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A Step towards Website Redesign Success

A website redesign most commonly begins with sourcing of the right web design company to undertake the project. Many companies often start the process by assigning someone in the office the task of acquiring quotes from a list of web solution companies found through a Google search. If you have been assigned this task or are about to assign it, stop right there.

The approach to a successful website redesign is more than requesting new creative and finding a price you are comfortable with. It’s imperative that you can first provide a web design company with the critical information that defines your business in order to put them in a better position to suggest solutions that can improve your company’s image, exposure, and ensure a strong return on investment.  For optimal results that save time and money, and might even earn you praise from the boss for your incisive approach, we recommend that you gather the following information.

1. List the goals and objectives for your business and for your website.  Do they align with each other? They should.  Does your current website fulfill all the goals and objectives? If not, why? Have any of the goals and objectives changed since your last web design?
2. Who is your target market?  Has this changed?
3. List your competitive advantages. Does your current website highlight these advantages? If not, why? Has there been a change in your competitive advantage?
4. Has your brand changed? Would you like to change your brand?
5. What kind of feedback are you getting on your current website?  What is currently working, what needs reworking?  Reference your current website statistics or analytics tools to shed some light on this.
6. Examine your top competitors. What are they doing?  Would you like to try any of it on your own website?
7. What would make your website stand out from your competitors?  Are there any inefficiencies within your organization that an online system could improve?

Leading with your website goals and objectives, and organizing your information will ensure a much more strategic decision making process. You may discover that a complete website redesign will not be necessary, perhaps just touch-ups to your existing site.

A website is more then just an online business card, it can be a driving business tool.  A proper site can improve your company’s efficiency, profitability, and give you a competitive advantage.  Your company’s prospects depend on it. So take your time, and take it seriously.

Source: http://www.visibilitymagazine.com/9th-sphere/ezra-silverton/a-step-towards-website-redesign-success

GENERIC CIALIS on my website? I think my site has been hacked!

Has your site ever dropped suddenly from the index or disappeared mysteriously from search results? Have you ever received a notice that your site is using cloaking techniques? Unfortunately, sometimes a malicious party "hacks" a website: they penetrate the security of a site and insert undesirable content. Sophisticated attackers can camouflage this spammy or dangerous content so that it doesn't appear for normal users, and appears only to Googlebot, which could negatively impact your site in Google's results.

In such cases it used to be very difficult to detect the problem, because the site would appear normal in the eyes of the user. It may be possible that only requests with a User-agent: of Googlebot and coming from Googlebot's IP could see the hidden content. But that's over: with Fetch as Googlebot, the new Labs feature in Webmaster Tools, you can see exactly what Googlebot is seeing, and avoid any kind of cloaking problems. We'll show you how:

Let's imagine that Bob, the administrator of www.example.com, is searching for his site but he finds this instead:

That's strange, because when he looks at the source code of www.example.com, it looks fine:

With much surprise Bob may receive a notice from Google warning him that his site is not complying with Google's quality guidelines. Fortunately he has his site registered with Webmaster Tools, let's see how he can check what Googlebot sees:

First Bob logs into Webmaster Tools and selects www.example.com. The Fetch as Googlebot feature will be at the bottom of the navigation menu, in the Labs section:

The page will contain a field where you can insert the URL to fetch. It can also be left blank to fetch the homepage.

Bob can simply click Fetch and wait a few seconds. After refreshing the page, he can see the status of the fetch request. If it succeeds, he can click on the "Success" link...

...and that will show the details, with the content of the fetched page:

Aha! There's the spammy content! Now Bob can be certain that www.example.com has been hacked.

Confirming that the website has been hacked (and perhaps is still hacked) is an important step. It is, however, only the beginning. For more information, we strongly suggest getting help from your server administrator or hoster and reading our previous blog posts on the subject of hacked sites:

• My site's been hacked - now what?
• A quick security checklist for webmasters
• Message center warnings for hackable sites
• Best practices against hacking

Source:  http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com

Handling legitimate cross-domain content duplication

We've recently discussed several ways of handling duplicate content on a single website; today we'll look at ways of handling similar duplication across different websites, across different domains. For some sites, there are legitimate reasons to duplicate content across different websites — for instance, to migrate to a new domain name using a web server that cannot create server-side redirects. To help with issues that arise on such sites, we're announcing our support of the cross-domain rel="canonical" link element.

Ways of handling cross-domain content duplication:

• Choose your preferred domain
  When confronted with duplicate content, search engines will generally take one version and filter the others out. This can also happen when multiple domain names are involved, so while search engines are generally pretty good at choosing something reasonable, many webmasters prefer to make that decision themselves.

• Reduce in-site duplication
  Before starting on cross-site duplicate content questions, make sure to handle duplication within your site first.

• Enable crawling and use 301 (permanent) redirects where possible
  Where possible, the most important step is often to use appropriate 301 redirects. These redirects send visitors and search engine crawlers to your preferred domain and make it very clear which URL should be indexed. This is generally the preferred method as it gives clear guidance to everyone who accesses the content. Keep in mind that in order for search engine crawlers to discover these redirects, none of the URLs in the redirect chain can be disallowed via a robots.txt file. Don't forget to handle your www / non-www preference with appropriate redirects and in Webmaster Tools.

• Use the cross-domain rel="canonical" link element
  There are situations where it's not easily possible to set up redirects. This could be the case when you need to move your website from a server that does not feature server-side redirects. In a situation like this, you can use the rel="canonical" link element across domains to specify the exact URL of whichever domain is preferred for indexing. While the rel="canonical" link element is seen as a hint and not an absolute directive, we do try to follow it where possible.

Still have questions?

Q: Do the pages have to be identical?
A: No, but they should be similar. Slight differences are fine.

Q: For technical reasons I can't include a 1:1 mapping for the URLs on my sites. Can I just point the rel="canonical" at the homepage of my preferred site?
A: No; this could result in problems. A mapping from old URL to new URL for each URL on the old site is the best way to use rel="canonical".

Q: I'm offering my content / product descriptions for syndication. Do my publishers need to use rel="canonical"?
A: We leave this up to you and your publishers. If the content is similar enough, it might make sense to use rel="canonical", if both parties agree.

Q: My server can't do a 301 (permanent) redirect. Can I use rel="canonical" to move my site?
A: If it's at all possible, you should work with your webhost or web server to do a 301 redirect. Keep in mind that we treat rel="canonical" as a hint, and other search engines may handle it differently. But if a 301 redirect is impossible for some reason, then a rel="canonical" may work for you. For more information, see our guidelines on moving your site.

Q: Should I use a noindex robots meta tag on pages with a rel="canonical" link element?
A: No, since those pages would not be equivalent with regards to indexing - one would be allowed while the other would be blocked. Additionally, it's important that these pages are not disallowed from crawling through a robots.txt file, otherwise search engine crawlers will not be able to discover the rel="canonical" link element.

Source:  http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com