How does upgrading to Drupal 7 Help My Website?

An upgrade to Drupal 7 improves the future of your website. Updates to the administration of Drupal 7 are the result of hours and hours in professional software testing labs making sure administration is more usable and straightforward. Also, newer database systems mean you can run your Drupal site on different types of database setups to better fit your business needs. And major updates to different portions of the module and themeing systems mean smoother, quicker and more flexible custom module development for your Drupal site.

What should I consider when upgrading?

There are a lot of details to consider when upgrading your Drupal site. In fact, for many sites, the process of upgrading may involve completely reworking how the site is structured and managed. When Drupal 7 is released, all core functionality will have a working upgrade path. However, the majority of current sites use some community-contributed Drupal modules to complete their functionality. Most of the major contributed modules do have a version that will work for Drupal 7, but not all do. And not all Drupal 7 modules will have a smooth upgrade path from earlier versions of Drupal. Similarly, all custom modules for the site will require at least a minor rewrite due to changes in the database and themeing systems within Drupal 7.

It may be a little early to start the Drupal 7 upgrade process, but it’s not too early to start thinking about when and what is involved in upgrading your site. It will be at least a couple months before August Ash starts using Drupal 7 for new production sites; we have to evaluate Drupal 7 further to make sure it meets our needs. If you are looking to update and improve your website in major ways over the next couple years, an upgrade to Drupal 7 within the next six months would be recommended. If you want to keep your website much the same for the next couple years, there is much less reason to upgrade. As with any web site change or upgrade, the answer to the question for you comes down to cost. Is it worth it for you?

Contact us at August Ash to find out how much a Drupal website upgrade may cost for your site.

In today’s web world, a Content Management System makes it easy: you just login and make the change. You don’t need to keep track of files. You don’t need to have a fancy program to edit websites. You don’t even need to know programming or HTML. A content management system has the data and the editor all built in. You just log in and change the data.

Systems like WordPress are great when you want a site with a couple pages that don’t change very much and a blog with more quickly-changing content. But what happens when you want to add a whole new section to your site? For example, if you want to add a discussion forum to the site? WordPress has an add-on called BbPress. Want to add a calendar of events? A basic online store? You will have to install/purchase a whole new system to manage that data effectively. Unless you use Drupal.

Drupal has a large community of thousands of users. Drupal is used for all kinds of sites with all different kinds of data. And thus, the Drupal community has created hundreds of add-ons for specific needs. Instead of spending your time creating a new section of the site to house your forum or calendar, you just add and configure the feature within Drupal. Also, instead of having a number of systems to log in to manage your site’s data, Drupal is the one and only system.

For some specific features for your site, Drupal may not have a pre-built way to manage or display that data. But that does not necessarily mean that you need to create a new site to manage that data. Drupal is a very flexible content management system. Data structures can be built up directly within Drupal and displayed in a number of different ways in different parts of the site, much of it without writing a line of PHP code. Other content management systems would require a developer’s involvement for much more basic tasks, but with a bit of training about managing content within Drupal, you can have the developers work on making the finer, customized details of your site.

After you’ve created a successful Drupal website, your site can also grow in use. When the numbers of viewers gets into the thousands per day, Drupal and the Drupal developer community have tools to manage that. Drupal includes options for caching of data to make the site load faster, but also includes integration with more advanced cache management systems. Even some big, top websites use Drupal, such as Grammy.comm, Examiner.com, and The Economist, among many others.
Are you interesting in using Drupal for your website or learning more about the benefits?

Contact August Ash and have one of our Drupal designers assist you!

Plain and simple keywords are the words that people are typing into the search engines. So if you can show the search engines that your site is the most relevant for a specific word or phrase, then when people type in that word/phrase—and if you’ve done it right–your site should rank well in the search engines.

There are other factors search engines take into account when ranking sites, such as internal and external links, domain age, URL’s, etc, but for now we will just focus on keywords.

So knowing this, how should you use keywords? Which ones should you target? Where should you place them? And how many do you need? These are all great questions and things you will want to consider when optimizing.

Let’s start with which keywords you should target. This will vary depending on your company and industry because you want to target keywords that are relevant to your business. But, it’s also important to choose keywords that people are actually searching for.

Often companies will guess and choose what they think people are searching for to find their business, but in fact, you won’t know until you do some research. For example, on many occasions I had clients say they want XYZ as one of their keywords. I then research how many people are actually searching for that word and find out its only 10 per month. So in that case we’d want to find a similar word that more people are actually searching for…maybe ZYX gets 2,000 searches per month. Often slight variations to words can make all of the difference in searches, such as making something plural vs. singular, using abbreviations, or using an ampersand.

Another thing to consider is the competition for a keyword. If the keyword you want to use is too specific or general, there is going to be a lot of other sites targeting that same word and they might rank higher than you, simply because they have more content and information regarding that topic. If you want to find keywords that are heavily searched and have low competition, contact August Ash and ask about their SEO services.

Where you place your keywords will tell the search engines how relevant your website is to that search. So if you choose a keyword to target for a certain page on your site, you want to make sure you actually using that keyword in your content, your headings, and other places on that page. Where you place keywords within the content and the styling of them can also make a difference in the search engines’ eyes.

Lastly, let’s discuss how many keywords you should target. There is no exact formula for this but I would suggest targeting 2-3 keywords for each of your top navigation pages. You could in fact target thousands of keywords but that would be very difficult to manage. Targeting 2-3 per page will be a small enough amount to keep you focused and allow you to track your keywords, but a large enough number so you’re not using the same word and/or phrase over and over again in your content. The trick is to make your site read like it is not optimized. It should look and sound natural.

If you have any questions or are looking to start your keyword strategy, contact the SEO experts at August Ash. They can help you determine which keywords are right for your business, optimize your pages by adding keywords to the places that carry the most weight with search engines, and provide suggestions for which pages you should target with which keywords.

For example, start with your office manager, or whoever answers the phones for your company. That person is usually your first point of contact for potential customers who have questions. And those questions are like gold to you. Determine what people are asking when they call you for the first time (or if you get a lot of walk-in customers, consider what they’re asking for at the front counter). Chances are, your receptionist could rattle off 15 commonly asked questions along with a slew of “keywords” most people are using when they contact your organization.

Your sales reps, too, are a good resource for keyword brainstorming. They talk with inquisitive potential clients every day. They should know just as well, maybe better, than anyone else in the company, what people are talking about. More importantly, they’ll know specifically how they’re talking (i.e. what keywords are being used to describe your products and services).

Keep Up Your Momentum
We’ve talked about building up a high volume of possible keywords, which is a great first step toward optimizing your site. But it’s not the end. Something intentional and strategic will be needed to make use of this early brainstorming. That’s where your SEO comes in.

At August Ash, our search engine optimization team will not only lay an SEO foundation; we’ll build something worth maintaining on top of it. We get downright scientific in our keyword research, producing a list of keywords that are relevant, valuable, and smart.

Minneapolis internet marketing firm August Ash helps businesses and non-profits make sense of their myriad keyword possibilities. We treat keyword research as the strategic groundwork necessary for just about all future marketing work on a site. If you have questions about this process, or are ready to see how your site can benefit from a tested, intelligent approach to keywords, let us know.

When taking advantage of search engine optimization and Pay Per Click (PPC) to increase your traffic and profits, the use of well-researched keywords is crucial. If you have an e-commerce site, for example, your relevant and targeted keywords are key to cultivating return customers.

Smart businesses like yours put effort and time into your internet marketing programs to ensure that you benefit from appearing in the top of the search results. You have a strong selection of keywords that have been targeted for use year-round. But did you know that there are benefits to exploring seasonal keywords to take advantage of seasonal trends in e-commerce?

Seasonal keywords appear in search results during certain times of the year and have low relevance during the rest of the year. Strong seasonal periods are Christmas, Summer, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Winter, and the 4th of July for example. Almost any e-commerce site can take advantage of seasonal keywords.

By exploring seasonal search trends and patterns and applying them to your PPC campaigns in particular, you can plan marketing campaigns to run alongside annual peak times like Christmas or Valentine’s Day, establish the right timing for your Pay Per Click campaigns and determine how to increase site traffic during low traffic times surrounding major holidays.

Do you sell cookware, tools, or items for around the home online? You can capitalize on the Summer months or Father’s Day by featuring keywords targeting ‘Father’s Day gifts’ or ‘summer’ grilling and BBQ supplies, outdoor dining accessories and more.

Here’s a great example ad:
Buy Summer BBQ Gifts
Hawaiian Wood Chips, Unique
Spice Rubs for the BBQ Grill & More!

Run a travel-related business? You can take advantage of any annual event or calendar-related item relating to winter or summer getaways, camping, the 4th of July or large concerts or conventions coming to town. You could even include election years, busy wedding seasons or major sporting events!

One thing to keep in mind for your seasonal PPC campaign is that seasonal keywords ride on trends and thus, should not be included in your regular campaigns. For organization’s sake, you should create separate campaigns and ad groups to capitalize on seasonal peaks while maintaining focus on your year-round campaigns. You also want to ensure that your landing pages that are supporting the seasonal ads have been well-optimized for the target seasonal keywords.

Using seasonal keywords in a short-term, highly targeted Pay Per Click campaign can be a great add-on to your ongoing organic search engine optimization program. Ask us about setting up a targeted seasonal PPC campaign to support your e-commerce website today!

First things first- have something useful to say. If you’re not adding anything of value, consider waiting to tweet until you have that in place.

Next, become familiar with the lingo if you haven’t already. Because you have to communicate something in a short amount of space, tweets need to be succinct and direct. To combat this, the Twitter community has basically started their own language using abbreviations and acronyms.

You’ll see this when you sign up for Twitter and start seeing other peoples’ tweets. It might be a bit confusing at first, but this next section will help shed some light on that.

• @username – Use this abbreviation when responding to someone’s tweet or to acknowledge the author of an original message when forwarding tweets. The @ sign tells readers that the tweet is directed at someone and also creates an automatic link to that username’s profile.
• #topic – This indicates a specific topic or theme that the tweet falls under.
• RT – Retweet. This abbreviation signifies the message following it is a retweet, or a forwarded message, and not the original content of the tweeter.
• PRT – Please ReTweet or Partial ReTweet. Either the tweeter is asking for people to forward their message or they are announcing that the retweet has been edited.
• URLs – Often URLs are too long for the character limit on Twitter. Sites like tinyurl.com or tweetburner.com can shorten URLs for use on Twitter.

Some common acronyms used in conversation are:

• AFAIK – as far as I know
• b/c, bcz or cuz – because
• BFN – bye for now
• BTW—by the way
• EM – email
• fav/fave – favorite
• FB – Facebook
• FML – … my life (the first word most often interpreted as a four-letter one)
• FTF or F2F – face to face
• FTW—for the win
• FTL—for the lose
• FWD – forward
• GN – good night
• HT – hat tip
• HTH – hope that helps
• IIRC – if I remember correctly
• IRL – in real life
• IMHO—in my humble (or honest) opinion
• J/K – just kidding
• LI – LinkedIn
• LMK—let me know
• NP – no problem
• OH – overheard
• TMB – tweet me back
• TMI—too much information
• TY – thank you
• TYVM – thank you very much
• YW – you’re welcome

Tweeting get easier the more you do it, so don’t be afraid to try. Have fun with it and happy tweeting!

What you may not realize, though, is how many keywords you’ve already overlooked.

Before your SEO firm can work their science on your keywords, shaping your list of suggestions into a concise few keywords to target, they’re going to rely on your industry expertise. That is to say, at the earliest stage, it’s almost always helpful to begin with a “full hopper” of keyword possibilities, even if they aren’t all great keywords.

The art of whittling down that lengthy initial list will come into play later. That’s when your SEO expert will spend time analyzing the keywords, adding similar terms to the list, and nixing any that aren’t perfect for your online marketing plan.

Right now, though, in the infancy of the brainstorming process, it’s critical to include all the relevant keywords you can think of, given your extensive knowledge of the field you work in.

Coming Up With Initial Keywords: A Brainstorm or Just Spotty Showers?
If you spent the next 15 minutes compiling a list of all the keywords you think people are searching for in Google to find your site, how many do you think you could come up with? Fifteen? Seventy-five? Two hundred?

No matter how many you write down, you can be sure of one thing: you’re missing some. The most seasoned veteran in any field will invariably leave off a number of terms he or she’s been conditioned over time to disregard.

Examples of these omissions might be:

A commonly misspelled variation of a keyword (irigation services vs. irrigation services)
A plural version of a term that’s typically used in the singular, or vice versa (television repairs vs. television repair)
A two-word adaptation of something your industry only recognizes as a single compound word (land scaping vs. landscaping)

The reason it’s impossible to come up with all the potential keywords being searched for your type of product or service is because, in the world of search, we’re dealing with one gigantic variable: humans. Keywords can be as varied and unique as the people typing them. What in your eyes might seem like an obvious keyword for something, might never cross the mind of your next big customer.

That’s why it’s helpful to consider keywords from a broader perspective.

When we execute keyword research, we factor in a lot of things…because we’ve learned over time what kinds of variables are in place when it comes to anticipating keyword searches. But we couple our experience with one of our most valuable assets: our clients’ experience. When you work with AAI to build an SEO foundation for your site, one of the first things we’ll do is seek to learn all about you, your industry, and your customers. Your input, especially around the jargon you hear every day, becomes one of the most effective tools in our kit.

Minneapolis internet marketing firm August Ash helps businesses and non-profits make sense of their myriad keyword possibilities. We treat keyword research as the strategic groundwork necessary for just about all future marketing work on a site. If you have questions about this process, or are ready to see how your site can benefit from a tested, intelligent approach to keywords, let us know.

Don't let this funny-looking fellow run your SEO campaign!

While researching current events in SEO this week, I ended up on a few SEO and online marketing websites that really took me by surprise.  Not because they had innovative and useful ideas that I had to immediately take note of.  No, these sites were full of freshly blogged tips and tricks for improving your search engine presence that have been proven to be outmoded, if not detrimental to your standings in the search engines.   

So, inspired to light a torch and lead folks out of the Bad SEO Cave, I’ve put together a list of the top 10 outdated SEO practices that should never have a place any internet marketing strategist’s playbook.  If you come across a website that advertises any of these ‘tricks’, ‘strategies’ or ‘services’, RUN!  You don’t want your SEO program full of dusty old bones…  

Let’s all move on from these relics of a bygone era in SEO:  

1. Keyword Stuffing
   Back in the 90s, people realized that if you stuffed the meta keyword tag full of keywords, they could game the search engines and get great rankings.  This led to abuse of the tag, to the point where The Big 3 (Google, Bing and Yahoo) have publically stated they no longer support this tag and will ignore it if it’s used. The modern approach? Write your content naturally and include keywords throughout important content areas such as headers, meta titles and meta description.
2. Search Engine Submission
   Any company charging you to ‘submit your site to the search engines’  is making you pay for something the search engines do all on their own. The major search engines are so advanced, they will find your site quickly on their own, especially if you take advantage of a couple of simple tips.  Add an HTML and XML sitemap to your site and submit the XML sitemap to Bing and Google Webmaster tools. Also, get links from popular social media hubs to your site, as the search engines crawl these resources constantly throughout the day.
3. Automated Submission Tools
   Back before SEO was a fully fledged industry, using software that automatically submitted your site to myriad directories and bottom-rung search engines was common. Now, it is considered spamming and the bad ‘neighborhoods’ these links are associated with can get your site penalized in the search engines.  The modern approach? Build high quality, organic, relevant links slowly and with a defined strategy.
4. Reciprocal Linking (Link Exchanges)
   Link exchanges are the ‘pyramid scheme’ of link building. Some are complex affairs inlvoving 3 or more sites. Others are paid or free arrangements that bring little if any value to your site. Search engines penalize some of these arrangements and they look tacky on your site. Concentrate on building organic links by offering quality content and choose your link partners carefully.  Ideally, they should have established, well-organized sites/blogs with relevant content.
5. Article Marketing 
   Article marketing , like keyword stuffing, used to be a valuable content development and link building tool that was abused into obsolescence. A flood of low quality articles and issues with duplicate content ruined any value article marketing used to have.   The modern approach? Develop a well-designed and thoughtfully marketed business or personal blog.  This will generate organic backlinks for you if your content is deemed valuable by your niche community, helps brand you and gives you an authoritative voice online.
6. Forum and Blog Comment Spamming
   Nothing annoys a blog or forum community like a person who repeatedly makes an irrelevant comment simply to get their URL in front of people. You risk being blocked or banned from the community whose attention you’re trying to get.  Google has also devalued forum links.  The modern approach?  Leave a developed,  thoughful and useful comment that adds value to the conversation at hand.  People will appreciate this and will be more likely to click on your link if you make them curious enough!
7. Meta Keywords Tag
   Back to keyword stuffing-this tag was so abused in the past, that the search engines no longer support it.  That is one of two reasons to leave it out of your site code.  The second reason?  Competitors can easily review your keyword tags and farm them for keywords to use in their own campaigns. 
8. Duplicate Content
   There was a time when copy/pasting the same text throught the website would help you rank better, but no more.  Search engines penalize duplicate content and re-wording your resources rarely helps, as Google is particularly savvy to this tactic.   Write original, relevant content for each page and use your keywords only where necessary and in the appropriate ratio for the page.
9. PageRank Optimization
   Page Rank is simply an indicator of a site’s general health and relevance, and is no longer the end all, be all of optimization goals.  Google went so far as to remove PageRank from its Webmaster Tools after publicly stating it no longer had much value as a metric. Don’t waste your time sculpting for a metric that is iffy, at best.  The intelligent SEO practices you employ, your relevance and the value of the sites linking to you will all help to raise your PageRank, while innerlinking for usability on your site will help, also.  Do these, and your site will prosper.
10. Footer Links
    Footer links for the purposes of link exchange are spammy and ignored by search engines.  Consider linking to strong content areas of your site from the footer, if you must, but know that Google and Yahoo in particular devalue footer links. Footer links also have a very low click-thru-rate (CTR) and can dilute the strength of the links appearing earlier on the page.  Keep your footer links to privacy policies, contact links or outbound links to valued resources and leave the strong links above the fold.

Keep your tactics up to date and you’ll be steps ahead of the competition!

Have a great 4th of July! 

Briana Malmstrom
Follow me on Twitter! @BrianaAAI

We have provided professional web design, development, and internet marketing services to our clients for over a decade and are excited to bring our renowned ‘full service’ design and marketing expertise to these markets in the Southwest.

Located in the historic Littlefield Building in Downtown Austin, August Ash is available to help clients in Austin, Texas and the surrounding Hill Country. We’re happy to visit clients at their location or we can schedule a time to meet at our Austin office at our clients’ convenience.

Visit our new Austin, Texas office!

August Ash has grown to 24 full-time employees over the course of its 11 year history. While competing firms boast as many as 140 employees, August Ash’s careful management of company resources and commitment to attentive, personalized service during the recent economic downturn have allowed it to remain a leader in the web design industry and continue to provide exemplary services to a growing client base.

We look forward to continuing our tradition of personalized service and quality work in Austin, Texas!

With monikers like Naymz, Bebo, ReJaw, Yammer, BlabRoom, and Brightkite (only one of those was made up just now for effect; can you guess which one?), there’s no shortage of social media sites to enlist in your efforts. Your only limitations in this competition are your number of waking hours, and your desire to talk about yourself.

So on three, let’s race. The organization with the most social media profiles wins!

Or do they?

If this sounds a little ridiculous to you, you’re in better shape than some of your competitors. There’s an unsubstantiated belief going around right now that when it comes to social media profiles, more is better. Let’s address that for a second.

Sometimes More is Just…More
We’ve found that social media has a lot to offer, as long as you don’t try to use it all at once.

I recently came across an “about me” page for a self-proclaimed marketing guru who was obviously proud of his social media proliferation. On his site, he showcased a list of no fewer than 35 social media profiles on which he can be followed. I work with social media regularly, and there were several sites on his list I hadn’t even heard of.

A closer look at his accounts confirmed what I suspected. Most of his profiles had little or no content on them; some were set to automatically re-post what he was sharing via Twitter; and a handful of those that did have content hadn’t been updated at all this year. In short, most of his 35 social networking profiles were devoid of any real value.

I’m going to give this guy the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s naturally savvy in a lot of other business areas. What his social media activity says about him professionally, however, is that he values quantity over quality.

Be Valuable
Think about this as you navigate the sometimes uncertain waters of business social media. If you’re representing your business or non-profit in the social media spere, print out the following few questions and post them where you’ll read them every day:

• What are we saying?
• Would I follow us?
• Are we mixing in content that’s more broadly valuable to our followers (i.e. not written from a self-promotional standpoint)?

Admittedly, social media gets it’s fair share of ridicule on account of the noise it produces. In the midst of that noise, though, there are organizations who are doing it right every day. They’re communicating, innovating, sharing, growing, and adding to their bottom line. But they’re doing it all very strategically.

Minneapolis internet marketing firm August Ash helps businesses and non-profits make sense of their social media options every day. We treat social media as a tool that can bring value to an organization when used strategically. If you have questions about this blog, or are ready to see how your business can benefit from a tested, intelligent approach to social networking, let us know.