The Marketing Technology Blog

It’s been a while since I tipped a blog and I was reminded of that a couple of weeks ago by Tom Humbarger of Catalyze. A job change and side contract greatly shortened the amount of time I could spend on my site each day. Thankfully, that’s beginning to turn around now.

First, Some Feedback on a Previous Blog-Tipping

I did get word back from André at Lendo.org that the changes I recommended for his site resulted in some incredible increases in visitors and page views. André had about 290 unique visitors per day and about 700 page views before the changes. Now, Lendo.org has 1200 unique visitors per day, and about 3000 pageviews!!!

Tipping Catalyze

Today, I’m going to tip Catalyze - A Community for Business Analysts and UX Professionals - Creative People Designing Extraordinary Software. Catalyze goes well beyond a blog, it’s truly a social network so this will be quite a challenge! Tom pinged me a few weeks ago and has been patiently waiting!

Here are your Blog Tips:

1. You might laugh at this, but I honestly had to dig around to find out what “UX” meant! I didn’t realize it was an abbreviation for User Experience. I’m not sure that folks are searching on “UX”… you may want to write out “User Experience” in page titles, etc. Within the page, you may want to use <acronym> tags: UX so that the search engines crawl both the term and the abbreviation.
2. It’s going to be a challenge, but I’d really encourage you to provide a feed links on your home page. If you could develop a comprehensive feed of the latest posts, latest forum discussions, and perhaps the latest events - that would really provide a lot of value to readers.
3. On that same note, I noticed that I could actually get a RSS feed from your blog but it’s not embedded in your header for integration with browsers. All of the latest browsers will look for a RSS link designation in the header of your pages and they will automatically display a RSS subscription button in the Address Bar. Here’s what the code looks like:

   <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="The Marketing Technology Blog Feed" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/DouglasKarr" />

   Here’s how it looks when you go to my page in Firefox:

   

   Here’s what your page looks like:

   

   If you make it simple for people to subscribe to your site, you’ll gain more subscribers. Be sure to use a tool like Feedburner to monitor how many subscribers you have.

4. If I was a Google Bot scraping your blog page, I would index your page as “Blog thumbarger”… probably not the keywords you were seeking. If you can change your page titles to the actual title of the page, in this case: Are you a Design Thinker? Catalyze Current Wisdom by Tom Humbarger
5. Search engines do pay attention to how content is constructed in your pages as well. In the case of your blog posts, the title of the post is simply a link with a class=”siblog_PostTitle”. That’s not going to tell a Search Engine that there’s anything important about that Title. If you’re able to get into the guts of your application, I would ensure that I have heading tags, either <h1> or <h2> tags enclosing my blog post title. I would also recommend writing posts using heading tags as well.

   Perhaps the page with the most opportunity is your home page. This is simply one big page of links when seen by a Search Engine. If it was a page formatted with headings and excerpts that are tagged accordingly, you would be able to get that content indexed better.

6. On your calendar page there’s a Subscribe link.. but nothing on the link to subscribe to. I would also ensure that you denote the page titles as I wrote about the blog titles.
7. Digging into your page structure, I see an incredible complex maze of tables and divs. I don’t want to take a shot at my fellow .NET developers, but I see this so often that it hurts. A great .NET developer will have a tough time locating an element, so he throws a table around it to make it easier.

   Tables are for data, divs and stylesheets are for content.

   Think of it this way - pretend that you’re a search engine crawler and you are trying to ’see’ what content is in the page that’s useful to index on. Crawlers take a subsection of the page… no one really knows what percentage, but they don’t take the entire page. Your application has so much formatting code that it’s difficult to actually find the content! And by the time you do, it’s halfway down the page. This style is so common in .NET development. It makes the application easier to write, but difficult for crawlers to read. If there’s any means for you to provide feedback to your Content Management system, please let them know.

8. I actually wanted to take a peak at the “Powered by iRise” to find out more information but it linked to a blank page.
9. You’ve got dynamic Meta tags for keywords and descriptions on the page. Ironically, most search engines don’t pay very much attention to these, but they can’t hurt. Your meta description needs some work, though. If I saw your calendar page come up as a result, the description would come up as “Catalyze | Events”. I’m not sure you’re going to get a lot of folks clicking through on that! Instead, I would utilize your first paragraph, “The Catalyze event calendar is a comprehensive source for all activities – local or national – that are of interest to business analysts and user experience professionals.”
10. There’s no robots.txt file in your root directory. Robots.txt files let Search Engine bots know how you want your site searched. You can find a ton of information on Robots.txt at this FAQ page.
11. There’s no sitemap.xml file in your root directory and no Robots.txt file to point out where it is. Key to making your site search engine friendly is making it easy for Search Engines to map out your site and discover where things are. A sitemap is a programmatic roadmap to your site. Otherwise, the Search Engines can only scour the site by link… not knowing what’s important nor how the site is organized. This may be the most important thing you can do for your site! Read up at Sitemaps.org
12. I’m guessing at this last one, but given the lack of back-end tools being leveraged on Catalyze, your site is probably not pinging Google Blogsearch and the major Search Engines when your site changes or blog posts are made. Once again, it’s not that your site won’t be discovered, but proactively notifying services around the net will never hurt.

You’ve got one heck of a site, Tom, but no one is aware that it exists because of the lack of any Search Engine Optimization. Take a look at SEODigger on your site and you only come up for “Catalyze”. All of that content is wasted unless you can get the site Search Engine friendly. If you’re wondering why “Catalyze” is your keyword, take a look at a reverse search on your site and you’ll see why.

Best of luck! I’m not sure if you’ve got the development resources to make the changes or you have to work through the company who developed the application, but there’s quite a bit of work to do.

The last couple of weeks has been brutal. I’ve started a project Wiki to keep up with the projects I’m doing, I’ve hired a young developer to assist me, I’ve resigned from my employer and accepted a new position with a local startup.

I don’t want to burn any bridges with my previous employer (who I loved working with and for) so I’ve been mired in conversations with employees, leaders, and a couple special clients to assure them they are in great hands.

What’s suffered during that period, of course, is my Blog-Tipping program. You folks have been waiting patiently for me to get back on track and I sure do appreciate it. Alpesh Nakars’ Blogosphere is next on the list. Alpesh has been a long-time supporter of my site so I’m looking forward to helping out however I can. Alpesh is also a Microsoft Sharepoint guru… so if you’ve got Sharepoint, be sure to add him to your reading list.

Alpesh, here are your blog tips:

1. I like how you’ve got your site set up in a subdomain alpesh.nakars.com. One thing you forgot, though, is to ensure any traffic that goes to nakars.com gets forwarded. I would set up a redirect in your .htaccess file, I think this will work:

   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteBase /
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^nakars.com$ [NC]
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://alpesh.nakars.com/$1 [L,R=301]

   I believe you can even modify it a little more to go to your blog subdirectory, but I’m no .htaccess expert so you may need to do some digging!

2. Since your bread and butter is Sharepoint, I think I would concentrate on owning that space. The first keyword in your meta tags is “Google SharePoint Microsoft Domain WebHosting Free”… doubtful someone would be looking for that phrase. I think I would honestly lose the ‘free’ and then make my first phrases “Microsoft Sharepoint, Sharepoint, Sharepoint Services, Sharepoint help, Sharepoint tutorials, Sharepoint consulting, Sharepoint blog”… you get the point!
3. Your site is also missing a meta description tag. I would take the time out to write a great description, A blog about SharePoint by an experienced and passionate Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 administrator. Alpesh monitors 160 servers with over 1300 Sharepoint sites all over the state of Queensland. I would also add this to the hidden <h1> tag in your header. The current phrase, “IT’s all about technology!” is not going to help your SEO.
4. I’m curious if you’re actually seeing anyone utilizing your Category tree. In reviewing my hits on my page, very few (if any) register within the list of categories I have on my blog. You’re taking up some great space with a very large category list. I’m not advising you to get rid of it, but simplifying it may be a good plan (unless of course you’re getting a lot of folks clicking through). The repetition of Microsoft throughout the Categories could assist with your SEO, also.
5. The Copyblogger theme you’re using is a favorite of mine… the whitespace, clarity, and layout are fantastic. One thing I noticed with yours, though, is that the words from the sidebars are not differentiated too much from the post content text in size. I’d recommend enlarging your text within your posts, perhaps something like:

   #content {
   float: left;
   font-size: 110%;
   padding: 0 6em 0 0;
   width: 40em;
   }

   I’ve not tested that change on all browsers, but you can give it a shot.

6. You’ve got Popular Sharepoint Posts on the left sidebar and Sharepoint resources on the right… you might want to group all of your Sharepoint sections together to make it easier for your readers to scan through. Perhaps first your popular posts, then resources, then your categories on the right sidebar. Try the rest on your left. Organizing your links like this is an improvement in navigation and usability.
7. Your related posts after each post are assisting your SEO but probably not helping with keeping your visitors around. At first, I thought it was just an advertisement and I skimmed over it. I read your comment under the post and figured out they were related posts. I would give this portion a makeover: First, lose the <strong> wrapping around your comment - it takes away from the actual post. Try a lighter gray and smaller font so it doesn’t overpower the other info. Put the Related Reading in a <h2> tag so it stands out more. Wrap the content there in a new div, perhaps &div class=”related”> and then set the font-size for those links larger in the stylesheet. You may also wish to lose the advertisement in there. That’s up to you, of course.

Hope that helps, Alpesh! Great blog and congratulations on your growth! Keep on writing about Sharepoint to continue building your authority on the web in that area. I’ve worked with Sharepoint at my work and I know it really takes some talent to unleash its potential. Out of the box, I personally think it’s a stinker. It also makes me mad that I can’t use it with my Mac unless I’ve got IE and Office running in Parallels.

How to get your Blog Tipped

If you’d like your Blog Tipped, simply follow the directions on my Blog Tipping Post.

Recently I provided blog tips to Shonnie Lavender for her fantastic blog, My Blog Coach. Shonnie took the advice to heart and immediately began working to implement some of the changes. The most dramatic is the page header on her blog.

Here’s the ‘Before’ header graphic:

Here’s the ‘After’ header graphic:

Hopefully, you can see how inviting the new graphic is! Wow! What a transformation. The photo is friendly and inviting and the signature adds that extra bit of class. Shonnie’s content is already tops - this new layout is so much friendlier. Many bloggers shudder at putting pictures of themselves on their blog. Remember, the picture isn’t for you! It’s for the folks who are communicating with you through your blog!

Great job Shonnie! Please keep us appraised of how well your growth is!

How to get your Blog Tipped

If you’d like to get your blog tipped, find out on my Blog Tipping post.

Next up on the blog-tipping list is Linda Lee and the Netglobalbooks blog. Linda is an entrepreneur and single mom with 3 great kids. Linda started selling books and toys and concert tickets on eBay, and this lead to writing and selling ebooks and creating websites.

Linda’s blog is a beautiful one - with a Paintbrush theme by Antbag.

Here are your Blog Tips, Linda:

1. I’d recommend upgrading your version of WordPress to the latest and greatest version.
2. I found a couple oddities with your theme. On your main index page, your post starts with <p/> and there appears to be some rogue font tags that repeat themselves after each post’s content.

   You should be able to find the rogue font tag by editing your main index page in the WordPress theme editor. The funky p tag may be in your content.

3. You’ve got a dead link to a forum in your blogroll in your sidebar. If you want a forum that works in WordPress, you can try bbPress. My blogging buddy Tony Chung has it loaded up and running well on his site, Geekwhat.
4. I notice when you write that you have a mix of paragraph tags (<p>) and line breaks (<br />). A line break will break the line and continue you on the next line with no padding or margin. A paragraph; however, leaves some nice padding above and below your paragraph of content. Paragraphs break up the content nicely - making your content easier to read. I would avoid line breaks.
5. There are no meta data tags in your header. Meta data is used by Search Engines to display keyword and description information about your site and each of your pages. I recommend loading up a couple of plugins to assist you with setting your keywords and description meta tags!
6. Your RSS feed icon is nicely positioned! To be sure you’re attracting readership with your RSS feed, I’d recommend signing up for Feedburner and loading up the Feedburner WordPress plugin.
7. To assist Search Engines in navigating your blog much easier, I would highly recommend loading up a Sitemap generator plugin. My favorite is actually the beta version - it runs great and I’ve never had a problem. Since your blog is in a subdirectory, when you build your sitemap be sure to update your robots.txt file with the location of where to find it:

   sitemap: http://netglobalbooks.com/blog/sitemap.xml

   If you run into trouble, sign up with Google Webmasters to get some tips!

8. Who’s Linda Lee? Where’s a picture? Where are any pictures? Blogging is as much a visual experience as a reading one. People tend to connect well to people, not text. I don’t have a picture on my header because I’m a narcissist… I have it there so you can remember my face and perhaps trust me a little more.
9. I would also sprinkle your posts with clipart or images to differentiate it from other blogs and provide a little more insight to your content. Utilize bullets and headers (h2, h3) within your content so that readers can scan it easier.

Linda, you’re doing a fantastic job with such a young blog. You need not throw all of these improvements at it overnight - take your time. It appears you’re enjoying your writing and it’s personable and informative. Keep it up and add a couple of these tweaks over time - you’ll get a boost in readership and in search engine findability.

Good luck! (From a Single Dad!)

How to get your Blog Tipped

If you’d like your Blog Tipped, simply follow the directions on my Blog Tipping Post.