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BluDomain Mini Blog SEO and functionality review

January 2, 2012 by Marc Leave a Comment

A couple of years ago BluDomain introduced a unique HTML blog offering that BluDomain named “Mini Blog”. The BluDomain Mini Blog can stand alone or be part of one of BluDomain’s other templates. Like WordPress the BluDomain Mini Blog produces HTML blog and posts and is driven by a MySQL database. And that is pretty much the end of any substantive similarity between BluDomain’s blog offering and a typical self-hosted WordPress blog. They are entirely different in setup, administration and output.

Shortly after the release of BluDomain’s blog offering Mark Haynes did an excellent post describing its features and functionality. Mark’s inclusion of screen captures together with step-by-step administration and post creation discussion provides a good insight into the BluDomain Mini Blog. But his summation includes a potential caveat “If you’re running a word press blog and using all the features for solid SEO then this blog is a big step backwards.” So it is useful to add a comparison of BluDomain Mini blog and a standard WordPress blog features.

When Mark published his review WordPress was at version 2.8.4. In the intervening 2+ years BluDomain’s Mini Blog has not been updated, yet WordPress has had five (5) major update revisions and is now up to version 3.3. So let’s compare BluDomain Mini Blog to WordPress Blog with current versions.

BluDomain Mini Blog comparison to a WordPress Blog

Feature/Function	BluDomain Mini Blog	WordPress Blog
Maximum width	800 pixels	Unlimited
Upload background	Yes	Yes
Choose your own colors	Yes	Yes
RSS	Posts	Posts and Comments
External links	3	Unlimited
Social Media icons/links	Facebook, Twitter	All, Any, unlimited
Pages	Just 1 for Contact	Unlimited
Image tags	Alt	Alt, Title, Description, Caption
Video support	Yes	Yes
Custom navigation	No	Yes
SEO	Description, Page title	Description, Page title, Custom title, Optimized URL links, H1, H2, Canonical options
Comments discussion	No	Yes, nested comments
Hierarchy	None	Yes, Categories and Tags
Themes	None	1,400+ Free to download
Extensions	None	17,000+ Free to plugins
Cost	$50, installed	Free to download
End user license	Proprietary	Open source GPL2

Comparing the features and functionality it is difficult not to reach for the advantages of WordPress. Even if you decide to use our optimized WordPress for BluDomain setup service with an included custom premium theme utilizing all the advantage WordPress offeres in SEO and visitor engagement, the total cost is still very competitive. And, WordPress can work on the same hosting that you would use for almost any BluDomain site.

If you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment, call or email.

Filed Under: Blogs, BluDomain, BluDomain HTML, SEO, WordPress Tagged With: Blogs, BluDomain, HTML, Internet Marketing, search engine optimization, search optimization, SEO, Social Networks, WordPress

Best WordPress SEO permalink structure for blogs and sites is now made simple

January 2, 2012 by Marc 2 Comments

For SEO and site visitor engagement the URLs of your pages and posts can make a big difference. Fortunately new code in WordPress 3.3 allows more freedom in setting the URL link for your content with no negative performance or response time impact for the choice you make. Now your WordPress based site can have both user and search engine friendly permalink URLs with no penalty.

Prior to WordPress 3.3 setting the optimal URL for SEO and site visitors could cause your site to respond more slowly. This was as a result of a performance penalty related to “verbose rewrite rules” within WordPress which dictated increased database calls for URLs which included only the title or “postname”. Yet for visitor engagement and SEO slower site performance was often the result of an choosing SEO preferred option.

WordPress has a Settings option for what are called “permalinks“, meaning that the URL composition for the page or post can be modified or selected site wide. This is how WordPress describes the feature; “By default WordPress uses web URLs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them, however WordPress offers you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your permalinks and archives. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links.”

Using a URL page/post descriptive keyword structure improves engagementfrom site visitors, who will be more inclined to visit descriptive URLs, and search engines which will be able to index and retrieve keywords from the URL when they match search terms. This can help a lot with SEO and your site visitor conversion. Google and other search engines have made it so your permalinks are a basic part of a search engine user’s decision making process. The URL permalink appears as part of your search snippet on search result pages. Using redundant terms from categories in your permalink URL option could make your site appear spammy. While using a date in the permalink could make your content seem dated. Both cause unneeded length and useless terms in your URL. Fortunately those compromises are no longer needed.

WordPress permalink performance considerations are now resolved.

Up until WordPress 3.3, there was a quite serious performance issue when you have a lot of pages when you use just the postname, that is solved in WordPress 3.3. We can now use a simple permalink URL having only the domain and postname. This means shorter undated URLs with less redundant terms and more relative keyword content are possible with no performance issues. There are no more excuses to not use just the postname.

The danger of changing WordPress permalink URLs on an established site

Now before you change the permalink URLs of an existing site consider the potential search and SEO impact. Despite how easy it is to change permalinks in Admin, it is complex and can have a dramatic negative impact on your site if you’re not careful. After all you do not want to present a site with many multiple “404 page not found” results to your visitors. There are two steps in changing your WordPress permalink structure.

The first is simple, go to Settings -> Permalinks and select “Post name”.
The second step is to redirect your old permalinks to your new ones. To do that, you have to add redirects to your .htaccess file. Fortunately Joost de Valk has created an excellent webpage-based tool to address the potential negative impact from changing the permalink URL for sites which already have external links to content on other sites and in search engines. It automatically generates the redirect for you based on your domain and your old permalink structure which you can then include in your site’s .htaccess file.

If you make the change to your .htaccess file please test it by looking up your content on your site in a search engine and clicking through to that post/page on your site.

For more information about URLs and SEO read this article from Search Engine Journal, “URLs and SEO: Various Strategies for URL File Names“.

And if you have any problem feel free to email or call.

Filed Under: Search Engines, SEO, WordPress Tagged With: Blogs, permalink, search engine optimization, search optimization, URL, web/blogsites, Websites, WordPress

Improve your BluDomain SEO with our no-risk WordPress BluDomain Setup

December 26, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

We wanted to blog post about our new WordPress BluDomain Setup package. For just $197.00 it is only the cost of a couple of BluDomain options, but can fill almost all site SEO and marketing needs. From your blog to SEO maximized Splash page to HTML and smartphone/tablet options (even iPhone/iPad), shopping carts, video, galleries and more. Adding WordPress, in the right way, to your BluDomain site offers maximum flexibility and SEO. It takes us just one day and there is no risk.

Derived from our four years of experience working with BluDomain users and an equal period of in-depth WordPress development it is the best setup and configuration possible and one that can grow as WordPress and BluDomain continue to develop. We uniquely know BluDomain and WordPress.

This is some of what is included in our WordPress BluDomain Setup Package:

Complete WordPress Installation on your BluDomain hosting
Free StudioPress Genesis Premium parent and child theme. Including the same theme we most often use when making optimal BluDomain splash pages or you can choose any other StudioPress theme as an alternative option
Optimize your Blog for Search Engines and tips to increase your Search Engine Ranking Position
Optimal URL configuration for SEO. No symbols, unnecessary or redundant terms
Making Your Blog Spam resistant
Automate Daily Backups for safety
Setup a Professional Email and WP based Contact Form
Setup FeedBurner account to handle your RSS Subscribers
Setup Email Subscription Option and Embed it in your Blog
Free Support via Email
And we install plugins that your blog/website really needs and may suggest some that might help for your specific niche. Including plugins for Social Media linking, attractive image slideshows and galleries, Facebook Tabs, your own short Twitter URLs, automatic sitemap generation and many more. By using all of these you will be off to a better start.

Send us an email or call now to get started! We will reply asking for the info we need to get started.

Risk Free! No up-front payment, pay when we are done. And if we are not finished within 24 business hours of the receipt of your site info … it is FREE!

Filed Under: BluDomain, Internet Marketing, SEO, WordPress Tagged With: BluDomain, Internet Marketing, search engine optimization, Search Engines, search marketing, search optimization, SEO, web/blogsites, WordPress

Do BluDomain’s templates with HTML site options really help your website’s SEO? Ten reviewed.

December 21, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

Many of BluDomain‘s Flash websites come with optional HTML versions that are supposed to help improve your BluDomain site’s SEO. Recently I had occasion to review the potential effectiveness of an optional BluDomain HTML version’s series of pages from an SEO perspective for a client. Before I get into the results let’s review what BluDomain explains and advises are the benefits of having the $50-$100 BluDomain HTML option.

A duplicate HTML version of your template. It automatically takes on all edits made within the administrative editing area of your flash site. The HTML site is also compatible with Apple’s iPad. The HTML site is highly beneficial for search engines, each word and image is searchable and as such your site will gain much more search engine exposure.

So how beneficial are BluDomain’s HTML template options for “search engine exposure”? First lets explore the SEO qualities of the BluDomain HTML versions. This post began as a simple comment but with search engine marketing being so crucial to marketing success I decided to review all the BluDomain website templates offering an HTML option. My procedure for doing this was to manually review the source code for the “About” page (or similar) of each template, checking the scoring elements of SEO Doctor‘s audit of the About page together with using webconfs.com Search Engine Spider simulator to see the crawlable elements and indexable content of the About (or similar) page.

Summary of BluDomain Template HTML SEO findings

Surprisingly little additional SEO and “search engine exposure” is provided with the BluDomain HTML option. Currently BluDomain offers ten (10) templates with HTML options. But my review revealed that:

40% of BluDomain’s available HTML site options do not present any search engine indexable page content
60% of BluDomain’s available BluDomain HTML site options provide very SEO unfriendly URLs, while the remaining 40% could use improvement.
30% of BluDomain’s available BluDomain HTML site options do not have search engine crawable internal navigation/menu links
None of BluDomain’s templates offer SEO valuable H1 and H2 tagged headlines,

From BluDomain’s HTML template demonstration examples provided on BluDomain’s website, the HTML template options are not well constructed for improved site SEO, providing little to no expected real-world improved search ranking results.

A high performance SEO alternative to BluD0main HTML option is to use a well constructed WordPress website theme in conjunction with a Bludomain Flash template. WordPress is very compatible with BluDomain and is able to be installed in almost all BluDomain hosting accounts. WordPress generated blog posts and pages are well-respected for providing top-tier SEO and social network marketing. A well designed premium theme is easy to style and can not only a blog, but all the pages such as About, Contact and Investment and even replace the standard Bludomain splash/landing page. Plus unlimited additional pages, and features like video, mobile version, sitemap generation and more for no additional cost.We have packages beginning as low as $197 which include WordPress install, setup/configuration for good SEO and even an easy to style premium theme (an $75+ value), which includes the feature to create a new Splash page with free lifetime theme upgrades. We even install and pre-configure over 12 needed high value plugins and setup URL generation for SEO best practice. Using WordPress for the site’s SEO provides superior SEO, more features plus the best blog platform at a price that compares favorably to BluDomain’s cost with just 2-3 options, like video, mobile and HTML.

Individual Bludomain Template HTML audit observations

Below are observations for the About page of each of BluDomain’s HTML option websites:

Bludomain template name Aubrey
HTML option cost $50
Audited HTML page: http://www.bludomaintemplates.com/aubrey/html/#!/about_me