Pleasanton Web Design

This is a blog I created for a law office in the bay area. It’s a Wordpress blog with a customized theme.

Attorney Blog Design

Blogs to promote legal practices are getting more and more popular these days. The blog can contain timely analysis of current events relating to the legal practice’s focus, and highlight the attorneys’ expertise regarding the subject. The posts can also link back to the attorney’s main website, adding some SEO benefit.

admin attorney web design, blog, blogging, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web design

Myth #2: Search engine optimization alone will result in good ranking in competitive searches.

Doing well in competitive searches primarily depends on off-page factors – factors not directly modifiable by the Webmaster. Why? Because we webmasters are all trying to tweak our pages so they will appear at the top of the SERPs. The “customer” of the search engine is the person performing the search, not the webmaster trying to promote his or her site. Not the business owner looking for leads. Not the spammer trying to make a quick buck. So the search engine engineers look at other factors to determine the quality, importance and authority of the websites they list in their results. What are some of these factors?

Domain Age: How long the domain has been registered by the same entity. Search engines, especially Google, look at this as a trust factor and will give a significant boost to sites that have been around for a while.

Domain Registration Length: Registering your domain for only one year will penalize you as a possible spammer. Domain registration is inexpensive, so register all domains you plan on promoting for at least two years.

Incoming Links: Link juice, link authority, PageRank and backlinks all refer to this important measure. Links pointing to your site are a vote of confidence in your content. The more reputable the site that links to you, the more weight that links carries in the search engine algorithm. Links must be relevent to the context of your site.

Hilltop Authority: In a nutshell, hilltop authority is comparative a measure of how many times a web page is referenced in the initial search engine result set by other web pages in that result set. The rank of the initial result set is based on various factors such as keyword relevance and the other off-page factors previously mentioned. The search engine then reorders the result set giving a boost to the web pages that are linked to by other pages in that result set.

Bay Area SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Services

Web Promotion Articles

admin google, search engine optimization, seo

It’s pretty common to have the same global navigation items it both the main navigation and footer links of a website. Be careful though, if you are using an SEF URL extension for Joomla 1.5, such as sh404SEF. Having multiple menu items pointing to the same article or ItemId can disable the active menu styling. Instead, use the standard Joomla menu links for the main navigation, and set up the footer navigation with external type menu items, pointing to the sef urls created for the main navigation.

admin CMS, joomla, joomla extensions, search engine optimization, sef urls, seo, web design

Link exchanges are one way to help with link authority, especially if you have nothing else going for you. Promoting blogs and fresh quality content are preferrable, but some people don’t have time, and reasonable, content targeted link exchanges can at least get you on the map. But you need to be very careful.

1) Beware 3 way link exchanges with junk sites. Generally the person requesting the link will want you to link to their client’s site, but all you get is an incoming link from their throw-away wordpress site that looks like it was put up in 15 minutes. Don’t bother.

2) Ignore link exchange requests that require you to put your link up first. If you do, they won’t. Credible link partners will always place your link first (not necessarily before they contact you though).

3) Ignore link exchanges showing y0u some great PR sites that will link to you, but you have to put up your link first. Hint: those aren’t even their sites! A certain percentage of webmasters will see that high PR and put the link up.

4) Don’t exchange links with any website that is unrelated to yours, i.e. don’t put a viagra link on your golf club ecommerce site.

5) Don’t swap links with any low quality website. The search engines will never count the link anyway, and you will be wasting your time and credibility.

admin search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, spam, web design link exchange, seo

I have never really understood why web applications, like Drupal, that have the capability of producing search engine friendly (SEF) URLs don’t have them enabled by default. Who doesn’t like SEF Urls?

To Enable SEF URLs in Drupal 6, follow these steps:

1. enable mod rewrite – this can be done through .htaccess or httpd.conf
2. from admin: enable site building>modules>paths
3. enable site configuration>clean urls
4. create aliases site building > url aliases > add aliases

You have to add aliases manually using this process. Perhaps Drupal has, or will have a module that is more automatic in the future. We can only hope (but not hold our breaths)!

admin .htaccess, Drupal, sef urls, seo

Page titles in Joomla 1.5 are not particularly configurable. I prefer to use an SEO extension, which gives me total control of my page titles and metatags, but I understand the reluctance to rely on a non-commercial extension. Will it be around for Joomla 1.6? Who knows?

The problem with Joomla 1.0.X page titles was that they insisted on putting the site name in the page title. Joomla 1.5 cured that disease, but some people would still like to have their site name in their page title consistently across the site. For that, the perfectly simple solution is the Title Manager extension for Joomla 1.5 (native).

Download, install and activate this plugin, and you will have your Joomla site name, or another text string of your choosing in all page titles. You can even configure whether or not the page title goes before or after the original page title, as well as the seperator character. Here’s a peek at the configuration screen:

admin joomla, joomla extensions, search engine optimization, seo, web design

Microsoft’s update of LiveSearch launched this weekend. I haven’t read much of the hype, because I expect it is just that – hype. What I have absorbed is that Bing is supposed to be a “Google Killer” and a substantially new way of performing search, with the searcher being kept on the Bing site longer (because it gives them everything they need) so they can be exposed to more advertising.

The first thing I noticed when visiting Bing.com is the nice big graphic on the homepage. There was a little arrow indicating I could change the picture (hot air balloons, how original), but when I clicked on it, I was prompted to install Microsoft SilverLight, with no explanation of what it is.  I happen to be aware that it’s supposed to be a Flash type program that allows rich media experience, but I don’t know that the typical visitor would be. Anyway, I learned my lesson from Windows Vista and my daughter’s X-Box to thouroughly research performance of Microsoft products before exposing my life to them, so, no thanks.

The searches returned results identical to LiveSearch. Focused on keyword relevance rather than link authority. On-page trump off-page factors, so very easy to get good ranking, even for competitive terms. Good news, I guess, if anyone actually starts using Bing.

On Bing.com you are automatically shown local listings, including a little map for certain searches. Not a huge difference from Google, which does that already. Also included are categorized links below the top result, kind of like Google Sitelinks.

A search for Pleasanton Restaurants in Bing resulted in a list of the worst  restaurants in the area. I have a stomach ache just looking at it. The same search on Google results in a list of some very good, and some so-so restaurants. This is probably due to the review feature of Google Local. Bing has reviews listed too, but they are all pulled from Yelp. Bottom line is, as my son would say “FAIL.”

In conclusion, my first reaction to Bing.com is that it is a mediocre attempt to copy Google, so I have a hard time seeing how it is going to be a Google Killer.

admin google, joomla, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web promotion

Matt Cutts addressed the Google algorithm update that recently gave a boost to brands that I commented on in my post Big Company Google Boosts Other Big Brands in Search Results. He basically downplays the change and apparently ignores the question posed “What does Google consider a ‘Brand’” by saying his team doesn’t consider brands. Right. What is Vince based on then? Guess it’s a secret.

admin google, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web promotion

Let’s face it. Maybe Google started off as a egalitarian, nice, fair, “do no evil” type of company, but they have officially hit the big time. Big companies aren’t nice or fair. There is too much money involved. If you still buy into the nicey-nice Google culture, read the New York Times article on Google’s Marissa Mayer and the reaction/comments from Silicon Valley Web Guild and ValleyWag. That, along with comments from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, paints a pretty good picture of corporate executives drunk on their own elitist Koolaid (ok, crappy metaphor, but it’s early).  He calls the internet a cesspool. And the solution? Good ole Big Brands. Trusted by millions.

So what does that mean to you, trying to make information about your products and services available to the general public ? It’s going to be harder, at least in the short term. What does it mean to you, the searcher trying to find specific information that’s a little bit off the beaten path. It may be more difficult.

Here’s a possible side-effect of the brand bump in the Google SERPS, that I haven’t see much discussion about. In a couple of different verticals I work with, I’ve noticed page one being filled with directory results from large paid directories, rather than websites of individual businesses, when doing a local search for a specific product or service. Are these big directories considered a brand?  How does adding an extra step of displaying a directory results page in the search engine results page help anyone?

So Big Brand=Higher Quality, More Accurate Content=Better Search Results? No. Google has the ability, resonsibilty, or authority to determine what information is “TRUE” and what is not? NO. My personal opinion is that such an idea, forced into the algorithm by the almighty dollar rather than a concern for helping the searcher find what they are looking for, will result in people switching to another search engine to find what they are looking for. Then, when the traffic decrease results in a loss in revenue, Google will move the other way. I hope.

admin google, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, silicon valley web guild, spam, web marketing, web promotion

I’ve known that there was something wrong with DMOZ (Open Directory Project) for some time. There have been many sites over the years that I have submitted to DMOZ every six months, painstakingly going over the information to make sure that it meets the requirements. What a colossal waste of time. The sites rarely get listed. No explanation from the editor. The submissions just fade into nothing.

DMOZ is a valuable link. Google uses the DMOZ directory as a basis for the Google directory. Many other directories on the Web do the same, so your DMOZ link is duplicated many times over. This can add up to a lot of incoming links, and significant link authority.

The DMOZ editors are volunteers, but they hold a lot of power. I found a enlightening example of how this power can manifest itself in the blog Corrupt DMOZ Editor.
Here’s an excerpt:

Another day, another screwed DMOZ submission
It’s another day and more submissions are lining my queues. I go to a cafe with free internet access and cute college age kids behind the counter, and log in to one of my dmoz accounts using firefox to spoof the OS and browser. Then I delete a handful of listings starting from the top without even looking at them. The next batch I include but I make sure to drain the listings of any useful keywords. The next bunch I keep on hold for the next time. I have a few listings that have been on hold for, I kid you not, eighteen months.

The postings on this blog are a few years old, and I’m not sure how tongue-in-cheek some of the information related is, but reading through the blog confirmed the image I had of what goes on behind the scenes at DMOZ. Geeks with power. Not a good combination. Something as obviously dysfunctional as DMOZ will go away on it’s own, hopefully sooner than later. In the meantime, there are plenty of other ways to promote your website. I’m done wasting my time with DMOZ.

admin dmoz, open directory project, seo, web directories, web promotion