Archive for the ‘seo’ Category

Give WordPress a Speed Boost

Friday, January 8th, 2010

The other day I was looking at my sites performance score in Google’s Webmaster Tools. According to Google, my site was considered slow. This was very concerning as Google has made it known that in 2010 site performance will influence its rankings.

When I looked at my source code it became very clear what the problem was. I use WordPress to host this site and all of the plugins I was using were dragging down the performance. Each plugin had it’s own JavaScript file, it’s own CSS file, and several images. What makes WordPress so great can also be a detriment to you page load times.

Web Page Analyzing

I used the web page analyzer at www.websiteoptimization.com to find what areas of my pages could use optimization. The web page analyzer tool pointed out several JavaScript files that could be optimized along with CSS code that could be condensed.

WordPress Page Caching

Now that I knew where the problem was I had to find a way to fix it. There are several caching plugins for WordPress but the one that worked best for me was W3 Total Cache. This plugin allows you to perform several caching and page optimization techniques that will save you seconds on your page load times.

Page Caching
You can cache each page on your site to improve your response times.

Minify
Minify will shrink your web pages, JavaScript code, and CSS. It removes spaces and even comment tags to reduce the size of the files that are downloaded to support your site.

Database Caching
Caches database objects to improve your response time

Each of the features above have additional customizations which you should look at carefully. I found the minify settings to reduce my page load time significantly by putting most of JavaScript files into a single JavaScript file and the same for my CSS files. There are a lot of different features. I’d recommend trying several of them and then rerunning the web page analyzer to see which improve you site most.

Overall, I knocked several seconds off the load times shown in web page analyzer tool above. You’ll need to experiement a little to see which JS and CSS files can be combined in single files without breaking your web pages. I found that I could make great use of this feature but it didn’t seem to work with the Disqus plugin I’m using. This is unfortunate as Disqus is one of the biggest causes of slow page loads. If anyone is able to get W3 Total Cache and Disqus to work together, please let me know.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in cms, seo, speed improvements, tutorial, wordpress | View Comments

Referrer Tracking: How do people find your site?

Friday, August 14th, 2009

One question that every web site owner wants to know is “how do people find my web site”? Luckily there is a simple solution if you’re using a web analytics tool to track your site statistics.

The referrer stat tells you what web sites referred the most people to your site. This stat will list the URL’s of the sites who are sending you traffic. This gives you a great understanding as whether the search engine optimization you are doing is working or if the banner ad you’re running on a blog site is performing well.

Another important statistic which goes along with referrer is the keyword or search word statistic. This stat tells you exactly what a visitor typed into a search engine which led to them finding your site. You want to make sure that they keyword you’ve optimized your site for show up in this statistic. If not, you know there is work to be done. When you put the referrer and keyword stats together, you have a powerful way of understanding how people are finding your web site.

Tags: , ,
Posted in analytics, seo, web analytics | View Comments

Deliver More Leads without Spending More on Adwords and SEO

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

When it comes to generating more sales leads, web marketers will usually look for ways to bring in more traffic. Many will go straight to Google Adwords and bump up their daily spend. Others will start new SEO campaigns. What is often overlooked is the steady flow of visitors already coming to your web site.

These are the people you should focus your attention on especially if you’re working with a small budget or one that has remained flat or decreased over the past year. Each person who comes to your site opens up the opportunity to meet a new client or customer. To do so, your content, messages, and promotions should be built to match the needs of your visitors. This ensures that they feel welcome and shows that you know and really “get” what their problems and/or needs are.

In theory this sounds great but in practice it can be very overwhelming trying to learn what hundreds or thousands of visitors each month want from you. This brings us back to why web marketers generally focus more on the masses and work on pulling in “traffic”. I think it’s time that we move beyond the masses. Mass-everything is dying in this new world of one-to-one communication and micro-niches. This is why we’ve been working so hard on Marketing for Mavens. We want to find a better way to hypertarget individual visitors that is both beneficial to you and them.

We’ve found that the best way to do this is by managing all of your promotions, niche content, persona content, and offers together in one location and then, using an algorithm, analyze your visitors based on the pages they visit, and in real-time deliver the best content that matches their needs. This simplifies the process for you and makes it easier for your visitors to find the content they want.

While visitors are browsing your site, we are gathering information on the pages they go to, where they came in from, and the content they are viewing and building profiles of each person to better understand their needs. Now, when someone completes a form on your site, you can provide additional information to your sales team other than the one PDF that was viewed or product that was downloaded. You can show a complete history of all the PDF’s, videos, downloads, etc. which will help your sales team provide a higher level of service to your potential customers and clients. From a Marketing perspective, you’ll learn which content and promotions are most active, which pages are converting the most leads, and more importantly connecting and communicating directly with your customers.

To learn more about Marketing for Mavens please visit www.marketingformavens.com. If you want to see how hypertargeting your content can build a better user experience for your visitors and generate more leads for your sale team please join the beta currently open to all new registrations.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in improve sales leads, mass marketing, seo, web marketing | View Comments

SEO: What Are You Doing With the Traffic That Comes to Your Site?

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

It’s a tough economy for most companies. Layoffs and budget cuts are happening everywhere and companies are being forced to do more with less. Web Marketing has picked up as the web is a cheaper way to reach customers by providing a higher return on your investment. SEO, in particular, has become an even hotter topic as the focus turns towards “free” and “low cost” ways to promote a company and drive traffic. However, driving traffic is only part of the equation. It’s what you do with this traffic once people get to your site that really matters.

At Marketing for Mavens, we’ve worked hard over the past year to deliver a product that helps you do more with less while also providing a better user experience for the people visiting your web site. If your traffic was to remain the same for the next year, our service will help you make the most of that traffic, helping you drive more leads than ever before.

Marketing for Mavens matches your promotions and offers to each individual visitor based on the pages they view on your web site. This allows you to target your content more effectively while providing a better user experience. This is an automated process. You provide the content and Marketing for Mavens will match it to your visitors. It’s simple to setup and you can be testing the effectiveness of our service in a matter of minutes.

We are currently offering a free beta program that is running through the next few months. Once the beta ends (targeting March 09), the service will continue to be available for free with some limitations. Let us help you make the most of your marketing budget and see how matching your promotions to your visitors can more effectively help you turn visitors and happy customers.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in seo, web marketing | View Comments