Archive for the ‘Internet Marketing’ Category
SEO Lessons Learned Launching My Free WordPress Blog
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Starting up my new SEO blog was an exercise in compromise. For once in my life, I decided not to obsess over the (super fun) details and instead moved straight to writing posts. I grabbed my domain, paid $10 to map a free WordPress blog to it, and slapped my social network icons in the sidebar.
I didn’t have the time to figure out hosting and plugins in addition to writing the content. I decided to focus on the things I had to have (content and a place to put it), and the things I could not change later (domain) without negative impact on the blog’s SEO. The rest (hosting, cool templates, control over SEO elements, plugins) can be added on or changed later after I’ve proven to myself that I have enough to write about.
In the process, I found a couple of important SEO elements missing in the free WordPress-hosted offering:
- No 301 Redirects: This is a biggie for SEO. WordPress does not 301 redirect when you move your blog. In addition, WordPress does not 301 redirect your blog’s subdomain to your mapped domain name. Example: http://jillkocher.wordpress.com 302 redirects to http://webpierat.com. Consequently, if you want your blog to build link popularity & keep it, map it to a domain right from the start so that you can either keep the same URLs or control the 301 redirects yourself when you decide to move it later. Without the mapped domain, your content will either be stuck at the blog’s subdomain or will have to leave its link popularity behind when it moves.
- No Plugins. Plugins are not available when blogs are hosted at wordpress.com. You can’t modify your title tags or meta data, no sticky posts or other great SEO plugins for custom WordPress installations.
- No Google Webmaster Tools Verification. WordPress is working on it, but the former verification method is kaput.
And a couple of social media and usability elements are also missing:
- No JavaScript Support. WordPress’s free blogs only support HTML. Many of the cool plugins and widgets require JavaScript. Bummer.
- No Social Media Integration in the Templates. If you want to offer quick logos and links to share posts on Twitter or Digg or Facebook … you can’t. That requires JavaScript, or manual coding in every post. There’s also no quick way to list all your social profiles in your sidebar without manual HTML.
That said, WordPress does include some nifty features in the free version:
- XML Sitemap: WordPress creates an XML sitemap automatically, and makes it autodiscoverable on the robots.txt file it also generates automatically. Example: http://webpierat.com/robots.txt links to http://webpierat.com/sitemap.xml. Unfortunately you can’t modify these manually.
- Edit Post URIs + 301 Redirects: Bloggers can edit the default title-based URL while they’re in the post admin. Cool. Better yet, if you publish the post and then want to change the URI after it’s live, WordPress automatically 301 redirects the older versions of the URL to the latest version (even through multiple URL changes).
- 404 Errors. Deleting a post produces a hard 404 error on that URL, which will prompt deindexation if a URL has been indexed. Would be better to 301 redirect it to harvest any link popularity the URL may have collected, but at least it’s a 404 and not 200 that lives on forever cruftily.
- Tags & Categories: It’s nice to have the ability to create tags and categories for posts to easily create a navigational hierarchy. Be careful to choose wisely, though, so you don’t give prominence to non-valuable keywords & phrases. Similarly, don’t name both a tag & category the same thing or you’ll inadvertently set up competition for the same keyword phrase at different URLs.
One day soon I’ll start experimenting with a custom installation, but I’m still too excited about the prospect of playing with 301 redirects and CSS to allow myself to get distracted by it. There are a lot of other pros and cons to starting your blog on WordPress’s free platform, but these are the ones that made an impression on me.
What has made an impression on you?
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Thanks for sharing.
Mind the Language Gap: Localization vs Translation Online
Filed under: Internet Marketing | Tags: localization, translation
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My name doesn’t exist in Spanish. Jill would actually be pronounced Heeee – J’s make an H sound and LL makes a Y sound. Jill works just fine in the American Midwest, but when I moved to California for college I encountered a whole new world of Spanish-speaking folks who were genuinely confused by my ridiculous name.
On a far larger scale, the same issue exists across the internet as sites attempt to expand their reach from their native language to serve other countries in other languages. American English is very close to the Queen’s English, but American English just doesn’t speak to the British in the same way. It’s more than sprinkling in some U’s and swapping Z’s for S’s. In Wisconsin I’d stuff a package in the trunk, but in London they’d place a parcel in the boot. I watch my step, they mind the gap. And we’re not even going to talk about the double meaning of fanny packs, yikes.
Some sites translate their navigation and major headings only, but leave the featured image content or product detail information in the original language. I can’t think of a better way to illustrate that customers speaking that language are not a priority. Sears uses a translating technology that autoconverts English textual content to Spanish, but the featured content images are still in English. Message to the Spanish-speaking population: You don’t matter as much but we’d like you to give us your money.
Would you send your English-speaking founder to the streets of Paris to sell the widgets he’s passionate about and communicates magnificently well in English, armed only with a sheet of common French phrases and expect him to sell like gangbusters? Of course not. He won’t be able to communicate effectively there, no matter how passionately he believes in his widgets. Similarly, French customers are not going to drop $300 (or euros) on your site if your French content is poorly written and archaically constructed. You wouldn’t write your primary content woodenly, why on earth would you translate woodenly? It’s ineffective and even insulting. You can’t just slap a French flag on it and call it a day.
In some cases, the navigation is in the original language but some linguistically orphaned content exists deeper in the site. If you can’t read English, how could you navigate the English Virginia.gov site to find the Spanish translation of the preparation for college guide? Lovely that it’s offered, but how will the people who need it find it on the site?
Sites communicate most strongly in the languages of their creators, naturally. When attempts are made to create content for other languages, many sites make the mistake of purely translating the same words they use to the equivalent word in the other languages. Not so good unless you just really don’t want to make a connection with those readers / customers. In that case, save everyone the time and don‘t bother to translate in the first place.
I enjoy babelfish as much as the next gal, but it’s no way to localize content. Localization is about creating content specifically for a geographically defined audience in their preferred language. It’s about carrying your message to them as an important audience equally valuable to the one that speaks the core language of the site, not expecting them to piece together your message and thank you for the opportunity to enjoy your delightful site so clearly not targeted at them despite its translated status.
If you’re serious about expanding your reach to other languages and countries, take the time to hire or contract with someone native to that country fluent in the dialect required. Don’t ask him to translate the content you’ve already written, boil it down to a series of key message bullets and allow him to create the content from those key messages in a way that will resonate best.
For more on localization and SEO, Andy Atkins-Kruger is an excellent resource at Multilingual Search Blog or WebCertain.com.
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Thanks for sharing.
