In today’s modern internet sales environment you need to ask yourself:

“ Will Front Page Rankings deliver the sales results I need ? “

The short answer is a resounding “No” but let’s elaborate a little on the question and then answer it. “Being on page 1 of Google”  is still a surprisingly common desire by “rookie” business website owners.

Whether it’s a new business, or a new website for an existing business, the number of people who think that if they could “just rank on the front page of Google” for a particular phrase they have in their minds, that all their problems would be over is still considerable.  .. But are superior rankings alone, enough any more?

..Consider the screenshot below.

Many people don’t even recognise the faintly pink area as an advert/s, and sometimes there are as many as 3 adverts there, so a legitimate #1 and #2 as shown above,  is already equivalent to #4 and #5, to these people.

And many SERPs these days have Local Business (maps) listings plus Videos, Images all around, so the choice  of destinations other than your site grows all the time.

So CTR (or Click Through Rates) starts to take even greater importance as even a #1 Organic ranking will probably have several enticing choices above and below it, and not even be all that clearly a #1 position to a non-techie searcher, and if you’re ranking below the fold on the browser there’s a good chance the searcher might not even SEE your listing.

So clearly, improving your click through rates on rankings that do get seen, so that the customer  (hopefully) clicks your site over and above the others all around you is not only the only way to improve traffic on a keyword when you can’t actually go any higher, but also it’s a great way to snipe traffic from above you from lower positions.

The Changing Face (& Workings) of Google.

If you’ve used Google in the last few weeks you can’t of helped noticing they have changed the look of their sacred interface quite dramatically, (leading incidentally to reports of less traffic  for some sites since the rollout) however that is not all they have changed, not by a long way.

As noted by several sites, Google caffeine is live – that is the new super-powerful infrastructure that Google runs on, and this has shaken lots of sites performance up in many different aspects, not just rankings.

We think perhaps the new version of Webmaster Tools is also Caffeine-powered because it’s pretty hyper compared to the last version and now gives far greater insight into your site’s traffic and performance across all Google indexes than has ever been available anywhere before, and now includes basic keyword CTR data, which although limited is more than we had before, and gives a reasonable indication to us that Google will likely be looking at this more and more as time goes on, perhaps even as ranking signals, finally.

What happens when they DO click my site?

Good question. Considering the ever increasing difficulty of ranking high enough to be seen,  and then of getting them to actually click yours, over your competition, what happens when one way or another a precious customer does find you? ie

Does the Website Convert (visitors into customers) ?

If it doesn’t, before you spend any more time and money worrying about SEO, you would be much better off spending some time and effort on either getting a decent site, or looking into improving the conversion rate of your current site, ie Conversion Rate Optimization.

Hence you can hopefully  see that Superior SEO in 2010 has far more wide-ranging connotations and responsibilities than ever before, and people who think that just  a front-page ranking for a keyword is all that is required to build a strong  online business don’t understand either Google, their competitors, and quite likely their own potential customers.

We’ve been writing about this  for several weeks now, so were excited to see Thesis 1.7 is finally here ..from Chris & the Team a couple of days ago.

WE think if you don’t have it, already, you should buy it NOW

Truly Superior Wordpress SEO

Hi!

It’s party time here at DIYthemes, and there are two big reasons why:

First, this week marks the two-year anniversary of day I launched Thesis. To commemorate this momentous occasion, I decided to have a look through some of the original Thesis files to see how far we’ve come…

And as it turns out, I’ve seen horror movies that scared me less than that old code

On the upside, knowing where we’ve come from makes me all the more excited to announce the second big reason why we’re partying this week at DIYthemes:

Thesis 1.7 has arrived!

While you should ALWAYS upgrade to the latest version of Thesis, this one is extremely important for three notable reasons.

1. The new Options Manager allows you to save and restore your options settings, and this will prove useful whenever you work on your site.

Whether you’re installing a new Thesis skin, sharing options with friends, or backing up your settings for upgrades or server moves, you’ll find the Options Manager to be extremely helpful.

2. Thesis 1.7 is the most efficient, fast, and flexible version to date. You’ll notice performance improvements on your live site AND in the admin panel; usability enhancements like this are what make Thesis a joy to use.

3. Although I’m known for my attention to detail, I really went nuts on this particular release. Fortunately for you, this means that there is a lot to love about Thesis 1.7! Check out the new feature list, and you’ll see what I mean:

http://diythemes.com/thesis/version-17-features/

In addition, to help you get started with Thesis 1.7, we’ve added helpful videos to the Thesis download page. Whether you’re installing Thesis for the first time or upgrading from a previous version, you’ll have a clear example of how to get Thesis up and running!

Oh, and one last thing-starting this week, we’re going to begin publishing tutorial videos, helpful tips, and community news on the DIYthemes site. To receive automatic updates by email, visit the address below and enter your email address in the appropriate box:

http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=thesistheme

Finally, thank you for being a Thesis user and having such impeccable taste in Web software

Chris Pearson and the DIYthemes team
http://diythemes.com/

——————————————————————-

In our opinion Thesis 1.7 is the best wordpress SEO theme by far. 

SEO Ultimate

SEO Design Solutions “SEO Ultimate” plugin is fast becoming our favorite SEO plugin, it’s installed on all our main sites now.

In our opinion what makes this the overall superior SEO Plugin is the ongoing product development which means that since we started using the plugin there have been at least 4 upgrades adding functionality all the time, and which now sees basic autolinking functionality included in the version 1.81 release, it is both very simple to understand and use, but extremely powerful and has all the onpage SEO-related functionality you need in one plugin.

..In our opinion this is now the truly superior “All in One” Plugin.

Headspace 2

From UrbanGiraffe the extremely comprehensive and advanced Headspace 2 SEO plugin, a very good product, but possibly a little over-complicated for anyone but advanced SEO practitioners, thoroughly recommended if you want to try it. Offers very advanced features such as nesting illustrated here.

Redirection

Also from UrbanGiraffe the excellent “Redirection” plugin which allows you to use 301 redirects to tidy up old posts, change URLs, cloak affiliate links and has many more SEO uses (and we’ll be covering some of these in upcoming SEO Tips posts)

Contextual Related Posts

Ajay DSouza’s related posts plugin is our favourite because it looks at post context to suggest related posts, rather than using the tag system as most do.

Broken Links Remover

This is a great plugin, one of those you wonder how you managed before once you’re using it. Not only does it automatically check your site for broken outbound links and allow easy fixing of problem links, we also use it to remotely monitor other sites, ie if you’ve linked to a site, and it gets hacked or goes down for any reason , you’ll be automatically notified of problems (via the site running the Broken Links plugin) whenever you log into it.

Nofollow Case by Case

We didn’t like “nofollow” much for outbound links even when it was thought you could “sculpt pagerank” internally using it, we always believed that if a link deserves to be there at all, it should be live. Wordpress comes with nofollow implemented as standard on comments, this plugin makes everything live as default, and you simply add /dontfollow to any URLs you may want to kill linkjuice on for any reason.

XML Sitemaps

The default XML sitemap for Wordpress plugin, it rebuilds the sitemap every time you create or edit URL structures and auto-pings to ensure you are re-crawled / indexed as fast as possible. Install it, run it, forget it.

SEO Booster Lite / Pro

This is an interesting plugin we’re testing the Lite version of but think we’ll be buying the Pro version shortly, and it seems to do what it’s supposed to, i.e. advanced whitehat automated SEO.

It works by monitoring 2nd page hits you’ve had from search engines, and auto linking to them using the search term as anchor text, to try and elevate that term from second page to first, for a traffic spike. We’ll be going into more detail on this on upcoming blog posts, but suffice to say its promising enough to make this list.

Then all you need is:

The Best Wordpress SEO Theme

..which in our opinion is Thesis – v1.7 (out very soon) and you’ll be away.

Wordpress SEO firepower

But SEO for Wordpress is not just installing all the goodies..

Lots of people are under the impression that SEO is all automatic on Wordpress, and this just isn’t true, because just like a championship winning race car, not everybody will drive it the same.

Although it is true that if you know how to write and optimize content properly Wordpress does look after the technical side for you, simply having the best plugins, theme and set up is not enough, you will still need engaging and effective content, and a correct site structure to deliver superior seo performance.

For the “..How to’s ” please see our SEO Tips Series

Another in the excellent “How to” series of SEO tips from the mighty SEO Design Solutions..

This week they’re explaining how to put the “design” into SEO web design..

Over to Jeffrey Smith @ SEO Design Solutions

“Here are 10 powerhouse SEO tips that you can use to design a new website and make sure it gets off to the right start. First, the strategy, then a brief synopsis of the tactics are outlined below.

SEO Tips to Build a New Website:

1. Start with a theme (meaning your market and the top level keywords).
2. Use Keyword Research to build that theme into the site navigation, internal links, tags and naming conventions.
3. Determine the tipping point is for the top 5 competitors and exceed them using time-released content.
4. Leverage internal links to select preferred landing pages.
5. Build a stable base of off page links from trusted sources first, and then ensure a fresh supply of relevant ongoing links.
6. Build pages properly the first time “optimal” using a pliable CMS system which does all the SEO / heavy lifting by default.
7. Use keyword research to integrate less competitive keywords (branches of the root phrase) into supporting posts, pages and off page content (then go back to point #3).
8. Keep site architecture flat and make sure to link to a sitemap for that segment of the site (if you use categories).
9. Make changes to older / trusted pages – If ranking priorities change, go back and edit and add additional links and content to leverage pages 4 months or older to link to new pages with supporting keywords.
10. Measure the results and rinse and repeat.

Start with a theme: Understanding the competitiveness of the keywords, based on competing pages, the authority of the competitors holding down the top 5 spots and the content and link thresholds they exhibit is a great start for any endeavor.

You can also expand your base of modifiers to embrace multiple variations or flavors of the market to drive additional traffic that competitors may be leaving on the table due to their own narrowness or lack of creativity. *Links will be provided at the end of this post for further elaboration on various tactics and techniques.

Use Keyword Research: When conducting keyword research, keep in mind, it is the long term objective that matters, so you have to build the most competitive keywords and phrases into the site structure so that it is always present and acts as a hook for a node of relevance.

Then, using faceted or tiered navigation, you can drill down from the most broad phrases into the category and / or product level (giving each page its own focus) vs. trying to mash everything together as a keyword free for all.

The rule of thumb is a page should be optimized for 3 -5 keywords per page, anything else is just mid-tail and long-tail traffic which will happen anyway, once all the pages are indexed, linked and working in unison.

Determine The Tipping Point: Each keyword has a tipping point, determining what that is takes to outrank others requires observation, analysis and execution to overcome.

For example, is it 15 pages of content for keyword A, 25 deep links and 100 internal links from other pages, 5 pages of content for keyword B, 100 deep links and 4 months to season enough search engine trust?

They say practice makes perfect and no two websites are alike, however this is a moving target and requires persistence based on keyword thresholds exhibited by (a) your own website and (b) the thoroughness of your competitors SEO strategies and whether they are hollow or back by solid SEO metrics.

Leverage Internal Links: Leverage the links you build from other websites by using keyword relevant internal links through co-occurrence. If a keyword exists on another page you intend to rank for, and then make sure that all of the subsequent pages are linked to the preferred landing page with the keyword or semantic variation to support the preferred ranking.

Off Page Links: Getting the proper type of off page inbound links matters more than the quantity of links pointing at a page or website. Trusted links pass trust; you can have 200K inbound links from sites that are classified as a bad neighborhood that pass nothing of value to your website. On the other hand, you can have 1000 quality links from sites that have trust and authority and pass more ranking factor along than the 200K links.

Aged sites replete with either (a) trust or (b) rankings in the niche, market or segment your site corresponds to are ideal.

SEO for a CMS: You don’t have to over-think your SEO, just build it on a solid platform (such as WordPress) refer to our WordPress SEO Tips. After you set your site up properly the first time, you can easily mirroring the title, h1, meta tags and page naming conventions and focus on adding themed content to add an array of robust keywords and landing pages to garner rankings.

Keeping Site Architecture Flat: Flat site architecture implies building relevant pages in the root folder and using exact match or targeted naming conventions for the url structure. For example, instead of having a site format and naming convention like domain.com/electronics/games/sony-psp/ you could use domain.com/sony-psp-games.html to flatten the subfolders.

Here is a great piece on competition and how to leverage content silos to get that value out of your deeper pages and add traction for specific pages.

Making Changes to Older / Trusted Pages: You can benefit tremendously from refining or editing pages with trust or page rank to increase indexation for other newer pages or site segments.

Many SEO’s don’t tell you that your websites most trusted pages (older than 4 months) are a treasure trove when re-optimized or utilized (by adding additional content or links) to act as pivotal points within a website.

Linking from trusted pages passes along value beyond measureable link flow alone, it allows your other pages to rank on less inbound links from other sites (as inbound links or external inbound links are treated much in the same way).

Measure, Rinse and Repeat: No explanation needed here. Just test the metrics, keep a log and make adjustments where needed to dial in specific keyword variations.

These 10 SEO tips should allow you to make a great start and strong ranking finish. Now, as promised, here are the links.

• WordPress SEO Tips
• Overcoming Competitive Markets
• SEO and Internal Linking
• How SEO Really Works
• 6 Steps for Launching a New Website

"Ibiza" image optimization

As we keep saying, Superior SEO is NOT just about ranking for a few particular phrases anymore, it’s about a holistic understanding of the big picture, and looking sideways as well as upwards in the SERPs.

One of the most important developments for SEO moving forwards is the advent of Google universal search results, i.e. images, and video appearing in the main SERP results.

Obviously if:

1. you have a strong marketing plan
2. you know how to make your results appear there..

..This could have a lot of potential. With that in mind we have been experimenting for a good while now to truly get to grips with how to rank images, because for most SEOs this is still a bit of a mystery, and nearly always an afterthought, but it shouldn’t be, because images are usually much easier to rank for than the same keyword in the normal SERPs, and for a new site can really get traffic moving quickly by comparison to the equivalent time to rank normally.

Also, following the “usual advice” won’t actually do you much good, that’s far too random, and entirely too  “may, or may not..” for us, so here’s a basic “how to” for anyone aspiring superior seo-ers who want to know.

1.) Use Wordpress for your website if possible

Lots of people say Wordpress is all you need for SEO, but that’s not actually true, as the SEO content and design are what YOU TYPE IN, not the particular codebase that you type it into. However with Images, it is closer to the truth, although the same principles apply on any site, Wordpress does help you get it right without trying so hard.

2.) Follow the “usual” advice

Naming the image with relevant keywords, using alt text including (variations and modifiers of) the keywords, and a descriptive title, plus getting the keywords on the page, in the proximity of the images.

(This is as far as most SEOs can advise on image rankings, (without 1.) )

3.) Hotlink and use the image in another post, on the original site, or even better, another site.

4.) Link from the second image, to the first image, using your target keywords as ALT (anchor) text

5.) Text Link at the page from a couple of other places using your target keywords as Anchor Text

The picture above is on one of our test sites that has been pretty much empty since it was built 18 months ago,  so you’d likely think that the chances of getting it to rank for “Ibiza” with no content to speak of, and no links to speak of are pretty slim?

heh heh…

Now if you were to believe  the Google Adwords tool, “Ibiza” on the “exact ” setting is 1.2 million searches per month globally, and 20.4 million on the “broad” setting.

Without going into details this little website that’s had no work done on it whatever until this weekend just gone, has been quietly racking up between 2 – sometimes nearly 500 hits per day from just this one keyword.

We wouldn’t mind betting that’s more than the majority of Ibiza sites get from their entire longtail and main searches.

So anyway, now it’s established with a reasonable amount of relevant through-flow, we’re going to sort it out a bit and use it for it’s intended purpose, a high-quality hand-edited FREE Ibiza business advertising directory.

This is a good phrase, isn’t it?

It’s totally traffic-less apart from the various SEOs trying to rank for it, but it’s emotive, it  just sounds so good everyone wants to rank for it, to be “the one” who is #1 for Superior SEO services

This week there’s a new kid in Town..  www.superior-seo-services.com

The colours and styling look suspiciously like our old friends  FPR, but if that were true they’ve upped their game a little and at least built it on the right platform now

It has certain trademarks from their coding, but it’s impossible to say for sure at the moment.

Anyway, whoever it belongs to, they’ve gone for the full sniper approach, domain, internal linking etc, let’s just hope it’s going to rank for other things besides “Superior SEO” and “superior SEO services” or it’s going to be a mighty big disappointment traffic-wise, and a huge waste of the raw ranking power of well configured Wordpress SEO installation.

Because of actual superior seo, at 6 months in, ours is getting a reasonable amount of wordpress-specific traffic now, especially on the subject of Thesis 1.7, and doing this kind of thing too

Superior SEO services we look forward to jousting with you in the charts

Thesis 1.7+superior seo = winner

The latest news on the upcoming Thesis 1.7 release from Chris & his team, brought to you by Superior-SEO.us

A couple of weeks have passed since my last email, and I STILL haven’t released Thesis 1.7 beta.

Ya’see, the problem is that whenever I get close to release time, new little details reveal themselves, and I end up learning something that I can use to add some more AWESOME to Thesis.

With 1.7, this effect has really been in overdrive, and I’ve been able to add some killer AND useful new functionality! Here’s the latest and greatest:

- Totally flexible comment system:

In previous versions, Thesis didn’t give you a choice here, and everybody’s comment areas were rendered in the same order “trackbacks – comments – comment form.” In 1.7, you’ll not only be able to drag and drop the display order, but you’ll also have a few more fine-tuning display options that are sure to please

- Include a slew of JavaScript libraries! Pretty much everyone can benefit from having Javascript libraries at their disposal, and with Thesis 1.7, you’re just a click away from the most popular ones. Add jQuery, jQuery UI, MooTools, SWFObject, and others, and kiss those old JS library folders goodbye!

- Reorganized Thesis Options page: The more I organize the underlying code, the more I’m able to organize the controls you use to unleash Thesis’ potential. Straight up, the Thesis Options are leaner, faster, and more sensibly-arranged in 1.7.

Talk to you soon!

Chris Pearson and the DIYthemes team

In the meantime, you don’t have to wait for it to be released, if you buy Thesis now you’re entitled to the free upgrade anyway. ..what are you waiting for?

From the Thesis team this morning..

Our goal this year is pretty simple:

We want to continually blow you away with the best products and services that will help you build the best websites on the planet. Marketing rhetoric is fun and all, but I like action, and I know you do too. Here’s what we’ve got in the works at DIYthemes:

First, I’m going to release Thesis 1.7 over the next couple of weeks.

Developers will get a beta version, and then everyone will get the final release once bugs are squashed (I like to think there won’t be any bugs, but then again, I WOULD think that ). Our last release, 1.6, was biased toward design, but 1.7 is going to bring you more technical detail that will further improve on our world-class SEO framework.

Here’s what’s new:

- Options Manager.

If you’ve ever delivered a Thesis site to a client, then you know what a pain in the butt it can be to go into a new site and set every single option by hand. With Thesis 1.7, you’ll be able to save and restore the Thesis Options without having to be woefully inefficent.

Oh, and skin developers? You’ll be able to use this new functionality to share font and design settings, and this will make it easier to help people set up your awesome skins on their sites!

- Insane New SEO Controls and Detail.

Thesis has always been optimized and ready to perform in the search engines, but there were still some areas where exacting, precise controls were lacking. Not anymore.

Version 1.7 contains a totally redesigned document  that allows for SEO customization at a level that no one has ever seen before.

You’ll be able to supply  details, and even control the indexing (noindex, nofollow, noarchive) onevery stinkin’ page of your site.  Better still, you’ll find a new page in the Thesis Options panel that will give you total control over all these
details on your Category and Tag archive pages.

Optimize EVERYTHING because that’s how you win on the Web, and that’s what Thesis is all about.

- New Headline Filter.

This one’s a bit technical, but I’m using (and loving) it on my newly-relaunched version of Pearsonified (http://www.pearsonified.com/), which is running on a pre-release version of Thesis 1.7. Basically, this simple filter will allow developers to show/hide headlines, and you’ll be able to use this to create more diverse post styles on your site. I’ve used it to create “asides,” which are a little less formal than my normal posts-here’s an example (note the absence of a headline and byline):

http://www.pearsonified.com/2010/01/web-publishing-2010.php.

It’s just a little thing, but oftentimes, things like this bring the most joy to people
who like to customize their sites!

- Beefed-up Internationalization.

Thanks to the help of our fans in other countries, I’ve been able to identify certain parts of the code that were not so translation-friendly. To fix this, I’ve gone through every single string in Thesis and made sure that everything is up to spec for internationalization. Now, it will be easier than ever to use handy translation software to translate Thesis into different languages!

Now that you know what’s coming in Thesis 1.7, let’s get back to something I mentioned in the subject of this email: “a new kind of website optimization.”

The killer part about this is that I wasn’t talking about Thesis!

As you know, Thesis is all about helping you build a flexible website that is technically precise. Problem is, your CONTENT is every bit as important as the code that runs your website, and it’s always been a bit of a bummer to me that I can’t do more on this front to help you out.

Well, thanks to my partner Brian Clark, this little problem is solved I know this is a bit of a tease, but you’ll be hearing more from me on this in the days to come!

Finally, thank you so, so much for being a part of this journey. It’s a pleasure to wake up every day and know that I can help you in some small way, and I am grateful for the opportunity to continue to do that!

Rock on, folks.

Chris Pearson & the DIYThemes team

The search for the ultimate Wordpress theme, and indeed Wordpress website development platform may be over…

.

.

We set this site up as an on-going experiment in many ways, but have been too busy to do anything with it as yet, however that is all changing in 2010.

We’ve written before about wordpress seo before, covering..

Wordpress’ inate SEO superiority, and

the best SEO plugins

But have so-far stayed off the subject of themes, because:

a) We build pre-optimized Wordpress sites on any Wordpress theme, and ultimately, like a HiFi, your SEO results can only ever be as good as the weakest link in your chain.

b) The theme can only ever only be as good as the SEO you put into Wordpress underneath it, by way of your site content, structure etc, and a good theme cannot make up for a poorly designed site.

However, the theme is the site’s  on-page interface with Google with regards to your onsite SEO  (via the on page stylesheets, titles, layout etc)  so once you have a well-designed site, then your choice of theme can be very important to obtaining a superior seo performance.

After much experimentation this site now runs on Thesis, which is pretty damn cool.

The latest version of Thesis – 1.7 ’s  “inbuilt SEO out of the box” is so good  even if you are not  SEO -minded, if you just build a good site, it will pretty much take care of it for you.

This is what really gives Thesis the edge, it converts Wordpress into an incredibly powerful and flexible web design system, allowing maximum flexibility in how you handle, structure and configure your setup to suit.

From their site:

The Thesis Theme for WordPress is a high-quality template system that you can use to improve your site immediately.

Thesis boasts the strongest SEO of any theme on the market today thanks to its expertly-coded HTML + CSS + PHP framework. Not only that, Thesis also contains additional options that will allow you to fine-tune each and every page of your site. The days of worrying about your in-site SEO are over

—with Thesis, the strategy is “just add killer content.”

Not a coder? Not a problem. The Thesis option panels allow you to command your site with ease, while Thesis does all of the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

You’ve never had this much control over your site before, and this is precisely what makes Thesis indispensable to critical webmasters all over the globe.

We highly recommend that you check it out.

One of the reasons we built this site was to test out the new technology on it as it becomes available, because in all honesty, we have gotten a little lazy with our default setup, because it just works so well, and the old adage applies in SEO as in life:

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”

But this is a brand new project, as yet un-indexed by Google, who seem to be on a go-slow again this week, so we can try all the new stuff on this from scratch, and one of them we’ve been gagging to play with is SEO Design Solutions new Wordpress SEO Plugin – SEO Ultimate

Well, it’s installed and operational and first impressions are good, it’s a very strong tool,  far more comprehensive than All-in-One-SEO (which is the default, and a fine package)

Once installed the plugin has a dropdown menu below the plugins menu,  shown here on the left from which you access the various modules that form the plugin.

All of them have been very carefully thought out as you would  expect from the SEO Design Solutions team, and in totality provide solid comprehensive and clever control over the various aspects required for a superior wordpress SEO setup.

• Title Re-writer gives you precise finite control over all types of content titles, including cats, tags
• Noindex Manager gives you simple but complete control over every type of page in your Wordpress setup
• Slug Optimizer holds a long editable list of stop words it will  automatically remove & re-write your slugs (post URLs)

The 404 Monitor tracks every 404 “Page not found” error so you can fix the problem, (or fix the broken inbound link!)

And check out the funky Linkbox Inserter (bottom of this post) offering your visitors the ideal (customized) link text code,  to encourage easy linking to that page or post.

As for performance, as with cars it’s a lot about the driver..

We’ll let you know