SEO Tip: Don’t Bother with Meta Keywords

Connecting the Internet Graphic

Here’s a tip from , author of the WordPress SEO Plugin we use on several WordPress with SiteControl sites.  Back in the early days of search engines to get ranked you added keywords to each page to tell the search engine what your website was about.  As you can imagine, this quickly got abused and search engines began ignoring them, since they were essentially useless.

None of the big three search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo!) put much weight behind the meta keywords, so in Joost’s opinion, and Web Services, it’s just not worth the time to fill out, and then manage.  Instead, spend your time writing good content.  Good content that talks about the search terms you want to be found for.  If you want your website to be indexed for “best loan rates in Kalamazoo, Michigan” then you need to have a story (not an image banner) explaining that you do in fact have the best loan rates in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  If you don’t write it in your content, the search engines won’t know it, and can’t point people to your site.

Read the article on Joost’s site.

For more tips from Google on getting your site indexed, check out the Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

WordPress sites top 50 million

WordPress

Over the past weekend WordPress passed the 50 million mark.  That’s right, there are over 50 million websites on the web that are powered by WordPress.  That’s nearly 20% of the entire web.  WordPress powers such heavyweight sites like TechCrunchTEDCNN, and the National Football League, and also many of your Credit Union websites.

Rest assured your are in good company, and CU*Answers Web Services is right here with you.

How to Upload Videos to YouTube

More and more websites are including video on them.  We often get questions on how to  publish a video on your website.  Web Services’ recommended solution is to upload the video to YouTube or Vimeo and use their embedded browser.

Here’s why:

  1. They’ve built a business on it.  Their servers are set up to stream video.
  2. They have the bandwidth.  Instead of using CU*Answers’ hosting bandwidth, use theirs and send it directly to your visitor.
  3. They’ve already done all the hardwork to make an embeddable video player.
  4. It’s easy.

Lifehacker has put together a simple set of instruction on how to upload a video to YouTube.  Once it’s up on YouTube you can then embed it on your website.  If you are using WordPress with SiteControl, there is even a simple code you can use.

FirstFCU.org Site ReDesign Launches!

Congratulations to First Federal Credit Union on the launch of their updated site design based on our WordPress with SiteControl platform.  The new site has even more features coming soon as they will be our first full featured Multi-Lingual site featuring selectable Spanish language translations of the majority of the site content.  The site also features a random YouTube video playlist and promo sideshow with thumbnail previews.

CUSO Development Company Private Site

cuso development company best practices

A few weeks ago at the CUSO Development Company Board meeting, CU*Answers Web Services launched the new CUSO Development Company Best Practices website.

This private blog was created for clients and partners of CUSO Development Company may collaborate on opportunities and share ideas regarding best practices.  This site was built on WordPress and intentionally styled to keep the look and feel of the corporate site.

New Site for CU*South

Last week, right before the CU*Answers Leadership Conference, Web Services launched a new website for our cuasterisk.com partner CU*South.  This new site takes a radical break from their previous website strategy in that with this new site they are going to manage their own content locally.  Because this new site is built using WordPress, they can simply log in and publish new content as needed.

The entire site is dynamically controlled through the WordPress dashboard including some of the newer features of WordPress 3.0 such as custom background images.