I often work with WordPress sites doing SEO. I recently had an opportunity to build a site for a friend, Crystal Anne Artwork. My friend is an artist and being that the site is essentially all pictures and no text, an interesting problem presented itself. Without any text to work with, how would I accomplish the SEO?

After some research, a WordPress SEO plugin seemed to present the answer. Having never used one before, though, I was initially skeptical. Nonetheless, I thought it had very little potential downside and a large potential upside. At worst I would waste the time and effort of installing it and setting all the keywords and such, and I weighed that small downside against the potential upside, a boost in rankings. In the end, I decided it was an easy choice and that I would go ahead and install one.

There are a number of different WordPress SEO plugins offered. Yoast’s SEO plugin seems to be one of the most popular, as well as SEO Ultimate by SEO Design Solutions. I went with another popular choice, the All in One SEO Pack. In the end these plugins all do pretty much the same thing and my choice was motivated more by the aesthetics of how the plugin integrates with the dashboard and the edit page more than any reason. Yoast has a very good interface as well and also allows the user to analyze the page for things like keyword density, which many users may find very helpful. In my case, more than anything else I was attempting to give Google some text to grab on to in order to generate a site description for the search results page, so I didn’t feel the need for a bunch of bells and whistles, but some users may find these helpful and I probably would as well in a different application.

After activating the plugin and setting the values, it was time to sit back and wait to see if it worked. In this case, after about 24 hours I noticed an appreciable rise in both the search rankings for the site and the image rankings. Google also started catching the site description and loading that as opposed to random text from the page.
It should be noted for the novice user that these plugins have some very powerful features that can create disastrous results if used incorrectly. Many of these plugins utilize the noidex and nofollow features, which tell a search engine to ignore the contents of the page. When attempting SEO, except in very specialized instances this is exactly the opposite of the desired results, so unless you know what you are doing I highly recommend these options be left alone.

In summation, a WordPress SEO plugin seemed to work for this author, at least in this instance. It is definitely something I will be adding both to future sites and to the sites I am currently maintaining.

Once upon a rosy time not long ago, site rankings were king. That #1 spot on the search result rankings was as coveted as gold, sought after, fought for, envied, coveted, and dreamed about: a modern-day internet marketing analog to the Holy Grail. But with the advent of personalized search engine results, many have begun to question whether rankings matter as much as they used to, and further, some have begun to ask the question: When search engine results are personalized to every user, can there even be such a thing as a true #1 ranking anymore?

A lot of study and thought have been put into answering these questions, and while true believers may question their validity or refuse to accept the truth, the fact is that it appears that even with personalization turned on, SERP appear to vary little from one query to the next, regardless of what other queries have been made recently. Stephan Spencer at searchengineland.com has done some fairly extensive testing into this phenomenon, and reports his results here. In a nutshell, what he found was that regardless of what other recent searches may have been performed, for certain keywords site rankings adjusted very little. There may be some minor shifts in positions, but in general the same results appear, even in keywords that may have very different meanings or desired results based on past searches, and that positions appear in roughly the same order, whether or not personalization is on and regardless of recent queries.

He further went on to interview Mike Moran, SEO genius and 30-year man at IBM, on this issue. This is what Mike Moran had to say:

“What I think is true is that, for many queries, a single search result is #1 the great majority of the time, but I think it is less true than it once was and that ranking reports are not nearly as valuable as they were a few years ago. It’s better to focus on traffic and conversions and not get too hung up on rankings.”

This quote really cuts right to the crux of the matter. Rankings only matter inasmuch as they drive traffic, and traffic only matters when it’s the traffic that you want coming to your site. Otherwise, you will just end up with high bounce rates and a bunch of wasted effort. The true key, then, is to make sure you show up high to the potential customers you want visiting your site, and drawing them in and keeping them once you get them there. And the secret to that is content, content, content. As the old adage goes, “Give them what they want and they will beat a path to your door.”

More on content and keeping customers on the page once you get them there, but for now the lesson is easy: Even in this crazy world of search engine result personalization, rankings still matter, but rankings are and should always be viewed as merely a tool to drive the type of traffic you want to your site. That’s true marketing, and that’s where sales, and success, begin.

There is a war going on in the world of SEO. On one side stand proponents of content-based approaches. On the other is a group of technically-minded individuals propounding an approach based on code-based SEO strategies such as meta-tags and –titles. Who is right? The answer is complicated and technical, if there is even an answer at all, but to try and make it simpler, in short: neither…or both.

While most search engine companies will say that organic keyword usage and relevant content is the primary factor their algorithms use, it is abundantly clear through extensive testing (since those algorithms are kept as mysterious as possible) that other factors including number of links by reputable sites and coding-based meta approaches can also play a valuable role. While pingbacks are most often achieved by having good, relevant content (which, after all, is what causes folks to want to link to your site), how do those potential linkers find your content in the first place? It is clear that technical, coding-based solutions are an easy way to help juice up the ratings of your site initially, helping customers and consumers find your site so that they can spread the word.  They can also be that little extra edge your site may need to grab that next spot or maintain its ranking. Clearly, SEO is a veritable witches’ brew of modern day internet alchemy, a field that can be the most important arrow in the quiver of a company attempting to establish or maintain an internet presence.

A good SEO company (like The Click Experts) makes use of both approaches, building content with organic key words and other content approaches in mind, providing clients with a website that contains solid, relevant, knowledge-based material that will draw search engines crawlers, and hence potential clients, in like flies.  The company then overlays this content with behind-the-scenes, coding-based strategies proven to enhance results and improve rankings. This is a case of the sum being greater than the parts. While both strategies can be effective, neither one is a complete solution. Layering one on top of the other creates a rich tapestry of results to which search engine bots will respond strongly.

While many entrepreneurs are capable of writing competent, knowledge-based articles for their site, fewer know or are capable of the specific type of organic, keyword-rich that is required for SEO. Fewer still are capable of the kind of behind-the-scenes coding that goes into a truly effective, all-inclusive SEO strategy. SEO is an area that truly requires the attention of smart, dedicated, and knowledgeable professionals. Hiring a proven, SEO-minded web design and marketing company like The Click Experts can be some of the best money a business can spend on itself. As commerce continues to move increasingly into internet-based venues, SEO is the way to allow your customers to find you. Without SEO, you can end up losing customers. If they can’t find you quickly and easily, they can’t buy from you and you run the risk of having them siphoned off by other, more tech-savvy companies as they sort through tens or hundreds of results. The answer is clear: SEO is the wave of the future. Ride it to success or be swept away.

Contact us today to get your business and its online presence on the right track.