3 Quick Tips for Search Engine Optimization

We are working on optimizing our new site for search engines this week, and being the magnanimous people that we are, we thought we would share with you some tips and tricks for getting your site optimized as well.

There have literally been billions of articles written on search engine optimization. Why do we need another one?

For one, part of the beauty of the Internet is the collaboration of minds. In talking about search engine optimization, I may help you grasp an idea that you have never been able to before with the other articles- not because the other articles aren’t well written or thought through, but because everyone communicates and learns in different ways.

Secondly, and somewhat selfishly, blogging about popular subjects like search engine optimization that relate to your target audience happens to increase your search engine optimization.

Which relates to our first point:

“Fresh” Content is King

Google and Yahoo and the other search engines love to read, and they are great at it. So great, in fact, that they can read the equivalent of millions of books a night and have the book reports ready for their teacher the next morning.

Who is their teacher? You are. And their grade depends upon how relevant their book reports are to your questions.

So you ask:

“Where can I find the best pizza in Los Angeles?”

A search engine might answer:

“Let me think… I read about a thousand books about that very subject last night, but these it looks like lots of places are saying that Abbot’s Pizza Company is the best overall. Here’s my research…  “

In order to get the best grade possible, they have become really good are realizing when a book is just a large collection of garbage, or when it has meaningful, unique, and relevant content.

As you can imagine, well written blogs are like heaven to search engines. Not only do they have rich, original content, but they also tend to link to other sites that have rich, original content on the same subject.

What does all this mean for you? If you want search engines to like your site (and who doesn’t?) give them some good reading material on your specific subject.

Don’t miss this point! Writing about just ANYTHING won’t get you very far. You need to realize what your target is and aim for it. Otherwise your rantings are just a discombobulated (had to use that word) mess to the search engines, and they won’t mention you very often to their teacher.

Been a while since you have updated your pages? Search engines notice that too, and they will easily get bored. Keeping content fresh is of vital importance in keeping your search engine rank.

Label Label Label!

So you have great, fresh content. Now what?

Now you need to tell the search engines what your content is about. You do this in several ways:

Page Titles -

Each page on your site should have a uniquely targeted page title. According to SitePoint, this is the most important step in SEO, although I tend to disagree (as is obvious by the fact that I list this item as #2). What good is a well titled book without any pages? You might entice someone to pick up the book, but then there is nothing to read!

Keep your titles targeted and to the point (no longer than 60 characters) and be sure to use unique key words (relevant to the page, of course!).

Headers -

Search Engines also categorize your information based on the headers you give your content (<h1>, <h2>, etc). The lower the number after the h, the more important the search engine thinks that title is. This is one of the ways search engines decide what your content is about.

Metadata -

Although metadata does not usually effect page rank in a search engine, it does effect what people will see when your page is listed in a search engine, thus potentially generating more clicks. The <meta description> is most often used by Google.

Links Galore

Going back to our book analogy, search engines are rather choosy about the books they read. In fact, they don’t like to read a book unless someone they respect recommends it to them. The more they respect the person recommending the book, the more likely they are to read it quickly, and the more importance they will place on what it says. If, for instance, their worst enemy recommends a book, they will not be very likely to rate it well.

Getting other pages to link to you site is crucial, but also keep in mind that HOW they link to you is important. Simply linking the word “here” to your site is a nice gesture, but means a lot less to a search engine than linking the words “10 awesome Photoshop Techniques” to your site. The link text tells search engines what you site is about before it even goes there, and it also tells the search engine that other people are reading your content, and it might be worth their time.

In essence, other sites that link to you are like votes. The more votes you have, the more likely search engines are to rate you higher. The more sites that link to you using link text that is relevant to your targeted keywords, the more likely you are to rank highly when those keywords are typed into a search engine.

Beware!

Search engines have enemies, too. They are called spammers, and if you get a spammer linking to your website, that could be a quick death to your search engine optimization efforts. Avoid advertisements that promise to boost your website ranking for cheap cash. It is most likely a spammer, and will hurt you more than help you.

There are 3 tips for you. Got more tips that have worked for you? Post a comment and let me know.

Tags: SEO
Posted in Website Resources | 1 Comment »

Random Quotes in Jquery

In building Groupsinteractive.com, we tried to incorporate several elements to make the site more, well, interactive. One of those features is the randomly pulled quotes about our product that appear in the bottom right hand corner. Each time the page is refreshed, a new quote appears. We are obviously not the first company to incorporate this technique. I have been reading an advertising blog for several years now which has this feature, and I love it. I though I would take a few minutes and explain how we got it working on our site.

My user interface magic tool of choice is Jquery, which is a javascript library built by John Resig. I love it because it simplifies some of the more tedious elements of javascript, and allows me to do more coding in less time.

Step 1 – The Markup

I built my html and css before I knew I would do the randomly appearing quotes in Jquery, so this may not be the most efficient markup, but this is how I did it.

In the footer, I put the following html:

<div id="quote-box-text">
    <div>This is my first quote</div>
    <div>This is my second quote</div>
    <div>This is my third quote</div>
</div>

  <div id="quote-author">
    <div>
      <h3>Author1</h3>
      <h4>AuthorPlace1</h4>
    </div>

    <div>
      <h3>Author2</h3>
      <h4>AuthorPlace2</h4>
    </div>

    <div>
      <h3>Author3</h3>
      <h4>AuthorPlace3</h4>
    </div>
  </div>

  <div id="quote-box">
    <img src="images/quote-box.png">
  </div>

</div>

You will notice that there are three elements- the quote text, the author and where they are from, and the quote box itself (which is an absolutely positioned png image). These three elements all sit inside a div with a class of “grid_3.” (I am using the 960 grid system developed by Nathan Smith.)

Nothing too fancy here.

Step 2 – The CSS

Next, we look at the styling. Now, you can style the elements anyway you like, what I am going to show you is the styling necessary to make the quotes randomly appear.

css:

#quote-box-text div, #quote-author div {
 display: none;
}

Simple, right? All I do is tell the browser not to display any div element contained in an element with an id of #quote-box-text or #quote-author.

At this point, if someone were to load the page, nothing would appear in the quote box because the content is hidden. When we add the Jquery, that’s when the magic happens.

Step 3 – The Jquery

The first step here is, obviously, to include the Jquery library in your header. Fortunately, google hosts Jquery, so you don’t even have to download if you don’t want. You can link to it directly at:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/Jquery/1.3.2/Jquery.min.js"></script>

Once you have placed that in your header, open a script tag and input the following:

<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
$(function() {
 var randomNum = Math.floor(Math.random()*3);
$('div#quote-box-text div:eq(' + randomNum + ')').css("display", "block");
$('div#quote-author div:eq(' + randomNum + ')').css("display", "block");
});
</script>

Let me explain what is happening here.

First, we use 2 javascript functions, math.floor and math.random, to generate a random number. We use the combination so that the randomly generated number does not lean too far to either side (up or down). Thanks to http://www.javascriptkit.com/javatutors/randomnum.shtml for that explanation

The number after the Math.random function MUST match the number of quotes you have, or else one of two things will happen:

Not all of your quotes will be “put in the hat” to be randomly pulled or it will try to access a div that does not exist and nothing will show up.

Secondly, we use some Jquery to display a div based on the random number we just created. The Jquery function :eq() will find the nth child of a given element, in this case the nth (where n is the random number we generated) div of the div with an id of #quote-box-text. You can read more about the eq() function here.

We then do the same thing to display the quote author, using the same randomly generated number, and we are done.

Notice that the only thing Jquery is really doing for us is changing the css to display:block instead of display:none. CSS and HTML do the rest.

See a better way this could be accomplished? Please comment and let me know.

Tags: jquery, Random Quotes
Posted in Code Tutorial | No Comments »

Releasing the new GI

We are really excited to announce that we have released our newest version of Groups Interactive.  The URT development team has been locked away for the past six months cranking out what has come to be our biggest release yet.

The first thing you will notice is a complete design and usability overhaul.  From a new color scheme and new navigation to a completely reorganized admin section we have gone out of our way to make this version easy to use.

Here is a little of what you can expect from the latest release:

• Groups Interactive allows members to receive emails and calendar reminders in their favorite software: Outlook, iCal, Google and Yahoo calendars. Later this year, Facebook and handhelds (iPhones, Blackberrys) will be added. Your members are never out of the loop, even if they don’t login to Groups Interactive every day. You get information the way you’re used to getting it.
• A powerful new group search tool that helps you find groups by neighborhood, zip code, keywords (“Friday” or “women”), or type of group (Adult Bible Fellowship, men’s accountability, etc.) Newly formed groups and groups seeking members are automatically highlighted in the search window. The result: groups become “stickier” because visits lead to more permanent connections.
• It’s almost impossible for anyone to fall through the cracks. Pastors and admins can track group health, attendance, and studies through an impressive array of reports. You can see registered users who haven’t yet found a group, and even see the most popular searches by members looking for one.
• In a much-requested feature, you can now add the role of Group Coach or Area Pastor to the system for churches who need mid-level pastoral oversight. Multi-site churches can also track groups by campus.
• Church-wide calendars can be imported into Groups Interactive through ServiceU, a popular event management system.
• Churches can create and manage a library of book or DVD studies for their groups. You can even create weekly studies and downloads for study guides or discussion questions. This is particularly helpful if your church is doing an integrated study, where all groups are discussing the current sermon series.

Posted in New Features | No Comments »