whydowork.com

[LA Grouch]

I ran across this the other day... nice free tool.

Website Grader is a great, free, online tool, that will check your site for links, meta tags, ranking, directory/social listings, and more.

This only takes a couple of minutes to create a valuable report showing you what has been done right, and what needs attention.

No signups or registration required.

Knowing where your site ranks, and why… is good business.

Please bear in mind that maintaining the SEO of your site requires constant attention and tweaking. The Search Engines we rely so heavily on for traffic change their policies and desires almost daily. What works today, may not work tomorrow.

This tool is only one among many that should be used on a regular basis to monitor your sites performance.

[photomom04]

Thanks! There is a free tool at submitexpress that I love and use all the time.

[Matthew]

we use websitegrader. I think it's great. Joe worked at until we got a score of 99.8!

[photomom04]

Great to hear two good reviews! I will give it a shot. Im ashamed to say, I haven't checked some of my sites in quite awhile. This should be good for a reality check!

[photomom04]

Okay, websitegrader gets my vote as well! I've ran it on two of my websites. The newest is only 6 weeks old and scored 45/100 and for good reason. It's my first site using wordpress and I haven't learned nearly as much as I need to with it.

My oldest site is 5 1/2 years old. It scored 94/100, not as bad as I expected considering I haven't done much to upgrade it over the past year.

However! This is big.. websitegrader provided a piece of advice that I believe will make a huge difference in the search engines! The change will bring me an additional 1800 inbound links!

I will be making the change and see what happens!

[LA Grouch]

Okay, websitegrader gets my vote as well! I've ran it on two of my websites. The newest is only 6 weeks old and scored 45/100 and for good reason. It's my first site using wordpress and I haven't learned nearly as much as I need to with it.

My oldest site is 5 1/2 years old. It scored 94/100, not as bad as I expected considering I haven't done much to upgrade it over the past year.

However! This is big.. websitegrader provided a piece of advice that I believe will make a huge difference in the search engines! The change will bring me an additional 1800 inbound links!

I will be making the change and see what happens!

If you've just started with wordpress, there are some plugins I would recommend you use.

All in one SEO pack (many tweaks to improve optimization)

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator (automatically creates a sitemap for your site.)

Google XML Sitemaps (creates, updates, and submits XML sitemaps to the major SE's)

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer (control pinging and prevent repeats)

TwitterPost (automatically updates your twitter acount every time you post)

WordPress Database Backup (what it says)

[Matthew]

i would also recommend the whydowork adsense plugin:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/whydowork-adsense/

(no bias on that last pick) and I also like the "share this" plugin:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-this/

[kanneii86]

that was some useful information, thanks. What is the most effective way to optimize a site?








________
PS: For Door Handles, Door Hinges or Cabinet Furniture visit us at: Discount Door Handles or Hand forged

[LA Grouch]

Here are some basics...

* Try to have a Domain Name related to your product / niche. Make sure it is a .com.
* Buy your Domain name for 2 years or more. (this makes a difference to the SE's, especially Google)
* Properly format a Title and Description of each page in your site (keyword related to content)
* Use meta-tags (they do still work)
TIP: meta tag keywords is a good place to put common misspellings. Your regular keywords should be picked up through the page content.
* Use the H1 tag once per page at the top - containing keywords.
* keyword the rest of the H tags throughout the page.
* Quality text content throughout each page. Make sure there is a good range of keywords.
* Limit the use of banner and image advertising. (keyword the alt tag of any you use)
* Forget Flash, and limit JavaScript.
* Don’t use frames
* Do use CSS
* Create sitemaps on your site for SE’s and visitors to use. Also create sitemaps to submit to Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask.
* Manually list your site in the major Directories. (DMOZ plus about 10 others is enough)
* Forget submitting to the search engines, they will find you.
* Write about 10 to 15 PR articles, all different, and post them. (there are a ton of free places to post)
* Produce at least one article a week, rewrite it a few different ways and submit it to the free article directories.
* Join some forums and link your site in your signature, then become active.
* Use Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc – Construct a proper profile, post worthwhile info and link to your business.
* Join as many social bookmarking sites as possible and submit your posts.
* Join a few networking groups, profile your biz, and become active.

As you look into each one of these steps more closely you will see that there is much more to it. This should be enough to keep you busy for a while though.

Also... some of the plugins mentioned will take care of a few of these steps. Just be sure to double check everything and make sure the plugin is working properly.

[photomom04]

Thanks Matthew and Grouch. You two have kept me hopping all day with all this great information! I did install the whydowork adsense app. That is exactly something I had been wanting but didn't know where to find.

I also downloaded the All in one SEO plugin. I haven't been able to find instructions for installing. Can you tell me if I am supposed to copy the entire folder to plugins or just part of it?

[LA Grouch]

Thanks Matthew and Grouch. You two have kept me hopping all day with all this great information! I did install the whydowork adsense app. That is exactly something I had been wanting but didn't know where to find.

I also downloaded the All in one SEO plugin. I haven't been able to find instructions for installing. Can you tell me if I am supposed to copy the entire folder to plugins or just part of it?

If you are self hosted - all you need to do is download the plugin to your computer, then leave it alone. Log into WP, click Pludins in your Admin panel, click Add New, then upload it. WP will unzip and install it. You then simply activate it and set it up.

If you are on Blogger or Wordpress.com I can't help. I would NEVER put my site there.

[masterBB]

Here are some basics...

* Try to have a Domain Name related to your product / niche. Make sure it is a .com.
* Buy your Domain name for 2 years or more. (this makes a difference to the SE's, especially Google)
* Properly format a Title and Description of each page in your site (keyword related to content)
* Use meta-tags (they do still work)
TIP: meta tag keywords is a good place to put common misspellings. Your regular keywords should be picked up through the page content.
* Use the H1 tag once per page at the top - containing keywords.
* keyword the rest of the H tags throughout the page.
* Quality text content throughout each page. Make sure there is a good range of keywords.
* Limit the use of banner and image advertising. (keyword the alt tag of any you use)
* Forget Flash, and limit JavaScript.
* Don’t use frames
* Do use CSS
* Create sitemaps on your site for SE’s and visitors to use. Also create sitemaps to submit to Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask.
* Manually list your site in the major Directories. (DMOZ plus about 10 others is enough)
* Forget submitting to the search engines, they will find you.
* Write about 10 to 15 PR articles, all different, and post them. (there are a ton of free places to post)
* Produce at least one article a week, rewrite it a few different ways and submit it to the free article directories.
* Join some forums and link your site in your signature, then become active.
* Use Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc – Construct a proper profile, post worthwhile info and link to your business.
* Join as many social bookmarking sites as possible and submit your posts.
* Join a few networking groups, profile your biz, and become active.

As you look into each one of these steps more closely you will see that there is much more to it. This should be enough to keep you busy for a while though.

Also... some of the plugins mentioned will take care of a few of these steps. Just be sure to double check everything and make sure the plugin is working properly.

A very complete detailed information. Thank u very much. I havent yet done all esp writing article.

[masterBB]

Thank u for introducing us with websitegrader.com
I thought it was similar with one website that I once encountered. turn out it whole lot better. The detail is fascinating!

[Zacman]

La Grouch,

That was a good list.

Fortunately my two largest sites have all that and much more included which makes it so much easier.

I do apply the same techniques to my social network sites etc.

The only thing I would disagree with is submitting to SEs. They will find you, but I do have an auto-submitter that I can set to submit with each pages priority status on my sites. This helps the spiders crawl deeper into my sites much quicker. Not to mention whenever I edit or update a page.

When you start talking 100s if not 1000s of pages, getting them indexed quickly definitely helps.

Cheers,
Zac

[LA Grouch]

La Grouch,

That was a good list.

Fortunately my two largest sites have all that and much more included which makes it so much easier.

I do apply the same techniques to my social network sites etc.

The only thing I would disagree with is submitting to SEs. They will find you, but I do have an auto-submitter that I can set to submit with each pages priority status on my sites. This helps the spiders crawl deeper into my sites much quicker.

When you start talking 100s if not 1000s of pages, getting them indexed quickly definitely helps.

Cheers,
Zac

This is where the Robots.txt file and sitemaps play an integral part. They help direct the spiders through your site. There are some great plugins for WordPress users that automates this whole process.

It doesn't hurt to submit to SE's. Most experts in this field agree that SE submission is unnecessary because of the newer protocols and algorithms used. Content and links (front and back) will get you noticed quicker.

Blogging is the fastest method of getting a link noticed. As long as your blog is set up to "ping" correctly, each post should take no more than a day or two to achieve recognition. SE submission could take weeks, or months.

For anyone interested, Google has a free SEO guide: Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. This is a good insight into what Google thinks is important. They also have quite a few free tools available to help optimize and manage your site. If your not familiar with them there is a dedicated page on my blog.