We’re big fans of WordPress at Ascendancy. The open source blog/CMS is our tool of choice when building new sites for many of our clients. It’s dead simple for clients to add new content to their own site, and easy to add new functionality, with new third-party plug-ins being created every day.

As some of our readers may already know, we started out as an SEO agency, so we’re big on ensuring that our clients’ websites perform well in Google’s organic search listings, and that they reach their intended target audience. Here are a few handy SEO plug-ins we’ve used and liked which can easily be installed on your WordPress-powered site. Remember – always backup your database and website files before making any changes to your site!

1. All-in-One SEO Pack

This is probably the best-known and most widely-used SEO plug-in for WordPress. All-in-One SEO Pack allows you to enter custom Title and Meta tags on every page or post on your site- allowing you to create more relevant, keyword-rich Title and Meta description tags, rather than the un-optimised and auto-generated ones that WordPress inserts by default.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

2. Google XML Sitemaps

This plug-in can be used to generate an XML sitemap. XML sitemaps tell search engines about all of the pages in your site and where they are located so that they can be indexed – very useful if your site is difficult to crawl. You can also assign priorities to certain pages in your site (i.e. that product or service you really want to push) so that they are indexed by the search engines sooner and on a more regular basis.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

3. Google Analytics

Having a good stats package like Google Analytics installed on your site is a no brainer – if you haven’t already signed up, we suggest you go here right now – http://www.google.co.uk/analytics ! This clean and simple plug-in lets you enter your Analytics ‘UA’ tracking number, and pulls some of your statistics into your WordPress dashboard, which is very handy! Knowing what search terms people are entering to find your site should help you to optimise your copy, Title and Meta description tags using the All-in-One SEO Pack plug-in.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/

4. Redirection

If you’ve recently converted your site from a different content management system or static pages into WordPress, you will probably want to preserve the excellent page rankings you’ve no doubt built up on Google. This plug-in allows you to create 301 redirects from within your WordPress admin panel, rather than having to whip out a text editor and your thinking cap! A 301 redirect tells search engines that a page has permanently moved to a new location, transferring PageRank and the traffic that goes with it to the new location.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/

Have fun experimenting!

Over the last few months, you’ve probably heard quite a bit about Google’s latest attempt to break Facebook’s grip on our online social lives. Google’s previous social project, Google Buzz, never really got off the ground. This was partly due to the negative publicity the service received regarding poor user privacy and partly due to the fact that it didn’t really offer anything new.

Google launched its new Google+ service to great fanfare at the end of June. The service currently only accepts new users on an invite-only basis, similar to Gmail when that service first started back in 2004. In an attempt to remedy the damage done by Google Buzz, the service includes more comprehensive privacy controls and allows users to share posts with much narrower groups of people, known as ‘Circles’.

At this point you might be thinking ‘This is great, but how does this relate to my business?’ As yet, the ability to create a page for your business, like Facebook Pages, is unavailable. Google’s current stance is that the service is just for individuals. However, it is widely expected that Google will add the ability to create business listings in the near future – so keep your eyes peeled!

The ‘+1′ Button

Another area where Google+ could affect your business is in the field of Search Engine Optimisation. Just before Google+ launched, you might have noticed prominent ‘+1’ buttons appearing next to search engine results and on various websites when signed into a Google account. These are essentially Google’s equivalent of the ‘Like’ button on Facebook; a way of giving kudos to a product, service, or in this case a web site that you found useful. Whenever you ‘+1’ a page, it will appear under the ‘+1’s’ tab on your Google+ profile, and you’ll be given the opportunity to post a link to the site on your wall for all your connections to see.

At this point in time, there isn’t enough evidence to suggest a link between the number of +1’s a site receives and its organic search position. However, it has been found in the past that web pages which have been extensively retweeted on Twitter get indexed by Google more quickly than less socially-inclined sites. It’s quite likely that +1’s will have a similar effect on search engine results in the future; after all it is still early days for the service, and Google will want to give people an incentive for using their service rather than Twitter. Google are also known for sudden changes in their search algorithm and leaving their products in the beta stage of development for extended periods of time (yes – we’re looking at you, Gmail), so anything is possible!

A common issue faced by our clients is that they need to find an effective way of targeting potential clients online who are situated in a particular local area. 

If this sounds like you, here’s a checklist of several effective ways to target your local customers online:

• Make sure you have created a listing on Google Maps. If you’re listed already (as many businesses are) then take control of your listing by creating a new entry on Google Places that exactly matches the listing you see for your business on Google Maps (even if the details are wrong). If you’re not listed already then it’s very straight forward to create a new listing.
• Don’t be lazy with your Maps listing. By including lots of keyword-rich text, adding pictures & video, adding your business to relevant categories and making sure you get some reviews from friendly customers, you can improve your position in the listings.
• Don’t forget that you can target Google AdWords campaigns to a specific geographical area – so that when anyone within a defined radius of your chosen location searches for your chosen phrases, your ad is displayed.
• And of course, you can target your local area through organic search too. Make sure you mention your geographical location plenty of times on your website, and work it into your title tags in particular. You can even target surrounding areas with some careful thought – for example, mention that your business serves x, y and z areas in addition to your own.
• Facebook pay per click advertising allows you to advertise only to specific geographical areas, and indeed to particular demographic groups.
• Twitter is also, of course, an excellent place to find your local customers online and build relationships with them.

Need to target a local audience online? Contact Helen for more details about how Ascendancy can help.

As we work on our clients’ websites, we often see the same issues recurring across multiple projects. One particularly tricky issue that we frequently come up against is when a client is suffering from what we call ‘KFS’, or Keyword Fixation Syndrome.

I asked our optimisation specialist Geoff about Keyword Fixation Syndrome – how to recognise the signs, and how to overcome it!

• Keyword Fixation Syndrome can be diagnosed when a business attaches out-of-proportion importance to a particular keyword or phrase that they want to target in the search engines.
• Out of proportion? What we mean by this is that the keyword is not as important as the business owner thinks it is. Often a client will have an assumption that a keyword is crucial to their business – that by obtaining a top ranking for that phrase, their business will be revolutionised overnight, when in fact the evidence suggests that this would not be the case.
• Why would this be so? Sometimes your potential customers aren’t using the same terminology as you, and aren’t in fact searching for your chosen phrase at all. Sometimes the keyword is overly general and unlikely to convert well into sales. And sometimes the phrase would indeed revolutionise your business if you could achieve a top ranking – but the rankings are dominated by high-powered sites that have been around a lot longer than yours and have a lot more search engine ‘clout’ – meaning that in the short term you may be better off targeting other phrases, saving this target for a later stage in the campaign.
• Can KFS be treated? A keyword fixation can be very difficult to treat – patients are sometimes too emotionally attached to their ‘pet’ keywords for treatment to be effective. However, with a healthy dose of realism, keyword research can be effective as a treatment. By looking at the evidence – which phrases attract the most traffic, which are least competitive, and which tend to convert best into sales (running a pay per click campaign can help you test which phrases convert best if you have no other data on this), a full recovery – and website success – can be effected.

Not targeting the right keywords? Contact Helen for more details about keyword research and search engine optimisation.

If you’ve recently redesigned your website, or made some major changes to its content or functionality, you probably didn’t give a second thought to what happened to the ‘old’ version of the site.

After all, you probably didn’t like that site very much and couldn’t wait to see the back of it. Maybe you didn’t like the design, the content no longer fitted with your vision for the business, or perhaps the site had a poor conversion rate. Why on earth would you ever need that website again?

Let’s stop for a moment and think about why you wanted a new website. I think it’s true to say that the vast majority of redesigns or redevelopments have, as their fundamental goal, to grow your business in one way or another. So you’re trying to make your new website ‘better’ than the old one. You’ll probably be measuring the success of your new website in terms of how many website visitors you get, how long they spend on the site, or how many sales or enquiries are generated, for example.

But what if the unthinkable happens? What if your ‘better’ website is actually worse? What if you get less traffic than before, your visitors look at fewer pages and are less likely to make an enquiry?

The first thing you’re going to want to do is to analyse why the new site isn’t performing as you hoped. And you’re going to need a record of your old site in order to do that. You’ll want to compare your old enquiry form to your new enquiry form, for example, to try to figure out why more people are visiting it but fewer are filling it in. You’ll want to compare the copy on the old home page to the copy on the new home page to analyse why more visitors are being turned off and bouncing straight back out of your site.

What a shame you’ve fallen out with your old web developer, not thought to keep a copy of the old site, and the Wayback Machine doesn’t have a copy of your site for the relevant date period!

So what should you do before hitting the delete button on your old website? There are various options, some or all of which may be open to you depending on your circumstances:

• Make sure you get a copy of all the files from the old website on a CD

• Print out copies of all the pages on your website (or create PDFs if you don’t want an actual physical copy)

• My favourite – Use screen recording software to create a video of your interaction with the website. We’ve used CamStudio in the past to good effect. Set the software running on your machine and then simply use your own website – hovering over dropdown menus to show what happens, filling in forms, and showing your website ‘in action’ rather than as a static document.

• Also make sure you have kept a copy of any analytics data related to the old site.

And your New Year’s Resolution…?

Keep a log of any significant changes made to your website that may have an impact on its performance. If you notice a sudden upturn or downturn in traffic, conversion or bounce rate, for example, you can use your log to try to identify any changes you’ve made that may have caused it.