Website Redesign SEO Checklist

March 27, 2009 – 12:40 pm

Here is a seo checklist of items I compiled for a client recently that is in the process of a website redesign and wanted to know what things they should be concerned about when they make the site live. Hopefully the list is useful to others; items with a * mean it can be worked on slightly before the new website actually goes live.

1. Send an updated XML feed to Google and Yahoo – This will involve generating a new fresh xml sitemap file for Google and a urllist.txt file for Yahoo and submitting them to the search engines so they pick up the new pages as quick as possible and remove old pages quicker.
2. Check for dead links – Once the site is on the live domain we should run a quick test for dead links to ensure there are none in existence.
3. *Update/review all title tags and meta descriptions – This will be a good opportunity for us to review and update all title tags and meta descriptions.
4. Setup 301 redirects for key pages – As many people will be hitting old pages that are no longer live we should setup custom 301 redirects for pages that had considerable traffic to them and redirect them to the new equivalent page.
5. *Fill in empty alt tags – We should ensure there are no blank alt tags on the new website.
6. *Setup internal linking from subpages – We should double check that we have a strong internal linking structure with the new website content.
7. *Setup custom 404 page not found webpage – Again, since many people will be hitting dead pages we should create a custom 404 error page where they can quickly find what they were originally looking for.
8. *Setup a custom HTML sitemap page and link to it in the footer – We need to make sure there is a custom HTML based sitemap page that includes a link to all pages on the site to help the search engines index the new pages faster.
9. Create custom robots.txt file – We can create a robots.txt file to tell the search engines to not index any of the old page urls anymore.
10. Request manual deletion of old pages via Google webmaster tools – Once we have the robots.txt file up we can actually tell Google directly to remove old pages permanently from their index.
11. Modify goal conversion tracking in Google Analytics – Since the URL structure may be changing we need to make sure the conversion tracking for Google analytics is still functioning.
12. Ensure Google Analytics is working properly – We should double check that google analytics is functioning properly and still capturing data so we can compare stastics from the old website to the new one.

Posted in Search Engine Optimization | 7 Comments »

Use Facebook Advertising for Awesome Online Marketing Insight

March 10, 2009 – 8:12 am

One major advertising advantage Facebook has over Google adwords and other ppc platforms is that Facebook has access to real demographic and user preference data that few other systems contain.  Since a user of Facebook enters in their demographic information and have the access to join groups and note their personal preferences this data is real; not assumed like other platforms.While I have not yet tried Facebook advertising yet for any of my clients (I am planning to this week though) I have heard that it is not super effective.  Hopefully with the recent changes they have made it will become more effective.   In the end it will depend on the industry you are in if Facebook can deliver value or not.  This is a whole other story though.

There is something you can utilize right now on Facebook without actually sending them a dime that can be of great assistance to your marketing efforts online, offline, etc.  When you create an ad you can choose different options of who you want to target your ads to on Facebook.   Through process of elimination you can gain some valuable insights of your target audience through this simple system.  For example – lets say you are a camping gear manufacturer and you think hikers are usually interested in camping as well – you are considering advertising in a hiking magazine for your company.  You could narrow your search down to those who are interested in hiking then AND camping with this method.  The results are as follows:

47,469,140  – Total U.S. Facebook users
980,840 – Those who have an interest in camping
1,036,800 – Those who have an interest in hiking
1,719,120 – Those who have an interest in hiking AND/OR camping
980,840 + 1,036,800 = 2,017,640 – Those who have an interest in hiking OR camping (including DUPLICATES)
2,017,640 – 1,719,120 = 298,520 – Those who have an interest in hiking AND camping
So about 30% of campers have expressed an interest in hiking as well on facebook.

You can also take this down to a much more simple level by simply finding things such as if males or females are more interested in parenting, if there are more dave matthews band fans in Georgia or California, if engaged people are more likely to be interested in photography, if more college graduates are associated with coke or pepsi, and the list goes on and on.

Of course this data is not taking into consideration the entire world but it seems to be a fairly good sampling, 47 million users in the U.S. alone is very impressive. If you have had experience with Facebook advertising I would love to hear your comments.

Posted in Social Media Marketing | No Comments »