordPress SEO plugin, but also the blog. On that blog several people write new articles and this last one, from Joost de Valk himself, on website maintenance was not only a great read, but a real eye-opener for me.

Since I merged some blogs I had into this site you did not see much new articles. The site's ranking and number of visitors declined as well as a result of that lack of activity.

Now I am taking Yoast's advice to do some Website Maintenance and Clean Up of Old Posts. When I now look back at the articles on this site I see that the oldest articles are way back from 2006.

And yes, a lot of them are outdated, some are still relevant but could use some TLC. So now I have to decide if I just will delete them, if I will merge some of them into a bigger article or update them with the latest knowledge. Of course I also need to decided which ones I want to redirect after the deletion or not.

To see what are the most visited pages and articles you can go into Google Webmaster tools and Google analytic's, if you have implemented that. So that will be a great help during the clean up process.

Those most visited pages will most certainly stay, but probably need to be updated.

Others really are going to be tossed as they no longer are relevant like news on the release version of Joomla! prior to Joomla! 2.5.x and 3.x.

Website Clean Up

Website Clean Up Results Impact on SEO

For me the biggest challenge of this clean-up is to make sure the result that this site clean up will improve for the benefit of the visitors. They will, hopefully, get better info to solve their problems and the site will contain more relevant up-to-date information.

As for myself, it will be a mirror to check my own progress over the years, both in knowledge as well as in writing English.

What is the biggest risk factor as it comes to SEO? I don't know yet, it's a challenge. I will most redirect the old url's for post that will be merged, but I will have some articles that I will simply delete.

By deleting them the site gets smaller, but as the other articles will become more relevant. Hopefully that will give more authority to the site  so ranking will improve and visitor numbers will grow.

Editorial Calender & Schedule Plugin

One other thing I implement on this site is an Editorial Calender plugin. You can simply install it and check on your post schedule in a visual overview.

For me its a great way to schedule new posts, but also set a posting schedule that can be maintained much easier. You can make short notes and some title suggestions on ideas and set the base for any articles you want to write. Those short notes will be saved as Draft articles.

You can see in your schedule overview when it needs to be done and you can write ahead and release them automatically using WordPress planning option.

Need an article that was already written but would suite better after another planned article? Just drag it to when you want to have it published and plan it. But you can only do the later for posts that are not yet published.

Below you can learn more on this great productivity tool.

So keep an eye out for the changes and new posts.

In a month or so I will write an article on the results of this website clean up from an SEO perspective.

And yes, that article is already scheduled so I can write it during the next month as I keep an eye on this sites progress.

How to Start A WordPress Website Consolidation Project

Filed Under: WordPress

I created lots of websites during the past twelve years working with Joomla and WordPress.

The problem was that I not only created websites for clients but also for myself leaving me with a whole lot of sites to manage.

So this year I wanted to scale down on the number of sites to manage by consolidating different sites into one big site. This is that new website: https://www.websitebeginnersguide.com

Which Sites to Consolidate?

Taking that decision is one thing, getting into action is something completely different.

First off all I needed to determine which sites would be good candidates to move to a different domain and if it was possible to do so with a minimal loss in Google rankings.

When the whole project is done, it should even improve on the rankings and the number of visitors, creating a website that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

Criteria to take into account:

  • Website topic should match the purpose of the new domain
  • Permalinks structure should also be the same to be able to do a 301 redirect form the old website
  • Export and import of data should be easily doable
  • Number of RSS feed subscribers

For me that meant that the first sites to consolidate where:

  • www.herbertvandinther.com
  • www.pathosseoblog.com
  • Others to follow

Setting the First Steps

First off all I needed to setup the new website with the same CMS, in this case WordPress.

Decide on the Layout / design of the site. I now use Genesis with the News Pro theme from StudioPress. Not cheap, even for a premium theme, but well worth every dollar I spend on it.

After WordPress basic installation was done, I checked the common plugin usage in both sites and make sure the permalinks settings were identical.

The main reason for this was that it is a lot easier to do a complete site redirect than creating a lot of single 301 redirect rules per site.

The actual moves were done by creating a WordPress export file from the old sites and import them into the new one. If you want to do the same, make sure you check the box to import the attachments as well, that saves time and prevents some image link problems.

Search and Replace Old stuff and General Housekeeping

Some of the things I did after the migrations

  • Using this plugin to change the URLs of the images and old links form http://pathosseoblog.com/ with the correct new uploads path.
  • Check Old comments to see if there is nothing left that point to the migrated domains.
  • Used Ajax Thumbnail Rebuild for resizing the images for use on archives and layout options.
  • Update the Contact form
  • Set SEO Options -> I was not sure on using a Plugin or the Genesis SEO Theme settings. I decided to go the Genesis SEO options to see if that would work out better than WordPress SEO. Update: WordPress SEO by Yoast is now the main SEO function for this site.
  • Installed the Google sitemap.xml plugin to get the standard xml file to put into my Webmaster Tools account. Update: Sitemap.xml is now handled by WordPress SEO Plugin.
  • Deleted the two other site entries in Webmaster tools. You could do better to just inform Google webmaster tools that the site has moved.
  • Set up a new Subscribe widget
  • Cleaned out old and duplicate post categories

Other this to look out for in the coming weeks:

  • Check the error logs for 404 errors that need to be addressed
  • Check Stats and Tools to find other problems that might occur
  • Decide what other domain could be consolidation candidates
  • Write new articles and guides especially for WordPress and Joomla Beginners
  • Regain focus and have fun!

Website Beginners Guide Base

No. 1 on Google and No Clicks

Filed Under: SEO, WordPress

In the last few months I have been moving some websites from subdomains to new domains and sometimes changing there apperance.
Here is what happened on one of them…

The site was number One on Google for a long tail keywords phrase and it site was getting some nice traffic from this term.

After the move from its sub-domain life and going into its own domain I changed the template to a more suitable one and optimized the site to get more traffic.

One thing I did was the craft the Home page title so it would get even more traffic and it worked out nicely. The new theme was search engine optimized and I did not feel like I needed to do anything about it…

As I said, the site had a No. 1 position on Google, but after I wrote a new post on this site this happened to the traffic.

Title Problem Effect

Click to enlarge

Once I noticed the drop in traffic I checked Google and saw the site was still No. 1 but not with the title of the homepage anymore.

The title shown by Google was the title of the last post and no longer this traffic attracting title of the Homepage!
This title was not really on topic of the search term so nobody clicked on it to check out the site!

I checked the theme and changed the header option to make sure I got the Homepage title back into place.

Bringing it Back on Track

So everything is technically set back to how it should be, and now it was time to get Google's spider to re-index the site so the homepage title was back where it belonged.

Writing a new post that to update the site did the trick and the site was back in a few days.

All looked good, but a day later there was again this drop in traffic. Now I can explain the first drop, then the recovery but not the second drop.

The only thing I can think of was the short time upgrade followed by something Google might do like switching back for some time serving search engine cached indexes if they upgrade the primary index.
If you have another explanation, I would love to here it!

After this initial drop and kick back the site is now doing well, thank you for asking.
It is still growing in traffic.

Conclusion: Keep track of your site after you do a mayor upgrade like changing themes or even system upgrades.
The thing you need to watch closely is that the so carefully crafted title of you homepage is still the same so it will keep getting you the traffic. Especially it you have the No. 1 position on Google that you wanted to get.

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.

Weblog engines reviewed by Smashing magazine

Filed Under: Blogging, Drupal, Joomla, WordPress

Yet another great post from Smashing Magazine, this time Glen Stansberry wrote post reviewing of 10 Weblog Engines among them WordPress, Drupal and Joomla!

Af course they included MovableType and ExpressionEngine which I also tried but didn't like that much.

Looking and writing about the following aspects of each engine:

  • Programming language.
  • What features you’ll need.
  • The size of the software’s community.
  • The age of the software.
  • If you are planning on extending the Blog.

For Programming language my favorite is PHP, Like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla! (and Typo3)
Features are within the core or easily integrated with Extensions like Components,  Plugins and/or Modules.
Both these Blogging platforms have very good community to support you, although Joomla! is the biggest at this moment.
Age for me is really not much of an issue but for you looking at the first release dates…
WordPress started in 2003, Drupal in 2001 and Joomla! in 2005 as a fork from Mambo that was build from 2000 (Open source Dual license in 2001)
Extending your "Blog" is really easy with all the packages I favor.

Focus on Blogging

But when it comes to Blogging, WordPress works best for me and in the Smashing magazine post Glen wrote one simple statement under Drupal and extend it later on to Joomla!
        "it’s not just blogging software. Drupal is community software. "
Which is exactly how I see it…
You can use Joomla! for Blogging and with Drupal you can do the same thing, but I just don't like the Drupal control panel that much to write blogposts.

One other great article comparing Drupal and Joomla  mentioned in the post is from Steve (Hope you get a lot of traffic from this Smashing magazine article!)  over at Alledia on Joomla and Drupal.(Needs an Update since the release of Joomla 1,5 ;-)

All in all, a nice overview of the Blogging Engine landscape of today from Smashing Magazines, and for me its good to see that Joomla now is also considered a Blogging Platform although still with some limitations.
But those limitations can be overcome with the right setting and Blogging Components for Joomla.

WordPress SEO Post and Joomla Lessons

Filed Under: Joomla Seo, SEO Articles

Joost de Valk has written a great article on his new website about WordPress and SEO, Calling it "The Definitive Guide To High Rankings For Your Blog"  and I must say, he does a splendid Job in working through all the aspects of SEO for WordPress.

And indeed the Blogging world is raving about this article as well:

Here are few links:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-seo/7096/
http://www.searchengineguide.com/sage-lewis/yoast-should-boast-its-wordpress-seo-gui.php
http://www.jaankanellis.com/wordpress-seo-in-a-nutshell-by-joost/
http://sphinn.com/story/52017

And Yoast (that's right -> Joost ) also does a great Job in monitoring all those incoming links and as a true blogger reacting on every one of them :-) 

You will know by now that I use WordPress,Drupal, Typo3 and Joomla for a number of websites, so I can related to the technical aspects of his WordPress Guide as well as the real Search Engine Optimization stuff.

And this were you can learn as an Search Engine Optimization fanatic, looking at several aspects of this guide and pick the right stuff for improving any website.
That also means Your Joomla based website.

Some of the point you can look at are:
Basic SEO

Permalinks = Search Engine Friendly URL's

Titles
Descriptions
More text
Image optimization

Than there is more advanced stuff and some great advice on coding and more, you can really do well if you follow his advice on:

Point 5 – Conversion Optimization
Point 6 – Comment Optimization
Point 7 – Off site site Blog SEO, like using Twitter SEO 

I am looking forward to implementing some of his advice here on this Blog and on my other Joomla SEO Blog

Both are build with WordPress to Promote my Joomla sites about Joomla SEO and Open Source CMS SEO

And I must say, that Joost already has inspired me to write a similar post about Joomla and SEO, that is if you as a reader would like to see that as well, covering several technical aspect on how to do this advanced and basic SEO for Joomla.

An Other great article to read is Meet Yoast in which Joost writes about the redesign and the new domain name… also read the comments like "How does it feel to commit Technorati suicide" since your Technorati rankings won't follow you to the new domain like your FeedBurner readers will.

Thank you Yoast for a great post a great new site and insight into the basic off really well done SEO!

Keeping Up to date on Joomla 1.6

Filed Under: Featured

You now I do like Blogs… I write a few my self, and read a lot of others as well.

On new Blog that definitely goes into my Netvibes Joomla tab is this one from the Joomla developers, Developer Team Blog 

They will Blog about writing, seeking advice, coding and lots more, so as they say, it is a great way to stay in touch with the Joomla 1.6 development action.

Joomla Developers Blog

And as Barry North already pointed out in one of his recent posts, the Blogs are now on Joomla 1.5 native with a social bookmarking footer instead of the old JD_WP WordPress based component.
Which brings back to mind that you really can use Joomla for Blogging but there are still some things that need to be ported to Joomla 1.5 native before it really would be a great Blogging platform.

But for the Joomla Developers Blog, content is the key! And it will be easy to keep up since they do offer an RSS Feed (No, not just yet via Feedburner, but maybe in time…)

For now, keeping my RSS feed open to new blogpost and looking forward to new improvements in the SEO Field.

A new Blog? No, it just moved..

Filed Under: SEO BLogs

Most of you, have found this Blog to be on a sub-domain from the main site Design Cars.

And although that was were it started, it soon became obvious to me that it was not the best place for it.
No, Design Cars and this Joomla SEO Blog did not really match…from an SEO point of view that is.

Next to my other site and Blog about Joomla! Pathos Seo and that Joomla Blog I wanted to give you more information on search Engine Optimization for Joomla and WordPress and in a later stage also on Drupal.
All of them find examples of Open-source Content management systems and now you find that information in just one place.

So now the basic work is ready, the domain is claimed and then it was time to move the Blog here, to its new home http://herbertvandinther.com/

On the main site http://www.hummerbie.com/ you can find lots of articles already, but it will be growing fast, I hope you find the articles on the site just as helpful as my Blog posts.

With this move, I also changed the Template for the Blog, not much, but it has a wider view, new headers and somewhat new lighter colors.
For me the best improvement is the wide of the theme, so I can show you larger images and screen-shots, I hope you like it as well as I do.

If you find there is anything missing that was here before, please tell me so I can fix it…

In one of my next posts I will write about the how and what of the move, the difficulties and costs from an SEO Point of view of this kind of Blog moving, stay tuned!

One of the fastest ways to get into Google… Blog and RSS Feeds

Filed Under: Joomla Seo

If you want to know how fast you can get into the Google index…

My best time is 38 Minutes :-)

No really!, I wrote the post about Joomla 1.5 RC 4 and the SEF patch just about 40 minutes ago….

I do have a Google alert on “Joomla SEO” which should inform me if anything with Joomla SEO is posted or written on The Internet.
And I got an email with the alert that my Post was “discovered”, so I did a search on simply “Joomla sef rc4”, about 11.800 results showed up, and the post was ranked at a Nr 5  position.

Just above a Feed scraper website that reposts an excerpt of my post via Technorati I guess.

Yes, that is the drawback of RSS Feeds…

So here are some screen shots to prove it (no, no photo-shopping is done)

search results on google

Getting into Google fast:

blogging_the_fastest_way_into_google.jpg

A fast scraper….

scraper_site_for_adsense_also_fast.jpg

(No, no link here!)

The New and Improved Joomla DS Feed Syndication Component

Filed Under: Joomla Seo

If you have read this Blog for a Longer period of time (or have gone through the Sitemap..:-)) you might have read about the DS Syndication Component in my post Overcoming the Joomla RSS Feed Problem Well, there is a new version of this component since August of this year and I must say it is better then before! Putting in multiple categories in to one Feed. Not limited to the Frontpage any more.. choose to show HTML, Images or not in your Feed, using your special images. You can create multiple feeds with different categories and different images for the feeds. There is also a module that can show each of these feed images to subscribe to or just the ones you selected Running your Feeds through Feedburner I always like to run my Feeds via Feedburner, because they have some great options! So for my new website a used the DS Syndication component to get two separate Feeds Joomla and WordPress Feeds from Hummerbie.com And I have written a Tutorial for you on how to use the DS Syndication Component and where to find it! You can find it on Improve you Joomla RSS Feed and if you don't know why you should have Feeds? Read Why Every website should have a Feed

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