SEO Web Design Tips

Showing posts with label wordpress. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Wordpress SEO Plugins: All in One vs Yoast SEO

When it comes to building an SEO friendly website, selecting the right SEO friendly CMS is essential. While it's not the only SEO friendly CMS on the market, one of the most popular CMS platforms for SEOs out there is Wordpress CMS. Despite its SEO Web Design friendliness, Wordpress requires a third party plugin in order to properly SEO your website.

Two names surface to the top of every discussion and debate on the subject of SEO plugins for Wordpress: All in One SEO Pack and Yoast SEO.

Both of these plugins have a positive reputation from webmasters of Wordpress sites. Many have concluded that it all boils down to personal preference since both plug-ins perform excellently in various areas as far as search engine optimization is concerned.

But before you decide on whether you would use All In One SEO or Yoast SEO, here is a breakdown between the two to help you make a well-informed decision.

All in One SEO Pack

The old timer of all SEO plug-ins, All in One SEO has been the staple choice of Wordpress webmasters for years because of its simplicity and no-nonsense approach. Configuration and modification are all done in just one configuration page, which enables editors to tweak everything all at once. All in One SEO supports canonical URLs, quick and easy entry of meta information, and fast setup of personal default settings.

All in One SEO, simply put, is all about the basics. These include setting page and post formats, assigning no index to tags and categories, and 404 title formats among others. It does not yet have any link features that connects a website with the owner’s Alexa accounts.

While there are various features missing in All in One SEO’s string of goodies, what really makes this plug-in a hard sell is that it does not have a “breadcrumbs” feature that is highly popular among SEO strategists.

The paid version also offers the same characteristics plus the free tech support that comes with it.

Wordpress SEO by Yoast

Comprehensive, yet not complicated, the Yoast SEO plug-in has drawn webmasters and SEO practitioners left and right. This plug-in boasts of multiple features not found in other SEO plug-ins.

For one, Yoast SEO has a post edit widget that helps webmasters spot any optimization deficiency with their pages. Another goodie that comes with the Yoast SEO plug-in is its “breadcrumbs” feature.

But what makes Yoast SEO a winner is its Page Analysis tool. This is a diagnostic application that provides you vital SEO data, specifically common SEO flaws in your pages. Quick and reliable, this feature is great especially when it comes to fast on-page optimization tweaks.

So Which Plugin is Better for Wordpress SEO?

If you are a minimalist who prefers easy and quick SEO tweaking and modifications, then you cannot go wrong with the All in One SEO Pack. Yoast SEO, on the other hand, is a perfect fit for those who prefer a rather aggressive and result-driven search engine optimization tactics and techniques with total control over the configuration of your Wordpress site.

Do you have an opinion on which Wordpress SEO plugin you prefer? Leave your comments below!

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Key Ingredients for SEO Web Design

The practice of search engine optimization is more than just crafting keyword-optimized content and meta for your web pages. Any SEO web design expert knows that website optimization must also take into account the basic fundamentals of creating a user friendly web design and developing it on a powerful, search engine friendly platform that will promote optimum SEO gains.

As SEO web design tips noted in the previous post about what to look for in a search engine friendly CMS system, proper HTML structure has a great impact on overall performance of an organic SEO strategy. We're going to take that notion one step further in this SEO web design tips blog by highlighting some of the key ingredients that go into creating an SEO friendly web design.

SEO Friendly Website Development

Proper HTML language markup when developing a web design that must rank well in the search engines is the first step in ensuring SEO web design success. This best practice of SEO friendly web development can make a significant impact on the overall performance of your SEO campaign. Companies that specialize in SEO web friendly web design and development utilize SEO-friendly CSS techniques instead of regular HTML tags when creating fonts, colors and other universal website design styles. Doing this CSS technique keeps the HTML markup on a web page clean and concise for the search engine spiders. It also keeps the ratio of keyword-optimized text higher than that of websites that do not utilize CSS to style their web pages. Another critical SEO friendly web design technique that developers use is integrating the keyword-rich copy that is crawlable by search engine spiders as high up in the HTML markup as possible to ensure maximum SEO benefits. This makes the search engine spider's job easier and can lead to higher rankings in the organic search results.

SEO Friendly Content Management Systems

It's commonplace in the website design industry to develop websites on content management system (CMS) platforms. From a best SEO web design tips standpoint, not all CMS systems were built equally for search engine optimization benefits. Search engine friendly CMS systems such as Wordpress CMS or Exponent CMS gives website developers an edge over the competition because both of these CMS platforms have key features for SEO friendly web design such as customization of Meta Titles, Descriptions and Keywords tags. Both of these content management systems structure their HTML markup in an SEO-friendly fashion with clear, concise markup and usage of CSS style sheets.

SEO-Friendly Website Graphic Design

Certain graphical aspects of a website design can be further optimized for greater organic SEO value, with optimized images and videos leading the way. This blog post gives great tips on how to properly optimize images for the search engines. Optimized images can help build keyword relevancy of a web page and help boost rankings. SEO Friendly web design also focuses on website conversion rate optimization. This practice centers on analyzing how website visitors behave on a website and optimize the website for ease of use and calls to action in order to increase the likelihood of conversions. This is a basic fundamental of website optimization and SEO friendly web design.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

What to Look for in a Search Engine Friendly CMS

If you have decided to dabble in the world of online business, the first consideration will obviously be a good website that is search engine friendly. Today, most designers are turning to Content Management Systems (CMS) to build their websites due to the ease of ongoing content maintenance for the website.

In fact, with some simple content management systems and free blogging platforms, pretty much anyone who knows how to surf the Internet can set up a simple website on their own these days.

However, making the choice between the myriad of CMS options available can be difficult if you don't know what to look for in a CMS – especially if ranking high in the search results is one of your primary business objectives. The emphasis here is on SEO because it is the backbone of any online business so it's imperative that you build your website on a Search Engine Friendly Content Management System.

With this in mind, here are a few SEO Web Design Tips that you should look for when you're trying to find an SEO friendly CMS for your website design.

Ease of Customization of the CMS

Any CMS you choose should be user-friendly in terms of allowing you to customize several of the features. A website should be unique and hence, the CMS should allow for customized URLs created with your own keywords for easy search engine indexing and ranking. CMS platforms like Wordpress – although Wordpress requires a third-party plugin to maximize SEO value – or Exponent CMS give you complete control over highly important Meta data for SEO including:

Page title tags – which should be unique with an emphasis on keywords and phrase
Meta Descriptions tag
Meta Keywords tag

A search engine friendly content management system should provide customizable access to all three of these vital on-site SEO tags. Without being able to personalize these Meta tags, the search engines won't be able to get the full story of your website's pages and you won't get the search rankings you're trying to achieve. An SEO friendly CMS should allow the link anchor text to be alerted to suit your unique needs any time.

The top two SEO plugins for Wordpress that our company uses for SEO in Atlanta are the Yoast SEO plugin and the All-in-one SEO pack.

Functionality of the Search Engine Friendly CMS

The way a CMS functions will determine the success of your website. For a start, avoid any system, which will generate duplicate content, as this will lead to penalties from search engines and lower ranking. In addition, it is important to use a CMS that allows easy updating of both content text and images.

Additionally, search for a search engine friendly CMS that gives you access to make permanent 301 redirects of any URLs for the purpose of SEO and avoiding alarms of duplicate content or losing search engine rankings if a URL has changed. More importantly, the content management system must have easy access to all pages for manual editing because search engines are always attracted to updated content.

To recap these SEO Web Design tips to get the most out of your Internet marketing strategy, consider all of these factors until it becomes clear what the best search engine friendly CMS is for your business. The website you set up can either make or break your company and the more you invest in your research and planning of your SEO, the better the site – and your organic SEO rankings - will turn out to be. To learn more, contact our Search Engine Friendly Web Design Company today!

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