Megan's Web

Content management systems and blogging platforms such as WordPress provide an excellent, simple way for website owners to add content to their website without having much technical knowledge. There’s a few pitfalls for the novice though, and being aware of these things can have a big impact on the performance of your site.

People who know me will have heard my periodic rants about “the terrible code” in some website or another, and I can see you all rolling your eyes and thinking “who cares about the code, only geeks care about the code”. Here’s one of the reasons why I care about the code: (more…)

This morning I attended a Sitepoint webinar with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) experts Kristen Holden and Mike Hudson. In a field beleaguered by snake oil merchants and charlatans, it’s good to get some plain old commonsense advice on the topic, so I’m writing this post in an attempt to crystallise some of the ideas in my own mind and share a brief outline of the important points.

What is SEO?

In the most literal sense, SEO means what it says - optimising your website so it can be easily found and indexed by search engines. If you just put a website up without SEO, there’s a good chance your site won’t be found, no matter how good it is. I’ve seen businesses here in Tasmania with websites (often those built in Flash) that don’t come up on Google even if you search for the exact business name and town – a good indication that something has not been done correctly right from the beginning.

But simply being found isn’t enough – you need to be found by the right users. There’s little point getting to the top of Google results if the users that search brings to your site don’t find what they want.

Another important aspect of SEO is online reputation management. You may not be able to control what others say about you or your company online, but you can do a lot to counter any negative or inaccurate material by working to make sure the information you want seen comes up higher in search results. (Antony Mayfield’s book and blog Me and My Web Shadow is an excellent resource on this subject.)

The good news is, SEO is not black magic; a lot of it just comes down to common sense. While the algorithms that search engines use to decide how to rank pages are extremely complex, there’s plenty of good commonsense things you can do that will start you out on a good footing. (more…)