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<channel>
	<title>Ken Shoufer</title>
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	<link>http://www.kenshoufer.com</link>
	<description>Web Designer for Hire</description>
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		<title>Child Themes</title>
		<link>http://www.kenshoufer.com/2010/12/22/child-themes/</link>
		<comments>http://www.kenshoufer.com/2010/12/22/child-themes/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 15:47:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[tutorial]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wordpress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cms]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[function]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[template]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[theme]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.kenshoufer.com/?p=192</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This post will explain how to add a child theme to a WordPress site. Child themes are the recommended way of making modifications to a theme since they preserve your changes when the theme gets updated. If you have some understanding of HTML, CSS and PHP, creating child themes will be easy. Directory Structure WordPress [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This post will explain how to add a child theme to a WordPress site.</p>
<p>Child themes are the recommended way of making modifications to a theme since they preserve your changes when the theme gets updated. If you have some understanding of HTML, CSS and PHP, creating child themes will be easy.</p>
<h2>Directory Structure</h2>
<p>WordPress directory structure:</p>
<ul>
<li>public_html
<ul>
<li>wp-content
<ul>
<li>themes
<ul>
<li>theme-name</li>
<li>theme-name-child
<ul>
<li>style.css</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>WordPress theme contains:</p>
<ol>
<li>style.css (required)</li>
<li>functions.php (optional)</li>
<li>Template files (optional)</li>
<li>Other files (optional)</li>
</ol>
<h2>The Required style.css File</h2>
<p>Style.css provides the information header by which WordPress recognizes the child theme, and it replaces the style.css of the parent.</p>
<p>The information header indicates that this is a child theme in the &#8220;Template&#8221; declaration.</p>
<p>Here is an example information header of a child theme’s <em>style.css</em>:</p>
<blockquote><p>/*<br />
Theme Name:     Child Theme Name<br />
Theme URI:      http: //example.com/<br />
Description:    Child theme for the Theme Name<br />
Author:         Your name here<br />
Author URI:     http: //example.com/about/<br />
Template:       themename<br />
Version:        0.1.0<br />
*/</p></blockquote>
<p>A quick explanation of each line:</p>
<ul>
<li>Theme Name. (required)</li>
<li>Theme URI. (optional)</li>
<li>Description. (optional)</li>
<li>Author URI. (optional)</li>
<li>Author. (optional)</li>
<li>Template. (required)</li>
<li>Version. (optional)</li>
</ul>
<p>A child theme’s stylesheet replaces the stylesheet of the parent. The parent’s stylesheet is not loaded at all by WordPress. Import the parent&#8217;s style sheet to ovoid having to repeat all the styles you want to keep in the original parent&#8217;s style sheet. Since the child theme&#8217;s stylesheet is loaded after the parent&#8217;s stylesheet, it is easy to override the parent&#8217;s styles by simply adding the style to child theme stylesheet.</p>
<h2>Create a Child Theme (Example)</h2>
<ol>
<li>Make a new directory in wp-content/themes, and name it themename-child. (themename = the parent theme name)</li>
<li>Create a style.css file with the proper header and save it into the themename-child directory.
<pre class="brush: css">/*
Theme Name: Theme Name Child
Description: Child of Theme Name
Author: Your name here
Template: themename
*/

@import url(&#039;../themename/style.css&#039;);

#site-title a {
color: #009900;
}</pre>
</li>
<li>The new child theme should show up in the &#8220;Plugins&#8221; section of the Dashboard. Activate the new child theme.</li>
</ol>
<h2>Using functions.php</h2>
<p>The functions.php of a child theme is loaded before the parent’s functions.php which allows you to modify the functionality of a parent theme. Since the child theme function is loaded first, the parent&#8217;s function should be <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Pluggable_Functions" target="_blank">pluggable</a>.</p>
<p>Example:</p>
<pre class="brush: php">if (!function_exists(&#039;theme_special_nav&#039;)) {
function theme_special_nav() {
//  Do something.
}
}</pre>
<p>In that way, a child theme can replace a PHP function of the parent by simply declaring it again.</p>
<p>If the parent&#8217;s function is not pluggable, it still can be modified by the child theme with another method.</p>
<p>Example:</p>
<p>Add this to functions.php in parent.</p>
<pre class="brush: php">//create the parent_echo_test function
function parent_echo_test() {
echo &quot;******PARENT ECHO TEST*****&quot;;
}</pre>
<p>Add this to functions.php in child.</p>
<pre class="brush: php">// Removes parent_echo_test
function remove_echo_test() {
remove_action(&#039;init&#039;,&#039;parent_echo_test&#039;);
}

// Call &#039;remove_echo_test&#039; during WP initialization
add_action(&#039;init&#039;,&#039;remove_echo_test&#039;);

//create the child_echo_test function
function child_echo_test() {
echo &quot;******CHILD ECHO TEST*****&quot;;
}

// Add our child function
add_action(&#039;init&#039;,&#039;child_echo_test&#039;);</pre>
<h2>Template Files</h2>
<p>Child theme <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Templates" target="_blank">template</a> files can override any parental template file by using a file with the same name.</p>
<p>Here are a few example cases for using template files in a child theme:</p>
<ul>
<li>add a template that is not offered by the parent theme</li>
<li>add a more specific template (see <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy" target="_blank">Template Hierarchy</a>)</li>
<li>replace a template of the parent</li>
</ul>
<h2>Other Files</h2>
<p>A child theme can use any type of file a full-fledged themes use such as images, stylesheets and Javascript files.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Make Money With AdSense</title>
		<link>http://www.kenshoufer.com/2010/10/15/make-money-with-google-adsense/</link>
		<comments>http://www.kenshoufer.com/2010/10/15/make-money-with-google-adsense/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Oct 2010 04:28:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[advertising]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[advertise]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[website]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.kenshoufer.com?p=25</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Good news! Making money with your site, no matter the topic, has become easier than it&#8217;s ever been before &#8211; and it&#8217;s 100% legitimate. Google AdSense enables even small-time website owners the ability to make passive income. Even if your site is just for information purposes, you can still participate and make decent money with [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Good news! Making money with your site, no matter the topic, has become easier than it&#8217;s ever been before &#8211; and it&#8217;s 100% legitimate. Google AdSense enables even small-time website owners the ability to make passive income. Even if your site is just for information purposes, you can still participate and make decent money with AdSense &#8212; or at least enough to fund your website.</p>
<div style="height: 1em; visibility: hidden;">CREATING A BLANK LINE</div>
<hr />
<div class="aligncenter" style="margin: 1.5em 0 1.5em 0;"><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="576" height="347" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/iAceed8sW1o?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="576" height="347" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iAceed8sW1o?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></div>
<hr />
<div style="height: 0.1em; visibility: hidden;">CREATING A BLANK LINE</div>
<p>Depending on how much advertisers are paying Google for an ad will determine the pay you receive for each click or impression. It&#8217;s in your best interest to use <a href="http://www.google.com/trends" target="_blank">popular search terms</a> since advertisers are willing to pay more for them. Login to your account at any time and see the total amount of revenue you&#8217;ve generated.</p>
<p>Ideas to get more money from your ads:</p>
<ul>
<li>increase the traffic to your site</li>
<li>filter ads to match your audience&#8217;s interests</li>
<li>place ads where they are more likely to be noticed</li>
</ul>
<p>It&#8217;s all about the numbers, so promote your site on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc. and see your ad revenue take off.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Earn through Affiliate Programs and Advertisements</title>
		<link>http://www.kenshoufer.com/2010/10/15/earn-through-affiliate-programs-and-ads/</link>
		<comments>http://www.kenshoufer.com/2010/10/15/earn-through-affiliate-programs-and-ads/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Oct 2010 04:16:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[advertising]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[seo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[affiliate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[traffic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[website]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.kenshoufer.com?p=22</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If you want to make more money on your web site, read on. The two main categories of making money online are advertising and selling good and services. This post will focus on advertising. any char Advertising So you don&#8217;t have anything to sell, but you want to generate some revenue from your hard work. [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>If you want to make more money on your web site, read on. The two main categories of making money online are advertising and selling good and services. This post will focus on advertising.</p>
<div style="visibility: hidden;">any char</div>
<h1>Advertising</h1>
<p>So you don&#8217;t have anything to sell, but you want to generate some revenue from your hard work. Advertising is a great way to start.</p>
<p>Anyone with a website can get advertisers, but when you are starting out the potential companies who might advertise on you site will be relatively few so try <a href="../2010/10/15/make-money-with-google-adsense/">Google Adsense</a>. It&#8217;s easy and a no-risk venture especially while you are building a user base.</p>
<p>Another source for advertising revenue is affiliate advertising. The way to do this is to join as an &#8220;affiliate&#8221; of various sites, either  directly, or through an affiliate network. An affiliate network is  simply an intermediary where you can select from a variety of  advertisers.</p>
<p>To join  an affiliate network or program, simply go to the site and complete  their online application form. Some programs will give you instant  approval while others require a human to check out your application  before it is approved. Once it is approved, you&#8217;ll be given some HTML  code which you can cut and paste into your web page. Note that some  affiliate networks and programs will not accept you unless you have your  own domain name. If you are planning to earn from your site, you should  seriously consider registering your own domain name.<br />
How To Choose An Affiliate Program</p>
<p>How  should you choose an affiliate program? My suggestion is not to choose a  program according to the payment scheme, but rather according to the  kind of people who are likely to visit your website. For example, if you  are targeting parents on your site, links to affiliates with  educational software, books and the like may generate more revenue than  banners that link to web hosting companies. The most important rule of  choosing an affiliate program is to know your target audience.</p>
<p>Another  point to consider is whether you really want to join every single  affiliate program that comes your way. Some studies suggest that sites  that make the most money from affiliate programs are affiliates of only a  small handful of programs. Furthermore, concentrating your  advertisements from one network may allow you to be paid faster. If you  advertise for hundreds of different affiliate networks on your site, you  may end up earning only (say) a few dollars per month from each  network. If your advertiser&#8217;s minimum payment amount is higher than what  you can earn each month, it may take you a long time before you accrue  enough to be paid.</p>
<p>On the other hand, that formula does not  necessarily hold true for every site (or every page on your site, for  that matter). For example, if your site has a particular theme, and an  affiliate network only supports one or two suitable advertisers, you  might want to sign up for a few affiliate networks so as to get a  greater number of relevant advertisers. After all, advertisements that  are relevant to your audience are more likely to be taken up than  general advertisements. (What&#8217;s the point of putting banners from only  one affiliate if nobody is going to click them?)<br />
Automated Context-Sensitive Advertising</p>
<p>One  of the latest trends in website sponsorship is to sign up with an  advertising network like Google AdSense The advertising network  automatically checks your web page and determines the most relevant  advertisement for the page. As a result, without much additional effort  from you, you get advertisements targeted at the interests of your  visitors. As mentioned earlier, targeted ads tend to result in better  performance and returns.<br />
Get Started</p>
<p>Advertising revenue is  one of the most effortless way to earn money from your site. You merely  have to put the banner there and wait for the money to roll in. (Well,  okay, not quite. You will still need to have some visitors first before  you can make anything.)</p>
<div style="visibility: hidden;">any char</div>
<h2>Payment Schemes</h2>
<p>Before joining any program, you should probably be aware of the different payment schemes available.</p>
<div style="visibility: hidden;">any char</div>
<h3>Pay Per Impression (CPM)</h3>
<p>Here, you are paid according to the number of times the advertiser&#8217;s banner is displayed on your site. The amount you earn is typically calculated based on the number of thousand impressions of the banner (impressions = number of times the banner is displayed), often abbreviated CPM (cost per thousand, with the M being the Latin numeral for thousand). That is, $5 CPM means that you get paid $5 for 1,000 displays of the banner. In general, the amount paid is usually small, but it is easy to earn since everytime a visitor loads the page, you earn. This is known as a &#8220;high conversion rate&#8221;. Needless to say, this method will allow you to automatically earn more if your site attracts a lot of visitors.</p>
<div style="visibility: hidden;">any char</div>
<h3>Pay Per Click (PPC)</h3>
<p>When you are paid per click, you are only paid when visitors click the advertiser&#8217;s banner on your site. The amount paid is usually higher than the pay per impression scheme. Whether you get a high conversion rate here depends on the banner (whether it attracts people to click it), although in general, it has a higher conversion rate than the pay per sale method. A high traffic site will probably enjoy a higher click rate than a lower traffic site, although you will probably get better results if your banners are carefully selected to suit the target audience of your site.</p>
<div style="visibility: hidden;">any char</div>
<h3>Pay Per Sale or Lead</h3>
<p>While you will probably get the highest payment rates with this method, it has the lowest conversion rate of the three schemes. You will only earn if your visitors click through the banner and either purchase an item from the advertiser or take some other prescribed action (eg, sign up for a service). Like the Pay Per Click method, you get much better results if you carefully select your advertisers to suit the target audience of your site.</p>
<p>In general, to avoid wasting resources in issuing checks for very small amounts, advertisers will usually accrue the amount owing to you until it reaches a certain level (such as $25) before they pay you.</p>
<p>More information on affiliate programs with lists:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.affiliatetips.com/" target="_blank">AffiliateTips.com</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.top-affiliate.com/" target="_blank">Top Affiliate Program Directory</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.affiliateprograms.com/" target="_blank">AffiliatePrograms</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.100best-affiliate-programs.com/" target="_blank">100 Best Affiliate Programs</a></li>
<li><a href="http://anidandesign.com/affiliate-marketing/eco-friendly-affiliate-marketing/" target="_blank">Eco Friendly Affiliate Programs</a></li>
<li><a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Yahoo-Affiliate-Programs" target="_blank">Yahoo Affiliate Programs</a></li>
</ul>
]]></content:encoded>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Drive Traffic to Your Blog in 10 Easy Steps</title>
		<link>http://www.kenshoufer.com/2010/10/15/25-ways-for-how-to-drive-traffic-to-your-blog/</link>
		<comments>http://www.kenshoufer.com/2010/10/15/25-ways-for-how-to-drive-traffic-to-your-blog/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Oct 2010 04:02:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[seo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[traffic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[website]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.kenshoufer.com?p=17</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[You just created a blog. Yeah&#8230; let&#8217;s celebrate! Now for the interesting part. How do you get people to look at your new blog? While there are literally dozen of techniques to achieve this, here are 10 of the most popular ways to get those eye balls headed in the right direction. 1. Link to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>You just created a blog. Yeah&#8230; let&#8217;s celebrate! Now for the interesting part. How do you get people to look at your new blog? While there are literally dozen of techniques to achieve this, here are 10 of the most popular ways to get those eye balls headed in the right direction.</p>
<p>1. Link to your own articles. You can do this within your blog, of course. But also make sure that you are using links to your own work if you do any sort of blog writing for other people. (Of course, make sure that you&#8217;re allowed to do this.)</p>
<p>2. Get active on social bookmarking sites. Top ones that I would recommend as a blogger are Mixx and StumbleUpon but there are lots of big and small ones out there to keep you busy. The key here is to choose just a few and then be truly active on them on a regular basis. This gives you more credibility on the site and drives more traffic to your blog.</p>
<p>3. Visit the blogs of other people who write on similar topics and leave thoughtful comments there. Include your blog link in the &#8220;website&#8221; section of the comment form and people will start turning up on your blog.</p>
<p>4. Add a link to the blog on all of your social networking profiles. If you&#8217;re on Facebook or LinkedIn, you should make sure people can find your blog there.</p>
<p>5. Add a link to the blog on your email signature. Also add a link to a specific post that you like.</p>
<p>6. Give away your writing. Do guest blogging on the sites of others. Offer to write one article per month for a site that you like in exchange for a link. Alternatively, you can publish articles on sites like this one which may provide you revenue income but which are also a tool for promoting your own blog.</p>
<p>7. Have a link love post each week. These are posts that many bloggers are doing these days which are simply lists of some of the other posts that they are reading around the web. People like this because it&#8217;s a great resource for them to start learning about other blogs with similar topics. And you get the immediate attention of the people that you are linking to.</p>
<p>8. Tell Technorati that you&#8217;re around. You should sign up with Technorati and then make use of Technorati tags in your posts.</p>
<p>9. Add a link to the blog on your bio. There are many different places where you will publish your bio over the years. Make sure that you include that link so people from all of those places can find your blog.</p>
<p>10. Attend blogging events. There are social media and blogging conferences cropping up all over the place these days. Other bloggers are your best readers so start getting out there and meeting them.</p>
<p>These are all great ways to start driving traffic to your blog. However, the best way is to get creative and do some sort of blog promotion that no one else is doing yet. Anything that gets you attention is going to get you traffic.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>SEO Secrets and You</title>
		<link>http://www.kenshoufer.com/2010/10/15/seo-secrets-and-you/</link>
		<comments>http://www.kenshoufer.com/2010/10/15/seo-secrets-and-you/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Oct 2010 03:56:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[seo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[traffic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tutorial]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[website]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.kenshoufer.com?p=14</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[CREATING A BLANK LINE Flex Your Power with SEO SEO (Search Engine Optimization) makes your website more attractive to search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Search engines regularly crawl the web looking for new or changed web pages. If you want people to notice your hard work, your website must appear on the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div style="height: 1.5em; visibility: hidden;">CREATING A BLANK LINE</div>
<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Flex Your Power with SEO</span></h2>
<p>SEO (Search Engine Optimization) makes your website more attractive to search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.</p>
<p>Search engines regularly crawl the web looking for new or changed web pages. If you want people to notice your hard work, your website must appear on the first or second page of search results.</p>
<p>This guide explains in detail SEO techniques you can use to generate more traffic to your site.</p>
<p>Making your website easier for search engines to understand is what SEO is all about. Engaging in search engine optimization requires a constantly evolving skill set. This guide contains basic practices that have remained relatively constant over time.</p>
<p>SEO is considered it to be spam or manipulation by some. Properly implemented SEO within search engine guidelines is endorsed by Google and other search engines. Search engines strive to give the viewer more structured and valuable content which is what good SEO can provide.</p>
<div style="height: 1.5em; visibility: hidden;">CREATING A BLANK LINE</div>
<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Search Engines 101</span></h2>
<p>Search engines have programs called spiders which scan web pages for links and key words.</p>
<p>There are many things that search engines look for. Here is a <a href="http://www.metamend.com/things-search-engines-look-for.html" target="_blank">detailed list</a>.</p>
<div style="height: 1.5em; visibility: hidden;">CREATING A BLANK LINE</div>
<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">You Need Good Site Architecture</span></h2>
<p>Having good site architecture offers benefits beyond aesthetic considerations, including:</p>
<ol>
<li>Easy Expansion—Because your site is divided into manageable sections it is easy to add new sections and grow in the future.</li>
<li>Easy Navigation—Intermediate and advanced users can manually manipulate the site&#8217;s URL to change sections.</li>
<li>Easy Maintenance—Because the website is divided up into manageable sections it is easier to maintain than a site with a flat structure.</li>
<li>Well-Defined Hierarchy—Pages with more generalized information are at the top of the tree. As you navigate deeper into the site, pages present more specialized information.</li>
</ol>
<p>Good site architecture is much easier to achieve nowadays with a CMS (Content Management System) such as <a href="http://wordpress.org/" target="_blank">WordPress</a> or <a href="http://www.joomla.org/" target="_blank">Joomla</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.searchengineguide.com/lisa-barone/siloing-revisit.php" target="_blank">Siloing</a> and <a href="http://www.canonicalseo.com/theme-pyramids/" target="_blank">Theme Pyramids</a> is important in good Site Architecture. When building a website you should strive for simple and easy-to-understand site architecture.</p>
<p>Example:</p>
<p>1. example.com/cars/<br />
2. example.com/cars/sports-cars/<br />
3. example.com/cars/sports-cars/ferrari/</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Keyword Research</span></h2>
<p>The right set of keywords will help others find your site. Understanding how to choose the best keyword takes some research.</p>
<p>Singular vs. Plural—Search engines and keyword research tools handle singular and plural terms differently. More information <a href="http://searchengineland.com/optimize-titles-singular-plural-171034" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p>Head Keywords—Head keywords are usually short one or two word concepts that can have a wide range of meanings. They have a high volume of searches, but the variety of possible meanings makes it difficult to know what the user was actually searching for.</p>
<p>Long Tail Keywords—These are multiple keywords (at least four or five words). These keywords are very specific and signal a clear intent on the users part.</p>
<p>There is a wide range of keywords falling between the head and tail.</p>
<p>Keyword research tasks:</p>
<p>1. Compile a list of all of your keywords.<br />
2. Develop clusters around a particular topic or subject.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Site URLs and Server Technology</span></h2>
<p>Whether your site runs on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP" target="_blank">PHP</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASP.NET" target="_blank">ASP</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Server_Pages" target="_blank">JSP</a> or something else, the SEO strategies are the same.</p>
<p>Each of these platforms has its own language, but they all serve pages out in HTML format. From a search engine optimization perspective there is no advantage in choosing one over the other. You can choose among the platforms based on cost of operations: hiring developers, designers, programmers, and webmasters.</p>
<p>If you are building a new website or undergoing a redesign and restructuring you should follow the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W3C" target="_blank">W3C</a> recommendations and build a website without revealing the server side scripting language.</p>
<p>This means instead of:</p>
<ul>
<li> example.com/cars.html</li>
<li>example.com/cars.php</li>
<li>example.com/cars.asp</li>
</ul>
<p>Your pages&#8217; URLs should look like:</p>
<p>example.com/cars/</p>
<p>Using this URL naming strategy will allow you to move from one technology to another without altering your site&#8217;s URLs or its underlying structure.</p>
<h3>Canonicalization</h3>
<p>It&#8217;s possible to serve your website under both: http://www.example.com and http://example.com. However, many search engines will see both and consider it duplicate content (the same content under two URLs), and may penalize your site accordingly. To avoid this:</p>
<p>Pick either http:// or http://www and use it consistently.</p>
<p>Configure your web server to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#3xx_Redirection11" target="_blank">301 redirect</a> all traffic from the style you are not using to the style you are using. More information on canonicalization <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonicalization" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<h3>Static URLs and Dynamic URL Parameters</h3>
<p>In many cases programming implementations use parameters instead of static URLs. A URL with a parameter will look like this:</p>
<p>example.com/page/?id=widget</p>
<p>While a static URL will look like this:</p>
<p>example.com/page/widget/</p>
<p>In most cases search engines have the ability to index and rank both formats. However, best practices advise the use of static URLs over dynamic ones since you are produce cleaner, easier to understand output.</p>
<h3>Keywords in URLs</h3>
<p>Generally speaking, it&#8217;s beneficial to have keywords contained within your URL structure. Having the keyword in your URL helps search engines understand what your page is about and also helps users know what they are likely to find on the page. Consider these two examples and see which you find more useful:</p>
<h3>Delimiters in URLs</h3>
<p>Delimiters are used in URLs to separate words. Search engines do have the ability to understand other characters, such as an underscore, but the hyphen is preferred over an underscore for human usability issues.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">JavaScript and Flash</span></h2>
<p>Search engines are very limited as to what forms of information they can read and interpret. Currently, they understand text-based content which is directly on the page. If your web application relies on JavaScript, Flash, or some other non-text form of displaying information, search engines will have a difficult time interpreting the content of your pages.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Design Page Structure</span></h2>
<p>Reduce coding errors to a minimum to ovoid tripping up a search engine spiders. Using proper standards and markup usually means pages are laid out in a more logical fashion. Using a CMS like WordPress forces you to isolate content from the context, which usually results in cleaner and more streamlined code. Additionally, these CMS systems make it much easier to build and maintain mid- and large-sized websites.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Title Considerations</span></h2>
<p>The title element is the strongest on-page SEO factor, so it&#8217;s important to pay attention to it. You want a title that is short and eye-catching with as many keywords as possible. Make sure your title still reads cleanly and does not have an unintelligible keyword-stuffed title since this will display in the search engine listing for your website.  You may include your site name in your title for branding purposes. Whether to place your website name at the front or end of the title can be decided by personal preference. If you are a large company or well-recognized brand such as Coca-Cola or Ford, you can place your name at the beginning of the page title. This lets you build on the trust in your brand. Smaller or less well-known companies should place their names near the end of the title so that a browser&#8217;s focus goes to the keywords in your title.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Meta Keywords and Descriptions</span></h2>
<p>These factors are largely ignored by search engines due to abuse in the past. In some cases having identical keywords and descriptions across an entire website has been shown to be a slightly negative factor in ranking. The meta description will appear under the title when your website shows up in a search engine result. Therefore, create a unique description that is well-written and eye-catching.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Headlines and Page Headings</span></h2>
<p>Page headings (also known as H tags) are structural elements used to divide a page into meaningful sections. They number from H1 through H6, with H1 being the most important and H6 being the least. Your page should only have one H1 tag. You can use as many other H2-H6 tags as you want, as long as you don&#8217;t abuse them by keyword stuffing. Many people have their H1 match their title tag. You can make them different, which allows you to use a wider array of keywords and to create more compelling entries for humans.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Bold and Italics</span></h2>
<p>Bolding and italicizing fonts doesn&#8217;t impact search engine rankings. Use these fonts for visual or other formatting reasons, not to affect your standing in search engines.</p>
<h3>Internal Anchor Text and Links</h3>
<p>Internal anchor text are the words that link to other parts of your site. Anchor text is one of the mechanisms search engines use to tell what a page is about. By using consistent or similar anchor text every time you link to a page, search engines gets a better understanding of what a page is about. Avoid using anchor text that doesn&#8217;t contain keywords (i.e., anchor text that reads &#8220;click here&#8221;) whenever possible.</p>
<h3>Content Considerations</h3>
<p>The more unique and interesting your content is, the more value it has to your site&#8217;s visitors. Most content falls into three different categories: boilerplate, news, and evergreen.</p>
<p><em>Boilerplate Content</em></p>
<p>Content for general information. Your about us page, testimonials, contact information, privacy contract, and terms of service constitute boilerplate content. These pages exist to help website visitors get to know you, learn to trust you, and feel comfortable sharing information or making a purchase from you.</p>
<p><em>News Content</em></p>
<p>Content that has a short-term lifespan. News pages can remain relevant for a few hours, or even a few months.</p>
<p><em>Evergreen Content</em></p>
<p>Content which has a long lifespan such as information about painting interior rooms.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Marketing</span></h2>
<p>Marketing a website is no different than marketing a business. You have to advertise, send out press releases, engage in viral or word of mouth campaigns, or visit other places and tell them about your website. Though a complete marketing plan demands its own guide, some of the key goals of any website marketing plan should involve:</p>
<ul>
<li>Getting people to visit your website.</li>
<li>Getting people to link to your site.</li>
<li>Convincing visitors to tell others about your website.</li>
<li>Encouraging people to regularly come back to your pages.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Link Building and Link Development</h3>
<p>Links are the primary method a search engine uses to discover your website, and a key factor in its rankings. Links help search engines determine how trustworthy and authoritative your website is, and they also help search engines figure out what your website is about. Links from trusted authoritative websites tell search engines that your website is more reliable and valuable. Search engines also look at the anchor text (words that link to your website). Links also increase in value over time.</p>
<h3>Directories</h3>
<p>Once your website is built you want to try and acquire links from as many trusted sources as possible in your particular industry. Getting links from websites that are related to your industry is usually more helpful than getting links from websites that are not related to your industry, though every link helps.</p>
<p>One of the first places many people start building links is from directories. Most directories have a fee for inclusion. Look for directories that are charging fees because they review each site before deciding whether to accept it. Don&#8217;t join a directory that lets in every site that applies; you want one that keeps out low-quality sites. To see if a directory is worth the review fee, check to see how much traffic they are going to send you. To evaluate potential traffic, check to see if the directory page is listed for its particular search term. If the directory is listed, this is usually a good indicator it will send you traffic. If the directory does not rank well for its term, check to see if it&#8217;s listed in the search engine index, and how recently it was crawled. You can check the last crawl date by clicking on the cache link on the search engine result page. Pages that are in the index and have been crawled frequently are usually more trusted and will pass some of that value to you. Pages that are not in the index or have not been crawled recently are usually not worth the review fee.</p>
<h3>Press Releases</h3>
<p>Press releases are usually used to get the attention of journalists or industry news websites, magazines and periodicals. Many press release websites have relationships with search engine news feeds, so using them can be a very effective way to put your website in front of the right people. Most press release websites do not pass along any link value, they simply act as link pointers to your website. If a journalist, news website or blogger sees your press release and writes about you, you may get a link from them. Consider press releases in light of how much traffic and secondary links they can bring; ignore the link from the press release service.</p>
<h3>Content and Article Syndication</h3>
<p>Content and article syndication websites allow you to publish your content on other sites. In exchange for the free content these sites are willing to provide you with a backlink. Most of these article syndication sites are like press release sites in that they do not pass any link value, but instead act only as link pointers. To decide if this strategy should be a part of your marketing and link-building plan, look at the most popular articles in your category and see how well they rank and how much traffic they are likely to drive. You can also use article syndication sites to identify third-party websites that would be interested in publishing other articles from you.</p>
<h3>Link Exchanges, Reciprocal links, and Link Directories</h3>
<p>Exchanging links with other related websites is a good practice, if it makes sense for your users. Creating link directories with hundreds of links to other websites that are of very little or no use to the user is a bad practice and may cause search engines to penalize you. If the link has value to visitors of your website and you would place the link if search engines didn&#8217;t exist, then it makes sense to put up the link. If creating the link is part of a linking scheme where the primary intent is to influence search engines and their rankings then don&#8217;t exchange the link.</p>
<h3>Paid Links and Text Link Advertising</h3>
<p>Paying for links and advertising can be valuable, as long as you follow search engine guidelines. If a link is purchased for the advertising value and traffic it can deliver, search engines approve of the link. If the link is purchased primarily for influencing search engine rankings it is in violation of Google guidelines and could result in a penalty. If you want to buy or sell text link advertising without violating Google guidelines, look for implementations with a nofollow, JavaScript] or intermediate page that is blocked from search engine spiders.</p>
<h3>Viral and Word of Mouth Marketing</h3>
<p>Creating content that is viral in nature and gets you word-of-mouth marketing can help you acquire links. This process is often called linkbaiting. Content created for this purpose is often marketed on social media sites like Digg, del.icio.us, and Stumbleupon. As long as your content becomes popular naturally, without artificial or purchased votes, you will be within search engine guidelines.</p>
<h3>Blogs and Social Media</h3>
<p>Blogs are a relatively new form of website publishing. Their content is arranged, organized or published in a date or journal format. Blogs typically have a less formal, almost conversation-like style of writing, and are designed to help website owners and publishers to interact more with their customers, users, or other publishers within their community. The journal and conversational format of blogs usually makes it a much easier way to gain links from your community. You must create content that members of that community value and are willing to link to. For a blog to be truly successful the authors must participate in the community and publish frequently. If this behavior doesn&#8217;t mesh with your company culture, creating a blog is not going to be effective for you.</p>
<h3>Social Media</h3>
<p>Social media and bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, and Stumbleupon have community members who function almost like editors. They find and vote on web pages, stories, articles, videos or other content that is interesting or engaging. Most social media or bookmarking sites are looking for new content on a regular basis. The frequent publishing demands of blogs also requires a constant flow of new material. To get the most out of social media you must become involved in the community and submit stories from other sources, not just from your website. Each social media website has its own written and unwritten rules. Learn these before submitting stories. Every community frowns upon attempts to &#8220;game&#8221; the voting procedure. Tactics such as voting rings and paid votes that artificially influence the voting mechanism should not be permitted.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Analytics and Tools</span></h2>
<p>Once your website is up and running you will want to know how many people are coming to your site, how they are getting there, what pages they are viewing when they arrive and how long they are staying. For this you will need a website analytics package. There are a wide variety of analytics packages, ranging in cost from free to several hundred thousand dollars each month. Each analytics package measures data in its own way, so it&#8217;s not uncommon for two programs to have slightly different results from the same set of data. Additionally, each package provides a different level of detail and granularity, so you should have some idea what you are looking for before purchasing a package. The two main methods of implementation are log files and JavaScript tracking. The most commonly used analytics package is Google Analytics.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Linking Strategy</span></h2>
<p>A good general overall linking strategy is to slowly acquire links from as many trusted sources as possible, with a wide variety of anchor text, to both your home page and sub-pages. If, over a short period of time, you gain too many links with similar words in the anchor text, from a few or low-trusted websites, to a limited number of pages, this would create an unnatural linking profile. Your website will be penalized or filtered by search engines for such behavior.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Common SEO Problems</span></h2>
<p>You can build a website with great content and institute an effective marketing plan, yet still be foiled by technical issues. Here are some of the most common problems:</p>
<h3>Robots.txt File</h3>
<p>A robots.txt file communicates what pages or sections of your website you want search engines to crawl. A common mistake is blocking search engine spiders from a section or entire site you want indexed. You can learn how to create a robots.txt file from Google Guidelines. Google&#8217;s Webmaster Central has a tool to let you verify that your robots.txt file is performing how you&#8217;d like.</p>
<h3>Response and Header Codes</h3>
<p>When your web server serves a page there is a special code that tells the browser or spider the status of the file served. A 200 response code means the page serves normally. If not configured correctly, some web servers will serve a 200 code even when a file is missing. This can create a problem when search engines index a lot of blank empty pages. A 404 is the response code when a page or file doesn&#8217;t exist. To improve usability, set up a custom 404 page with a message explaining what happened, a search box, and links to popular pages from your website.</p>
<h3>Duplicate Content</h3>
<p>The content from any page should only exist on one URL. If the same content exists under multiple URLs, search engines will interpret this as duplicate content. Subsequently, the search engines will try to make a best guess as to the best URL for your content. If this condition is true for a large amount of your pages, your website may be judged low quality and be filtered out of the search results.</p>
<h3>Duplicate Titles</h3>
<p>Every page of your website should have a unique title. When a search engine sees duplicate titles it will try to judge the better page and eliminate the other from the index.</p>
<h3>Duplicate Meta Descriptions</h3>
<p>If a large number of pages have identical or very similar meta descriptions, these pages may be filtered for low quality and excluded from the index.</p>
<h3>Poor or Low Quality Content</h3>
<p>In an attempt to create a large number of pages very quickly, many people will employ automated solutions that end up generating pages with fill-in-the-blank or gibberish content. Search engines are getting better at catching this condition and filtering these sites from the index.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Blackhat SEO and Spamming</span></h2>
<p>Some people engage in tactics or methods that violate search engine guidelines to achieve higher rankings. They can employ a wide variety of tactics including (but not limited to):</p>
<ul>
<li>Keyword stuffing</li>
<li>Link spamming</li>
<li>Paid linking</li>
<li>Artificial link schemes</li>
<li>Sneaky or deceptive redirects</li>
</ul>
<p>If you employ a tactic that seems to involve tricks or is done primarily to manipulate search engines and artificially inflate rankings, you can be considered to be engaged in blackhat SEO or spamming. This has repercussions for any site you work with, and should be avoided. For more detailed information, review Google&#8217;s guidelines.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"> Conclusion</span></h2>
<p>Good SEO takes time, as you need to develop great content and a strong community voice. But this is just what the Internet needs: high-quality pages that provide a valuable service to users.</p>
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