Why ExpressionEngine has great SEO

ExpressionEngine is fast-becoming my ‘go to’ solution for genuine CMS work for a multitude of reasons. However, one often-overlooked aspect when choosing a CMS is it’s inherent SEO features. ExpressionEngine is a cut above a lot of the competition ‘out-of-the-box’; here are a few of its SEO features:

• Ability to define custom URL Structure. Unlike many other enterprise-level CMS platforms, ExpressionEngine makes it easy to set static, semantic URLs, with the ability to specify custom directory structures. Some other CMSes require core hacks to handle even the most simple structure.
• Ability to specify custom metadata. ExpressionEngine makes it incredibly easy to define custom page title tags, meta descriptions, meta keywords, and other on-page SEO elements. While other platforms offer this functionality, ExpressionEngine goes a step beyond other Content Management Systems by making it very easy to manually override default metadata by simply tweaking your templates. This makes it easy and scalable to implement on-page optimization onto thousands of ‘long tail pages’ saving time, while still giving marketing teams the precise control that’s needed to have an effective SEO strategy.
• Internal linking is easy – ExpressionEngine allows pages to reside in multiple categories and channels, without having to worry about duplicate content. Because ExpressionEngine does such a great job of allowing you to display and publish content, it becomes easy to interlink pages.
• An easy way to generate XML Sitemaps – Having a properly formatted XML sitemap is a key step towards getting content indexed in the search engines. Thanks to the inherent flexibility of its template structure, ExpressionEngine is able to easily output a perfectly-formatted XML sitemap, complete with custom priority codes.
• Robust indexing and caching – ExpressionEngine’s advanced caching capabilities, including template caching, query caching, and tag caching reduces server load and improves page loadtime, making it easier for the spiders to index your pages.
• Easy integration with Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer – Analyzing data is key to making your SEO efforts successful. Whereas many other systems make you update multiple pages to put on Analytics scripts, with ExpressionEngine, it’s literally a copy/paste situation. Even setting up advanced subdomain tracking, custom variables, and event tracking is painless, taking minutes where other systems take hours.

Questions to ask when planning a new online shop

There’s an awful lot to think about when making the decision to launch an online shop, and it’s worth being very clear on the requirements before any design or development begins. This will ensure we select the right tools for the job and engage the right people to create the look of the site.

Shop Front (Appearance)

• What other sites do you like the look of?
• Do you have an existing logo, branding or colour scheme?
• Do you need logo and branding to be created for you?
• Should the front page have a welcome message, a carousel of images, static images, latest offers or a combination of features?

Products – what you are selling

• What type of products do you sell?
• How many products will you sell online (approx.)?
• What specific product information do you wish to display online to aid your customers in the buying process?
• Do your products have options? For example, do products have choices of size, colour, material, etc
• Approximately how many images will each product have (max)?
• Would you like to show related products when customers view a product?
• Are your products non-physical such as downloads, membership, etc?

Categorisation – how your products are organised

• Should products be grouped together into categories? This can help users find what they need more efficiently, particularly if you have many products
• If so, how many categories are required (approx.)?
• Do you need multiple levels of categorisation? e.g. Boys Clothes -> Shirts Trousers Jackets
• Would you like users to be able to search for products on your website?

Checkout

Discounts & promotions

• Will you need to offer your customers discounts on your products such as vouchers or coupons?
• Will you need to offer discounted or promotional prices? Such as Christmas or Valentines promotions?

Delivery / shipping

• Are your products shippable and do you charge for delivering your products to your customers?
• What structure do you use for this?
  • Flat rate
  • Weight based
  • Cost based
  • Size based
  • Other (please detail)
• Do you intend to ship orders abroad? If so, how does this affect your delivery charges?

Taking payments

• Are you VAT registered?
• Are all your products VAT applicable?
• Do you have a preferred payment gateway you wish to use ie sagepay, paypal etc? A payment gateway is used to process credit card payments
• Do you want to offer fully integrated payment processing on your website? Most gateways can process the payments away from your site (e.g. PayPal, SagePay Form) which is a simpler option
• If you want to process payment within your site, are you aware of the PCI compliance issues related to this?
  PCI is a set of industry data standards and regulations to decrease the amount of online fraud – read more about PCI DSS
• Do you have a merchant account with your bank? Does your current bank offer merchant accounts?
• Do you have the following to show on your online shop?
  • Terms and conditions
  • Returns policy
  • Privacy & security policies
  • Guarantee
  • Company registration details
  • VAT registration if applicable
  • Contact details – email, telephone, address
  • Relevant disclaimers

  The majority of these are required by many payment gateway providers before they will authorise your account.

• Do you require customers to sign up for an account before they can order or do you want to permit “anonymous” checkout?
• Do you intend to trade internationally?
• If so, do you require multilingual and/or multicurrency?

Back office – managing your online store

• Do you want your customers to be kept up to date with latest offers and products?
  They could do so by signing up to a mailing list either during checkout or using a standalone signup form
• Do you require reporting for your online store?
  For example, sales reports, customer reports, stock reports, product reports
• Do you need to be able to manually create orders such as taking telephone orders or orders in person?
• Would you like customers to be able to view current/past orders and manage their account details online?
• Do you have staff that process orders?
• If so, will they need special permissions to do so without editing the rest of the website?
• Do you require your online store to communicate with any external systems such as:
  • CRM (customer relationship managers – Sales Force, Netsuite, etc)
  • Accounts packages (Sage, QuickBooks, other)
  • Other (please detail)
• Do you require bulk product data uploading or will you enter the products into the website manually?
  Generally, it is quite straight forward to upload product data and images from an excel spreadsheet or CSV formatted document (comma separated values)
• Do you require web hosting or will you organise hosting yourself?
• Do you require any of the following related features for your store:
  • Search engine optimisation (SEO) management – meta tags, titles, keywords, HTML & XML sitemaps, search engine submission
  • Blog/news section
  • Information pages – about us, contact, find us, others
  • Mobile commerce – selling over mobile devices (iphone, blackberry, ipad, etc)
  • Contact forms and/or newsletter signup forms
  • Social media integration and social bookmarking – feeds for Facebook, Twitter and/or You Tube
  • Advertising – ability for companies to pay for banner ads on your site

Kinetic Pulse attempts the Bath Half Marathon

Sunday 11th March 2012 will see both myself and Martyn attempt to run the Bath Half Marathon.

Although we have watched it many times – the main route goes right past Kinetic Pulse Towers -  it was only this year we felt sufficiently confident to have a go! We had both taken part in a few 5k& 10k races over the past couple of years and thought we were just about ready for the challenge!
We have been training since last summer but upping the distance very gradually – even now I’m worried I won’t make it round!

But I am feeling fitter and actually quite enjoying running (something I thought I would never say! I rememebr desperately trying to do anything to get out of the ghastly cross country runs at school…)

I am running for Run for Congo Women – a charity that supports & sponsors women in war torn Congo.

Martyn is running to support the RNLI.
We’d be delighted if you could spare some cash to sponsor us in our valiant, knee breaking, efforts.

New site for Redwood Strip Curtains launched

Redwood approached us recently with a request to complete, enhance and launch their OSCommerce website which had been sitting around in a semi-developed state for quite some time!

The enhancements included:

• Custom product price calculations
• Custom user calculators
• Integration with YouTube Channel
• Setup and integration with WorldPay gateway
• Fixing issues with existing OSCommerce modules
• Enhancing some of the usability and visual features of the site

Due to the very specific business and technical requirements, we worked very closely with the company so that we could deliver this project economically and quickly

New website for Energy Efficient Widcombe launched

We recently launched a new WordPress website for a local community drive Energy Efficient Widcombe.

This group runs regular workshops & community events about topics such as energy-saving & insulation, and provide a support network for the more vunerable members of the commuity during the colder months.

The website needed to be simple to use & navigate and need to use a simple CMS to allow the group to easily update content. Kinetic Pulse came up with a simple, yet eye catching design based on the default Worpdress 2012 theme and gave the client comprehensive training in how to use WordPress.