The first week in December marks the Closed Loop Marketing company retreat to The Web Builder 2.0 conference in Las Vegas. While four of the eight team members are speaking at the conference, the remainder of the team will be there to attend the conference and learn as much as possible. Oh, and to support our team speakers, of course.

On Monday, December 3rd Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus co-present The Right Tests at the Right Times.

In this session Lance and Sandra will talk about how conducting user tests at several critical stages of a Web development project can save time and money””all without a testing lab. Listeners will learn how to use a variety of usability tests””design feedback, paper prototyping, card sorting, task and timing analysis, and multivariate testing””to iteratively shape their projects and get great user feedback.

On Tuesday, December 4th all of our speakers will present.

Lance will present Online Advertising Update: Google Takes Over

Conference attendees will learn how the online advertising landscape has shifted dramatically over the past few years as Search has grown to be the dominant ad platform. Google has been the driving force behind the mainstreaming of Search, but with its recent moves it is clear that Google’s vision is much broader. In this session he will review the reasons behind the major shift in ad dollars toward the Internet, analyze the current state of online advertising and discuss the trends and players that are promising to reshape the advertising world as we know it. Lance will do a live demonstration of the Google AdWords platform and explain its role in catapulting Google to the top. And he will end by showing why Google is poised to turn the whole advertising industry (not just online) on its head.

Later that day Lance will speak on Pleasing Users and Search Engines Alike: Balancing Design, Usability and SEO

This session will demonstrate why showing up in search results (through search engine optimization) is important. In addition, he’ll also go under the hood of sites that have achieved beauty and usability while attaining top rankings in the major search engines. Attendees of this session will leave with practical tips on how to structure, design, and code sites in ways that please both users and search engines.

Sandra Niehaus will present a session on Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers (which is also the title of Lance and Sandra’s new book.) Sandra will use case studies to focus on the most important concepts and elements for creating effective landing pages, home pages, detail pages, and the checkout process. Attendees of this session will learn how to prioritize web design efforts by aligning them with business goals and walk away with practical design guidelines for improving ROI.

The remaining speakers Amy Greer and Roger Gilliam will speak about Harnessing the Power of RSS

In this informative and educational presentation, attendees will learn the difference between “nice to have” and “must have” feed elements””and the impact those elements have on people finding your feeds. The audience will see good and bad examples of how feeds render in various feed readers and learn what you can do about it. They will even provide a checklist of RSS best practices to take with you. Packed with specific examples, screen shots and actionable intelligence, this session will give the information you need to harness the power of RSS for your organization.

We are looking forward to our trip to Las Vegas and the Web Builder 2.0 Conference. For those of you attending, we will see you there. For those of you who can’t make it, check our blog for a recap upon our return.

For more information about Web Builder 2.0, check out the official conference website.

This is part two of a three-part follow-up series to my article Complete Blog Optimization Guidelines.

Part one, Optimize RSS and Atom Feeds for Wordpress, focused on Feed optimization. This article focuses on WordPress platform-specific guidelines for optimizing Your Blog as a Whole. (Keep an eye out for part three which will focus on optimizing Individual Blog Posts.)

Note: These tips assume you are using WordPress as an installed application on your own dedicated or shared server, and not as a free hosted blog on wordpress.com. These tips do not take into account any WordPress upgrades in the recently released version 2.3.

1. Customize Page Titles””Utilize Targeted Keywords

This is arguably the most important change you can make to help improve your organic search rankings. Incorporate targeted keywords into your titles, even if this means the page title will be different from the actual post title.

There is a great plugin called the SEO Title Tag plugin for WordPress that will allow you to customize your titles. Download it, place it in your plugins directory (main-blog-directory/wp-content/plugins), and enable it in the Plugins area of Admin.

After you enable the plugin, you will need to add a little code to the header.php page of your theme. Don’t worry. It’s very simple. In the Admin area of your WordPress blog, go to Presentation >> Theme Editor and click the Header link on the right. In the editing window scroll down and find the <title>{code here}</title> element.

Replace everything between <title> and </title> with:

<?php if (function_exists('seo_title_tag')) { seo_title_tag(); } else { wp_title(); bloginfo('name');} ?>

This checks to see if the SEO Title Tag plugin is active. If so, it uses the custom title, if not, it will use the WordPress default.

To set the home page title go to Options >> SEO Title Tag.

To set other page titles, enter the custom title in the Title Tag text field which will now appear when you are writing a post or editing a page or post:

2. Use Keyword Rich URLs

By default, WordPress uses query strings in its URLs. For example, http://your-blog/?p=180. These URLs are not search friendly. You should change your Permalink structure to incorporate post date and name. In Admin go to Options >> Permalinks and click the radio button next to Date and name based.

This will now use your post title in the URL. It might look something like this:

http://your-blog/2007/11/14/optimize-your-blog/

This URL now contains keywords the search engines might pick up.

Many times you will want the URL to be different than the actual post title. For example, my post Blogs Gone Wild!: Optimization Strategies to Ensure Yours is ‘Of Age’ is a hook that will hopefully get people to click, but it’s not good for optimization purposes. So, rather than using the post title as the default page title and URL, I changed them both to Complete Blog Optimization Guidelines.

Post Title:

Page Title & URL

To make the URL different than your post title, enter your custom title in the Post Slug text field when you are writing or editing your post.

You don’t need to add the dashes. WordPress does that for you.

3. Add News Reader Subscribe Buttons

You should to make it very simple for users to subscribe to your feed. Sure, the autodiscovery chicklet is probably displayed in the URL window (unless you’re using IE 6.0…shame, shame), but many people have no idea what this is. So, make subscribing easy by adding a few popular feed reader buttons to your sidebar. Do not overdo it. Just pick a few.

The method for adding the code into your sidebar can vary depending on if you’re using widgets, and on what theme you are using. For this blog I simply went into Presentation >> Theme Editor, clicked on the Sidebar link on the right and added in the code.

Again, your solution might be different, but here are the images I used for this blog. Feel free to grab them. The linking code is also represented.

Yahoo
http://e.my.yahoo.com/config/cstore?.opt=content&amp.url=<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>

Google
http://www.google.com/ig/add?feedurl=<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>

netvibes
http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?url=<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>

Bloglines
http://www.bloglines.com/sub/<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>

This code:

<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>

represents your blog’s RSS 2.0 feed. If you use FeedBurner (we use MyBrand from FeedBurner) you can replace that code with your FeedBurner URL.

For example:

http://www.bloglines.com/sub/http://feeds.closed-loop-marketing.com/ TheClmBlog

4. Add a Technorati Button

You definitely want your blog ‘faved’ on Technorati if you want it to be ‘findable’ in one of the largest blog search engines. Make it easy for your readers to ‘fave’ your blog by putting a Technorati Button in your sidebar. The CLM blog has the Technorati button just under the feed reader buttons.

Here is a Technorati button and link code:

Technorati Button
http://technorati.com/faves?sub=addfavbtn&add={your blog address}

Note: {your blog address} is the full URL of your blog’s home page, NOT the feed URL.

5. Offer Email-based Subscriptions

Many, if not most, people are unaware or not comfortable with the concept of feeds. Depending upon your specific audience, you might want to consider offering your content via email subscriptions. This allows users to receive your content via email rather than having to use a feed reader.

FeedBurner offers a free email subscription service.

6. List Most Recent Blog Posts

Make is easy for your readers to scan your latest posts’ titles. Show 3 - 5 titles. Download and install the Recent Posts plugin.

7. Add a Google Sitemap

Make your blog readily visible to Google. Download and install the Google Sitemaps Generator plugin.

8. Ping Blog Search Engines Each Time You Post

Wordpress makes this very easy. In Admin go to Options >> Writing and add the sites you want to ping into the Update Services form field. Make sure WordPress has auto-populated this field with http://rpc.pingomatic.com/. Also consider adding these other services.

Following these tips to Optimize Your WordPress Blog as a Whole will help increase your blog’s visibility and will make it easier for your users to find what they are looking for. My next post will be part 3 on WordPress optimization for Individual Blog Posts.

For those of us who’ve been wondering when it would ever happen, it looks like Web 2.0 is finally growing up.

For many months now, wild speculations, entertaining but seemingly ephemeral applications, and irrational business decisions have swirled around the phrase “Web 2.0″. Organizations frantic to stay ahead of the curve””including some of our clients””have looked for a 2.0 bandwagon to jump onto, only to find there wasn’t one. At least, not yet. Or they’ve tried to artificially bolt 2.0 technologies onto their existing business model only to find it wasn’t a good fit for them, either commercially or philosophically.

“Web 2.0 is dead! Long live…”
It was with some relief, then, that we read the announcement “Web 2.0 is dead!” circulate through the blogosphere. Not that we disliked 2.0 so much, but it’s been one of those annoying fads like low-slung jeans that few seem to know how to wear properly and no-one knows how to regulate. Something whose absence might improve society in general.

We read the announcement, and sat back to wait for the next wild trend. Web 3.0, perhaps. Or mobile-enabled VR. Or the blossoming of the semantic web.

Except that’s not what’s happened.

Instead, we’re seeing a more considered, rational, planned implementation of 2.0 technologies. Businesses that understand they need to change their way of thinking about the web if they want to benefit from, say, wikis, or blogging, or mashups. It’s the 2nd wave of Web 2.0, no longer the exploratory cutting edge, but arguably more useful.

B.L. Ochman makes a similar point in her post titled “Web 2.0 Dead? Don’t Be Silly!” - that many companies are just now beginning to make full use of these newer technologies, along with some great examples.

Web 2.0 As the Stage, Not the Star
So the 2.0 technologies are, at last, getting out of their own way. Instead of being the focus of a company’s growth, the newer approaches are enabling the growth. New types of interactions are spontaneously emerging as 2.0 becomes everyday.

Which brings me to a wonderful example of this - TuDiabetes.com. TuDiabetes.com and its sister Spanish-language site, EsTuDiabetes.com, is a social network site for a specific community - those people who’ve been touched by diabetes. Founded by Manny Hernandez, the entire site is based on the free Ning social network platform created by Marc Andreeson and Gina Bianchini. It brings together those who’ve been touched by diabetes, along with their friends and family, and lets them share their experiences, connect and interact in wonderfully supportive ways.

Would this kind of site have been possible five years ago? Yes, but it would’ve entailed a significant investment of time, effort, money, or all three. Five years ago the platform itself would have been the main focus of the organization’s effort, instead of being a springboard to newer, greater things.

The point is, as Web 2.0 goes mainstream, we’re sure to see many more creative uses of it like TuDiabetes.com, uses where the result, not the platform, is the star of the show.

Personally, I’m looking forward to it.