As promised, here’s the recap of the recent Chicago SEO Meetup: Harnessing WordPress…

The first thing we covered were reasons why people and businesses might choose WordPress over other platforms like hand-coded HTML, Drupal, ASP, Joomla, etc.

• WordPress has a large and very active development and support community

  Why is this important? This usually translates to more/neater widgets and plugins, better/easier to get support, and because it’s so popular you’ll have an easier time finding people who can help you out if you need help. (Ask me about RedDot some day if you’d like an example of why you should go with a platform that more than 4 people in the US know anything about).

• WordPress has really well written documentation for the DIYers

  This probably doesn’t need explanation… basically, if you ever want to try to understand or fix something on your own, you want to be able to easily find and understand the documentation. There are some software developers who write in weird prose that is only discernible by middle-earthen elvish attorneys — WordPress’s codex is not like that.

• WordPress is easy to use, even by the technologically challenged.

  If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball… Same basic principle, but much less painful. If you need a platform that can be updated/used by people on your staff who are uneasy with the concept of blogging or aren’t as technologically clueful as you might like, WP is a great option because the interface is intuitive. If you can use Word, you can use WordPress.

The biggest argument against choosing WordPress was security related. Is WordPress more insecure than other platforms? — Not inherently… if it seems like there are more problems, I would argue that it’s due to there being so many people using WordPress (and perhaps not maintaining it properly or using questionable plugins/themes). There are things you can do to mitigate security concerns if you have them, but for the most part, if you’re responsible about maintenance and security practices, you’re not taking an unreasonable risk by choosing WordPress.

On to the SEOing….

Much of the SEO related items that were discussed were not WP specific, but were just general best practices — write good titles, unique meta descriptions on every page, good anchor text, etc.

The WP specific items that were discussed and plugins that were recommended included:

• Don’t over-bling your blog — Be judicious about the types and quantity of plugins you’re using. Too many can cause conflicts (which will make things malfunction), or slow your load time to the point that your rankings suffer, or open you up to security issues (Do you check the source code of the plugins you download and install? Are you checking to see who the programmer is?).
• SEO Smart Links (Plugin) — To auto-insert internal links, this is a useful plugin… (if you’re too lazy to do them manually). Just be careful to not overdo it. Keep it to one or two internal links per post (ESPECIALLY if the posts are on the short side).
• Premium Themes like Thesis, WooThemes and Genesis — In addition to automating much of the design drama that most bloggers or non-technical users don’t care to futz with, these themes also build in a lot of the SEO work as well. This minimizes the number of additional SEO plugins and scripts you’ll need to install, which reduces the chances of conflicts and problems.
• Learn how to modify your own template files — If you’re not going to spring for a premium theme, I strongly strongly strongly urge you to learn how to edit and modify your own template files. You can edit your files to handle some of the mundane SEO work that would otherwise be handled by a plugin, and as mentioned before, the more plugins you have that need to process the data, the more overhead and the slower your site will load. It’s really not difficult to edit the header file to always stick the name of your site at the end of the title, or to insert the the_excerpt() function into the meta description to always have unique page descriptions, etc.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Recap of Chicago SEO Meetup: Harnessing WordPress for SEO

We’ll be covering things like “Why WordPress (over other platforms)?”, recommended classes and tools for learning to use WordPress effectively, tips for creating content and plugins to use for helping SEO efforts and improve rankings, and more.

We are not (at this time) 100% sure there will be a projector, so you may want to plan to take notes. Specific tools, plugins and recommendations will be posted online for later consumption, and I might try to bring handouts (if anyone is interested).

The September Chicago Search Engine Optimization Meetup is scheduled for 2:00pm on Saturday, September 25, 2010 at the Budlong Woods Branch of the Chicago Public Library.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Chicago SEO Meetup: Harnessing the Power of WordPress

Come hear me speak on Wednesday, July 30th at the Gleacher Center, Downtown Chicago

You might be wondering what management has to do with social media, SEM, online advertising, etc. If you’ve ever worked for a not-online-only company, chances are you know *exactly* what manglement has to do with it — or more to the point what role they play in preventing you, and the people like you who know what needs to be done to get it done right, from doing your job.

This talk is aimed at upper management and executives who either think they know about social media, SEM/SEO and internet advertising, or who realize they only know the buzzwords and need a better understanding of the concepts and ideas.

The goal of the session is to give these decision makers with a better grasp of the concepts involved, and help them start thinking about ways they can modify current business procedures to accommodate these new and emerging technologies.

It’s all great to walk into the marketing department and declare, “Let’s get on Digg! Let’s get a million visitors!”, but seriously, is that really what the company NEEDS? How do you even define what is needed?

Once you have your needs and goals defined (because really, you can’t define your needs until you define your goals… it’s hard to create driving directions without a start point AND an endpoint), then how do you go about implementing your plan of action? Here’s a hint: meetings to schedule more meetings, to throw things back to committee to review and then another meeting to discuss the findings just isn’t going to cut it. The cycle time for decisions and actions is dramatically shorter now than ever before, and if you’re used to doing business the way you did business 30 years ago, or even 10 years ago, you’re going to miss A LOT of opportunities, or you’re going to waste a lot of money doing things ineffectively.

Wow Carolyn, this sounds FASCINATING…. when is the talk?

Ever so glad you asked… here are the details:

How To Reorganize Management For Social Media, Search Marketing & Internet Advertising

Speakers:
Carolyn Shelby, Social Media and SEO Consultant
David Dalka, Internet Marketing, Change Management and Mobile Search Marketing consultant

Date: Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Time:
6:00p — Registration
6:30p-8:00p — Program
8:00p — Networking and Cash Bar

Location:
University of Chicago Graduate School of Business
Gleacher Center – Room 100
450 North Cityfront Plaza Drive
Chicago, Illinois 60611 USA

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
How To Reorganize Management For Social Media, Search Marketing and Internet Advertising

Initially, when I read that part of the announcement, I thought, “that is a great idea!” mostly because I end up getting talked to by recruiters all night long instead of talking to other people who have job-jobs. Apparently, Ron May said something in one of his copious newsletters about how awful the disenfranchisement of those groups is, but I didn’t really read it so I’m not going to attempt to craft a truly well written response. I’m sure if Ron shows up to this event I’ll end up hearing about it anyway.

My guess is the goal of the ban is to encourage more actual tech discussion, and also to limit the number of people who RSVP because the venue is not huge to begin with, and now that it’s winter and we can’t avail ourselves of the outdoor seating, the space will be even more limited than before. Also, the food ran out rather quickly last time and I’m going to attribute that to hungry job seekers as well.

At any rate, I’m looking forward to attending on the 24th to see how the new rules affect the atmosphere, crowd levels and overall utility of the event.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Silicon Prairie Social 2 – No Recruiters or Job Seekers Allowed

Regarding the PageRank update: No loss in traffic, doesn’t seem to be anything hurt but my pride. I strongly suspect I’ll survive.

Regarding TechCocktail 6: I hear it’s sold out now, so yay that I remembered to r.s.v.p. early this time. It’s scheduled for Thursday, November 15th at John Barleycorn in Wrigleyville (where it was the last time it was in the city… was lots of fun). Sadly, I may not be able to go if I end up being sent back to Omaha (again) next week. If that happens, I’ll be happy to give my “confirmation for 2″ thingy to someone who is able to attend but didn’t sign up in time. If I am going back to Omaha, I’ll post something to the blog to see if anyone is interested in the tickets… please don’t email me about it til then. :)

Regarding Omaha: *sigh* I only wish I could tell you about the festivities, because this project is really the poster child for “What is a tragic comedy?”. On the upside, I’m racking up the frequent flier miles and I’m on a first name basis with the hotel staff, the starbucks drive-up girls, and the car rental people.

On the downside, I think my kids have forgotten what I look like.

With luck (crosses fingers), this insane travel will be done by the end of the year for sure and life will settle back down. Until then I will be more vigilant about posting. My biggest fear has just been that my posts will start to look much like my Twitters (e.g. me whining about the travel and the project and generally venting to prevent insanity).

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
PageRank Update, TechCocktail 6, Omaha

It is a pretty site… too bad it’s all Flash.

I’m not even entirely sure what to say here. I mean, can you honestly say your business provides search engine optimization services when you sell websites that are built entirely in Flash and, literally, the ONLY two links on the WHOLE site that a spider can see go to YOUR site… not a site that has anything to do with the client?

It is a pretty site… too bad it’s all Flash, but it’s nice to look at none-the-less. Check out the site in Lynx though. There’s hardly anything there at all.

Check out the site in Lynx. There's hardly anything there at all.

Holy Mackerel! is a seafood restaurant… you wouldn’t know that from the Lynx screenshot though. Seafood is in the domain, so I guess that’s helpful; however, it might be more helpful to have the title tag say something like “Holy Mackerel! Seafood – Lombard, IL” or maybe even add in “Restaurant” after Seafood. Just “Holy Mackerel!” isn’t descriptive enough. The page is pretty crystal clear about the location, which is good, but you still don’t really know this is a seafood place if you can’t see the Flash.

Now look at the source…
Even operating under the assumption that the client is completely IN LOVE with the Flash site… which they’re entitled to be, it’s a very slick site… one would still think that a company who SEOs the crap out of the links to THEMSELVES might take some time to consider the needs of the client when putting the design together.

Things that make you go hmmmmm.

A few things that struck me as odd…
(A) One might think that the name of the hotel in which the restaurant is located might be a good opportunity for a link to — oh I don’t know — the hotel. Maybe that’s more of a “good neighbor” type of link. I know I’d find it useful *shrug*, but I guess we can let this one slide…

(B) Actually having some anchor text where the mailto: link is might make the link functional.

(C) It’s easier to rank for terms like “restaurant” when you spell “restaurant” correctly (and maybe have it on the page more than once).

(D) Clearly someone there knows something about SEO. Pity they didn’t use their mad skillz to SEO the client’s website.

So why am I picking on this site?
For one thing, this supports my previous post about double checking the work that your vendors do to make sure you’re not getting screwed. I realize there’s more to SEO than just on-page stuff, but it’s not THAT hard to make some minor changes to this page so that it looks like someone at least tried. Further, it wouldn’t have annoyed me so much if the links to the developer weren’t *SO* SEOd. So it’s not like they don’t know how, you know?

The other thing that bugged me is that I have a general dislike for using your client’s website to promote yourself. Just a personal thing. I know as a client, if I’m paying the vendor good coin for the work, I don’t want to have to give them free advertising, too. Maybe if they cut me a break on the cost we can discuss it, but for the most part, I want the site to be about my business, not theirs.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Holy Mackerel! You call that SEO?

As you entered there was the standard “Hello, my name is…” sticky badge for your name (I had to restrain myself from nicking the cool comfy grip hot pink Sharpie… I’ve never seen one before and I want one now), but then they also had sticky badges that said “I Know…” and “I Need…”. Of course, you had some smartasses walking around with “I Need… a girlfriend” and “I Know… lots of stuff”, and then there were people who felt this was a good place to write a tome about their wealth of experience in what could be considered a -5 pt font. (Little tip from cshel — boil it down to 5 or less words and WRITE BIG — otherwise you get people leaning in *awfully*close and squinting at your chestal region to read your sticker).

Speaking of stickers and chests, my feeble attempt at cleverness for the evening was putting my “I Know… SEO” sticker on my back. The logic there was that if I’m already talking to someone and someone else is walking past, they’re more likely to be able to read something on my back rather than something stuck to the front of my shirt. Also, and this is probably more of a girl issue to consider, there is only so much front-of-shirt real estate available for stickers unless you want to look like you’re trying to make a sticker faux-bikini.

People I saw or met at the event…

• Jeffrey Mitchell, a recruiter with Harvey Nash in Naperville, and also founder of “Close to the Heart”, a charity “dedicated to bringing together people to achieve meaningful and enduring positive changes throughout the world… based upon the philosophy that anyone can change the world if they only make a decision to do so. The organization sponsors fund raising events and supports fair trade as a force of positive change”. (He’s looking for some pro-bono web help if anyone would like to volunteer some of their talents.)
• Jason Catena, a Senior Staff Software Engineer Build System Architect (whew! say that ten times fast) at Motorola. IIRC, we talked long enough to exchange cards, but I think the crowd and noise levels at the time were chatting prohibitive.
• Jeff O’Hara, who claims to “hate SEOs” and works for the Wheaton School System, is also President and Founder of EdModo (website coming soon). Sounds like it’s a social site for grade schoolers and (I’m assuming) their teachers. Jeff was also there with his web designer friend, who’s name escapes me at the moment, and his other friend, who’s name also escapes me but I do remember was wearing an “I Need… a girlfriend” sticker.
• Antoine, from PunchEngine was a sponsor with the table next to The Krull Group. Since I was standing by Steve’s table for most of the evening, I got nosy and checked out the PunchEngine demo. PunchEngine is sort of like a combination of LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and Monster… it’s a lot to explain, so check out their site as it does a good job of explaining the concept.
• There were a number of other people I saw… Dave Rohrer, an in-house search manager with a car problem; Tom Gibson, Sr. Network Administrator (and SAN-Lord) from Provena Health; blogger David Dalka, whom I know from Search Industry conferences; Chicago technology reporter Ron May of The May Report; Tim Courtney of XNet; and finally, Steve Krull of The Krull Group, who seems to think I’m useless as far as suggesting restaurants (and to that I say, freaking ask me to suggest restaurants in Oak Brook BEFORE 10 at night, hmm?)

So, to wrap it up… I thought it was a great event and I look forward to the next one!

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Silicon Prairie Social Re-Cap

So what is the Silicon Prairie Social? Well, to steal from their website…

Silicon Prairie Social is an opportunity for technology professionals in the Chicago area to connect in a social setting with likeminded people. The event is open to everyone, and specifically targets upwardly mobile tech professionals, entrepreneurs, service providers, Internet professionals, Web 2.0 and startup companies, the mobile industry, and mobile marketing professionals.

I’ve been to two of the TechCocktail events in the city, and they were great fun (witness the obvious fun being had in the photo — on the far left is Steve Krull, one of the sponsors of Silicon Prairie Social, I’m in the middle, and then Dave Choate is on the far right). The only problem with the downtown events is they’re just a little hard to get to from the burbs and then it’s a hike and a half to get home afterward. I’m really hoping this event turns out to be a huge success because I love the idea of being able to attend these kinds of things without having to schlep all the way downtown.

Just for giggles and some possible content for the SEO 101 podcast website, we’re kicking around the idea of me bringing a camcorder and doing little interviews with random people at the event. So if you see me walking around with a video camera, feel free to either flee in terror or come on up and ask to be interviewed. Make sure you bring me a card though… no business card, no linklove later. I’m pretty good at remembering names, but there is just no way I can remember everyone’s website addresses without something written down.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Going to the Silicon Prairie Social? I am.