Norm's Blog
Norm Douglas is a full time web developer. Here he will share his thoughts on his day to day activities.
Melbourne Joomla Day 2010
Tuesday, 09 February 2010 05:41
This weekend coming, I have the honour of once again playing a small role in the Melbourne Joomla Day. JDay's are a bit like a conference, but far more hands on.
There will be some of the best Joomla minds gathered including Andrew Eddie, Sam Moffat, Brad Baker and Azrul Rahim. I will be presenting a workshop on Templating and how to create them from scratch.
Should you be able to get to Melbourne Australia this weekend, it's not too late to register for Melbourne Joomla Day.
Cheers
Joomla SEO strategy - a Study
Saturday, 09 January 2010 09:05
Seems to me, that it's quite embarrassing for a so-called Joomla SEO expert, to not rank very highly in Google for their own targeted keywords. Well I'm here to tell you that this is my predicament.
But I'm not shying away from the fact. This particular keyword term/s is highly competitive, and in a bid to make my Teaching Joomla website a success and play with the big boys, I'm going to give it a crack!
Currently one of the most competitive keyword search terms is "Joomla How To Video". However another very popular term, is "How to install Joomla". As with any SEO strategy that I undertake, it's important to try and work on a search term that you have a chance at. When I analyse the following terms, I find there is .
Search Term - Number of searches per month (USA)
how to install joomla - 49500
how to use joomla - 5400
joomla how to - 3600
joomla templates how to - 1000
Now initially, you might think that we should just target "how to install joomla", being that it is the most popular. However what this also brings is vastly bigger competition. Whereas something like "how to use Joomla" is a much smaller audience, and therefore we might have a chance at having a bigger impact quicker.
So that's what we will do. To target this I will write a few articles based on this search term, and I will also make two new videos on this topic.
I see this type of transparency as vitally important in trying to teach you, my viewer, the finer points of SEO... and also to show that there are no secret hidden methods, but rather just simple facts.
Wish me luck!
An update for Winland Garden Tools
Tuesday, 05 January 2010 07:16
Pruners, Ratchet Secateurs and Loppers... going NUTS!
Seems that you don't need Indian Black Hat contractors, Dodgy Directory Listings or even a "Tag Cloud", in order to improve your Google rank.
Winland Garden Tools eCommerce site is now ranking clearly in the first page of Google for many of our target keywords. We have done this all via traditional methods and following the well documented Google Best Practices.
A few well placed contextual keywords across a number of different sites I have access to have probably helped, however also Google philosophy is simple... they want to provide the best search results. Therefore if you have a well designed site that meets their SEO requirements, AND you have lot's of good content on your site... then Google will find you.
Some very useful tools I always use are:
Winland Garden Tools
Friday, 20 November 2009 09:32
Here's a site I'm currently working on. This site is designed to sell Ratchet Secateurs. These secateurs are awesome, and almost makes me want to take up gardening (almost). I'm trying a number of different SEO related things here, with my WHITE HAT firmly on.
My theory on Search Engine Optimisation is always the same. If it's good for the end viewer, then it should be good for Search Engines. I try never to go down the "latest gimmick" road, and to be perfectly honest, I don't think SEO really is that much of an art.
However in a bid to try and see if some simply honest SEO "tricks" will help the ranking of this brand new site, I'll keep you updated on the progress.
Here's a link to the site Winland Garden Tools - Ratchet Secateurs.
Let's start blogging
Friday, 20 November 2009 09:19
So here I am with a blog on my site. Well I finally gave way to the mounting pressure of why I should have a blog. So let's start one.
This blog will be available freely and I would encourage you to post comments. I will talk about sites I'm building, new stuff I find and my time working with the Joomla core team. Occassionally I might also throw in my other great love... Mountain Biking.
Cheers.