Mesmer Lab

1 Quick Way to Increase Your Website’s Visibility

Jason — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:36:31 +0000

Write more!

If you want your website to show up on your target audience’s LCD screens, write articles. Keep writing articles. More articles means more keywords. More keywords means more search engine results. More search engine results means more visitors. I’ll briefly talk about why this works.

SERPs

Search engines love new content (something I’ve been sorely lacking here lately). If you want to be found, you need findable content, duh! The current rumors I’m reading say Google doesn’t like it if you don’t publish a new article at least weekly. Take that with a grain of salt. Simply put, more articles on more topics will result in more results on search engine result pages thereby increasing your website’s visibility.

Viral

If you write something that sparks an idea in a visitor, that person just might email/tweet/fb/digg/etc your article to a friend. New readers are always a good thing. By definition, more readers equate to a higher visibility of your website.

Exhibit Credibility

You want to be known for something? Write a how-to about it. Step-by-step instructions on the best way to season your dirt for a tomato garden are sure to get return visits by potential green-thumbers. For some reason, people think I’m an authority on how to add a custom font to WordPress. Go figure.

Once you’re an ‘authority’ about a specific task, you’re website will surely benefit. Another tutorial I developed here was about creating email templates in Magento. I took notes while I was learning how to do it. Then I developed my notes into an article, and Bob’s your uncle.

I have ONE tutorial about Magento on this site. That is by far my most popular post. The custom font one comes in second at about 75% the visits of the email template one. A few of my tutorials have been linked on some pretty obscure websites. Leaving my thanks for the reference and expanding on the specific issues discussed just seems like the right thing to do. And of course this will enforce my credibility and also hopefully lead more visitors to my website.

Conclusion

I vow from this day forth to write at least one new article a day. It need not be a well-formed 500 word dissertation worthy of Encyclopaedia Brittanica. It need not be a majestically dissected tutorial worthy of CSS Tricks. By achieving this task I shall gain notoriety on the internet, whether that is a good thing or not.

The internet is a fickle mistress. Keep her interested and she will hopefully return the favor.

image by: gerlos

Digging into WordPress: Book Released

Jason — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:05:49 +0000

The much-anticipated book about the ins and outs of WordPress is finally here. Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr released Digging into WordPress today. Currently, the PDF version is available for immediate download for $27.

I suggest you pick up this book if you’re new to WordPress or if you’ve been using it for a while. Chris is great at explaining how web-related concepts work at CSS Tricks. He joins Jeff Star in this project, and the professionalism in the product is stunning.

Features

Listed on the book’s site are the following features:

How to get things set up right
Building themes and how they work
Keeping sites secure and optimized
Using WordPress as a CMS
Integrate things like Twitter and Delicious
Making the most out of WordPress

Peek Inside!

From CSS Tricks, Chris offers a peek inside the book. I really like how much color and engaging images they’ve included. This is a welcome change from all the black-and-white instructional books I know you’re used to.

Buy the Book

You can buy the PDF now and get the print version at a discount later. You will also have access to updated versions via a download link in your email when they’re released. Free upgrades for life are always awesome.

So go on over and pick up Digging into WordPress now!

WordPress Plugin: WP-Table Reloaded

Jason — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:51:46 +0000

So I wanted to have a table with zebra stripes in a WordPress installation. I found a quick and full-featured plugin that allows the stripes, plus so much more.

WP-Table Reloaded will let you import a table from a CSV, HTML or XML file. You can enter the cell data directly into the admin page. You can swap column or row order with minimal effort. You can hide or show columns or rows.

Extra Features

But then there are extra features that really make this plugin shine.

Alternating row colors: Every second row will have an alternating background color.
Use Table Headline: The first row of your table will use the tag.
Print Table Name: The Table Name will be written above the table in a
tag.
Print Table Description: The Table Description will be written under the table.
Use Tablesorter: You may sort a table using the Tablesorter-jQuery-Plugin.

I’m currently using this plugin on a website for a sprinkler company in Houston, Texas. Everything you see on the page is pretty much stock settings. There is one table for the service fees, since I didn’t want zebra stripes on a 2-row table. Then another table for the rest of the services.

I just wanted to give a quick nod to this well-rounded and very functional WordPress plugin for implementing HTML tables. Thanks go to the author of this plugin. (Apparently this is his first WP plugin!)

Related Blogs

Magento: Beginner’s Guide (Book Review)

Jason — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:41:44 +0000

I have been humbled by the good people at Packt Publishing. For some reason they think I’m an authority, so they decided to let me review one of their new books, Magento: Beginner’s Guide, written by William Rice.

If you’re not familiar, Magento is a fresh and promising ecommerce solution. A leading feature of the software is the core is 100% open source. Of course there are many plugins, themes and other customization features which range in price from the altruistic ‘free’ to the enterprising ‘thousands of dollars’. But in the end, if you’re looking for a robust ecommerce solution and aren’t afraid to get your hands dirty, look no further than Magento Commerce.

This is a hefty book, weighing in at 300 pages. I’ve read the official Magento User Guide, and although it is informative, I feel that it is somewhat dry. I’m eager to flip through the ebook they sent me to see if there are any ‘between the lines’ tips and tricks to liven up a Magento project I’m working on.

At first glance, the table of contents definitely seems to focus on the GTD side of things. For instance, the first chapter is all about installing Magento.

This chapter is written especially for you, if you are:

Installing Magento on your own

Using a low-cost, commonly available hosting service

Familiar with putting files up on a web server, but that is the limit of your technical knowledge

Willing to ask your hosting service’s technical support some simple and specific “Yes/No” questions about their setup

Eager to get your store up and running as fast as possible

Even if you own a server, or are very technical, this chapter is still worth reading. It can
save you time by helping you to avoid problems while installing Magento.

Sidenote: I highly suggest getting familiar with how Magento works. This isn’t WordPress.

So I’ll be reading the book and applying the knowledge within. Eventually I’ll gather my notes into coherent form and publish them as an official review right here. Until then, your homework is to read about how Magento can work for your business. If you’re wanting to sell online, I really do recommend it.

Anchor Tags, IDs, Google and You!

Jason — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:52:47 +0000

So Google added yet another facet to their SERPs this week. The new feature allows you to jump to the information you want right from the search snippets. At first glance it seems they’re acknowledging the proper use of the named anchor tag. Further investigation turns up clues of nimble ID attribute seeding.

Page Division Benefits for Visitors to Your Web Site

This is great news for both sides of the SEO table. The search engine user can click directly to the desired information instead of wandering around the page once they’re directed to a site by the SERP. The old way was sort of like getting directions to a house party that left you at the entrance of a neighborhood. This new way leads you to the right driveway.

Page Division Benefits for Web Developers

For the web professional, proper SEO techniques will allow you more granularity and specificity in your SERP presence. A few choice placements of the correct anchor tags (and possibly usage of the obligatory ID tags) can net great returns and more ‘good’ traffic to your sites. When I say ‘good’ traffic, I mean people who won’t end up in the bounced column in your analytics.

For a more in-depth look at how the new algorithm works, please jump over to Site Booster’s article entitled New Strategy to Increase Search Engine Visibility.

What Comes Next?

I’m more interested in if IDs will be included in the Google SERPs. I’d rather give IDs double duty than have to insert tags into my code. Most well-written pages employ header tags,

and so on.

The example Google gives on their blog uses:

Now I’m not sure if the Google algorithm is triggering on the anchor name or the ID. Big points to the big G if they use both. I’m using different methods in different areas of this article to see how things turn out.

Your Turn

Let me know what you’re thinking about this new avenue of Search Engine Optimization and how you plan to implement it. I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments.

Google’s New Sandbox Search – Caffeine

Jason — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:31:44 +0000

It seems the search engine market is becoming competitive again. In response to the recent release of Microsoft’s ‘decision engine’ Bing, Google is stepping up their game.

Competition breeds innovation, proof that capitalism works.

This week, Google released their new sandbox search engine, nicknamed ‘Caffeine’. In my initial tests, it seems Caffeine results are focused more on articles and web pages, not video or news results. Youtube and news items are typically still on the first page, but they are further down instead of always sticking to the top.

It seems you can’t saturate your Youtube video description with keywords anymore. Content is king.

I have had pretty good results on SERPs by using the WordPress platform, which in cooperation with the All-In-One SEO plugin, makes META info maintenance a breeze. You have control of each page’s data, as well as the overall site’s META keywords and description. And well, content is king. Write a good article and you should see good results.

My best performing article here at Mesmer Lab is about how I add custom fonts to my WordPress installation. I wanted an easy solution for having a unique look, but flexible enough to only require regular text, not opening Photoshop every time I need a new header image.

So to that end, when you search for ‘add custom font wordpress’ right now you’ll find the following results:

Google (current): http://tr.im/wi30
Google Sandbox: http://tr.im/wi2Q
Bing: http://tr.im/wi53

First off, let me explain how good tr.im is as a URL shortener. Create an account with them and you can track clicks. That alone should give you enough incentive to use them exclusively. Add that they use unique URLs and you’ll never use another URL shortener again.

Now there are some interesting differences here. The current Google SERP has my article at #4, including an indented link for a related article on my site. Indented results are a function of Google’s algorithm and are typically seen as having more authority. I was pretty jazzed when I noticed I had one.

The Caffeine SERP shows the same article at #3, pushing ahead of the result from Digg. Hmm, what does that mean? Google is giving less weight to bookmarking sites? I never really got into Digg, but I use Del.icio.us pretty regularly. And although I see their merit, I’d rather find actual articles in my SERPs rather than a middleman.

And well, Microsoft hates my site it seems. Where’s Mesmer Lab on Bing? Not sure. I went through the first 10 pages and couldn’t find a trace. I gave up digging deeper into the SERP pages when I started seeing results that weren’t even related to WordPress or fonts.

So what does this mean to you? Well if you’re a typical web user you should start seeing more direct links rather than having to click through a bookmark aggregator. Less clicks, less bandwidth, more efficiency. If you’re a web developer, your SEO prowess should shine through much easier. Using Caffeine could possibly give your expertise a 10% boost in authority. Content writers should also see similar results. Just keep writing good content and your analytics and AdSense results should validate your worth.

The people over at Facesaerch have developed a side-by-side comparison of the current Google engine and Caffeine. Test it out at http://www.facesaerch.com/caffeine/.

Create a New Email Template in Magento

Jason — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:26:30 +0000

Emails are a big part of the online world, so it follows that a professional ecommerce site should have professional email templates. A full-featured ecommerce solution is what you’ll find with Magento, an open source solution for selling products online. Magento provides a system to keep the more basic contact times with your visitors smooth and carefree. With open source comes great customization (and complexity).

This tutorial will guide you through the steps to create a new email template in Magento. Specifically, you’ll create the email that your visitors will receive when they sign up for your newsletter.

Requirements

Access to your website’s Magento admin panel
A little knowledge of how HTML emails work
This tutorial

Step One: Create the Template

I said you need to know a little about how to create an HTML email, but since Magento comes with many templates you can kind of get away without the knowledge at first.

Log into your admin panel and navigate to System > Transactional Emails.
Click the ‘Add New Template’ button on the top right.
Choose one of the default templates from the first drop down box.

Transactional Emails" title="System > Transactional Emails" width="300" height="222" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-571 postimage" />In this tutorial we’ll be using the ‘Newsletter subscription confirmation’ template. This would typically be the first email your visitors would receive so I figured it would be a good choice. Choose the locale of course, then click the ‘Load Template’ button.

This will load the appropriate template which in this example is located in the /app/code/locale/en_US/template/email/ directory. The filename is ‘account_new_confirmation.html’. As you can see, it is very easy to alter the templates for international support. You can leave most of the template as they have presented it. I’ve changed the email addresses, the phone number, the store name and the source URL for the logo.

Back in the admin panel, give your template a name. To keep things simple, I’ve used ‘Newsletter Subscription Confirmation’ for the name and the subject. Now here’s where you can modify the template to suit your specific needs. One of the key features of Magento is the ability to have multiple stores within one installation. Therefore you can load the same template in the first half of this step, then modify it for each store in the second half.

Click the ‘Save Template’ button on the top right and you’ll see your new template in the list of Transactional Emails. Now lets move on to implementing it into your site.

Step Two: Using Your Template

From the top horizontal menu, navigate to System > Configuration.

Newsletter" title="Customers > Newsletter" width="300" height="192" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-564 postimage" />Scroll down to the Customers section on the left menu and select Newsletter.

In the drop down box for Confirmation Email Template, choose the new template you just created. The option just above it should be set to Customer Support. Click the ‘Save Config’ button on the top right and you’re done.

Step Three: Testing Your Template

Now navigate to the public version of your site to the Newsletter box.

Type in your email and click ‘Subscribe’. Sync your email client and you should see a new email from ‘[Site Name] – Customer Support’ with the subject of ‘Newsletter subscription confirmation’.

Check all the text, make sure the logo shows up and the email addresses and phone number is correct. Make any changes back in the admin at System > Transactional Emails (second image in step one).

Conclusion

Magento Commerce, the open source ecommerce solution, can be very intimidating to those of us coming from WordPress. Its configuration options are very intricate, allowing you to customize designs, layouts and almost every other piece of the site on a per-page basis. Hopefully I’ve shared some useful knowledge on how to create a new email template in Magento.

Make sure you test your emails extensively. They are acting as your host/hostess, concierge and valet. You want them to be as professional as possible. No typos, easily readable text, and please, be sure to quadruple check your email address and phone number.

A key nugget to remember about HTML emails is you have to put your CSS styling inline. You can’t reference an external CSS file or even have it in the HEAD. All HTML emails are contained within the BODY tag. Also, don’t even try using DIVs for your layout. Go old school. Bring out the TABLE tag and party like its 1999. Just look at the example templates they have to get a feel of what is or isn’t acceptable. If there’s enough interest, I’ll write a post on my experience with HTML emails.

I will be adding more quick tutorials like this for Magento as I wade through their user guide and forum. Please feel free to comment or ask a question in the form below.