Blogging

Why do some websites fail to achieve objectives? How can you whip an underperforming website into shape? Which elements are the most critical when initiating a website redesign project? How can small businesses cost-effectively add sophisticated capabilities like custom search and social networking features to their sites? What separates effective navigation from poor design?

Learn the answers to these questions and more in some of the best blog posts and articles on website design published so far in 2008.

A Small Business Year-End Web Site Checklist by Search Engine Land

Search marketer Matt McGee provides an outstanding 10-point checklist of items that site owners should check (at least) annually, including domain registration, contact form operation, autoresponders and outbound links.

15 Ways to Get Your Website in Gear by iMedia Connection

Lisa Wehr, CEO and founder of Oneupweb, writes that if your online marketing efforts are coming up short, it may be a good time to take “a systematic look at how your website is performing and (develop) a strategy to address its shortcomings.” To this end, she recommends reviewing 15 areas, including navigation, interface design, architecture, PR and SEO.

Site Redesign: 4 Vital SEO Tips for Web Designers by Search Engine Watch

Noting that, “Many times when companies consider a site redesign…their rationale may be that they need better ‘marketing fluff’…Rarely do you hear companies say, ‘We need to redesign our Web site because it wasn’t built for SEO,’” Mark Jackson, President and CEO of Vizion Interactive, outlines the four essential considerations in a redesign. Included in his analysis is an intriguing suggestion for a CMS, and the introduction of the term “Flashterbation” (using Flash for no real reason) to the web lexicon.

Write in the Quiet to Get Your Point Across by E-Marketing Performance

Michelle Montoya provides three writing tips for getting your message across to “scanners,” the significant portion of online readers who “want the message as quickly as possible and don’t want to have to read through a bunch of muck to get to it.” Key to this is using “quiet times”—those short sentences mixed in among your paragraphs that really get your point across.

Top 10 Reasons A Website Fails To Perform by Internet Search Engine Database

You spend significant time, effort and money on a website redesign, and then get lackluster results. Why? Gary Klingsheim, Vice President of Moonrise Design, nails it in this list of 10 factors to examine, including poor definition of your target audience, underestimation of competitors, and inconsistency in design and content. Obviously, this is a great post to read before undertaking that redesign effort.

How To: Create a Great 404 Page Not Found Error Page by Conversation Marketing

Ian Lurie supplies step-by-step instructions for creating a more engaging and friendly 404 error page for your site than the standard “This page cannot be found.” As he points out, if someone mistypes a URL or follows an incorrect link from another site, why drive them away with a boring standard message? For some really creative ideas, check out 404 Pages - Funny, Geeky, Disturbing from Squareoak.

Using Google’s Custom Search Engine for Internal Site Search by Ask Enquiro

Manoj Jasra, who writes a lot of great stuff on web marketing, explains why Google’s Custom Search tool is excellent way to add this functionality to your site in this brief but informative post.

Google Wants to Help Web Sites Make New Friends by The New York Times

Saul Hansell, editor of the New York Times Bits blog, explains the features of Google Friend Connect, which lets small website publishers add social networking features to their sites. As Hansell writes, Friend Connect gives website publishers an easy way to let users log in then link their profiles from other social networks (including Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Hi5 and Google’s Orkut), and “add OpenSocial applications, written by Google and other companies.”

The 19-Hour Website Analysis, in 20 Minutes or Less by Internet Search Engine Database

Stoney deGeyter, website design expert and owner of Pole Position Marketing, explains that “Investing in SEO and PPC marketing, without having performed a thorough (usability) analysis of your website is largely an exercise in vain.” He then provides a 19-step guide, with links to prior articles, to analyzing and improving your site’s usability looking at factors like on-site search, about us, contact and FAQ pages.

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist for Website Navigation by Search Engine Guide

Yet another highly useful checklist from Stoney deGeyter, this one detailing 21 considerations for effective site navigation, including consistency, proper categorical divisions, and the use of absolute links throughout the site.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Web Marketing Research, Part 1

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Read more:
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Website Design, Part 1

Which blogging platform is best for your needs? How can you get the most out of your RSS feed(s)? How can you more effectively convert blog readership into revenue? What SEO tactics are crucial to incorporate on your blog?

Learn all of this and more in the articles and posts highlighted below, some of this year’s best so far on business blogging.

A nip and a tuck: Five fast makeover tips for your blog by Smarter Than Your Average Blog

InfoWorld editor Uyen Phan offers five simple tips for making blog posts more appealing, such as using lists, bullets and multimedia.

Top 10 RSS Promotion Tips by SiteProNews

Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, provides 10 tips for maximizing exposure to your RSS feeds, including registering with RSS feed directories, linking to your feed, and using auto-discovery.

How to get your Blog Traffic to Convert in 5 Easy Steps by Search Engine People

Blogger Jennifer Osborne gives simple yet effective tips for converting blog traffic into leads or sales, such as including an “About Us” section and using the loop strategy when writing blog posts.

Finding A Home For Your Work: The Best Blogging Platform For You by Smarter Than Your Average Blog

Writer Steph Auteri presents the pros and cons of the leading blog platforms (Blogger, WordPress, TypePad and Movable Type) as well as alternatives MySpace and LiveJournal.

Blogger’s to do checklist before hitting the publish button by Search Engine Marketing Consultant

“How many times have we hit publish on a blog and then realized we forgot to do something crucial, whether it is changing post slugs or a crucial spell check?” Online advertising guru-ess Jennifer Slegg asks then answers this question with a list of crucial pre-publishing items to check, such as correct spelling, links and tags.

101 Ways to Monetize Your Blog Without Irritating Your Readers by Inside CRM

For independent bloggers, the editors of Inside CRM offer up an extensive categorized list of blog monetization links, ideas and programs, from merchandising, various types of advertising, and affiliate programs (all of which are respectable, if incorporated in a professional manner) to sponsored posts (a more questionable approach).

Blogging Tactics for 2008 by Ask Enquiro

Writing that “The Online Marketing Blog recently ran a poll asking readers which SEO tactic they plan on using most in 2008 and the winner with 25% of the vote was Blogging. This doesn’t surprise me because blogging is an excellent way to manage PR, offer technical support as well as interact with users,” Manoj Jasra provides six helpful tactics for improving SEO results for blog including interlinking of top posts and establishing relationships with other bloggers.

And finally, three excellent blogging for business posts just for WordPress users:

4 Tips For Your WordPress Strategy by Search Engine Guide

Another useful post from Manoj Jasra, this brief piece shows some of his favorite tips, tricks and plug-ins for use in setting up WordPress blogs.

Optimizing Wordpress Page Titles, Post Titles and Page Slugs by Graywolf’s SEO Blog

SEO guru Michael Gray provides step-by-step instructions for search-optimizing posts in WordPress.

10 Unusual & Original WordPress Themes by Mashable

Sean P. Aune showcases ten WordPress themes that go beyond standard 2- and 3-column formats with design elements like large banners, Flickr integration, 4-column layouts, Ajax, tag clouds and more.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 1

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Read more from the original source:
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Blogging for Business, Part 1

How can you generate lots of high-quality links in just half an hour per day? Increase e-commerce conversions by a third or more? Use social media to enhance your SEO efforts and build your business?

Get the answers to these questions plus learn more about the largest and the fastest-growing social bookmarking and social networking sites in this installment of some of the best SMO blog posts and articles written so far in 2008.

How 30 minutes a day can result in 250 inbound links by Search Engine Marketing Exposed

Anthony Kirlew, a.k.a. OldSchool, shows how to dramatically grow the number of high-quality backlinks to your website by using social bookmarking sites and blogs.

See the original post here:
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 1

22 Considerations for Improving Natural Search Performance by MediaPost Search Insider

Rob Garner provides a comprehensive checklist of key areas to examine and modify for organic search success. In addition to the obvious (e.g., title tags, copywriting and link development) Rob includes more esoteric areas such as canonicalization issues, removing session IDs and sourcing out on-page JavaScript and CSS to external files.

How to hire an SEO Rockstar by Search Engine People

Author Jennifer Osborne offers a useful checklist to use when determining what type of SEO talent you need and then evaluating candidates.

Link Building Campaigns That Work by Link Building Best Practices

Because search engine algorithms are constantly changing, a solid link-building strategy shouldn’t be “trendy” but rather balanced between different types of link sites including blogs, forums, directories, articles and reciprocal link partners.

4 questions every web site owner needs to answer by Search Engine Marketing Exposed

A fairly short yet very thoughtful post that is more strategic than tactical. Stepping back and answering some basic questions about why someone would visit your site and what exactly you’d like them to do there provides a helpful starting point for SEO efforts.

The Ultimate Guide to Directory Submissions by SiteProNews

While this article doesn’t quite live up to its headline, it’s nevertheless an educational quick read for anyone starting link building efforts as well as a helpful refresher for more experienced SEO practitioners.

SEO Your Site in 60 Minutes by Search Marketing Blog Online

Another excellent post with a somewhat misleading title, this piece from Jon Clark is packed with three dozen checklist items to make sure your SEO tactics are on track, divided into home page, site and external activities. Items range from basic (formatting of title tags, use of H2 tags, internal text links) to advanced (setting up a domain name redirect, “link funneling” using insidious nofollow tags). While going through this list will take considerably longer than 60 minutes, but it’s a worthwhile effort.

Deconstructing Search Engine Bias by MediaPost Search Insider

This post helps SEO pros understand, at a high level, the “biases” built into search engine algorithms in order to craft strategies and tactics to capitalize on them. These biases include factors like “spamminess,” authority, blog buzz and links.

Using Differentiators in Keyphrases: What Every Search Engine Optimization Company Needs to Know by PromotionWorld

A thoughtful piece from Scott Buresh on the value of adjectives for search; using modifiers in search phrases can simplify SEO efforts while delivering more highly qualified traffic. This works with descriptors (e.g. “B2B email marketing” vs. just “email marketing”), location (e.g. “search marketing services Minnesota”) and other attributes.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Read more:
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 1