By Richard V. Burckhardt

When I started out in web development way back in the dark ages (1998), I was doing web design for an in-house agency. Primarily, we did sites for the publications that the parent publishing company produced, but we also took on local Palm Springs area clients and built web sites for them.

It went something like this. For a certain amount of money, like $500, we’d build a ten page static web site. We’d do the design work, but the client provided images and text. We’d do the SEO as it existed in those days (title, meta tags, submit to the search engines/directories) and then there would be a monthly hosting/maintenance fee (about $50). Quarterly changes (pictures and text) were part of the fee, anything else cost extra.

Of course, the client was sort of at our mercy as they had no way to make changes themselves. They had to go through us. This could get frustrating for clients who needed frequent changes to their sites, like real estate agents or those with products that needed changing constantly.

Fast forward to today. Yes, if you really need a complicated site with a web designer, programmer and so forth, that option is definitely available more than ever. But, if what you want is a smaller site that you have complete control over and won’t cost a fortune, it can be had quickly and inexpensively.

Where you ask? Simple. Find yourself a hosting company that is WordPress friendly (most are) and that can easily install this free blog platform in the root on your hosting account (Hostgator.com and Godaddy.com are two that come to mind). Check on this before opening the account as some hosts want to place the blog in a subdirectory by default. Moving it to the root so that your domain points right at it can sometimes take some server side acrobatics that are beyond the scope of an SEO 101 reader.

What, you say, I don’t want to blog! I don’t have time to blog! Why in the world would I want to use WordPress?

The answer is that WordPress is more than just a blogging platform. It is also a content management system that gives you control over your content, pages and site features in an easy to use control panel. For instance, instead of sending text and photos off to a designer to place on your site, you just login to your WordPress admin and enter the text and upload the image in a WYSIWYG format, not unlike using a word processor (though HTML view is available, too).

And, WordPress offers the power and potential of thousands of plugins and widgets that add functionality you control that no web designer can hope to offer. For instance, I am also the editor of The Eye Zone, a blog about vision and eyewear. If you take a look at that blog, you’ll notice the large featured images section at the top of the front page. That’s a free plugin called Featured Content Gallery that installs easily. You provide the images and upload them to your hosting account. You have complete control.

But, how does this help you if you only want a web site, not a blog?

WordPress can be used as if it were a web site. You can create pages, just like on a web site and turn off comments until or unless you decide to start using the blog functionality. Since the front page of a WordPress site lists posts by default, you’ll either want to write a single post for the front page or make the front page show a designated page instead.

You do this in the WordPress admin under Settings > Reading. See image below.

Take a look at AddictionInterventionServices.com. This is a small web site that was recently changed to WordPress from my original (nice, but dated) design done several years ago. The site has eight pages, all of which the site owner can now edit himself. The video in the right nav was simply YouTube code pasted into the text widget that WordPress provides for placing code in nav bars. Simple cut and paste, no programming needed.

The same is true with the “Addiction Facts” section. That’s simply a plugin (Stray Random Quotes) code pasted into a text widget, just like the video mentioned previously.

If you look at the bottom of the pages, you’ll see social sharing links. These are provided by another free plugin, Sociable. The Link to this Page link is also a free plugin, LinkToThisPage.

This site points to the Intervention page as the home page (see image above). And, the site owner has indicated that he might want to do some blogging at some point, so he’s all set.

WordPress itself is fairly SEO friendly, but you can extend your search optimization through some great (and free) plugins like HeadSpace2, Canonical URL’s for WordPress and Google XML Sitemaps.

Need to do a redirection? With a WordPress site it’s easy with the Redirection plugin. No need to contact your webmaster/system admin.

And, there are literally thousands of themes for WordPress, free and paid, that you can use to get just the right look for whatever your site is about. There are e-commerce, real estate, SEO-ready and even Twitter-inspired group themes. Or, you have the option of hiring a theme developer.

Need something more than a few static pages? Let’s say you are an affiliate or want to pull a product feed. As they say, there’s and “app” for that, too.

For this article, I used one of my parked domains to create a shopping comparison site for Internet, wireless and wi-fi products. Using the same techniques above, the site features various pages of products all created by setting up a free DataFeedFile.com account, installing the Include It plugin, selecting merchants in my DataFeedFile.com account and saving the keyword search php code (generated through simple tools at DataFeedFile.com) in individual plain text files (example: voip.php) for the plugin to pull. I created each keyword based page (like VOIP) and pasted the Include It code (a simple text string) on each, which calls the php code from the designated keyword focused file (example: voip.php) and, voila, instant shopping comparison site!

By the way, that’s a free WordPress theme that is being used for the site. Check the footer on the site to find out which one.

If what you want to do is pull a feed into a WordPress site, take a look at the DataFeed Poster plugin. It’s not free, but very good at what it does.

I hope you can see just how powerful a WordPress driven site can be, even for those who only want a web site and have no interest in blogging. The tools, functionality and SEO capabilities that you can have yourself (no web developer needed) are incredible compared to just a few years ago, and we didn’t even touch on what you can do with Twitter and social media with plugins.

And, if you ever do want to begin blogging, something this SEO recommends, it’s just a matter of getting started because the functionality is already built into your site.

SEO 101: Need an SEO Friendly Site? Think Blog! is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

User generated content is simply the comments, reviews and feedback left by visitors to your site.

So, why is it so important?

First, it’s free content for your site or blog. You didn’t have to write it or take the time to come up with the ideas.

Second, those impassioned contributors are actually free marketers for your site (so you want to nurture them and cultivate them!).

Third, it generates credibility and demonstrates the usefulness for your site. As SEOs tend to preach, content is king and the more good user generated content the search engines find, the better they consider the quality of your site.

Fourth, the search engines love it because it feeds them rather than competes with them. In other words, more content equals more crawling.

Fifth, it provides a longtail solution for keywords. No more keyword stuffing to try to catch the longtail!

Sixth, quality user generated content makes it easier to get link love.

Finally, did I mention it’s FREE?!

So, now that you’ve got an idea as to why you should be adding user generated content to your SEO toolkit (If you haven’t, you’re going to fall behind the pack fast, so get with it!), how do you go about optimizing your site to make the most of it?

1. Consider your site’s SEO: Before you do anything else, review the optimization on your site or blog. See my post S E O 101 for basic optimizing tips.

2. If you don’t have a blog or forum, get one! This is the first step towards user generated content because blogs and forums are all about comments. If you are just running a static web site, a blog or a forum is a quick way to get started on the road to user generated content land. Better yet, get both! Do some research first and be sure the blog or forum software is search engine friendly. I can’t tell you how many help e-mails I’ve gotten from forum owners who discovered too late that their forum wasn’t and none of their content was showing up in the search results.

3. Remove fluff: Posters frequently add self-serving content, including links, which you will have to moderate. Remove it to keep your content targeted and theme centered. This also helps keep the PageRank flow where it belongs and makes the site look better, too.

4. Moderate topic titles: If a poster simply makes the title of his post “Help!” you should change it to something more keyword rich like “I need help with keyword!” where keyword is whatever the topic is.

5. Hard code main keywords: Do this to the main page of your forum or blog (H1 tags) and do the same with the title meta tag on that page.

6. Promote good comments: When you get a really good comment or post, promote it to the main page of your blog or forum and post a notice that you have done so. This rewards the hard work of the poster and they love it!

7. Offer a badge or widget: Make it easy to copy and use and include a link to your site or to the poster’s profile. You’ve seen these on all kinds of social sites. For instance, take a look at the front page to my blog, The Web Optimist. You’ll see a Recent Reader list over in the right navigation bar. That’s a MyBlogLog badge that lets you join my community.

8. Make your URLs friendly: Don’t make them a jumble of letters. Not only do readers hate that, so do spiders!

9. Have content on launch. If your site is new, fill it with content prior to going live. The quickest way to get folks to click away from your site is for it appear barren and vacant. Write content yourself, get friends and family involved, use a few syndicated articles, whatever it takes. No one wants to be the first to comment, so get some friends to get things started.

10. Automatic review e-mails. If you are an e-commerce site, send an automatic e-mail to buyers after a sale requesting a review. It works for eBay and Amazon.com!

11. Give incentives to top producers. Reward top contributors with ranks, points or perhaps discounts. Even the big boys do it. Just take a look at Yahoo! Answers, one of the biggest success stories over at the possibly-soon-to-be-bought-by-Microsoft search engine. It rewards points to contributors. Other than bragging rights, the points aren’t good for much, but that doesn’t stop folks from racking them up with answers!

If you’re serious about your SEO, you need user generated content to stay competitive. Review your site or blog today to see how you can go about adding it in the form of forums, reviews, comments and so forth. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to catch up with the pack!

User Generated Content: What It Is, Why You Want It, How To Get It is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

If there is any part of SEO that is currently ripe with opportunity it’s Local Search. A huge portion of search is for information local to the searcher (Palm Springs movies, Houston pizza, etc.), but a ton of local mom & pop businesses simply don’t know that there is such a thing as “local” search. Many folks think that search is, well, search!

So, now is the time to take advantage of this lack of understanding about local search and get your business in there! It takes more than just a web site targeted to a local audience. Rather, you need to know about about how local search works.

For instance, searchers are basically lazy and tend to search for a city name rather than narrowing down to a neighborhood or zip code, so instead of “pizza 92262″ they’ll start their search with the city as in “palm springs pizza” as the query.

Also, take a look at what you get in a local search result:

So, let’s jump into some tips to help you with your local search optimization.

1. Include your physical address. Make sure it is on every page on your web site. if you think slapping a postal address into the HTML address meta tag will help you get found in local search, think again.

2. Be central. Unfortunately, the search engines tend to focus on the city center, meaning that the first results that come up for a search like Boston bars will be those in center city. If you’re lucky enough to be centrally located, you’ve got a leg up on the competition. If not, you could try getting a mailing address that is centrally located, but the search engines will definitely frown on that. All it takes is one disgruntled person going to that location and finding a mailbox to report you. And, businesses without street addresses can’t get listed in Google local listings.

3. Optimize your web site. Regular SEO can have an influence. Be sure to use the name of your city in your content (our Palm Springs office, not just our office). Use your city name in your image ALT attributes and anchor text. See my S E O 101 series for general optimization tips. Make sure your classic SEO is location specific.

4. Optimize your local listing. In Google, go to Local Business Center. For Yahoo!, go to Yahoo! Local. For MSN (or Live or whatever they call themselves today), go to Windows Live Local Listing Center. Fill out the forms with all relevant information. Provide links, web pages, photos and coupons if available.

5. Get reviews. Reviews can have an effect on how you rank in the results. Lots of good reviews can only help you. Enlist friends, customers, relatives, business partners or whoever you can to write good reviews to get you started, but don’t spam. You’ll get caught.

6. Get listed in trusted sources. The search engines pull some reviews and listings from what they consider trusted sources like Superpages, Yellow Pages, Info USA, Localeze and Yelp. Some are free, some are for a fee, but listings in these can help. In Yahoo, del.icio.us rankings might also have some influence.

7. Make sure your data and category are accurate in #4 & #6 above.

8. A keyword-rich domain name can’t hurt.

9. Do local videos. These tend to have great click-through rates and can come up in Google blended results.

10. Cross link with maps on a trusted site like Mapquest.

11. Create a local listing for all locations. If you have more than one, don’t just create a local listing for the main one. Get them all in there!

As always, this barely scratches the surface of local SEO and is intended to get you started in the right direction. I go into more detail in my SEO workshop, offered to web site owners and small businesses. Check my blog at http://www.weboptimist.com for more information or contact me to set up a custom workshop for your business group of five or more people in the Palm Springs area of Southern California. Travel is possible for large groups.

This article will be updated periodically.

See my related S E O 101 posts .

SEO 101: Local Search Optimization is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

For instance, a site owner can create a plugin with information relevant to the site including images, phone numbers, links and other data such as reviews. A user can load the plugin from a gallery so that when the site comes up in a search result, the link will not just be a link to the site, but sort of a blended result with an image and additional links similar to what Google now serves up as One Box results.

Sort of personalized universal search results.

Yahoo! Open Search Platform will focus on “completing tasks” rather than dishing out results. Users can share results with others, add or remove enhancements or even report sites as abusers of trust.

According to Yahoo!, it’s “All about users choice.”

Site owners can add buttons, galleries and marketing info to create a richer experience for visitors. The new service, which is free, will be open to all sites by way of an API or feed upload.

More information, including example images can be found at http://tools.search.yahoo.com/open . Also see the Yahoo blog for updates.

Yahoo! Open Search Platform is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

Yahoo, however, considered the practice to be spammy and redundant. Of course, when you try to ask what they mean, they basically just repeat themselves (look at our guidelines, etc.) and won’t give you any information.

We couldn’t figure out why they felt this way. Our competition is doing the same thing (and a lot worse) and Yahoo wasn’t giving them any grief.

The “redundant” part is what we couldn’t figure out. After all, our drop down navigation is in a javascript, which isn’t spiderable, so we weren’t repeating links on the page. It just didn’t make sense.

So, we’re in the process of reinventing our navigation system to make the Yahoo Gods happy and hope to roll it out shortly, but a funny thing is happening. I just noticed in our ranking reports that a lot of our brand phrase keywords are ranking well in Yahoo.

Interesting. What appears to be happening is that the main page to the Frames Direct site is ranking for search phrases rather than the actual product page. For instance, we show a #1 rank in Yahoo for “abba sagami eyeglasses” for the main FD page and it appears to be finding “abba sagami” in the drop down and is obviously pulling “eyeglasses” off of the page.

What is really interesting is that if you view the source for our main page in IE, the links in the drop downs don’t show, which would lead me to believe the drop downs aren’t spiderable. If I spider the page with my spidering software, the drop down links don’t show up, either

But, if you view the source in Firefox, the drop down links appear and you can find “abba sagami” in it. This would lead me to believe that Yahoo is suddenly using technology similar to Firefox and can find those javascript drop down links.

Fascinating. Apparently Yahoo was seeing something that we weren’t. As far as they were concerned, our javascript dropdowns ARE spiderable, meaning we were repeating links on the pages.

Wow. That put a whole new spin on things. If they had explained this, we would have seen the light earlier, but as usual, they gave an edict with no explanation and left it with that. Communication is not one of Yahoo’s strengths.

But, this makes me wonder if Google will be following suit? If so, a lot of sites using drop down javascript navigation could be in for an interesting time.

Yahoo and Javascript Drop Downs is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

Once you retrieve your recorded comments, Evoca gives you HTML code that you can use to put the recording in your blog if you think it’s worthy of blogspace. I’m still playing with that function. So far, unless I paste the code in a separate comment, my header, footer and sidebar disappear. I’ll keep working on that.

One thing I’d like to see them implement – the ability to resize the recorder. I also think that it’s a bit awkward to have to hit the “Send” button after the recording is made. The way the box is organized, it looks like the “Send” is for sending a note by e-mail. The first time I tried recording, I didn’t know I had to “Send” it. Minor things. You do have to open a free account with Evoca, but hey, it’s free.

So, got comments on SEO or my balding head? Jump down to the bottom of this page and give it a shot.

Evoca releases new voice comment plugins is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

After weeks of doing away with old pages that had long been forgotten, many old sitemaps, duplicates and doing 301 redirects left and right, we requested reinclusion and got the same canned response that we weren’t in compliance with Yahoo guidelines.

As we continued to search for the reason, we finally managed to get in touch with a couple of Yahoo search engineers. One responded with a cryptic, terse “why are you playing games?” e-mail that didn’t help at all. We didn’t have a clue WHAT they wanted and they refused to tell us what the problem was. There are two SEO analysts on our team and neither one of us could have guessed what the problem eventually turned out to be.

The other, bless his heart, actually gave us some guidance. Big on his list – getting rid of the subdomains.

That floored us. As far as we were concerned as SEOs, there was absolutely nothing wrong with our use of subdomains. But, when the Yahoo Gods talk, you pretty much have to listen. We converted the subdomains to subdirectories and did 301 redirects to the subdirectories. While we were at it, we created some new content for all of the pages involved so that there would be no questions regarding any duplicate content.

Yahoo started respidering us in January and our pages are beginning to show up in the index again. Whew!

I write this in response to an article by Rob Sullivan, suggesting a combination of subdomains and subdirectories make for good SEO ( http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/blogs/comments/330_0_1_0_C/ ).

I’d be VERY careful about using subdomains these days. In addition to the Yahoo problems we had, I heard Matt Cutts comment recently that subdomains are among his next spam targets over at Google.

Subdomains and SEO is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO