The Blog Coach

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:17:22 +0000

Thinking about adding a blog to your site? This isn’t Field of Dreams – just building it won’t make them come. Read more in this article, where I discussed with Lori Baer how to get visitors to show up, how to get them to return, and what kind of content you should be posting.

Article: Local Perspective – The Blog Coach: Michael Verner

New VWS Site

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 03:02:07 +0000

The new VWS site has been launched, but you probably knew that – since there’s about a 90% chance you are looking at it as you finish this sentence. Yep, this site is brand, spanking new! The update has been long overdue (almost 3 years), and I’m excited to bring more content and more intimacy to the site.

SEO Bootcamp – Part 1: Meta Tags

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:46:29 +0000

Get in line, privates! Over the next few months, I am going to run you through the paces and get you soldiers in shape. When we are done you’ll be ready for the front lines of the Internet — the search engines.

There are methods to help you improve your ranking on the search engines. There’s no quick fix, and there’s no magic bullet. If anyone claims a “guaranteed” top result on Google, I would be skeptical. It takes a lot of hard work to master the art of search engine optimization. You can do everything right and still not make it in the first 3 pages of Google — at least right away.

…Now on our first day of training – meta tags. Definition of meta – referring to itself; self-referential. So, meta tags refer to the document they are in, more specifically, the content of the page they are in.

We are going to focus on the two most important meta tags for SEO (though there are more) – keywords and description. They go in the section of your HTML document like so…

"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
	<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
		<head>
			<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
			<meta name="keywords" content="Your keywords go here..." />
			<meta name="description" content="Your description goes here..." />
			<title>Cakey Cakes</title>

The Keywords Meta Tag

1	<meta name="keywords" content="Your keywords go here..." />

What are keywords? They are important words or phrases used on your page. Basically, it is a list of search terms that you think search engine users might use to find your page.

Let’s say your site is for your cake decorating business (Cakey Cakes), specializing in customized birthday cakes, based out of Pittsburgh, PA. Your keyword list (the content property of the tag – where it says “Your keywords go here…”) for the home page, might be “pittsburgh cake decorating, custom birthday cakes, bakery, cakey cakes.”

In general, keep this to at most 8-10 words. These words and phrases should appear in your content (and if possible in your description). Also, your content is (or at least it should be) different on every page – your keywords should be too.

Just a warning – DO NOT TRY TO TRICK THE SEARCH ENGINES! Don’t try to use keywords that don’t really correspond to the content of your site. The search engines are smart enough to figure this out and actually penalize your for trying to cheat (possibly by even removing your site entirely). For shame!

Sometimes it is best to try for some non-obvious (but still relevant) search terms. It is really a cat-and-mouse game. Search engines are always changing the algorithms that determine their rankings. Patience and persistence pay off.

The Description Meta Tag

1	<meta name="description" content="Your description goes here..." />

The description meta tag is exactly what is sounds like – it is a short description (just a short sentence or two – try to keep it under XYZ characters) of the content on the page. Just like the keyword tag, this goes in the content property of tag.

Be sure to include a liberal dose of your keywords, but don’t do too much to crowbar them in. The sentence should make sense as some search engines will choose to use this in their search results.

For our Cakey Cake example, the home page description could go something like “Cakey Cakes is a Pittsburgh, PA based, full-service bakery specializing in custom birthday cake decoration.” See how it contains a lot of the keywords, but sounds natural. That is what you are going for.

Just like the with the keywords – DON’T TRY TO CHEAT! It will not pay. Because people have tried to cheat the search engines before, these tags are now not extremely important for search engines, in fact, some just discard them. It is however good practice to include them on your site, it can only help and it can help you to fine tune the content on your website.

That’s it for now, soldiers! Fall out!

PHP/CSV Tip

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:26:39 +0000

Just a quick tip that might help out some other developer out there. I am using PHP’s fgetcsv function to import comma-separated data that has been exported from an Excel spreadsheet.

It was giving me fits though – skipping over null values and throwing everything out of wack. If you are having this problem, there is a good chance you are using a Mac (like I am) and just saving as a “Comma Separated Values (.csv)” file. While this seems logical. BUZZZZZZZ! I guess it is wrong. You have to save as “Windows Comma Separated (.csv)” file. This solves everything.

Link: 15 Key Elements All Top Web Sites Should Have

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:32:00 +0000

This is a great little article about what should be included in all websites. I couldn’t have written it any better myself, so I won’t try to reinvent the wheel (notice just the navigation needs to be “above the fold”).

Link: 15 Key Elements All Top Web Sites Should Have