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We chose these federal websites as our top 10 favorites because of their creativity, web usability or usefulness. If you have a favorite website, please suggest it below in our comment box.
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is a social networking development platform for multi-user version of WordPress or WordPress MU. It has the following functional capabilities:
In short, BuddyPress can give you the basic, minimum social networking features and functionality required to create an online community around a particular niche, subject matter or physical community.
If you are looking to build a social media website or social networking website … or if you are looking to create a sense of community from within your web visitors, BuddyPress might be the solution for you. Give us a call and we can discuss this in greater detail.
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This is crucial and it is part of the measurement. In order to analyze a site, you need to define the standard. Defining the target audience is part one of defining the standard. You have to know whom you want to visit your site. Are they men or women, children or adults, educated or not, English speaking or not? You have to define, as closely as possible, who you want to find your site. What is their demographic profile? What to they look like? How do they think? How to they speak? And most importantly, how do they Google? You must understand their language, semantics and research habits.
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So, you have defined your various audience segments. Now we move on to step two of defining the standard by which we will measure the effectiveness of our SEO. For each segment, what keywords would they use in Google to find sites like yours if they did not know you existed? Another crucial exercise. I recently worked with a consultant for nonprofits. I asked him what keywords his intended clients would use to find him. He replied, “fund development … non profits.” Really? Is that really how people talk, I asked. Maybe they do, but I don’t think so. So, I asked him, how many ways can you say, “fund development?” I offered these suggestions:
Then I asked my client, how many ways can you say, “nonprofit?” Again, I offered these suggestions:
Now, lets think of all the combinations of ways that people can say, “Fund development nonprofit.” In addition, lets think of ways that people can submit this to a search engine as a query. For example, “how to raise money for charity,” might be a phrase that his intended audience may use Google. Are you following me?
In order to properly search engine optimize (SEO) your site, you have to first find out who is your target audience then put yourself inside of their shoes and their head. You have to creatively and resourcefully think about all the possible ways they would think, talk, act, write, ask questions, research and Google. Only then, when you have developed a list of 5-10 long-tail keyword phrases can you properly assess the optimization of your website.
This SEO analysis tool may help you determine the competitiveness of your keyword:
| seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-difficulty/ |
Remember, the competitiveness of your targeted keyword will directly impact your ability to make progress. The longer tail you have, i.e., the more focused and specific your phrase and the more words in your phrase, the more competitive you will be and the less competition you will face. Moreover, studies show that people who are most likely ready to buy or execute will be very sophisticated and long-tail in their search words. When web visitors Google a long-tail keyword phrase, they are ready to buy.
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This step is part making doing it and part making sure it was done. If it was never done in the first place then its a good time to do it. Most of these activities are manual. However, there are some automated tools to assist you with this as well. A well-rounded automated SEO analysis tool is WebsiteGrader.com. It covers most of these topics and assigns your website a report card so you can keep track of progress. Other comprehensive SEO analysis tools include:
| rankingtoday.com/seo/site-checkup.php |
| se-inspector.com |
| seoeng.com/search-engine-optimization/automated-website-analysis.htm |
For each distinct page of your website, you need to ensure the following:
If you have 8 unique pages on your website then you have 8 opportunities to optimize for 8 unique keyword phrases. Don’t waste precious time and opportunities optimizing for a single keyword phrase if you have multiple pages to work with. Every page should be uniquely optimized and invidually as possible leveraging as many different variations of the way your target audience may think, speak, write or research. Remember, there is more than one way to label “fund development.”
These tools will help you see what your title and meta tag information looks like to a crawler:
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The bottom line is that Google places the most value and its highest priority in its search algorithm on unique, relevant content. Google thrives on content like plants thrive on sunshine, water and nutrients. You must have quality content on your site if you expect to compete on natural, organic search engine optimization (SEO). There is no such thing as the right content to code ratio. But, each page of your site should clearly focus on one keyword phrase at a time.
Fortunately, there are some GREAT content density SEO analysis tools out there that will generate keyword density cloud tags … or are they tag clouds? Regardless, these tools help you see in a very visual manner what your page is about. Check out these (and if you discover any more, please let me know):
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Inbound links are a crucial component of SEO. Google has this thing called Page Rank or PR. The number of websites that link to your website is an indicator of popularity and authority.
Think about it. People who consider the Dalai Lama the highest official, credible figure within Tibetan Buddhism will refer to the Dalai Lama over and over again. They will reference his website, his speeches and his quotes. Same thing for the Pope Benedict XVI. Those who consider him the Holy Father of the Roman Catholic Church will frequently refer to his name and the Vatican.
Did you notice that I justed linked to these two sites? This is what you want … people linking to your site. This is what we call an inbound link and the more of them you have, the more credibility and authority Google will grant you. The more inbound links you have, the higher your PR or PageRank. The higher your PageRank, the more quickly your SEO efforts will take hold and gain traction. So, one of the best ways to get responsiveness from your SEO efforts is to focus on legitimate inbound links. These tools will help you discover your PR:
There are a couple of ways to gauge your inbound links. One is to go straight to Google and enter, “link:” plus your domain name. For example, in the Dalai Lama’s case, I would enter “link:dalailama.com” into Google’s search bar. As of today, this search reveals over 2,500 inbound links to dalailama.com. When we compare that to the Vatican, “link:vatican.va” we see that the Vatican, with over 17,000 inbound links has should have a higher PR than Dalai Lama. You can do the same exercise with Yahoo except the command is links: not link:, e.g., “links:vatican.va” or “links:dalailama.com“. By the way, you will see an enormous discrepancy between what Google considers a legitimate inbound link and what Yahoo considers a legitimate inbound link. Yahoo is much more generous and liberal – some people will also say more accurate – than Google in its inbound link analysis. Here are some other valuable SEO inbound and backlink analysis tools:
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Now that you know your inbound links, you probably want to build a few more. This is called inbound link development and you can do it a number of ways. It is also closely related to URL submission to directories and search engines so we will cover both at the same time.
First, you want to Submit your URL to as many search engines as possible so that they know about you and start to index your site. It’s simple. Just to go the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN/LIVE) and add your URL:
These tools tell you how many of your pages have been indexed by the search engines:
Now that your site is submitted to the search engines, you need to work on developing those inbound links. You should submit your site to relevant industry directories, associations, blogs and social media (social networking) sites. Create as many profiles on as many different social networking sites as possible and make sure that you include your website domain name (URL) within those profiles. Good examples would be:
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Interestingly, the number, type and destination of your outbound links can also affect your SEO. There is something called, “link juice,” that you get from high PR sites through your inbound links. At times, you may want to preserve your link juice and not pass it on. Now, I believe in Karma … what goes around comes around. So, you need to be generous with your outbound links but not irresponsible. Moreover, if you link to “bad neighborhoods,” then Google may penalize your site because it does not want to misdirect people to sites that may not be relevant or appropriate for its audience. So, it is very important to know how many links are leaving your site and where they are going. Some of these tools will help you with your outbound link analysis:
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Accessibility means a couple things. For one thing, web accessibility means that people with hearing and visual disabilities can access, read, view, understand and interact with the site in an equivalent manner. Web accessibility and accessible design is also mandatory in certain situations (See: Section 508 Compliance and 508-Accessibility).
Accessibililty also means another thing. If the server that a site is hosted on is down then it is not accessible. If the connection from the hosted server to the internet is slow or down then it’s not accessible. If a page loads very slowly and the browser times out then it’s not accessible. If a page was builtin 100% Flash and a web visitor is using an iPhone or some other browser that does not have a Flash player installed then it’s not accessible. So, there are a ton of things that would make the site unaccessible. Some of these tools will help you access the page weight and load speed of your website:
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There are a couple of other issues that may not be intuitively obvious but are nevertheless important. One has to do with how long a domain name has been around and another is how long it has left on the lease. A third is whether the ownership is anonymous and a fourth is whether many different domains that point to each other are all owned by the same enttity.
This really gets into the fine-tuning and nuances of a sophisticated search engine algorithm. So, this is one of the more subtle features and steps that you would focus on – unless your domain name is about to expire … then this becomes urgent.
In general, a website that has been around for many years should carry higher authority, credibility and page rank than a brand new site. If you think about it … if you needed an attorney would you select one who just graduated from law school or one who has been around a for a few years? Would you want the pilot of your airplane to be fresh out of flight school or a seasoned veteran? Same thing for websites. Google tends to trust sites that have aged a bit more than ones fresh out of the box.
Likewise, would you feel better about buying a car from a company that plans to be in business for a while or one that is going out of business? If your domain name registration is about to expire in less than one year, Google tends to trust that a tiny bit less than one that has invested in a 10+ year registration. So, you need to ensure that your website has been around and will be around.
Finally, if you think you are clever by registering 100 different domain names so that you can point them all to one or each other in order to trick Google into thinking you have lots of inbound links then you are not that clever. Google can check ownership of the domain names as well as the IP address they are hosted on and determine if this is a link scheme or not. If you get busted then you will suffer a drop in your credibility.
These tools help you determine domain age and IP addresses:
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Now that you have set up and baselined your site, you need to create an action plan for increasing relevant content, developing legitimate inbound links, improving your PR and rising in the ranks. Going back to your list of keywords, you need to run these through some automated tools to see where you land on the search engine results page (SERP) to determine if you are making upward progress or losing ground. For example, I may rank #35, which is third page of Google, position number 5 for a given keyword phrase. If I check back in a month, I would hope that I may be #29 or second page, ninth spot. However, I could discover that I’m #43 or fourth page, third spot.
Why would I lost ground? Well, for one, you have no idea what other people like you are doing to optimize their sites. Say that you are competing for Los Angeles acting coach. Do you think you are the only acting coach in Los Angeles? If your competitor is more aggressive in creating inbound links and relvant content on his or her site then you may end up sliding down the SERP while he or she marches up. Keep in mind that you have no control over Google, the other search engines or what your competitors are doing. There is no guarantee with SEO – that is why it’s both an art and a science.
These tools will help you automate your baseline analysis of where you fall with regard to certain keyword phrases. It is important to record the results in a spreadsheet and come back on a regular basis to check your progress. Remember, you cannot manage what you do not measure. It is important to keep accurate records.
The following list of websites are comprehensive directory of free SEO analysis tools:
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Bounce rate is another term that is clearly misunderstood. People ask SQs and IQs (stupid questions and ignorant questions) like, what should my bounce rate be? Is 60% to high of a bounce rate?
Please don’t get me wrong, I am not demeaning anybody when I label these as stupid or ignorant questions. Ignorant, by definition, means “lacking knowledge, information or training.” It does not mean you are stupid or you chose to ignore the facts.
So, what is a bounce rate?
Website owners will typically employ web analytics like Web Trends, Omniture, Google Analytics and other piece of software that help web managers measure, track and understand web visits and visitor behavior.
A “bounce” means that somebody came to your website and then clicked the back button. Usually, this means that the web visitor landed on the page, realized they were in the wrong neighborhood and did a U-turn. But, a U-turn is not always a bad thing.
For example…
Suppose that a web visitor Googled a phrase like, “what is cloud computing,” and they land directly on this page: What is Cloud Computing? The web visitor lands on the page, reads the answers, is satisfied and then does a U-turn. When they click the back button their web analytics considers this a “bounce.” Is that bad? Not necessarily.
Now, I suppose if the purpose of the article was for the user to take a Call to Action like sign up for a news letter or buy a website or pick up the phone can call somegbody. In that case, I suppose a bounce is bad. But, if all you are doing is trying to educate your web visitor, introduce yourself as an expert and build web visitor loyalty then this particular bounce is not really bad.
Overoptimization
Suppose you optimized your website, or your website naturally ranked very high for a very generic term. Say that you are run a website for the Central Atlantic Regional Soccer (CARS) association. But, every time a car buyer Googles, “cars” your site comes up. They click on your website, realize you are not a car dealer and then back out. Is that a bad thing? No, its a great thing. You are dominating the search engine for a very popular generic term. That is a bounce I would be happy to have.
There is no such thing. Bounce rate is only one of many factors that you need to consider as part of your overall assessment. Personally, I would be more concerned with a shopping cart abandonment rate or my conversion rate.
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I hear and read lots of talk about Web 2.0, SaaS, New Media, Cloud Computing and other buzz words. Let’s not get caught up in all the semantics.
The “cloud” is simply a metaphor for the Internet.
In the old days, we had client server, object oriented programming (OOP), thin-client, high level languages, APIs, web apps and dozens other fun words and acronyms that help us techies make non-techies feel really stupid.
When I talk to the masses, I try to use plain and simple language even if it may not be 100% “technically” correct. Plenty of techies will correct me, but when they do, it doesn’t help my cause – simplify complex terms to people who don’t need to know or care about the details.
So, here it is …. the official definition of Cloud Computing:
“Cloud computing allows me to pull out my iPhone, check my e-mail, pay my bills, find out what the weather is going to be like, text message my children, update my blog and find out where the heck I am and how to find the closest Starbucks. How it happens, I don’t really know but it seems to work like magic.”
It doesn’t matter, as long as it works.
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Philanthropic site, Mentoring.org, founded by Geoffrey Boisi and Raymond Chambers, leverages all aspects of web design, online marketing, search engine optimization and social media to spread the word and make a positive difference in the world.
The site encourages web visitors to be a mentor, start a program, find resources, access research and take action. This is not a passive site, it clearly calls for action. Mentoring.org uses nifty features like Google Custom Search, Google Analytics and links to its YouTube channel, Facebook page and profiles on Helium, MySpace, Change.org and Think. The site also has its own Mentor online community forum.
Check it out, make a difference and help Mentoring.org change the world.
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Leading the way in harnessing the popularity of social networking sites like YouTube, FEMA launches an inspirational YouTube channel. For those government employees who are not allowed to access YouTube from your federal workstations, attached is a screenshot.
As you can see, the site is well designed and beautifully branded with the Department of Homeland Security seal and FEMA logo. The site goes a long way toward educating the public in the use of tax payer dollars. FEMA’s YouTube videos demonstrate the good work that FEMA is doing. It also is a step forward in allowing heads of executive departments and agencies to speak directly to the public by way of social networking.
President Obama’s historic campaign, based in large part on social media, is a reflection of how the administration plans to govern as well. And, in the age of ugly government websites, it is refreshing to see such an elegant implementation. In fact, FEMA’s YouTube channel outshines The White House YouTube channel. Soon, we expect to see many more federal, state and local agencies and departments fall in line and produce their own YouTube channels, Facebook pages and blogs.
Government agencies should, however, define government policy on the use of social media sites because many legal issues such as privacy rights, accessibility rights, security and records management still apply.
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