Goodtree & Co. » technical

How to Score 99% in Website Grader

Hal — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 02:09:28 +0000

This story first appeared in ActiveRain.

Cary, NC – There are a lot of helpful tools for analyzing your website – broken link checkers, SEO analyzers and so forth. Website Grader from Hubspot is one of the best (and most popular).

Website Grader uses an amalgam of proprietary tools to analyze how well you communicate with search engines, your audience and other websites. The result is a score that summarizes your website’s effectiveness on the web.

There are no costs or fees, but you do have to give them your email. I’ve gotten a few notes from them, mostly informative. I can unsubscribe at anytime.

Try it on your own website: Website Grader.

Scoring High

The range goes from 0-100. A high score means you have an effective website – good search visibility, good structure, good audience.

The report will pinpoint things that can be improved.

I’m happy to say that CaryCitizen scored a 99 out of 100. So how’d we do it?

#1: Be An Authority

If others see you as an authority, they link to your website and your stories. Incoming links constitute 75% of Website Grader’s score.

Write interesting stories about your community, especially things that have been ignored by major media. Good pictures are important too. Label the pictures properly (use a desciptive title such as “Cary Baseball” instead of a number like “DSC_1067″).

Send your stories to the people and organizations you cover. Ask them to send it to all their friends. And relatives.

Now people are linking to you. Your search rank rises. You retire rich.

#2 Get Indexed

Does Google know you’re publishing tons of great stuff? Website Grader will tell you. It will also tell you how many pages have been indexed.

Get credit where you deserve it.

#3 Avoid Fake Link Love

At CaryCitizen, we get 20 or 30 requests every week to “exchange links.”

Don’t do it.

Call it “link promiscuity” or “link prostitution” (or anything else that comes to mind), but it probably doesn’t help (and may hurt).

Linking connects sites of similar content. One would expect common keywords between the linked content. Link love is not a quickie hook-up of convenience in the dark of night.

Google makes its living delivering relevant search result. Efforts at gaming the system like Fake Link Love always work out badly.

#4 Other Factors

Other factors, like Twitter mentions, blogging grade and length of domain registration are evaluated as well. It all gets cooked together into your score.

Evaluate your own site at Website Grader. You can also see how CaryCitizen scored by clicking on the badge.

HTML Redirects

Hal — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:24:51 +0000

Cary, NC – Today, we’re going to nerd-out with a post about how to redirect an html page.

WHY REDIRECT

Sometimes, you need to change the home page address (url) of a domain.

For example, we built a new site for our client Julie Roland. Previously, her home page had been http://julierolandrealtor.com/index.html.

For her new site, we went with an all-WordPress installation. That changed her home page address to index.php.

The problem is with legacy links – people who have the old address (index.html) end up at a 404 (page not found).

THE SOLUTION

Fortunately, the solution is simple.

Create a new page called index.html
Add this code between and :
Upload to the root (top level) on your server

Bear in mind, if you already have a file called index.html, this will over-write it, so be careful.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF A REDIRECT

We also used the redirect trick to send traffic from Julie’s old blog to her new site.

Old blog address: http://julierolandrealtor.com/wordpress/
New blog address: http://julierolandrealtor.com/

For this instance, we created a directory called ‘wordpress’ and upload our index.html redirect file into it. So, when people go to the old address, they get instantly redirected to the current home page.

Click on the old blog address up above and see for yourself.

SUMMARY

Html Redirects can help your existing audience find you if you have changed the address of your website.

Technical Services

Hal — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:42:02 +0000

Along with solid creative work and strategic thinking, success on the web demands a broad range of technical expertise.

From a pure programming standpoint, we hand code some of our sites and adapt open source platforms for others. We make extensive use of APIs to tie together content from all over the web. Our languages include HTML, PHP, CSS, JQuery, MySQL, XML, XHTML, JScript, ActionScript, CentOS, Ubuntu and many others. Most of our work is on open source Linux platforms.

From an applications standpoint, we create databases, manage analytics, run our own ad server, supply hosting, set-up and install WordPress and create widgets for maps, calendars, video and all kinds of content.

Blog is a Dirty Word

Hal — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:54:27 +0000

We continue to install WordPress for clients at an ever increasing pace. But we stopped calling it a Blog.

Sure, the blogosphere gets bigger every year. The pool of experts continues to expand (you know you’re one if you read ProBlogger). But even more key, the pool of non-experts is really taking off.

Two things are widening the audience for blogs:

Better options for integrating blogs into web pages and social sites
“Subscribe by email”

Better Options

Back in the day (last year), you could re-publish your blog as html, allowing you to place it on a web page. Now, you can click a box and syndicate your stuff so it automatically appears on Facebook and Twitter.

Over at WidgetBox, you can build a shiny widget with a few clicks that others can easily use to re-publish your content. About a third of our traffic is coming from off-site syndication.

Bottom line: more people have more places to see your stuff and it doesn’t look like a “blog.”

Subscribe by Email

Feedburner and others give publishers an option to include a “subscribe by email” link. It’s easy to enable – just a few clicks and embed a piece of code.

Feedburner’s email service (free) provides a really clean, professional, business-grade product to the inbox of subscribers. People who “don’t read blogs” are signing up in droves.

Check it out for yourself: Subscribe to our blog by email

Call it Anything Else

Call it a Journal or a Notebook or News. Take inspiration from The Sartorialist, Make the Logo Bigger and Slashdot.

Why do we call ours a blog? Cause it’s for experts

TIMA / Google Seminar

Hal — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:35:38 +0000

TIMA, the Triangle Interactive Marketing Association, had a great seminar on Wednesday presented by Google*.

Hetal Gordon and Tonia Lipscomb from Google covered two broad topics – AdWords and content networks like YouTube. The information was flowing fast and furious, but here are a few interesting items we managed to capture:

100 Billion – the number of search queries Google gets in a year.
8 Seconds – how long it takes for a viewer to decide whether or not to stay on your site.
Time of Day – using Google Analytics, you can see precisely when people are spending the most time on your site and adjust an AdWords campaign to maximize this window of opportunity.
“Feed what’s Working” - Google’s advice about keywords. In a nutshell, when you create an AdWords campaign, focus on what gets the most clicks .
Google Trends – this is part of the Google Labs suite (it’s a beta product). See what key words and phrases are moving web traffic and adjust your approach accordingly.
The World’s Largest Focus Group - with Analytics, that’s certainly one way to look at Google.
54 Percent – that’s the percentage of people 18-54 who use YouTube. Pork & Beans, anyone?
Meta Tags Still Matter - So many websites don’t use meta tags, and so many people claim that they don’t matter, I just had to ask the folks from Google: are meta tags obsolete? Answer: Yeah, totally obsolete. Unless you want the search engines to find you.

Thanks to the crew at TIMA and Google for the great seminar!

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* Pictured above (L–>R): Laura St. Onge (TIMA), Louise Gordon (TIMA), Tonia Lipscomb (Google), Hetal Gordon (Google) and Amy Boaz (TIMA).

Best Free Back-up Utility

Hal — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:23:17 +0000

Here’s another in our series of lab-tested, must-have free utilities for Mac nation.

SyncTwoFolders is our favorite back-up program. It’s great for iTunes, iPhoto and most anything that’s stored in directories.

What we like about S2F is it’s flexability and simplicty. You choose your source, choose the target and choose a sync option:

Short explanations of each option pop up in the alt text to assist you. We use the one chosen here (Source up Target) to send files to an archive. Files are added from the Source to the Target (but not the other way around). Nothing is destroyed or over-written on the Target. Perfect for iTunes.

You can get SyncTwoFolders on Site de Tom Christ Flo Joa or MacUpdate where it is a five star rated utility.

Managing Passwords with Sxipper

Hal — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:34:52 +0000

As the usefulness of the web grows, we all have more and more passwords and user names. Some sites allow anything; others want 7 or more characters, upper- & lower-case, numbers. It gets baffling. But here’s a great utility for managing it all.

It’s called Sxipper. Sxipper is a free plug-in for use with the Firefox browser (please tell me you’re not still using Internet Explorer).

Sxipper is easy to install (takes less than five minutes, no special skills or hacking required). It’s secure, it’s smart and it’s a massive time-saver. Here’s what they have to say about themselves:

Always available - appears when needed, so you can log in or fill forms with a single click
Trustworthy - encrypts your personal data and stores it on your computer
Accurate form fill - learns from its own users how to complete forms with 100% accuracy with our unique training tool
OpenID provider - provider of private and public identifiers. Sxipper.com is a secure, phishing-resistant OP, with support for PAPE. Identity 2.0 begins here.
Easy to install - gathers data from your address book and web browser so that you have a running start

Basically, when you navigate to a site where you need a password (gmail, flickr, your blog), a little dialogue box pops up asking you to choose an identity. For most sites, there’s only one choice (the only time I see more than one is for blogging, but that’s because I write 6 or 7 blogs).

Select an ID and Sxipper logs you in. Simple!

Sxipper also features automatic form fills, a very handy feature. Never type your name and address again.

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A brief word about Firefox. Here at OCDC, we’ve tried (and continue to test our web work) on all the major browsers – IE, Safari, Camino, even Navigator (yuck). Most people continue to use IE because they’re stuck with bad old Web 1.0 habits.

Give Firefox a shot – it’s endlessly customizable to your needs, has a small footprint, is constantly (and automatically) updated and is from the not-for-profit Mozilla org. What’s not to like? Say goodbye to IE and it’s endless pop-ups, hangs and crashes.

Download Firefox and give it a try. You’ll thank me.

Using WordPress Themes in 4 Easy Steps

Hal — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 09:41:31 +0000

It’s easy to add some bling to your blog with a new theme if you use WordPress.

Themes are designs you can download that alter the look (but not the functionality) of your blog. You can install a new theme anytime you like – all your content stays intact.

1. Browse some themes online

WordPress is open source and a lot of free or shareware themes exist. Start by browsing some of these sites:

WP Themes

WordPress Theme Viewer

Smashing Magazine’s 83 Themes

2. Download a couple of themes you like

Just look for the download button (or link) next to any theme you like. We fancy themes with two or three columns that are widget ready (widgets are handy plugins that addd functionality to your blog).

3. Upload the theme to your server

Most themes download to your computer compressed and expand themselves once they hit your desktop. Upload the uncompressed folder to your server into the directory:

/wp-content/themes/

4. Activate the theme

From the admin panel, selection Presentation from the menu across the top. You’ll see your available themes displayed. Double click on the theme you’d like to make active.

Your done! Click on “View Site” to see your new theme in action.

We’ve installed a new theme – it’s Micfo Web 2.0 Green by Cory Miller.

Google Keyword Tool

Hal — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:42:44 +0000

We’ve blogged about this before, but because keywords are so important, we thought we’d go into a little more detail.

Keywords are nothing more than the most common terms people use to describe something. But choosing the right keyword can mean this difference between success or failure for your website.

For example, we almost called our website “interactive copywriter.” But a keyword search revealed that “interactive copywriter” was not anywhere near as popular a search string as “online copywriter.” Whew! Good thing we looked.

Keywords can be single terms or multi-word phrases (like “online copywriter”). Using a keyword tool gives you objective data about different words and phrases, an easy way to compare their popularity, helps you discover alternatives and gives you more surety about the words or phrase you choose.

We recommend the Google keyword tool for all online copywriting which involves the creation of keywords and phrases.

How to Create Favicons

Hal — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:19:35 +0000

Here’s another Web 2.0 tip for Boomers.

Favicons (pronounced fave-IKONZ) are the tiny pics you often see preceding a web address in your browser bar. Here’s ours:

In this post , we’ll tell you how to create your own favicons– it’s so easy, you’ll wonder why you waited.

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1. First, need to create your own favicon artwork. Any graphics program will do – Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, etc. The dimensions need to be 16px square. Yep, it’s small. So keep it simple.

2. Save your art according to these specs:

- Supported file formats: gif, jpg, png, and bmp.
- Use a gif or png with transparency if you require it.
- Maximum file size: 150.00 kB.

3. Now go to Dynamic Drive’s Free Favicon Generator.

Follow the instructions (browse and create icon). The generator will create a file called favicon.ico from your artwork. The generator will also create some html code for you to use on your webpage.

4. Upload your favicon.ico file to the same directory on your website as your index.

5. Add the code to your web page as instructed (just cut and paste it into the head section).

You’re done!

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Special thanks once again to Dynamic Drive for the free favicon generator.