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A Truly SEO Friendly Website for Free

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RayB

Our old brand name has a website dating back to 2003, with all the pages still indexed in Google even now, but the brand was dormant. We have decided to re-launch the brand in a limited way, but the old website was useless.

So, as an experiment, I decided to convert it to a new site for free, using Wordpress (and I have ZERO coding skills). Here is the new Weald Print Solutions site, which is now totally SEO friendly. All I need to do is tidy up the look and feel and add some new content.

This is what helps to make the new site SEO friendly:
  • I have used a free theme called Neoclassical - which is written is a very SEO friendly way (use of <h > tags etc) and looks nice
  • I created a file called .htaccess and pasted this code into it using notepad and uploaded to my root directory:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
  • This allowed me to change the postname setting in Wordpress Permalinks to: /%postame%/ - I now have search engine friendly urls
FREE WORDPRESS PLUGINS

I then uploaded the following SEO plugins from the Wordpress site and activated them:
  • Redirection - Which enabled me to 301 redirect the old indexed urls to the new friendly ones (so I don't lose "page age" in Google). This plugin also deals with "canonicalization" - it redirects the "www" to the "non www" version or vice versa, as well as index.html and index.php versions
  • Robot Meta - easily adds verification code for Google Webmaster tools, plus a bunch of other useful stuff like forcing a trailing "/" on the end of all urls, plus things like "noindex" and "nofollow" tags where appropriate.
  • All in one SEO Pack - this plugin allows you to create a title tag, meta description and meta keywords tag for each page and post.
  • Google Analyticator - Allows you to add Analytics tracking code with ease.
  • Google XML Sitemaps - This plugin will create an XML sitemap automatically - which you can submit to Webmaster Tools
Finally, I used a free FTP program called Filezilla to upload the various files and plugins - sorted!


Trust me - if I can do it, anyone can :)
 
I'm interested in this.

Can you go into greater detail?

e.g. how did you set up the LH menu? Was it a case of just typing in the menu items and the pages are created automatically from that?

Also, what other tweakings did you do?

Cheers,

Steve
 
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Hi Steve,

The neoclassical theme has a left and right sidebar by default.

So, in Wordpress, simply go to Presentation > Widgets and drag and drop which elements you wish to appear in each sidebar - it takes seconds!

For example, I have excluded things like archives and categories - as i am not planning to blog on it - but keep it static
 
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Sometimes I take stuff like this so much for granted. Hopefully your tutorial will be helpful for others in a similar boat. :)
 
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So, in Wordpress, simply go to Presentation > Widgets and drag and drop which elements you wish to appear in each sidebar - it takes seconds!
Click to expand...

It takes you seconds .... :D

I've got a site in mind, so I'll see how long it'll take me.

Steve
 
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I said:
Sometimes I take stuff like this so much for granted. Hopefully your tutorial will be helpful for others in a similar boat. :)
Click to expand...

That was the point of the thread really Brian, to help people who have not got a Scooby! (Which is where I was at a few weeks ago with Wordpress, and not being a coder)
 
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We've been keeping quite about this for some time.

For all the web designer/developers out there if you haven't already you need to become WP, Drupal... specialists, if you are not already, the lower end of the market has had it's day.
 
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An Oasis said:
We've been keeping quite about this for some time.

For all the web designer/developers out there if you haven't already you need to become WP, Drupal... specialists, if you are not already, the lower end of the market has had it's day.
Click to expand...

Sorry about the keeping quiet bit - I just though it would be helpful to people who want a SEO friendly (non e-commerce) site for buttons.

I totally agree the low end web designers (and the non SEO savvy ones) are redundant in this scenario - they should re-skill in terms of creating custom business branded themes for Wordpress ;)
 
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RayB said:
Sorry about the keeping quiet bit - I just though it would be helpful to people who want a SEO friendly (non e-commerce) site for buttons.
Click to expand...

No need to be sorry I just thought that I'd point out what might not be obvious to some people on the forum. Web design & dev moves at a frantic pace and I can imagine that it is easy to miss what seems obvious.

For all but established sites that need upgrading or companies that have the budget, I would not even bother getting a site developed these days.
 
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Just a little update. The homepage of the re-worked site was re-cached yesterday - 24 hours after re-launch - along with half of the internal pages (which shows the importance of the 301 redirects from the original url's)

Interestingly the homepage is immediately on page 2 for the phrase "Printing West Sussex" - with zero SEO done to it!
 
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Gosh Ray ... you have finally caught up with this then? Tut tut !! Some of us have been doing it for a while aint we Rich? ;)

Within an hour of setting up my site the pages were indexed, traffic was finding me and life was good!!
 
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Ray, you could leverage the site further by setting up keyword links to your main services at ALP in your right hand nav. I could code this up for you, but if you wanted to do it yourself, simply edit the blogroll in the WP admin section with your services links, then publish the blogroll to the nav via the widgets editor.

2c.
 
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I said:
Ray, you could leverage the site further by setting up keyword links to your main services at ALP in your right hand nav. I could code this up for you, but if you wanted to do it yourself, simply edit the blogroll in the WP admin section with your services links, then publish the blogroll to the nav via the widgets editor.

2c.
Click to expand...

Hi Brian,

Yes there are few things I will be doing with the site, but I wanted to transfer it over with the original (rubbish) copy, and let everything re-index and settle first.

Adding links in the sidebar is a doddle with Wordpress - I have put some on the left sidebar already, but don't want to go in heavy with onpage SEO just yet ;)
 
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For all but established sites that need upgrading or companies that have the budget, I would not even bother getting a site developed these days.
Click to expand...

That assume a lot in the person behind the wheel - 'monkeys with guns' springs to mind!
 
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Gillie said:
Gosh Ray ... you have finally caught up with this then? Tut tut !! Some of us have been doing it for a while aint we Rich? ;)

Within an hour of setting up my site the pages were indexed, traffic was finding me and life was good!!
Click to expand...

I know Gillie - I'm way behind you and Richard when it comes to blogs, but now I have taught myself how to set one up properly from an SEO point of view I wanted to share the info for newbies :)

Also, it is handy for those needing a static website on the cheap (as is often asked around here)

That assume a lot in the person behind the wheel - 'monkeys with guns' springs to mind!
Click to expand...
I agree Gary - my main site cost a fair few quid to do it properly - and for that you need a good designer/coder - I'm sure we would all agree with you there.

This thread is aimed at those who need good website for next to nothing - and Wordpress will blow the cheap 2 bob web designers into the middle of next week from an SEO friendliness point of view - especially if you need a CMS :)
 
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I'm a fan of Wordpress and use it for my blog. I'd say rather than shoe horn websites into Wordpress look at Joomla! Drupal et al. These are very powerful and simple content management systems with many many very useful business related (point and click) add-ons.

IMHO

d
 
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RayB said:
Trust me - if I can do it, anyone can :)
Click to expand...
Ray, I think you are:

1. underestimating your own level of aptitude and skill, you obviously have a technical mind, you have learnt quite a lot of technical web related things recently, and your business of printing is a technical one.

2. overestimating the level of aptitude and skill of most normal business people.

The instructions you have given might as well be written in Klingon for the use they will be to most normal business people. A lot of normal business people will fail and give up at the first hurdle, when they realise the wordpress zip (or tar.gz) file they downloaded from the wordpress site doesn't run an installation program on their PC.

Saying that, the one click installations of Wordpress that some hosts provide might alleviate this first hurdle, but the remaining steps will still be gobbledegook to a lot of people.

The nearest thing we have so far to non-technical novice user website setup is still the online sitebuilders you get from the likes of Microsoft (Office Live basics) and 123-reg.co.uk (instant site). These sites aren't quite there yet in terms of SEO, however I still managed to create a site using 123-reg's instant site free (hosted for free too) service that got to page 1 position 10 for web design northampton (www.webdesignnorthampton.org.uk) in a competive area where the competition should know about SEO.

RayB said:
I totally agree the low end web designers (and the non SEO savvy ones) are redundant in this scenario - they should re-skill in terms of creating custom business branded themes for Wordpress ;)
Click to expand...
The low end of the web market is already eroding with the likes of these online sitebuilder services, the hundreds of mrsite customers, the thousands of Microsoft Office live basics (which is free) customers can testify to this. Which is one of the reasons my company moved from custom bespoke web design to offering our sitebuilder service, albeit a slightly more upmarket with handholding service rather than mass-market automated DIY service.

Free open source cms's are just another nail in the coffin of the low end design market, just as easier to use and better web design packages are too, e.g. www.websitex5.com

I agree that low end web designers should either get out completely, or reskill and exploit what is happening, not just for cms's, but also for sitebuilders, as I mentioned in an earlier thread price for a simple website. It might even be more fun for them since they can focus more on graphic design rather than web coding. However even the low end of the graphic design market will erode too, I noticed there is now an interactive design your own logo for free feature on the www.vistaprint.co.uk website!
 
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RedEvo said:
I'm a fan of Wordpress and use it for my blog. I'd say rather than shoe horn websites into Wordpress look at Joomla! Drupal et al. These are very powerful and simple content management systems with many many very useful business related (point and click) add-ons.

IMHO

d
Click to expand...

Yup they are good applications, but SEO with Joomla is a pain... there are components like JoomSEF, but then your other components need integrating with it... that is just to get the URLs SEF... I have never looked at SEO for Drupal...

For quickly throwing up an SEO friendly site I don't think there is anything to touch wordpress... but am all ears if you can correct me on this ;-)

Also, remember wordpress does other things like trackback... pingomatic etc. which are also very useful...
 
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Just to add,
If it is a static site rather than a blog you may find it better to create the site
with Wordpress, save all the pages, adjust as necessary, upload them, then
delete the Wordpress version.
 
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One thing to bear in mind if doing a proper 'website' (ie instead of a blog) using blog software like wordpress is google has its own blog search engine.

There is a possibility they could decide to move the site (if they think it is a blog) from the regular search results into the blog search results (resulting in less people finding you I would imagine).

There does not seem to be any clear guidance I can see from google as to when or where or why they have some in the blog search, and some in the main results, and they can switch them from one set of results to the other, or even both, at will....

They may also decide to give links from blogs less importance than sites at any point in time (due to the fact the blogosphere links out to more people more often than the rest of the web in general), its all in their hands, and they rarely let people know what is really going on...
 
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RedEvo said:
You think so? Check this out ;)

d
Click to expand...

To be fair, GNU has a point. e.g.

http://www.redevolution.com/

http://redevolution.com/

http://www.redevolution.com/index.php

http://redevolution.com/index.php


There are technically 4 versions of your homepage (and therefore every other page on your site) - not essential, but not perfect either, whereas Weald Print Solutions in Wordpress is bulletproof in this respect (as is A Local Printer which is custom built).

In a perfect situation this would be dealt with, can it be done easily with Joomla?

PS - This is NOT in anyway a criticism of your excellent website - just a question posed by way of an example :)
 
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Smarty pants Ray does it again :D

Okay Ray how do you do the hyperlinks in WP? I can now do them in forums but there isn't a little world and chain symbol in WP (I know I am a very low wattage at times).

Oh and please may I have the non klingon version ;)

Also, does anyone know how I can get rid of the Meta thingy's - half way down on the right http://www.country-couples.co.uk/blog/

Thank you
 
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RayB said:
There are technically 4 versions of your homepage (and therefore every other page on your site)

In a perfect situation this would be dealt with, can it be done easily with Joomla?
Click to expand...

Yeah, fair enough although strictly speaking the none www version should be fixed at the server/DNS level. My only comment is the system isn't creating these URL's, you have to hand crank them. My point really was to demonstrate the flexibility of the system for creating SEF pages. I'd always run Joomla! over Wordpress for a full website although as I've said I'm a fan of Wordpress blog wise ;)

d
 
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Thanks Ray. I have now switched from Front Page to Wordpress. I am still very hazy about what I do next, other than transfer all my old content. How do I get to put in keywords?
 
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RedEvo said:
Yeah, fair enough although strictly speaking the none www version should be fixed at the server/DNS level. My only comment is the system isn't creating these URL's, you have to hand crank them. My point really was to demonstrate the flexibility of the system for creating SEF pages. I'd always run Joomla! over Wordpress for a full website although as I've said I'm a fan of Wordpress blog wise ;)

d
Click to expand...

Understood (and you have a juicy PR7 so no problems there!!) :)

But, I'm a bit of a stickler for these things (sad I know) - can the same level of "bulletproofness" be achieved in Joomla (with a detailed .htaccess file for instance)?
 
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Yeah i must agree with wordpress being the way forward. I had been using cmsmadesimple for quite sometime but wordpress has a huge support network and some great mods.

I did write a post on my blog quite sometime ago which might be worth a read for what i feel being might be some use might be not. I would also update your news feed with all the latest sites.
 
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RayB said:
But, I'm a bit of a stickler for these things (sad I know) - can the same level of "bulletproofness" be achieved in Joomla (with a detailed .htaccess file for instance)?
Click to expand...

Yup...

Remember www.yourdomain.com & www.yourdomain.com/index.php are onme and the same in reality and in the eyes of Google. The only thing to sort is the www and none www version which, I think, should be fixed at the DNS level not in the .htaccess file.

With Joomla you can play with the .htaccess file although one using the SEF Advance add-on there really is no need.

I think Wordpress will go from strength to strength but it's got a long way to go to match the flexibility of Joomla/Drupal et al. This it worth a read.

d
 
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Servers are set up to serve a page by default. When someone types www.somedomain.com without a file name the server is set thus:

Serve index.html first
If that's not there serve index.php
If that's not there serve index.htm
etc

If you have both an index.html file and an index.php file then www.somedomain.com/index.html is different from www.somedomain.com/index.php and www.somedomain.com/ and www.somedomain.com/index.php are different.

However in the absence of more than one index file there's no confusion, www.somedomain.com/index.php is the same as www.somedomain.com

d
 
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RedEvo said:
Servers are set up to serve a page by default. When someone types www.somedomain.com without a file name the server is set thus:

Serve index.html first
If that's not there serve index.php
If that's not there serve index.htm
etc

If you have both an index.html file and an index.php file then www.somedomain.com/index.html is different from www.somedomain.com/index.php and www.somedomain.com/ and www.somedomain.com/index.php are different.

However in the absence of more than one index file there's no confusion, www.somedomain.com/index.php is the same as www.somedomain.com

d
Click to expand...

Yep - I can see that on the server side - but the fact remains they are still technically different url's (confirmed by MC as per link above) - so if people link to you using different versions of the url/extension you are losing link love as I understand it?
 
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The examples he gives are all different URL's

the www version
the none www version
the index.html version
the index.asp version

You can't force people to either put the index.php or leave it when linking to you. Like he says just make sure your internal links are consistant. His post reads in a very laid back way to me ;)

d
 
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Yes, at present (as with all things google related there is no promise that what is the case today, will remain the case in the future)

www.somedomain.com

is treated differently from

www.somedomain.com/index.php

as far as page rank goes anyways.

Server side they may well end up at the same page (assuming the server is defaulting to index.php) but google will regard them as two different urls.

You can see this in operation at many sites, for example this forum

http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/

has a toolbar page rank of 6 at present

and the same page, but more specific url

http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/index.php

has a toolbar pr of 5 at present.

Consistency is key, ensure you choose one or the other for your linking strategy or you will be splitting your page rank for those two, between those two. Have it all going to the one you want it to go to....
 
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RedEvo said:
The examples he gives are all different URL's

the www version
the none www version
the index.html version
the index.asp version

You can't force people to either put the index.php or leave it when linking to you. Like he says just make sure your internal links are consistant. His post reads in a very laid back way to me ;)

d
Click to expand...

Ok - this from the official Google Blog HERE

1. Having multiple URLs can dilute link popularity. For example, in the diagram above, rather than 50 links to your intended display URL, the 50 links may be divided three ways among the three distinct URLs.
Click to expand...

Or am I still missing something :|
 
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