Web Steez - Full Service Web Design and SEO

Create the Perfect Title Tag in WordPress Without a Plugin

admin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 23:23:41 +0000

If you’re familiar with WordPress, chances are you have heard of the various SEO-related plugins that allow you to tweak your meta-data. These plugins are very friendly, and some of them have been coded quite well, but they do tend to load your site with unnecessary markup and slow it down a bit. As you know, a well-optimized title tag can bring you heaps of SEO goodness.

If you want, you can certainly install a plugin like HeadSpace that will allow you to control the title, description and keywords on pages and posts.
<?php if (function_exists('is_tag') && is_tag()) { echo 'Tag Archive for "'.$tag.'" - '; } elseif (is_archive()) { wp_title(''); echo ' Archive - '; } elseif (is_search()) { echo 'Search for "'.wp_specialchars($s).'" - '; } elseif (!(is_404()) && (is_single()) || (is_page())) { wp_title(''); echo ' - '; } elseif (is_404()) { echo 'Not Found - '; } if (is_home()) { bloginfo('name'); echo ' - '; bloginfo('description'); } else { bloginfo('name'); } ?>
Big thanks to Perishable Press for their original post on this.

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Dimes to Dollars

admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:17:51 +0000

This real estate site features an elegant display of homes for sale and rent. The client has full control over a huge amount of options related to real estate, and can easily keep his site updated.

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Organic SEO reduces PPC costs and delivers longterm results

admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:41:18 +0000

Focus on long-term, sustainable rankings

The online marketing industry is huge, estimated at $9 billion last year and projected to exceed $20 billion by 2013. That’s a figure that any business owner should pay attention to. The majority of this advertising is spent on PPC – pay per click advertising. Businesses have been able to buy traffic, using certain keywords and bidding on them according to how likely they were to bring in quality traffic that converts into sales or leads.
That's all well and good, however the real focus should be on generating sustainable organic rankings for those keywords instead of constantly bidding on them. Only 11% of advertising budgets go to SEO, while 87% direct their efforts in PPC. Think about it - if you spend $10 on a keyword and get one hundred visits in a month, that's $1000 that you allocated. If you put the same amount into SEO for that keyword, and brought your rankings to the front page of Google, you'd receive the same exposure. Plus, once you're on page one of Google, you can usually stay there with minimal effort and no further investment.


Alternatively, you can continue flowing money into PPC, but it will be a never-ending effort. PPC remains attractive to marketers because of the ability to easily measure PPC success. Traditional marketers like to see solid metrics on ROI, CTR and other relevant data they can use to analyze campaigns. SEO is not as easily quantifiable, but nonetheless a good SEO campaign can be measured and weighed effectively.
Several studies on visitor trends and SERPs indicate that 90% of searches click on the first page of results. The visibility of a natural listing, although possibly lower on the page, still attracts twice as many clicks than paid ones. Why is this? I side on the reason that it's because of implied endorsement; they trust search engines to deliver the best results, and many people see paid search results as artificial advertising.
The bottom line is that if you want to save money on PPC, you should invest in SEO. Organic search results bring a steady flow of traffic, just the same as paid ones, if not more. Plus, once you have a solid ranking for a keyword you previously bid on, you can lower your bid amount and focus on testing new PPC advertisements.


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5 Good Reasons Why Your Business should use WordPress
admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:11:45 +0000

			

				

			
		
Consider WordPress for your next business website
WordPress is an Open  Source software which allows it to be used free of cost. You can  use it on any kind of personal or commercial website without have to pay  a single dime for it. Over the past few years it has evolved into a full-blown CMS, capable of supporting complex websites.
It’s User Friendly
You don’t really have to be experienced to use WordPress on your  website. Most hosting companies let you  install WordPress on your site at a single click of the mouse. The  administration section is easy to navigate and its even easier to add  articles and add content to your website.



Here are a few other reasons we like WordPress for small business websites so much:

SEO – WordPress provides great search engine  optimization (SEO) right out of the box. We recommend tweaking the setup a bit, but there are many SEO benefits that WordPress provides for  free. In fact Google’s own Matt Cutts says WordPress is “made to do SEO  well” in this video: Matt  Cutts gives tips to small business owners.
Content – it is easy to update content on your  website without knowing HTML.  Do you hate the idea of having to learn  to use a complex HTML editor tool like Dreamweaver? Do you have to “ask”  your webmaster every time you want to make a small change to your  website? Well no longer – once WordPress is set up for you, you can  easily create new pages or edit existing pages using a simple rich text  editor.
Plugins – There is a worldwide conglomerate of  developers creating amazing themes and plug-ins – imagine free design themes, or being able to extend your website  with polls, contact forms, ratings or hundreds of other cool features  with just a few mouse clicks.
Support – If you do have problems, or want to add  very custom features, you have a world of resources available. There are literally thousands of WordPress developers out  there. And there are so many people writing about WordPress that help is  only a Google search away. The WordPress codex is a great place to start.
One-click-installation – Quick installs are  provided by many hosting providers, including Dreamhost, 1and1 and GoDaddy.



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9 Crucial SEO and Social Plugins to Install with WordPress
admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:29:04 +0000

			

				

			
		
Plus some other tips and strategies to help maximize your site’s exposure
When installing a new WordPress site, I always like to bring in some of my “core” plugins. These typically fall into three categories: SEO, social networking/bookmarking, and statistics. Let’s start with the SEO plugins.
Must Have SEO Plugins
1. Platinum SEO Pack or Greg’s SEO – Platinum SEO Plugin is the ultimate WordPress SEO solution.Platinum SEO Plugin offers all the features of All in One SEO plugin  plus more. Greg’s SEO pack also allows you to do much the same, and claims to be more efficient with fewer lines of code involved. Some critics say there’s a drawback to using these plugins, but when you’re running a site with a lot of content, it makes optimizing individual page meta-data so much easier. And after all, content is king.



2. SEO Super Comments – For each user comment we will create a new dynamic page on the blog, holding the actual comment information. This page will not actually exist in WordPress database, but we will create it dynamically using a WordPress plugin. What we instantly get in this way is big jump in site’s index visible to search engines. 
3. SEO Smart Links –  EO Smart Links can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog. Building an internal link structure has never been easier.
Statistics
1. Ultimate Google Analytics – An easy way to integrate Google analytics into your site.
2. Statpress  – The first real-time plugin dedicated to the management of statistics about blog visits. It collects information about visitors, spiders, search keywords, feeds, browsers etc. It works from within the WordPress admin, so it’s convenient.
3. WassUp – WassUp is a new Wordpress plugin to track your visitors in real time. It has a very readable and fancy admin console to keep tracks of your blog’s users visits.
Social Networking and Bookmarking
1. Sociable – Automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites!
2. Disqus – Disqus makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community.
3. Tweetmeme – Easily allows your blog post or page to be retweeted. It provides a live count of how many times your post/page has been retweeted throughout Twitter.
Bonus – The Ping List
As a bonus, I’m providing a ping list for you to insert in the “Writing” section, under “Services” and this will essentially ping various RSS syndication sites when you updates your site. It’s a great way to gain exposure.

Download the list (.txt)



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E.A. Tager
mmeisner — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 08:41:26 +0000

			

				

			
		
E.A. Tager wanted to replace their ten year old site with a modern CMS that both looked good and functioned well. We gave them a clean design they can carry into the future.


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Ducktrap Photo
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Ducktrap Photo displays black and white photos by Herman Meisner. He wanted a clean design and can easily manage photos through a built-in gallery. It also includes a blog and extensive SEO.


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Go Green Cubes
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Go Green Cubes offers eco-friendly box solutions for moving. They wanted a website that would display their company’s mission, services, and incorporate a blog and SEO-friendly foundation.


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Advanced Monitors needed a modern website to replace their old, outdated one. We combined e-commerce, SEO, and a clean web design to give them just what they wanted.


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