Link Building For Your Site

By Ricky Dawn Friday, 13th January 2012

Link building is one of the, if not the most important parts of any SEO campaign, it is also one of the hardest and most time consuming.

However there are easier ways to build links, some of which I mentioned at the end of an earlier post (Getting your site indexed), but these links are not very powerful and are only really good for getting your site indexed.

There are many ways you can build links to your site, some of which I have listed below.

The good Ol' fashioned link request emails

This tactic has been around for a long time, is probably one of the most used, and can provide the best return, you can potentially gain a lot of quality links by simply asking Webmasters to link to your site. This tactic works much better with more established sites with some authority rather then new sites.

The only problem with this is that it can be very time consuming and with more web savvy site owners today they are sometimes reluctant to place a link on their site, as this would negatively affect their Google page rank.

A good trick when using this tactic is to provide something in return, for example I check the Webmasters site for crawl, code and SEO errors and inform them on these before asking for a link, I then keep a conversation going with them until eventually I ask for a link.

Add Banner to your WordPress.org Plugin Page

By Neil Sweeney Friday, 6th January 2012

Feel your WordPress plugin page needs a little something more? Then try adding a banner!

It seems this little under advertised feature of the WordPress.org plugin directory is really easy to do and makes your page look that much better. I recently added a banner to Simply Poll plugin page and it looks really swish now.

Posted in Guides, Plugins, Wordpress | 3 Comments »

On-Page SEO Guide

By Ricky Dawn Monday, 5th December 2011

In the SEO series I have been talking about how you can get your site indexed, using the Google keyword tool and your site's architecture. By now your site should have great architecture, be indexed in Google and have a list of keywords.

Now we move onto rankings and how to move up in the SERPs (Search engine rankings position). Any good SEO campaign will begin with an On-Page SEO strategy, only when you're confident that this is in good shape should you consider moving onto Off-Page SEO.

Before you start your On-Page SEO the first thing you should know is why you are doing it and how do Google and other search engines use it.

The reason behind On-Page SEO is so that Google knows what your web page is about. If your page is empty or is solely a flash site which Google cannot read then how is Google supposed to know what your site is about? This is why many of the suggestions below include adding keywords to certain areas of your website and in specific ways.

There are many different factors to consider when completing your On-Page SEO. A lot of the time people can be all over the place when completing On-Page SEO which means some things get overlooked. Follow our On-Page SEO guide to have some seriously great On-Page SEO for your site.

CatN vCluster beta closed

By Steve Friday, 11th November 2011

Since launching vCluster version 1.0 early last year, we have had a lot of interest and uptake from people looking to test our clustered hosting service for their websites and applications.

We have now exceeded our quota of beta users and therefore disabled the ability to create new vCluster packages in the run up to the launch of version 2.0. This allows us to continue collating the feedback generated and focus on implementing the new suggestions and improve the features available in the new version.

Some of the feature requests have made it on to our Roadmap and will be available with the launch of version 2.0, with any suggestions that do not make it into the initial release added to our backlog for possible implementation in the future.

Back in August 2011 we provided a few teasers of the new control panel in its development stages, alongside allowing visitors to our stall at WordCamp 2011 weekend access to the control panel. This provided us with some initial customer feedback, which proved useful in finalising the design and allowing us to focus on features that improve the hosting product itself.

There have now been over 30 significant changes improvements made since version 1.0 and more additions on the roadmap that are under development.

If you have any questions about vCluster or any of our hosting products, please feel free to contact us with your queries and we will be happy to help.

Posted in CatN Control Panel, Site Updates, vCluster | No Comments »

Making a Custom WordPress Install

By Neil Sweeney Tuesday, 4th October 2011

As a WordPress developer, making websites and plugins is a good challenge and highly rewarding experience with WordPress. The only annoying thing when developing WordPress across a number of different locations is the install.

Automattic have done a great job streamlining the install process with choice of a GUI or text interface to get the configurations all setup. But one aspect they haven't work on so much yet is a custom WordPress install; there is no official option as of yet to build a WordPress package that will automatically install and activate plugins that you chose but that's not to say there isn't one though!