Webcraft Webmaster Services

Add Breadcrumb Navigation to Your Pages Breadcrumbs are an additional navigation element that is a series of highlighted links showing where you are. (Home » Category Name » Post Title) Breadcrumbs benefit both search engine crawling and users. Breadcrumbs add high quality anchor text links to site which helps pass content value and page value through site. Users like and use the additional navigation. Here is a plug-in to add breadcrumbs to your WordPress site or use the all in one plug-in from Yoast. my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can be done today." If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Regards Gerald Website: http://www.webcraft.ws E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws Twitter: WebcraftGuru Facebook: Webcraft Guru I'm protected by SpamBrave http://www.spambrave.com/

Recommended WordPress Plugins Plugins are available for most blog platforms and help tune the software, add functionality and features. Here are a few WordPress Plugins we recommend to optimize your content so that it is more discoverable by search engines and readers: Optify WordPress Plugin. Automatically enable Optify's inbound marketing software on your WordPress site. Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin. A full-featured SEO plugin to help with customizing posts for SEO. Includes breadcrumbs, XML sitemaps, canonicals, customizable title tags/meta tags and more. SEO Friendly Images. Allows easy updating of alt-text and title attribute for the image itself. Google Analytics Plugin. Generates the code on every page for you to track your performance with Google Analytics. Disqus Comment System. A great way to encourage engagement with your readers and to keep visitors reading your content by showing them related posts on your blog to what brought th

Blogging Content Ideas Sometimes the roadblock to starting a blog is not knowing what to write about. Here are five types of blog content you can write about: How-to's - Ask your audience what their major problems are, do the research, and solve them. Expert interviews - Reach out to influencers in your industry to collect their opinions and feature them on your blog. Case studies - Listen to customer service calls, sales calls, media, etc. to see what relevant issues and topics you can discuss. News stories - Keep an eye out for what is hot in your industry and blog about it. New laws, new regulations, new products or services are all fair game. Insight posts - Collect pieces of information that are interesting and blog about them with your perspective. my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can be done today." If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Regards Gerald Webs

Blog Writing & Management Ideas Have one or two people who are the lead bloggers on the site. - Let them set the tone, voice, and personality of the blog. Make sure your bloggers are writing under their own names, not a pseudonym. - Sign up for Google Authorship in four easy steps to link your name with the content you create to make it feel more personable. A thumbnail photo of each post's author can have a big impact. - We connect emotionally with faces, even if they're just images. Blog with personality and an attitude - in the sense of expressing some kind of emotional reaction to what you're writing about. Keep the tone conversational. - Passive voice, corporate jargon, financial buzzwords - lose them in favour of plain language. By all means, use appropriate technical terms if you're talking to an audience that uses them too. but ask yourself if this is the kind of language friends might use over coffee (and by coffee, I mean beer). S

Blog Promotion - Internal If you want your blog to succeed, you need to promote it. One of the best places to start is with your company's network. Consider everyone working within your organization, plus all of their friends and business connections in their own social networks, plus all of their friends and connections. it's probably bigger than you thought. By tapping into your company's network you can create greater awareness of your blog and encourage people to read and share its content with their own social networks. This will extend the reach of your content and drive more traffic to your site. Here are a few tips to promote internally: Put headlines of your blog post on homepage of site so that they automatically update when a new piece is posted. Use blog posts as part of your newsletter with links into the blog post itself or the blog homepage. Ensure RSS feeds are set up on your blog. The RSS feed will alert readers when a new post

Blog Promotion - Organic If you are using WordPress as your blogging platform, some SEO best practices are already done for you, thanks to the WordPress development team. But here are some very important key points that you should remember while creating your blog content. Make sure blog content is included in Sitemap.xml May need to create it's own sitemap.xml Register and validate blog with blog directories. As a starting point, here is a list of 23 blog directories to submit your blog to. Link to other blogs and bloggers on your blogroll to give link love so you can get link loveEnable commenting with registration. Comments are great user generated content and extend a conversation on a topic. Make registration mandatory as well as utilize "rel-nofollow" on any links in comments to minimize spam. Add a social sharing widget to the blog. Many social sharing apps are available - we use the DiggDigg floating share side bar. my motto is "Ke

Blog Promotion - More Ideas Clearly, content is king today, and blogging is a great tool to get your message out. But content alone won't get the job done. To make your blog a success, you've got to market it. Here are more ideas on ways to promote your blog. Guest Posting Give away good blog content to others with links/attribution back to you Advertising Broader communication platform than just your product/service. Adwords, Adsense, StumbleUpon, Facebook Network with Others Comment on other people's blogs and forums with your URL in signature Respond to people commenting on your blog Email bloggers when you post something you think they will like Social Media Promote blog posts through your Twitter, Facebook, etc. with short URL my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can be done today." If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Regards Gerald Website: http://www.web

Promoting Your Business Blog Always be on the lookout to promote the blog and the content of the blog. Internal - work blog content and links into your on-going communications. Organic - make sure your blog is listed, searched and crawlable. Partners - include customers, clients and partners in the blog program including guest posts and content exchange. my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can be done today." If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Regards Gerald Website: http://www.webcraft.ws E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws Twitter: WebcraftGuru Facebook: Webcraft Guru I'm protected by SpamBrave http://www.spambrave.com/

Four Rules for Success Social media optimization is a way for organizations and individuals to generate publicity through social networking tools like Twitter and LinkedIn, online communities like Facebook, and automated tools like TwitterFeed and Ping.fm. The term "social media optimization" was originally coined by SEO consultant extraordinaire, Rohit Bhargava, the senior vice president of Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence and author of the Influential Marketing Blog. (Bhargava's work was so groundbreaking, Jeremiah Owyang, another social media optimization expert, even dovetailed a few of his own rules to the original work.) Social media optimization is basically a way to promote your blog, website, or even your company's brand, through social media, without being obnoxious or overtly commercial. Sure, you can blanket sites like Twitter with "Want to lose weight? Download my free report, '19 Ways to Lose Weight Fast'" repe

Please select one asap. A. Facebook advert for your website - We will create 1 advert on Facebook for your website. R850.00 one-time fee. No matter what your budget, you can display your ads on Facebook and our advertising network. Pay only if people click your ads. B. Google Adwords - We will create you a Google Adwords ID for you with 2 adverts that point to your website. R1500.00 one-time fee. No matter what your budget, you can display your ads on Google and our advertising network. Pay only if people click your ads. C. Internet Adverts - We will create 15 INTERNET adverts with pictures that point to you and your content on the INTERNET with contact details. R950.00 one-time fee. my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can be done today." If you have any questions or comments please contact me. Regards Gerald Website: http://www.webcraft.ws E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws Twitter: Webcraf

Local Business Online Visibility Tips When you think about online visibility for your local business it's so easy to get wrapped up and overloaded with what you should be doing on the internet to promote your website. Yet, small changes to your every day business routine can make a big difference. Often, business owners think about being visible online as a way of reaching people whom you have had no contact with at all. That's true in many cases. Sometimes, online visibility is as simple as making sure that people you interact with (even briefly) as part of your usual business routines are aware of your online presence. Not everyone wants to pick up the phone or call in to your premises to find out basic information like your opening hours or who to contact. Sometimes people just want to find out a bit more about you and your company. In this day and age of always being plugged in to the Internet, your website is the first point of call. That is

You Need A Local Search Strategy Approximately four years ago, Google made a major change in their search engine results page by introducing a "Universal Search" system that blended listings with video, images and news results along with the sites it gathered from crawling web pages. Universal Search also accommodated the increase in searches for location-specific information. Instead of just searching "restaurants", many people were searching "restaurants Louisville KY." Search engines tested this new interest trend by placing a map and local listings at the top of the results page. Heat map reports showing how users absorb a search results page implied that users paid a good deal of attention to the map listings at the top of the page. This research also indicates that users interact with map listings and organic search results more frequently than the paid ads. This change prompted Google to prioritize local search to the top

SEO Lessons from Local Businesses More than once in the six years that I have been providing SEO services for websites, I have had the opportunity to discuss with individual business owners their search engine optimization needs. Now and again, I run across an individual business owner who is quick to say that SEO is absolutely worthless. When confronted with such an absolute statement, I like to press for details. It has been my experience that people who speak in negative absolutes will have a horror story to share. In this article, I am going to detail some of the stories I've heard, which frequently tells more about some of the people in our industry, than it does about the effectiveness of search engine marketing. Problem Number 1 - "I rank number one in Google, and yet, I have never earned a dime from my website." When I first heard this story, I was very surprised. After all, if your SEO company did good keyword research, there i

Common SEO Myths Explained SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, can be difficult to understand if you are not familiar with it. Unfortunately many things you read about SEO on the internet are not always true. There are a lot of myths and misconceptions floating around the net and they can sometimes be hard to confirm or debunk because of the ever changing techniques and the complexities of the search engines. Some of the most common SEO myths are listed below and with it, the information to expose the truth so you can concentrate on real SEO methods to improve your site rankings and increase your traffic. 1. The More Reciprocal Links You Have on Your Site, the Better Your Ranking. Have you ever been to site that is nothing but a long list of links? These sites are called link farms or FFA (Free for All links) and they do nothing for your site's ranking. They are usually just filled with spam and can hurt your rankings because they are p

Writing Tips for Beginners When you're just starting to distribute articles to market your website, it can be a little intimidating because most likely you're not used to writing articles on a regular basis. Being a beginner isn't a bad thing - in fact, it's the perfect time to establish some excellent writing habits. This article offers you 7 article marketing tips that are especially helpful for beginners, and you can take any combination of these tips and use them to create your own writing strategy. 1 - Don't Try to Write an Article in One Sitting Writing takes time, and there are different stages to it. In the first stage you'll be jotting down ideas you want to include in your article. In the next stage, you start to write in complete sentences and paragraphs. The next step is the editing stage, and after that is the proofreading stage. Writing takes such mental effort that it would be very hard for you to do all of these s

Brand Reputation Management The term brand reputation management has been around for some time now and, over the past year or so, more websites have explored the possibilities of getting away from the hackneyed SEO tag and have embraced the need for brand restoration and management as forms of modern business communications are far broader and personal than reacting to negative posts on Google. A recent article on Mashable spoke with five companies, with each taking a different path to co-ordinating a company's message on various media classes. Some media types work much better with personalised communications, such as Twitter, with personal customer interactions, suggestions, industry retweets, adventures, film and documentaries, while Facebook seems to lend itself towards more behind-the-scenes content, such as newsletters, Instagram posts, video links, magazine features, Google maps of store locations, product launches, books, customer photos, exclusi

SEO Tips for Beginners According to Google, 95% of all online searchers never go past the first page of results. Ask yourself these two questions: 1. Is my website on the first page of results for my industry's major keywords? If not. 2. What can I do about it? If your website is not showing up on the first page of Google, Yahoo! or Bing for your industry's major keywords then your website is not receiving the traffic that it should be and your business is not acquiring as many leads as it needs to be. As far as online searchers are concerned, if they don't see your website on the first page of results then it might as well not even exist. Now, I'm sure that isn't the kind of news you want to hear after you invested all that time and money into your website. Fortunately, there are things that you can do to improve your website's rankings. Keep in mind that some of the things we will talk about in this article take time

Subliminal Image Marketing Companies pour millions of dollars into advertising every year, using television, radio, print ads, and other media to convince you to buy their products. Although many people claim to be unaffected by advertising, scientific research shows that ads can be powerful incentives to think more favorably about a brand or product. One popular advertising technique is the use of subliminal images which appear below your threshold of conscious awareness. Although you are totally oblivious to the subliminal stimulus, it still has the power to affect your thoughts and feelings. Subliminal Messages: The Basics A subliminal message is any type of stimulus that passes below conscious awareness. Most commonly, these are images or sounds. The purpose of a subliminal image is to embed a brand name, product, or other stimulus in the viewer's mind without his/her conscious awareness. Although the concept of using subliminal images was formula

Topic Ideas for Building Brand Influence Online press releases are often considered the hidden gem of a search engine optimization campaign. All too often, business owners focus on other viable content-specific initiatives such as web pages, blogs and article distribution without giving a PR the attention that it deserves simply because they don't believe that they have anything newsworthy to promote. This could prove a costly miscalculation since a properly optimized PR can be an online marketing triple threat. Are you ready to stop missing out on this promotional perfect storm, but just don't feel like you currently have anything important to announce? You're not alone. It's important to remember that a great press release isn't only relegated to major internal doings. The best-executed press releases are simply relevant and informative to your business' specific consumer demographic. Keep these 10 press release topic ideas in mind

Joining a network like Twitter or Facebook isn't enough to build an on-line reputation; you have to participate in it as well. That's obvious, but this is one area that worries some people who think they need to spend all day on these networks to build their reputation. That doesn't have to be the case. There are people who are constantly updating Facebook and Twitter, but you don't have to be one of them. Instead, note this quotation attributed to Benjamin Franklin: "It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it." This is usually quoted as a warning about the one bad deed, but you can also think about the many good deeds. For most businesses, building an on-line reputation is a series of many small good deeds. So it is a commitment, but not a large commitment. Let's look at 20 easy, practical ways to participate in various on-line communities. Each of these takes less than ten minutes

Personal Brand is Your Promise In the past, "personal branding" was just a term that was first used by Tom Peters in an article he wrote in 1997. Today, every person is considered their own personal brand. Even if you don't understand the term yet, your personal brand refers to how others perceive you, how they consider your knowledge and skills, and the things that make you unique and different from every other person out there - your unique promise of value. A part of your personal brand is the cumulative perceptions people have about you. It is your reputation, both online and off. It is what makes you one of a kind even in the midst of all the others who have the same or similar skills. This is what makes people choose you, and only you. Your personal brand is basically your promise. What Does Your Personal Brand Promise? Think of some of the popular brands out there. and what their brand promise is. You come to have certain expectation

Brand Reputation Resources In today's world, your personal brand's reputation is practically everything. Before people buy from you or obtain your services, they now search the Internet to find any information, reviews, or feedback they can get about you. They don't just hire or buy products from anybody anymore. If they see a negative review, it's almost certain that you've kissed a job or a customer goodbye. This is why it's important for you to manage and control any information on the web that's related to you. Any review, feedback, or comment will definitely affect your personal brand, and not necessarily in a good way. It can be difficult to control what's said about your brand online. After all, it's a free country, and anyone who wants to can easily write a review about you. Also, sometimes you just can't please everyone. Even if you do your best, there always seems to be a certain person, client, customer or

Remove Anonymity to Boost Credibility Does your site offer an e-mail address or a contact form? Does it offer a phone number and a P.O. box? There's nothing wrong with having those things, but having them and 'embodying' them are two very different Mohicans. Website conversion suffers drastically from excessive anonymity. Exactly what are you hiding from? Better yet, why? According to Stanford Web Credibility Research: "Make it easy to contact you. A simple way to boost your site's credibility is by making your contact information clear: phone number, physical address and e-mail address." Hint: Solopreneurs can use a service like Mail Boxes Etc. for a physical address. Remember, most customers in most industries don't want that "big business" feel; they want to be able to associate a face and a name with the company to which they're about to give their money. my motto is "Keep it simple" and &quo

Use Font to Convey Credibility. and Personality Font choices add character to webpages and logos. They play a very important role in your audience's perception of your business - and of you. Don't think something as silly as the appearance of words on a page would have any effect on website conversion? Think again. "Research has shown that the typeface (i.e., font) that is chosen for a website conveys mood, attitude and tone; and can impact the perception of a company's credibility." "Web pages presented in either a neutral or inappropriate typeface resulted in lower ratings for trust, professionalism and believability." [Source: S. Furman, Usability.gov - "Credibility"] Unless marketing directly to children, avoid using kiddy-style fonts like the dreaded Comic Sans (good heavens!). Even when marketing to children it is not the best choice. my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave an