We find that Sitecore offers flexibility, power, ease of use and constant innovation that serves our clients well.

In the fast-changing and evolving world of web content, it can be difficult to know if a particular WCM product is keeping up with the changes and spearheading innovative solutions.

However, a Gartner’s MarketScope analysis has again confirmed that Sitecore is not only a solid performer in the world of WCM, but is in fact a visionary and a leader in the market.

Gartner’s analysis examines factors such as the core services and products offered in a content management system, including the features and feature groupings, the quality of the offerings, and whether or not the features are native or offered through agreements with third party vendors.

They also consider the overall business stability of the organization, their financial vision and strategy and likelihood of continued support for their WCM product.

Other factors taken into consideration in the equation are market responsiveness, the product’s track record in the past, the quality and execution of the product’s marketing program, actual customer experiences with the product, and the functionality of the business organization itself.

In a comparison to 17 other content management systems, no other system beats Sitecore for its completeness of vision or its ability to execute it’s vision and make it happen in the real world.

Take a look at Gartners evaluation, and see if you’d like to put the Sitecore system to work for your online business. If so, our Sitecore specialists at WebDatamation can make it happen for you.

For businesses that consider their website and their customers who contact them online to be an integral part of their business, using a content management system is only logical. It will allow those businesses to provide a seamless, high quality online experience that open source or low-end solutions simply can’t provide.

For many of our customers, their website is a strategic part of their business. The added security and performance features of a CMS allow these businesses to focus the website and the usability features that make the customer experience truly superior.

By giving developers and content providers a simple to use and intuitive system, a CMS allows the marketing department or the sales department to create website content and design elements of the site. These professionals understand the customers and their needs better than developers or IT departments. With a CMS, the control goes to the people with the ideas, not only to the people with the programming expertise

The easy integration with business applications also provides a great opportunity for businesses to provide a better integration of Customer Relationship Management software and Enterprise Resource Planning software, as well as any analytics tools.

Because you, the company, are in control of the content and the programs and tools that you use on your site, you are able to better tailor your customers’ experience on your website, offer them seamless integration of eCommerce products and Web 2.0 feature, and fully optimize your site for search engines, so current and new customers can find you easily.

With so many advantages for developers and for the end customers, its easy to see why Content Management Systems are increasingly popular.

We think we offer you the best possible CMS with Sitecore. While there are still features they can improve, as we’ve mentioned here before, overall they provide a powerful program that is fully scalable so it can grow with your company. It’s also easy to use and forward thinking, constantly updating the product and forecasting the next trend, then responding to it.

Their “Gold” partner status with Microsoft ensures continuing support for all its best features.

If you haven’t utilized the power of a great CMS to provide your customer with the best possible experience online, I’d suggest giving it a try today.

Blogs implement topical pooling of link flow through using a platform of internal linking that makes it crystal clear to search engines what each sub folder is about.

Keep in mind that most sub folders are still viewed by search engines as entirely different sites, so through strategically cross-linking pages or posts from one sub folder to another, the synergy it creates can create spikes of link flow which translate into rankings.

Another great advantage blogs offer to static or legacy (CMS) content management systems that lack SEO prowess is, the ability to ping and promote its own content through RSS feeds and send search engine spiders deeper into a site.

The logic is simple, if you create a relevant page with a specific ranking objective (such as creating another layer to secure a competitive series of keywords, a hub page or a landing page), you can sculpt which page gets the most link weight from other pages based on site architecture and internal linking.

Blogs take the content and make it accessible instantly to search engines and puts your page in the Que for crawling from using RSS feeds. Once the bots arrive, if you have any links on the page, they follow and ping those links as well (which in turn schedule them for crawling).

This chain reaction can bring pages that have tapered off and fallen to less than favorable positions due to neglect or lack of revision or links. Blogs ensure that (a) more link flow is captured from the RSS and activity from syndication as well as (b) that the pages linked to from it have a new opportunity to make a second impression for search engine relevance.

Once a page is in the search engines’ index, it can start aging and maturing. Based on how it is linked to, the value of the content in context to other related information on your site and the authority it creates over time internally, each page is an asset to be eventually leveraged for SERP domination.

Out of site, out of mind applies for search engine spiders. If your content was fresh (way back in 2007) and you really haven’t done anything to stand out or target any additional phrases, then you give them no reason to return to pay attention to your website.

With the constant pressure of competition vying for coveted market share (which is divisible by rankings earmarked by keywords), your pages are either a relevant result or they are not. Part of that relevance is determined by post frequency (how often your site contribute new pages or revise older content), the other part is, how you link to yourself and how others link to you.

Without a solid foundation any links you acquire from other websites only have a limited shelf life. If your pages have a solid site architecture (like a blog) can move that link flow around within the site to the pages that need it most, the potency of each link can be sustained further with less effort.

Two things to consider the waning factor and the tendency for information to get archived in blogs, both can create drops in position. The remedy to this is deep linking (linking to other pages other than the homepage) with specific anchor text, continuity and volume from other areas of the site.

For example, if I have a page tucked away deep in the site (3 sub folders away from the root folder) and I am expecting to drive traffic there and have that page rank well in search engines, the fact that it is so far away from the primary navigation presents a challenge.

Think of it as a pyramid of glasses and pouring champagne in the top glass and having the spillover funnel down from glass to glass so that even the glasses on the bottom are full.

Link flow works in this manor. However, in this application, links are the fluid moving from one vessel (page) to another and if they have more than 50% fluid, then they can garner rankings in search engines (since they now have passed the threshold of internal relevance).

The point being, before you can acquire rankings, your pages need to be indexed. The more pages you have indexed on a topic, the better. Even more important, the number of pages internally linked on a topic, the easier it becomes to have the aggregate collective coherence of those pages appear for multiple keywords.

Pages with stronger internal links require less external links to rank higher. So, to answer the original question posed at the beginning of this post, the purpose of having a blog is to develop an authority website.

By reinforcing your topic (theming and siloing), your site is deemed an authority (which is the real reason to start a blog), in addition to the ease of posting updates or new content.

The short-term benefits will be obvious, the ability to create spikes in rankings for keywords in the titles and topics of the post. The long-term benefits are immeasurable as your site gains more momentum and becomes a market share devouring ranking juggernaut if managed with purpose.

Thank you for reading the SEO Design Solutions Blog, if you haven’t already, sign up for our RSS feed for more useful SEO tips and Techniques.

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/12/using-blogs-for-seo-rss-and-internal-links/feed/ 2 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/11/intro-to-dotnetnuke/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/11/intro-to-dotnetnuke/#comments Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:51:57 +0000 Akshay Sura http://www.webdatasource.com/?p=7685 DotNetNuke - another powerful content management system to add to the existing list. With so many CMS's around and each one of them offering you a vast set of features, you feel pampered. A few years back, building your dream website for your organization and managing its content simultaneously, seemed such a daunting task. However after Content Management Systems have come into existence, publishing dynamic content in a consistently structured and customized manner has been astonishingly simplified.

With over 500,000 registered users and 5.0 million downloads in late 2007 (as per official sources), DotNetNuke has become one of today’s largest and effective open source CMS. It has been written in Microsoft’s VB.NET for the ASP.NET (also by Microsoft) framework. With an extensible core and a set of additional customization features that include modules and skins, DotNetNuke can be used to develop, deploy and efficiently manage websites, including extranets and intranets.

Sitecore is based on the .NET technology. Setting up and deploying Sitecore is quite straightforward and you can get started with creating your new website rightaway. Sitecore is totally committed to the .NET framework and hence provides regular stable releases and updates thus complimenting the latest releases of .NET, Visual Studio, SQL server and Windows server.

One striking feature that you would notice once you have started creating your website with Sitecore is the ability to edit content In-Line. This allows you (or your editor) to browse through the pages of your site, just as a customer or an external user would normally do, and edit content by simply clicking on desired areas. This provides you an instantaneous feedback on the overall appearance and content of the edited area and saves quite a lot of your time. Editing content on one browser window and then testing the results on another seems quite a hassle, does it not?

Sitecore has a rich set of features some of which we shall discuss here. It provides you with a role based authorization scheme for your page content editors to edit parts of the site, based on their respective needs. Design is totally segregated from content and designers get a WYSIWYG environment to effectively create designs and page layouts without having to code. Sitecore claims to increase your page rankings and goal conversions, additionally providing you exhaustive reports on website statistics.

There is also some real good news for advanced developers. Sitecore has Visual Studio integration with intellisense and this enables programmers to thoroughly explore and customize the rich Sitecore API consisting of over more than 1,300 classes and 5,000 methods. It has a pipeline based architecture based on the .NET framework that is both open and extensible. Thus, advanced developers, proficient in Visual Studio can make use of this open architecture to their advantage and customize it to fit the requirements of their organization. They may even add new custom features.

However, it is worthwhile to mention here that mere installation and getting started with any CMS that has an extensive set of features is not just enough. If your content is not professional and well managed, you may get disastrous results. It is worth paying to ensure that enough research has been put to create content that best defines your product and your customer’s requirements. All you need to do now is install your desired CMS and see your sales soar!

You do not require beforehand knowledge of Microsoft’s .NET framework or C# in particular, to get started with the Umbraco CMS. All you would need is Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) server, where you would host and deploy your website.

I would like to mention here that Umbraco has particularly laid emphasis on the “ease of use” aspect. Allowing you to insert any page control from a drop down is a huge time saver. Moreover it is a completely open templating system with which designers can create accessible and valid XHTML with their markup left intact. This means that without any extensive know-how of technical parameters, designers can create professional design templates with complete freedom. This segregates the overall logic form the design within the system that is to be developed.

Integration of custom controls is as easy as it gets when it comes to Umbraco. All you would need to do is build your custom control in Visual Studio, copy the “.ascx” and “.dll” files into their appropriate folders in Umbraco and you are done.

One thing that is worthwhile to mention here is the Umbraco forum. If you are new to Umbraco, visiting the forum is the best way to get started. The forum is quite active with both experienced and novice developers sharing their problems, views and opinions. It is quite exhaustive so if you are stuck up with a problem in Umbraco, you might get your clarifications here real quick. Umbraco has recently launched umbraco.tv which is a video based tutorial website that would aid in its documentation and a better understanding of the Umbraco CMS by its users.

The official website of Umbraco claims, “You can do anything” with Umbraco. True to the fact, if you are a C# expert, then you may modify parts of the core which are basically C# (“.cs”) scripts, to suit your custom needs. However if you are a novice, just install and get started!

Data is represented as items. These items of different types are combined in a tree structure such that an item can have a parent and child items.

Templates are like Object Oriented Classes. A template contains fields that contain the actual content for an item. An item is an instance of a template just as an Object is an instance of a class. A template can have a “Master” which is used to create an item of a template. A master plays the same role as an Object Oriented Constructor. Masters can be configured to specify default values for fields and can specify sub-items that should be created when an item is first created. Templates can be based on other templates and inherit their fields, much like Object Oriented inheritance.

In Sitecore, Presentation is built from three things:

• layout
• sublayouts
• renderings

Content is built in Sitecore using a single layout and any number of sublayouts and renderings. A layout is an aspx page. It can contain html, code and place holders to which sublayouts and renderings can be assigned. A sublayout is an ascx user control which can contain html, code and place holders to which other sublayouts and renderings can be assigned. A rendering is an xslt stylesheet which can process the data item provided to it in xml format. Unlike layouts and sublayouts, a rendering can not contain sublayouts.

Content and Presentation are finally united in Sitecore by assigning a layout to a template or a specific Item.

When an item is requested from an http request URL which contains the path to the item in the content tree, Sitecore determines the layout to use to display the item. Multiple layouts can be specified for an item by way of devices. One device could specify for example a browser layout for the item and another could specify a print layout for the same data item.

Content and presentation can be designed in parallel. The Sitecore documentation suggests modeling the content tree based on the desired site navigation. Sitecore also supports internationalization, so that content can be generated for different languages.

It also supports workflows which determine steps that items must traverse before being published. Content will not be visible on a site until it is published.

Sitecore provides a pessimistic security model to assign permissions to users and groups. It is pessimistic in that if a user is not explicitly assigned permission, the user will not be granted the permission.

For dynamically generated content, site core has an extensive .net api that can be used in Layouts and sublayouts. It also provides xslt extensions that can facilitate building xslt renderings from sitecore xml.

Joomla is equally beneficial for a start up company or small business as it is for an established business. A Start up company (start-up venture) often has limited budget whether it is for website design or for any other business needs. Unless the business is an online venture; it is a common practice for start up companies to invest only in a simple informational website to begin with. Such a website may have a visually appealing design but often offers limited functionality.

Although all businesses small or large understand the value of an up market website; limited funds often prevent a start up company from investing in a powerful website to start with. In later stages when the business has grown a business can justify the higher costs involved in developing a full fledged database driven website.

Joomla allows a start up company to meet this challenge as it allows them to utilise a powerful website at a fraction of the cost. A Website designed in Joomla is powerful and rich with features found mostly on websites of established businesses. Joomla enables a start up company to have a strong online presence from the start thereby gaining competitive advantage over its competitors.

Joomla reduces the cost of developing a powerful database driven website manifolds.

Internet today plays a vital role in our day to lives. The changes in consumer behaviour pattern have made having an effective online presence a necessity for any business to succeed.

Lack of in-house technical expertise is another reason that prevents a start up company from utilising advanced websites or web based applications. Traditional database driven websites and content management systems can be complicated to use and require technical knowledge or training to use. Lack of funds for training coupled with lack of manpower with technical knowledge may prevent a start up company from using a content management system or a powerful web based software.

Joomla on the other hand is easy to use and does not require technical knowledge to use. Commonly used tasks do not require any training or technical experience. In most cases a Joomla website configured properly at launch will not require any maintenance or administration.

Websites designed in Joomla are interactive. Unlike traditional informational websites designed in Joomla are interactive and facilitate two way interaction between the company and users. Features such as customer registration, Registration for newsletters and enquiry forms come built into Website designed with Joomla.

Joomla is free to use and does not have any on going licence fee. This is appealing for start up companies and smaller businesses as cost of maintaining the website is almost null. This does not compromise the quality of the website in any way and some of the most successful websites are designed in Joomla. Established businesses as well start up and smaller companies across the world have preferred to use Joomla over other content management systems.

The features I like about Sitecore are its Structure, the ease of Navigation and most of all –its stability. The one drawback, however, is that the process of creating a site through SiteCore is different than conventional ways. This new approach might make a project more tedious but the final result you get through Sitecore is well worth the effort. Relatively speaking, all CMS’s have their pros and cons, though.

Many of you might have heard about Umbraco. All the news and blog entries about Umbraco sparked an interest in me to play around with it. I downloaded the latest version 3.0.3 from their website Umbraco.org. It far exceeded my expectations for a CMS, let alone a free Open Source CMS.

I have to be honest, I didn’t get to explore it as much as I would have liked to,but it looks promising. It only has a 4mb footprint and it’s extremely fast compared to DotNetNuke. It might even replace my use of DotNetNuke!

Since we’ve been offering the SEO classes over the past 7 months, we’ve reviewed over 40 websites. In each class of 6 online marketers, there’s never a dearth of problems to point out to them. I’m not talking about minor glitches here, but stuff that prevents the website from reaching its full potential with the search engines. In other words, as long as these problems exist, they’re not going to be able to gain all the targeted search engine traffic that they could be.

To put it into terms that anyone can relate to–the company is basically losing money every day they don’t fix their website.

Here are 6 common website mistakes that could be costing you money:

1. JavaScript or other crawler-unfriendly navigation that may impede indexing. Most newer sites don’t have this problem, but there’s almost always at least 1 site we review in every class that has its main navigation pretty much invisible to the search engines. If your navigation basically doesn’t exist as far as Google is concerned, then it’s very difficult to get all of the pages of your website indexed.

2. Navigation that buries important pages within the site architecture. The deeper that pages are buried within the website, the less importance they are given. For SEO, as well as usability purposes, it’s often helpful to showcase important sections of the website up an additional level in the site’s hierarchy. This can usually be achieved via a search-friendly CSS mouse-over menu.

3. Duplicate “pages” getting indexed under multiple URLs. While Google has, for the most part, worked out many of their canonical issues of the past and now generally realize that www.example.com/index.php is the same as www.example.com, many content management systems (CMS) take things a step further and provide a whole array of URLs for any one particular page of content. Sometimes this is done purposely for tracking reasons, as with session ids or tracking links appended to the end of URLs; but other times, it’s simply done because the CMS was never designed with search engines in mind. This is not a good thing, as it can cause the spiders to be so busy indexing the same content that they miss the more important stuff.