Jacksonville NC SEO

Sanford Web Design provides search engine optimization, search engine marketing, website design and website development which creates high-quality, cost-effective search engine optimized web sites for our clients. We do this by combining our creative and technical skills along with our knowledge of business, marketing and advanced SEO techniques to create high-ranking web sites.

Sanford Web Design is a leader in Organic Search Engine Optimization, meta tag composition, high-quality inbound link network creation, and pay-per-click campaign management. Our strategies have successfully promoted dozens of web sites to the top of their preferred search term (keywords) organic rankings on Google and other search engines. We stake our reputation as an SEO company on the results of our work.

As an SEO company, we’ve also done organic search engine optimization all by itself, without a visual redesign. Let us put our expertise to work for your web site today with a SEO expansion, or at least a meta tag, architecture, current search engine ranking and inbound links review. e

Call us today for a free introductory consultation or fill out our convenient form on the contact page for a complimentary site SEO analysis. Our headquarters is located in Sanford, NC. However we will be moving to the Hampstead, NC and Wilmington, NC area shortly. Please call for an appointment so we can discuss the particulars of your marketing and SEO challenges.

http://seonorthcarolina.wordpress.com

Sunday, June 29, 2014

Any tips of web design for a game review site?

Registered User Join Date Jun 2014Posts 7Hey there! :P

I've new to the forum but I'm a Programmer / Web Developer of about 7 years, despite this I am terrible at Web Design.
I have tried numerous tutorial websites and tried to mimic style of many free templates that exist to my own fashion, but to no avail.

So I was wondering, do any of you guys have any tips or even a website that could better teach me some basic skills in web design?
It really hinders your project work when you can't afford a designer and you like doing things yourself!

Saturday, June 28, 2014

Form validation when javascript is disabled

"Submit"/>

PHP Code:// Initialise the content string

if(isset($_POST['submit']))

$Name 

Hostakers - Request for a review

Hello All,

I developed New web hosting Website , we are providing secured and $1 unlimited hosting

Please give me Review of my site

site : http://www.hostakers.com

Thnaks,

How Press Release helps SEO

s website. Press release will be found by a user who wants information regarding the topic or type of product or company that you have. People will search for certain information that is related to your company, kind of business or services. A well written press release helps on search engine optimization because it will drive traffic to your site. A press release will not look like an advertisement if it is well written and relates newsworthy facts about your company. Techie Group Inc. has several Press release writers for your needs that will further help you in all your SEO needs.

A press release can get you to the first page of the search engines quickly with your keywords. You can even have multiple spots on the first page of Google because of your keywords sometimes. It is very important to have keyword rich press releases to be more effective. Press releases add the possibility of an increased traffic to a web site if properly optimized from customers and internet users searching for your product and business and provide improved rankings in most of the search engines thus, increasing more popularity. Publicity through press releases can have many advantages because it is free and at the same time, reaches a large coverage that can distribute it in a very wide range of audience through the internet.

A press release can also be known as news release, media release, press statement or video release. The main goal of it is to attract favorable media attention to public relations clients or to give publicity for products or events. It can announce a huge amount of new items like events, promotions, awards, news, products and services, sales and other financial data. Most of the time, they are used in getting a feature story or are sent to announce news conferences or other upcoming events.

Other Creating a new popup window on button click

Registered User Join Date Jun 2014Posts 1Creating a new popup window on button clickHi Everyone,
I hope you all doing good. I want to create a new window on button click and then want to draw something in that new window. Can anybody tell me how can i do that.

Thanks
MSF

Issue with centered buttons

Registered User Join Date Sep 2005Posts 1,626I'm not sure why centered button will not work without old solution like text-align:center;
Notice comment where is removed this line but this will not work.
float: none;
margin: 0 auto;

PHP Code:


How to run my project using codeigniter?

Hi,
I am just start using code igniter and i donot have much knowledge of it.
I recently get a project to view built in codeigniter. i put this folder in www of wamp and start execution.
first i got error related phpadmin i solved that but now i could not able to go further of this page message.

"Welcome to CodeIgniter!

The page you are looking at is being generated dynamically by CodeIgniter.

If you would like to edit this page you'll find it located at:
application/views/welcome_message.php

The corresponding controller for this page is found at:
application/controllers/welcome.php

If you are exploring CodeIgniter for the very first time, you should start by reading the User Guide.
".

I just want to know how to come out of this and start viewing my website pages.

Thanks

Friday, June 27, 2014

lib with dates funcs manipulation

Registered User Join Date Sep 2010Posts 2Hi all,
If there is some php(version 5.3 and later ) , like converting from different formats, difference between dates, etc ...?
Thanks!

Auto selecting item in a drop down list on textbox.text on submit

hi,

I am struck with this problem. I have a textbox, submit button and a drop down list populated dynamically from MySQL. Now I require drop down to be automatically select the item which is in textbox. The text in textbox is the result of MySQL query of a database. Can anybody help me.

venkatesh

Other Help to Convert excel formula for adobe acrobat

Registered User Join Date Jun 2014Posts 2Help to Convert excel formula for adobe acrobathi everybody! i would like to convert this excel formula to javascript for adobe acrobat

Queries about SEO types and methods

Registered User Join Date Apr 2013Location BangalorePosts 316I have totally confused in remember the SEO types and methods.Some websites were described the SEO method is 1.ON page 2.OFF page and type as 1.White hat 2.Black hat 3.Gray hat.
But some websites were described the SEO method is 1.White hat 2.Black hat 3.Gray hat and type as 1.ON page 2.OFF
So what is the actual meaning for SEO methods and types?

Queries about Google Algorithm

Registered User Join Date Apr 2013Location BangalorePosts 316All SEO web Masters said Google Algorithm only determines the website ranking position on search result depending on website performance,quality etc...But nobody does not tell about how that algorithm looks like...Its a kind of programming language or kind of formulas and anything else or totally different from this...?

Lead Web Developer

Registered User Join Date Jun 2014Posts 1JOB SUMMARY

The Web Developer is responsible for the development of the sites he/she is handed by the graphic designer. The developer must implement the design using W3C Validated code. The individual must oversee the development team and ensure proper standards are followed. Deadlines will be set that must be kept. The individual must be able to use a project management tool to keep the company up-to-date on his progress on each of his tasks.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Operate effectively as the leader of the development team.Also, operates effectively as an individual for a quick turnaround of enhancements and fixes.Responsible for meeting expectations and deliverables on time and in high quality.Responsible for the development of web sites and components.Effectively develops in a clean, well structured, easily maintainable format.Demonstrates creative, technical and analytical skills.Demonstrates ability to communicate effectively in both technical and business environments.Ability to improvise, troubleshoot, and learn new skills on the job.

REQUIRED SKILLS

1-5 years experience using HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and PHP.Desire and willingness to work in a collaborative, innovative, flexible and team-oriented environment.Some exposure using MySQL, Photoshop, Google Analytics, WordPress, and other web tools.Knowledge of Twitter BootstrapKnowledge of DNS, SSL ,and FTPBe able to effectively train clients in the use of the Web Site you built for them.A good understanding around the concept of Responsive Design.
If interested apply for the job here: http://webdesign309.com/careers/
Also take this short knowledge quiz: http://webdesign309.com/web-developer-quiz/

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Facebook debug not display youtube ID

i want your help guys! first of all sorry for my bad english knowladge!

so now about my problem!

i have my own CMS where i have some posts there and i want to parse if
i have image in post i parse first image and put it in the meta og:image, i did it no problem but i olso parse youtube links, if i have some youtube iframe embed code there i want to parse this link and get youtube ID and then put this Id in this link http://img.youtube.com/vi/"HERE YOUTUBE id"/maxresdefault.jpg, to get youtube thumbnail for og:image.

so i did parser and i get youtube ID but problem is a ,when i
put it in the link in sourse code it is display normally but when i go in facebook Open Graph Object Debugger and check this link
debugger says that i have no ID in link

one important thing is that in my CMS i use PHP Code:ob_start(); 
function to display values in .tpl extension files, (i

Serving javascript files from a web server

developer and new to web programming and am using node.js

I need to do this - The browser should make a request to the server and the server will return javascript files, which will then be run by the browser. The javascript files will be generated on the fly and sent to the client.


Browser does the following javascript calls:
foo-jscode.zip

Site reviews: new setup, new pricing!

Today we’ll be releasing a renewed setup for our site reviews.

For the past year, we have been limiting the slots for our site review orders to a fixed number per week. The demand for the service is overwhelming, and we would like to thank all customers for the trust you have in our expertise. And for the great responses you gave us after receiving the reviews:

Yoast, I have to say, that this was one of the best thousand bucks I’ve spent in IT – ever. What a phenomenal amount of insight and advise you’ve given us. Thanks, and I’m sure we’ll use you again on future projects.
Henry Meyne, CTO of Hoozon

We are very keen on serving you quality information that will help you improve your website, both for visitors and Google.

Over the last number of months, we realized that customers want to know everything. Not just what’s wrong, but also all that is right. We’ve had a number of responses saying ‘have you checked this or that?’. That is why we decided to open up the entire scope of things we check during a review.

Silver Review

We have set up a huge list of over 200 checks we perform for a review, and have written clear and to-the-point right and wrong chapters per check, like this:

Major update of WordPress SEO (1.5)

11 March, 2014 by Joost de Valk - 301 Comments

Today we’re releasing what’s probably the single biggest update to our WordPress SEO plugin since its initial release. It improves speed, fixes a ton of bugs and edge cases and adds a new bulk title & description editor. On top of that we’ve changed several default settings and added some smaller new features. This post addresses all of it, so keep on reading.

Rewrite of option and post metadata handling

Every post in WordPress has metadata, and our WordPress SEO plugin adds more metadata to that: from indexation settings, to meta descriptions and titles. We used to store those in a manner that was not as efficient as we wanted it to be, so Juliette, who became a committer in WordPress SEO a few months ago, rewrote the entire logic. This fixes a ton of the bugs we’d encountered over the years but also, and more importantly, makes us use the database a whole lot less.

Speed improvements

Along with these rewrites to how we save the plugins options and post metadata, we implemented a new class loader. This class loader make code load only when it’s needed, leading to a far smaller memory footprint and a lot faster performance on both frontend and backend.

We also rewrote several of the queries used for the XML sitemap generation, leading to a 70% decrease in the number of queries used to generate the index sitemap, making that a lot faster too.

Pippin, from EasyDigitalDownloads, has been running the 1.5 beta on easydigitaldownloads.com for a while already, when he flipped, this is what the performance graph looked like:

The Power of Our Reviews

14 March, 2014 by Thijs de Valk - 11 Comments

We’ve been doing our Website Reviews for quite some time now, and recently we’ve also added the Conversion Review to that list. There are some of you, the very loyal ones, who we’ve had the pleasure of helping in both these areas.

Today I’m highlighting one of our very loyal customers (he has far more of our products than just the reviews) that has benefited maximally from these reviews. Let me demonstrate how having our reviews done has helped him.

The Website Review

It all started when our friends over at Bully Max ordered a website review from us in June 2013. Their website homepage looked something like this (this is a screenshot directly from our review):

Analyzing your audience

23 March, 2014 by Marieke van de Rakt - 8 Comments

About three weeks ago,  I wrote a post about the necessity of knowing your audience. We ourselves are currently investigating our audience. We asked our newsletter readers to fill out a questionnaire. After we have collected the results of our survey, I started analyzing the results. It has been a great week for me! In this post, I would like to present some of our results and try to translate it to some practical tips for you all to use.

What did we want to know?

Our audience has grown rapidly during the last few years. Yoast began as a WordPress blog, but is currently much more than just a blog. Few years ago Joost was writing and working alone in a small room in our house, while we currently have a nice office and over 10 employees. That made me wonder: who is our audience nowadays? Do we still appeal to a technical (nerdy) group of people? Are our customers mainly developers? Or is not all of our audience that technically skilled? And which products appeal to our audiences?

My first analysis of our audience focused on whether or not there exist different groups within our audience. My hypotheses was that we would at least have two types of visitors on Yoast.com: a technical

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

A new Yoast theme: Strategy

25 March, 2014 by Joost de Valk - 17 Comments

Today we’re unveiling the next of our Yoast Genesis child themes: Strategy. Aimed a bit more at the business side of the WordPress community, you’ll find that the look of this theme changes dramatically with the different color schemes it comes with. From a warm, beachy Summer feeling orange to a cool Winter.

With great names comes great responsibility.

1 April, 2014 by Joost de Valk - 13 Comments

 

Update: check the date of the post ;)

In recent years, Joost and Yoast have become less and less synonymous, to the point where it’s now downright confusing as to what people are referring to when they’re correctly pronouncing Joost’s first name and the company name. You’d almost start to feel thankful for those ignorant people who still insist on calling Joost

Beautiful or Usable: What’s important while designing your website?

Beautiful or Usable: What’s important while designing your website?Beautiful or Usable: What’s important while designing your website? 3 April, 2014 by Marieke van de Rakt - 14 Comments

In releasing our themes, we got lots of reactions about the aesthetics of our themes. Some people found them plain looking, boring or unappealing. Others were very enthusiastic. Of course, there is no accounting for taste. But it made me wonder, how important are the aesthetics of a website? Does a beautiful site convert better? And what is the relation between aesthetics and usability?

What is beautiful is usable?The halo effect

The halo effect is a cognitive process in which people attribute all kinds of characteristics to a person based on a first impression or one characteristic. The attractiveness or the beauty of a person has been found to produce a halo effect. When you meet someone you find attractive, chances are higher you will think they are nicer and more intelligent than when you meet someone you do not find attractive.

In the literature concerning aesthetics of websites, this halo effect on the base of attractiveness is researched. The theoretical notion in these studies is that as people perceive a website as very beautiful, they will also think that it is very usable.

For a clear (and entertaining) explanation of the halo effect, watch this short video:

A much cited article on the matter is

WordPress SEO Premium 1.1

After we released WordPress SEO Premium at January 23rd and WordPress SEO 1.5 at the beginning of March (a major rewrite of large parts of the plugin), we’re now ready to release . This new version introduces regular expression support for redirects as well as an even better integration with Google Webmaster Tools and an importer for Redirection.

Regular Expression support

We’ve added a new tab to the SEO

Post Connector 1.5


I’m happy to announce that we’ve released the biggest update to Post Connector so far, version 1.5. New features in this update include related connections, backwards linking and automatically displaying linked posts after a post.

Related Connections

Here at Yoast we’ve been recommending you to add related posts to your post pages since it encourages both readers and search engines to continue their visit to your site. This means more pageviews per visit for visitors and for search engines it means you tie your related content to each other, improving its chance to rank in the search results.

introduces the concept of related connections. With related connections your WordPress website will suggest related (custom) posts which you can then easily link to the post you’re writing. Just like any other connection in Post Connector, related connections are stored in your database allowing them to be fully cached by WordPress and thus keeping your website fast.

In recent months, more and more hosting parties have recommended against the use of related posts plugins because they create to heavy a strain on the database. You will not get this issue with Post Connector.

Backwards linking

You can now link posts both ways, so instead of only linking from parent to child you can now also link from child to parent. Backwards linking is a connection option, allowing you to enable it per connection. Both parent to child and child to parent links can be automatically displayed under posts.

This allows us, for instance, to link this post to the Post Connector plugin page, but also the other way round. This allows us to show recent posts about Post Connector on the plugin page itself, and a block with related plugins on the page here.

Automatically displaying linked posts

Automatically displaying linked posts introduces a new way of displaying linked posts. Next to our widget and shortcode you can now display linked posts by let Post Connector append them to your posts. This new feature prevents the need of editing your theme files allowing you to easily switch themes in the future.

This new feature of course ties in perfectly with both the other two options above, making Post Connector a quick and easy related posts plugin.

: available now!

If you’ve already bought Post Connector, you can download the update now. Otherwise:
go buy it now

Also included in this update

We’ve also fixed several bugs, introduced an autoloader, improved our various admin screens, improved our license handling and added various languages.

Related Posts New plugin: Post ConnectorWordPress SEO Premium 1.1WordPress SEO Premium 1.0--

Moving your website to https / SSL: tips & tricks

In January I wrote about our plans in moving Yoast.com to SSL. We’ve since done that, with great results from an SEO perspective: we had no negative effect on traffic, whatsoever. Two weeks ago, we also moved our tool Quix to https. There are quite a few things we learned in the process of moving these two sites to SSL that we thought would be worth sharing with all of you. Also, some things happened in the last few weeks that make SSL a hot topic, so we’ll discuss those first.

Ranking benefit for completely SSL sites?

Last month, Search Engine Land reported that Matt Cutts had said about SSL that he’d “personally love to make it part of the ranking algorithm”. The Wall Street Journal picked up on this two days ago. Whether or not this actually happens (or, perhaps, has already happened) doesn’t really make much of a difference to me. A completely SSL site looks more trustworthy than a non-SSL one

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

News SEO 2.0: Google News optimization with ease

We’ve rebuilt and reimagined our News SEO plugin and taken it to the next level. Today we’re proud to release News SEO version 2.0, which allows you to easily optimize your site for Google News.

It had been, unfortunately, almost 2 years since we last updated the plugin which meant it didn’t work anymore for 95% of people and lacked many features. We’ve decided to make it a premium product, much like our Local SEO and Video SEO plugins, so we can actually afford to spend time on it. As always, our core WordPress SEO plugin (to which this News SEO plugin is an addon) is and will remain free of charge. Of course this plugin can also be used with our Premium WordPress SEO plugin.

What does our News SEO plugin do?

The News SEO plugin allows you to optimize your site for Google News. It creates XML News Sitemaps, editors picks RSS feeds and allows for use of the standout tag and the meta news_keywords tag as well as helping you optimize some of the more advanced XML News sitemap options like stock tickers.

Of course, you have to be in Google News first to be able to optimize for it, which is why I’ve taken the time to write a page outlining the Google News submission process. Not all sites qualify for Google News, but for those that do, it can be a very powerful source of traffic.

Universal Search

One of the most important reasons that Google News can lead to so much traffic is because it’s included in Google’s Universal Search results. A search for

Reviewing our site reviews: highly satisfied customers!

6 May, 2014 by Marieke van de Rakt - 5 Comments

We have been doing website reviews for more than 3 years now. Recently, we decided to update our format. We now offer different types of reviews, varying in depth of the analysis and in price accordingly. After completing a review, we usually have some contact with our customers (we answer questions about the review), but we were relatively clueless about the effects of our reviews. Do people really implement our advice? And are they satisfied? Do our reviews lead to more traffic and sales or to higher ranking in Search Engines? Time for a little research!

Very satisfied customers

A few weeks ago we asked our site review customers to give their opinion about the review we did for their websites. More than 100 of our customers took the time to fill out our short questionnaire (thanks guys!). Not at all surprisingly, most of our customers (82 %) have a WordPress site. They mostly maintain a blog, or a company site. We have customers from all over the world, but the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and the Netherlands are home countries to most of our clients.

We first asked our customers to indicate on a scale from 1 to 10 how satisfied they were with the review we made for them. A very large majority (67 %) was very satisfied with our review, rating it with an 8 or higher.

Thoughts on 404 Not Found error pages

8 May, 2014 by Michiel Heijmans - 56 Comments

Have you ever wondered why you should have that 404 Not Found page? What’s the use? The page is gone or broken and you don’t want people to end up there, so why not just redirect that page to the homepage of your website? They even made WordPress plugins that will help you do this, so why not, right?

Wrong. What you’re basically doing is putting people on a train they did not choose themselves. If I want to go to Paris, why send me to London instead? If a visitor wants to find a certain page on your website, give him that page or an explanation of why you can’t.

Back to basics

The 404 Not Found error means that the URL that was requested doesn’t point to a certain page. Or as Wikipedia puts it:

“The 404 or Not Found error message is an HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with a given server, but the server could not find what was requested.”

The page may have been deleted, or the URL was misspelled. The permalink structure might have changed or even the domain name, and redirects could have been set wrong. It doesn’t matter why the page isn’t there anymore. Just bear in mind that it’s probably your fault and not the visitors fault, and write content for that 404 Not Found page based on that assumption. Keep a close eye on your 404s, which can be done by using, for instance, Google Webmaster Tools or Screaming Frog.

Note that if you have some pages that need to go down temporarily, the use of a 503 Service Unavailable would of course be better than serving a 404 Not Found page. Smashing did an article on maintenance pages back in 2009: Effective Maintenance Pages: Examples and Best Practices.

Required elements of a 404 Not Found page

Let’s think about this for a while, because the internet is flooded with manuals for great 404 pages and everybody, including myself, has a different opinion on this.

First, I really don’t think the 404 should be a redirect to any other page. In the article 404 Page Best Practices, SearchEngineWatch also refers to this as not being the most user-friendly solution. There are plugins that semi-intelligently link the visitor to a ‘closely related’ page. This may seem smart, as that will give the visitor the information they want. Kind of. But probably not entirely. The visitor might still feel left alone on your website and click back to Google. That is the very reason I don’t like the redirect to the homepage. We test 404s in our site reviews and when we are redirected to the homepage, we will always add a chapter about creating a great 404 Not Found page, with a link to this article. Joost already explained a lot about the visitor’s mindset in that post.

That visitor expects an explanation on why you broke your website. I think just a small explanation is required.

There are a few options for why that page broke. You may have changed permalink structure. If you just did that, perhaps you want to know what the visitor did to get that 404 Not Found. Just ask him. You could also have deleted the page, as many 404s state: “The page is gone”. No. That page didn’t go anywhere but in your trash can. “We may have deleted or moved this page” is a more suitable description.

That would also mean the page is still around somewhere else. Why not point the visitor to a search form or site map? Luckily these are pretty common practices. What I also like, especially in an online store, is bestsellers or recently visited products. Keep that visitor on a shopping spree. On a blog, that would mean displaying popular articles or recent posts. A 404 page should never give the visitor the feeling that they have reached the end of your website.

Examples of nice 404 Not Found pagesHardrock.comEbay.comBlueFountainMedia (came across this one and it’s fun and usable at the same time)Annoying elements of a 404 page

I have to mention South Park here. They did a great job on creating funny 404s, just refresh the page and the SP fans will go wild, but it’s just not the best 404. Even with the most popular listings below the fun part. Create an actual page, don’t just try to be funny, as dull as it may be.

The worst one: the dog ate the page. Note that this might be personal. Even on a pet site, a dog on your 404 page just doesn’t make me smile (but what a nice website otherwise, indeed). Even when the 404 Not Found page isn’t bad at all like on this page, it may be overdone. Or I’ve just seen too many 404s with dogs already :-)

Fun is great by the way, but make it work. Don’t get a giraffe to lick my screen and think I’ll like your website regardless of not finding what I want. Help me to get back on track. At least point me to your homepage to start over again (but don’t redirect me!).

Another pet peeve: no 404 Not Found page at all. The browser telling me your website is crappy. That’s not what you want! Make sure your website has a 404 page. Using WordPress, just add a 404.php to your theme folder and create one if it isn’t there already, it’s really as simple as that.

Lastly, because I am looking forward to examples you have for crappy and great 404 pages: the huge 404 image that is telling me nothing more than that:

The Snippet Preview: what it means and how to use it.

12 May, 2014 by Joost de Valk - 37 Comments

Our WordPress SEO plugin has come with a snippet preview from day 1. This snippet preview mimics what the current page would look like in the search results, by our best “guesstimation”. In this post I’ll explain what the different sections are made up of, and what you can do to optimize those. I’ll also explain why the snippet might not always match what you see in the search results.

Note that the screenshots in this post are made using the latest version of WordPress SEO as of writing, version 1.5.3. So if you think “this is different from what I’m seeing”: update.

Headings and why you should use them

20 May, 2014 by Michiel Heijmans - 23 Comments

This post just had to be written. Somehow we have a chapter about Headings in all (!) our site reviews. Usually the website owner can’t change a single thing about the heading setup of the website, as he is unwilling or just lacks the knowledge to change the theme of the website. But headings do matter.

There are two ways headings can structure your content. In classic HTML, there would be 1 H1 tag on each page, maybe a couple of H2′s etc and these would all combine to form an outline of the entire document.

In HTML5, each sectioning tag (for instance

and
) starts again with an H1. This was done to make it easier to combine several components onto one page and still have a valid outline. It makes sense from a clearly theoretical perspective, but it’s lots harder to understand and we generally recommend against using it. This article explains what’s “wrong” with it.

Structuring the entire page

In the case of HTML4, it seems logical to use one H1 per page, of course being the main title of that page. In most cases, that’s not your brand name or website name (on your homepage it probably is, and that’s fine). On this page on yoast.com, it’s “”. That is what this content is about. I’m not going to talk about Yoast here, so no need to make that the H1, right? Matt Cutts agrees on using just one H1:

On a category page that H1 would be the category name and on a product page the product name. It’s not that hard, indeed. That is why we still recommend using the H1 this way.

H2 is for subheadings of that H1. Use it to divide content into scannable blocks; both Google and your visitor will like it. H3 is for subheadings of that H2, preferably. Sometimes I use H3 for blocks that should be H2, but just don’t hold that much information for the visitor, like the closing heading on this post, where I will ask you to comment on my statements – perhaps you don’t agree and we could have a nice discussion about that ;-)

I want to emphasize that this all isn’t new. Over the last five or six, maybe even more years, not much has changed in the way we recommend using headers.

Improving our reviews

We recently did customer research into what our site review customers thought about our site reviews. While we were very happy with the results, it also showed us some things we could improve. It was very clear people wanted our reviews for the SEO improvements most of all, and today we’re launching the changes to our review spectrum that are a result of that.

The biggest change we’re making is that we’re going to be actually making changes to your site, if you’ll let us: we’re going to be configuring the WordPress SEO plugin in a way that we think makes most sense for your site. This is not a “5 minute” process, as we have to understand what your website is all about to make the right decisions on all of the plugins settings, but because we’ve done the review, we can actually do that.

Also, we’ll throw in a license to our Premium plugin for a year, so you get the best we have to offer plus a year of support. All of that for the, low, low price of $899. If you don’t have WordPress or aren’t interested in getting us to configure WordPress SEO, you can get the Silver SEO Review for $699.

Check out our improved reviews page!

The new “ultimate Yoast package”: Diamond review

Also new is our new “ultimate Yoast package”, the Diamond review: for $3,999 we’ll do a platinum SEO review, a full conversion review, we’ll configure your site’s goals in Google Analytics and/or Clicky and we’ll configure your WordPress SEO if you have it.

We’ve done over a thousand reviews already and with these changes we hope to make the next 1,000 customers even more happy than the previous 1,000.

--

Monday, June 23, 2014

Visually direct and captivate your visitors

3 June, 2014 by Thijs de Valk - 14 Comments

In the last month I’ve been speaking at a few conferences with a talk I’ve dubbed “The Psychology behind Conversion”. In this talk I’m trying to explain why everyone who maintains a website should be interested in psychology and how it can help them.

Being interested in psychology, especially when applied to the web, is more than just reading Cialdini’s Influence. Don’t get me wrong by the way, that book is awesome. But there are just so much more psychological processes at work than people are probably aware of. One of the most important ones, to my mind, is visual attention. People undoubtedly understand that attention is of importance when it comes to doing, well, anything really. So the same goes for visiting websites. But in my opinion it is not just attention, but visual attention that’s most important for visiting websites.

Visual attention

There are a lot of processes playing their part in this. We are very visual beings, and not being able to see, especially when you’re used to seeing, impairs us more than anything. It literally helps us understand our world. Our sight can even influence our other senses, such as taste.

So it’s of great importance to direct your visitor’s visual attention to those parts of your website you want them to see. To make sure you’re keeping their visual attention. In this post, I will discuss three aspects of visual attention: visual cueing, facial distraction and perceptual incongruence.

Visual cueing

Visual cueing basically means directing your visitors’ gazes. You can do this with colors or textual directions, but the most effective way is shapes. And there’s one shape that’s unparalleled when it comes to visual cueing: the arrow. Now, I use the term ‘arrow’ in a broad term, as it can be an actual arrow, or more of a triangle shape.

On wheelofpersuasion.com you can find a great explanation on this. Especially this picture makes it very clear:

WordPress SEO Premium 1.2

As I announced yesterday on the Dradcast, we released a new version of WordPress SEO premium. This is another feature packed update with a lot of things people had been asking us for. Let me go through the list of new features:

Import redirects from your .htaccess file

If you have a lot of redirects in your .htaccess file and find it a hassle to manage, you can now import them into WordPress SEO, just go to SEO

Things to consider for your online shop

Last week, we had an email from somebody who was pretty desperate. He had set up an online shop, filled it with thousands and thousands of products and in the three or four months after release, still nobody had found his shop or ordered his products. The online shop at hand sells women’s cloths.

This guy isn’t the only one with that mindset. Unfortunately, a lot of people still think the internet will magically bring them a fortune without any more promotional work to be done. “If you build it, they will come”. If only.

Now we could easily sell people like this a review, and then have them rebuild their shop. But it only seems fair to guide the ignorant a bit, right? Here are some things to consider when setting up a webshop.

What’s the Unique Selling Point (USP) of your online shop?

A Unique Selling Point (or Proposition) is the main reason for a customer to switch products or shops. It’s the thing that makes your online shop better than the all the other out there. The concept was “first proposed as a theory to explain a pattern in successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940s” (from Wikipedia). I’ve also heard people saying the USP is dead and replaced by UBR, the Unique Buying Reason. Whatever you call it, your webshop needs it to stand out from the crowd.

Have you thought about this? Why is your collection of shoes better than the next? Perhaps you kept the environment in mind, like a lot of others? It’s tough to find that one reason why you’re better than the competition.

With your USP in mind, you can start building your online shop. In our reviews, we’ve found more than once that an online shop is just a collection of products and the human factor is entirely left out. That doesn’t mean you should add a live chat or whatever, but you should focus on a great About Us page. And for instance loads of positive testimonials and reviews for both your products and your shop as a whole. Something that’s left out even more is a blog. If you have a unique product or service, you must have something to say about it.

What’s the main eye catcher on the homepage?

Why would anyone list all their available products on their homepage? One of my favorite words is ‘clutter’. I just really dislike an online shop that shows a million different options for me to click on. I either already know exactly what I want to purchase and use Google to find it, or I visit your shop to see what you have that will make my life a bit easier. That’s a bit black and white, but it does emphasize the need for a great call-to-action on the homepage of your online shop.

A lot of online shops use sliders as their call-to-action. You already know our take on sliders, but unfortunately a lot of shops do use them. Especially when cloths are involved, an online shop comes up with great images in a slider. Apart from the discussion if static images or copy would convert better, you should at least create an obvious link or button on that slider. If possible, keep the same look for that link or button for every slide. And keep it in the same place.

Unlike thinking of a decent USP, it really isn’t hard to set up a decent call-to-action. Think along the lines of featured products or links to your sale or outlet page. Perhaps even a special page you’ve created for your summer collection.

Did you write great content for your product pages?

This will take some effort. Most online shops we’ve reviewed in the past year used manufacturer descriptions for their product pages. Just import that database or XML file and you’ll have a content filled webshop and Google will start showing your product pages in their search result pages. Think again.

This is probably the most common reason for cross-domain duplicate content for online shops. Most of your competitors will use that exact same description. So you can either:

Forget about ranking with your product pages (which can be a valid decision sometimes), orWrite unique product descriptions (or have someone write them for you).

Option one is only valid when you have common products that are offered all over the internet. You should at least use Product schemas and allow for customer reviews (unique content!), so you can focus on other content to make your site rank. Choose your categories with care and set up killer category pages. Maintain or set up that blog on your website. In short: focus on your Unique Selling Point.

The second option is much, much harder. Not if your webshop only has ten products of course, but with thousands of products it’s a whole different ball game. Hiring a copywriter might not be a bad idea in this case. It’s amazing in how many ways a good copywriter can tell the same story over and over again for similar products of the same brand. And prevent that duplicate content by doing so.

Do you create a safe environment for your customer-to-be?

Make sure a visitor feels safe enough to submit personal stuff like credit card details on your website. That doesn’t mean your online shop should just contain a lot of security signs. Yes, these should be added, but a secure feeling is also enhanced by other things, such as testimonials. And how about inline validation? Feeling secure is also about doing things right yourself.

An obvious one that is unfortunately forgotten by a lot of online shops: contact details. That large telephone number in your header makes sure I know I can contact someone if things go wrong. That address in the footer tells me you have an actual location I can go to with my complaint or damaged goods. It seems like some online shop owners just want to sell and prefer not to be contacted afterwards at all.

One more thing: Refund policies and Money Back Guarantees. Most of the times these are defined by law, so why not display these clearly on your website? A lot of your customers don’t realize they are protected anyway and don’t have a lot to worry about when purchasing anything from your shop. Listing these near checkout buttons is a great way to take away that last doubt.

Does your internal search work like it should?

Another pet peeve of mine. When you do a search in a webshop for “iPhone cable” and the results give back Galaxy covers. This might be personal, but when I do a search in a shop, I would like to:

See an image of the product,view the product price so I can already compare products in the search results,add cheaper items to my cart directly from these search results,have a clear ‘click here for more details’ link,be able to list all items instead of having to click to the next page (I can scroll really fast, you know),have these results ordered by relevance.

If you do this right, I’d be in and out your online shop in no time and you can send over all these great products you offer.

Gives you something to think about, right?

This is just the tip of the iceberg. In our reviews we cover this, and a lot more, so if you’re willing to spend money on getting our opinion, get one of our website reviews.

Also, if you run a website or build websites: you must have customer stories about this, or additional considerations. Perhaps you were that ignorant online shop owner in a past life? I’m looking forward to your additions in the comments.

--

Google Panda 4, and blocking your CSS & JS

A month ago Google introduced its Panda 4.0 update. Over the last few weeks we’ve been able to “fix” a couple of sites that got hit in it. These sites both lost more than 50% of their search traffic in that update. When they returned, their previous position in the search results came back. Sounds too good to be true, right? Read on. It was actually very easy.

Last week Peter - an old industry friend who runs a company called BigSpark - came by the Yoast office. BigSpark owns a website called iPhoned.nl and they’d been hit by the every so friendly Google Panda. Now iPhoned.nl has been investing in high quality content about (you guessed it) iPhones for a few years now, and in the last year they’ve stepped it up a notch. They are pushing out lots of news every day with a high focus on quality and their site looks great. Which is why I was surprised by them being hit. You just don’t want your Searchmetrics graph to look like this: