Chaotic Neutrality

I am often amazed by how many companies miss out on the opportunity to build fundamental search engine optimization practices into their website redesign projects.

In my experience, there is almost always a focus on:

• creative design and layout
• professional copy written content
• web development and launch

It saddens me because online marketing tactics seem to get pushed to the back burner when we work on website (re)design projects.

In a perfect world, each of the pieces above (creative, copy, development) would have an online marketing influence in them to ensure that SEO best practices are used during all phases of the redesign.

During the creative / layout phase, SEO would be incorporated by working with the creative teams so that they understand that:

• page headings should be in text rather than an image, if possible
• navigation components should not be driven by heavy graphics and images
• flash items should have alternate content that can display

During the copy writing phase, SEO would be incorporated by working with the copy teams so that they understand that:

• there are keywords and keyword variations that should be used in the content for each page
• there is a need to use certain keywords and that this is not meant to undermine their copy
• page titles and page descriptions should use specific keywords and keyword phrases also

During the development phase, SEO would be incorporated by working with the web dev teams so that they understand that:

• there are specific architectural improvements that can augment SEO such as
  • file naming conventions and directory structure
  • URL rewriting for dynamic URLs
  • setting up 301 redirects from old URLs to new URLs
• there are specific code improvements that can augment SEO such as
  • using clean HTML
  • avoiding javascript for changing page content and for site navigation
  • offloading script and styles into external files
  • using heading tags and text emphasis

Unfortunately, though, the above does not take place. Instead, the site is built and ends up looking great, but doesn’t rank for the right keywords — or even worse, doesn’t even show up in the search engines. The worse part is that it takes way more effort and way more resources to add those search engine optimization practices into the site after it has launched already.

My suggestion is to make sure that all of the key stakeholders in a project have knowledge of what SEO requires for each phase of the site’s development and the benefits of focusing on SEO (or consequences of ignoring SEO) are.

It may be an uphill battle, but it will be worth it down the road.

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I posted a guide to installing and configuring WordPress a while back. It happens to be a post that gets a decent amount of traffic for me.

If I could go back in time (which I might do by updating the guide in the near future), I would reaffirm how much I love the All In One SEO Pack Plugin and the Database Backup Plugins. However, I would also add a new one to the list.

The Automatic Upgrade Plugin is pretty amazing. It is extremely easy to use and extremely useful in saving time. It even helps remove most of the need for FTPing into your site.

I highly recommend that any WordPress users install this plugin and start reaping the benefits of it immediately. You will not be sorry.

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Mentos launched a viral campaign last month that is pretty cute.

It uses flash as the delivery system and combines some nice video sequences, 3D animations, and an interactive Mortal Kombat-esque kiss battle game to get the job done.

I thought the video was well done even if the game was a bit silly (pleasure bars instead of health bars, for instance).

Definitely worth a look since good viral attempts are few and far between.

See if you have what it takes to master the Mentos Kiss Fight.

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After much speculation and rumor build up for the last couple months, anal overlord of the world, Steve Jobs, finally broke the silence and announced the next version of the iPhone — the 3G version!

The news of the 3G iPhone is definitely cool. The EDGE network sucks for loading web pages… and that happens to be one of my primary uses for the phone (I actually ran the install for a wordpress blog through my iPhone — sure I had to upload it via normal means, but still!).

The cool stuff:

• Price: $199 for 8GB, $299 for 16GB
• Color: Available in Black or White (only 16GB)
• Speed: USES 3G!!!!
• GPS: Has GPS… and integrates with Google Maps. Yes! Wheee!
• Headphone Jack: Non recessed! Apple learns from a very dumb mistake in V1.0.
• Business: Exchange and push email support. Move over RIM, here comes Apple trying to take your slice of the pie!

The bad stuff:

• Price: My old iPhone is now almost worthless with very little resale value. $399+ down the drain, but I guess it will make a nice gift for a non iPhone fanatic.
• Release Date: July 11th is too far away. I want to play with a new toy. Damn it.
• Other Details: Not many other details are available yet. I’m hoping for some other cool features being improved like MMS capabilities, better camera, video recording, etc.

Apple pushes the cell phone market one step closer to full on data capabilities and a real web browsing experience. This should help usher in an improved era of phone+web devices.

I’ll bet that RIM and Blackberry are pretty concerned right now.

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An important SEO tactic that should be used for on-site content formatting revolves around the proper usage of HTML Heading Tags.

Heading tags are important because page headings serve as a great indicator of what a given page is about. If you go to a page that has a heading of “SEO Basics: How to Use Heading Tags,” it is a good bet that the rest of the content will be directly related to SEO & Heading Tags. Thus, these tags provide relevancy in the eyes of the search engines.

Now that we’ve touched on why they are important, let’s switch gears to how to use headings properly (plus, what not to do!).

Proper Usage

• Use the <h1> tag for the main heading on the page.
  Ex. <h1>SEO Basics: Heading Tags</h1>
• Use the <h2> tag for subsequent sub-headings on the page.
  Ex. <h2>SEO Heading Mistakes</h2>
• Make sure that you use the current page’s keywords in the <h1> and <h2> tags.

Mistakes

• Don’t use images for headings — styled text has much more relevancy in the eyes of the search engines
  • If you must use an image, make sure it has ALT text
• Don’t style your headings with the wrong HTML tags like this:
  Ex. <span class=”heading”>This is my heading</span>
  • It is important that you use the correct HTML <h1> and <h2> tags or the search engines will not give you credit!
• Don’t try to stuff all of your keywords into headings
• Make sure the heading of the page is relevant to the page’s actual content

Sounds simple, right? Well, it is… which is why it is amazing that so many sites do this wrong and pass up the SEO benefits of using HTML Headings correctly.

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