SEO competitor analysis will build a picture of the online topology. I helps expose opportunities & guide your online campaign in the right directions.

• SEO Competitor Analysis

Essentially broken into wo major areas:

• On-page – all of the standard SEO elements (meta, h, content, kw focus, site structure, internal linking etc + also check usability, branding, image etc)
• Off-page – primarily back-links (how many, where they are from, what quality, most importantly – can you recreate them for your own site)

On-Page Analysis (what to check)

• Domain age
  Search engines determine authoritativeness and trust. (there is a contraversy about it as search engines go with the date domain was registered not with the date it was first indexed.)

  http://www.seologs.com/dns/domain-check.html

• Backlinks
  Find out how many of the links to your competitors contain your target keywords then try to have more inbound links that contain your target keywords than your competitors’ in order to beat your competitor.

  http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/

• PageRank spread of the linking pages
  PageRank is a link analysis algorithm developed by Google, Inc., used to measure the amount of links a page has to determine it’s relative importance. The higher the PageRank a URL has, the higher is its authority is with Google. PageRank is one of the few factors that webmasters can use to determine the strength of a web page. If a website has a high PageRank, chances are it has a large amount of strong inbound links, and Google has ranked the site appropriately. PageRank is updated every 3-6 months at Google’s discretion, and should not be used as a definitive way to judge the trust of a website; it only gives us an idea of the website’s authority and link power based on Google’s algorithm.
  Find the Google PageRank of each page that links to your competitors, for it can also help you in finding out why some websites rank higher than others. Try to get more high PR links to perform better than them.
• Top level domains of the linking pages
  Try to have more backlinks from websites that use the corresponding top level domain than your competitors.
• Content of the linking pages
  Google prefers websites that get links from related websites. Goal for more inbound links from related websites than the websites of your competitors.
• Metric Analysis
• Page Authority (PA)
  The relevancy and quantity of high quality sites and domains that link to the page.
• Domain Authority (DA)
  The relevancy and quantity of high quality sites and domains that link to the entire domain.
• Unique Domains
• The quality of inbound links that point to a specific URL or page  as Google looks at specific linking domains and the quantity of unique domains tends to be better.
• Unique URLs
  The true quantity of inbound links as Google looks at the specific linking URLs and domains.
• Keyword Relevance
  How relevant a specific URL or page is for a specific keyword or phrase. KW in URL reflects how many of the target keywords are present in the ranking URL
• Keyword Focus
  Is the page obviously targeting a keyword? (present in the Meta, the H1 title, the content, etc.) Are they trying to target multiple keywords with one page? Are keywords bolded or otherwise highlighted in the content. Is there enough content to achieve a high level of keyword focus?
• Meta Data
  Description and titles should be present and in-line; character limits, capitalisation etc. Also look for unnecessary Meta data such as “Keyword” tags, these are not used by Google anymore but they can impart some little insights into what they’re targeting. Many websites still list all of their keywords in a single Meta tag. This is great for us as immediately you can see everything they are targeting, this data can be used later to see how well they are ranking for each of these words.
• Site Structure
  How many pages does the site have? Is it structured in such a way that 2nd and 3rd tier pages are easily accessible? Are URLs created dynamically by search functionality or are the pages static?
• Additional Files
  (robots.txt, sitemap.xml, an error 404 page and a sitemap.html…) Are they present and are they setup correctly?
• Dodgy tactics
  Does the site use spam tactics (keyword stuffing or duplicated content)? Has it been copied from another website or appear to be using hidden text? This will highlight the nature of the market you are in, if many sites use these underhand tactics then it is likely that they will experience a short lifetime in the SERPs.

Now Compile & Review Search Engine Result Page (SERP) Data!

Find out your three primary target keywords used by your competitors then gather and review the Domain Authority, Page Authority, Keyword Relevance and Keyword in URL Data of these targeted keywords.

When performing web analytics, pay attention to every detail, particularly traffic sources. If you get traffic from your competitor websites, check out the pages they go to and how much time they spend on viewing them.  In case your competitor regularly visits your blog page and spends 2 minutes in average – he’s keeping a track of your updates.

Know the SEO program your competitor uses for web analysis – most of the companies use SEO tools for web analysis. Once you identify the tool your competitor uses you’ll have the opportunity to find out what he can track. NB! your business performance depends on how well you understand your competitors.

How to define which SEO program your competitor uses?

• On competitor website’s landing page, open HTML source and check out the tracking code. Discovering the tracking code (it is possible to find out the SEO tool he uses). This is difficult, however taking into account that it is crucially important, it’s worth trying.
• Be aware of competitor updates.
• Remember, your competitors are doing the same thing and that is, trying to beat you; especially if you constantly grow and improve your services, your competitor will want to offer suchlike staff to stand out in the market. For this – regularly check out your competitor’s web site to track his updates and whether or not he has copy/pasted anything.
• NB! being aware of what your competitor does and what he knows about you means having some idea on his upcoming projects. (This is already a success.) In addition this is a great learning experience to know if your competitor has succeeded in achieving what you are intending to achieve and in case he did how he managed these all.

Off-Page Analysis

For this you need to use tools!

• Yahoo Site Explorer (now merged to Bing)
  Type URL into it and hit “explore”, ensure that you are looking at links “external to this domain” and links to the “Entire Site”. What you will be presented with is a list of back-links from pages on websites that link to the URL that you entered into the search field. The idea is that you can go through those links looking for places where you can get links from for your site – if you see a comment they made on a blog, go to it and see if you can get a link in the same way.
  Possible to find useful niche directories, relevant forums or sites from which you can get a link from (quite often a much quicker and easier way to find places to get a link from, you will not be able to get a link from every source that the competitor has, but you will be able to get some). Performing this for each of your major competitors means that you will be able to quickly gain lots of good links.

Competitor Analysis Tools

Many tools out there that offer more insights into competitor back-links, some will cross reference a specified number of competitors with your site and highlight places where more than 3 have a link from. Others will list the links in order of PageRank or keyword relevance, but these tools will normally cost to use and can vary in how much they cost from £50 per month to £1,000’s.

On-page analysis tools are also found in abundance on the net today, although most of them are free.

Good quality tools make a difference – a job will take less time or a significant amount more work can be achieved in the same time frame.

• Yahoo site explorer – Free www.siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com – great for checking back-links
• Majestic SEO – Paid – www.majesticseo.com – great for checking back-links
• SEO Site Tools – Free – www.chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/diahigjngdnkdgajdbpjdeomopbpkjjc – Great little tool for on page and off page analysis
• Linkdex – Paid – www.linkdex.com – great tool for off page analysis, but also has functionality for monitoring on-page SEO.
• Status Search – Free – www.quirk.biz/searchstatus – On and off page analysis tool.
  Search and Social Media Tools – Many of the tools listed above can provide you competitive information as well. E.g. Set SM2 to monitor the keywords that describes your competitor and you can start to see what customers are saying about your competitors
• Alexa - http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo – Alexa is the leading provider of free, global web metric
• Compete - http://www.compete.com/
• Quantcast - http://www.quantcast.com/
• Google Trends for Websites - http://trends.google.com/websites
• Google Ad Planner - http://www.google.com/adplanner

PageRank & site traffic features

St Francis Persian Rescue has what is described as a “Three-month global Alexa traffic rank”… It is in the ‘Rescues and Shelters’ category and was given a global rank of 8,760,328 when I first looked. Alexa are now (February 2012) saying that it is 8,789,150 and www.checksitetraffic.com is saying it is 8,732,440. There are 6 pages on the site with a PageRank of 2/10 and 4 pages that have 1/10. Another area that is not very impressive is the amount of times that the official ‘St Francis Persian Rescue’ is included in search engine results. On ‘Google index’, it rates as twenty! It is even worse with ‘Bing’, as it only rates as three! And as Bing now owns ‘Yahoo!’, this means that they produce exactly the same results.

Links & Social Media

The official site’s layout has been designed badly and is outdated. This could cause a big problem because users may lose interest, as it does not look very professional.

My redesign will improve the traffic for the company, as it is created in a modern style.

On Alexa, ‘St Francis Persian Rescue’ has a score of 23 for its ‘Reputation’. This measures ‘stfrancisrescue.co.uk’s reputation by seeing the number of links to the site in the Alexa traffic panel. Some of these sites are squidoo.com, dmoz.org, webtothumb.com and catchat.org. I think that St Francis have missed some very important sites which they should have included – for example, they have not created ‘groups’ on Facebook or decided to ‘Sign Up’ on Twitter. This would help in gathering followers or fans on Facebook or Twitter, which could lead to increased traffic.  YouTube also would have been helpful. One problem is that I have found when testing the 23 ‘Reputation’ web-addresses given by Alexa is that 4 of them did not work! These websites were: – webtothumb.com, allaboutdogsandcats.com, animalrehoming.co.uk and rescuereview.co.uk.

Webtothumb.com named two links to the Persian Rescue site, but neither of them worked; Allaboutdogsandcats.com said ‘404 – Not Found’; there was no such website as Animalrehoming.co.uk anymore and on Rescuereview.co.uk I could not find ‘St Francis Persian Rescue’ with the link on Alexa or from using their search engine. I will keep looking. So that really makes the ‘Reputation’ only 19!

For competitors, a main use of the social media programs is viewing what your rivals are achieving. Quite often followers write messages back to the companies and from this you are able to see what is said and most importantly what is popular. Another area that can be helpful is to see how many members are in their group. If you also have a group for your company it can be compared! In the event that you are behind, you should try to use techniques that have worked for your successful competitor in order to promote the group. LinkedIn is another very good site to use to research rivals. Information can be quite easy to discover about the organisations as well as referring to associates.

SEO & Findability

I think that the SEO and findability of the site on Google and other search engines could be better. For example it does not appear in the top 20 pages, when I searched ‘St Francis’, which surprises me.

These are the phrases that St Francis Rescue have purchased, as shown by Alexa.

‘Persian Cat’

‘Persian Rescue UK’

‘Himalayan Rescue UK’

‘Can you take cats on holiday’

‘Persian Cats UK’

‘Persian Cats for Re-homing’

‘Persian Cat Rescue Adoption’

‘Persianuk’

‘Persian’

‘On holiday’

‘Persian cats’

‘Persian cat rescue’

‘Persian cats rescue’

‘Persian rescue’

‘Persian cats for adoption’

‘Cat charities’

‘Cat charity’

‘Cats rescue’

‘Cat rescue uk’

‘Persian cat adoption’

‘Persian kittens for adoption’

‘Cat adoption uk’

‘Cat re-homing’

 This is quite a few, but I would definitely want the site to appear when ‘St Francis’ is entered on search engines.  Some of the phrases are very similar e.g. ‘Persian cat rescue’, ‘Persian cats rescue’, ‘Cats rescue’ – it would be good to have some different phrases.  

 Visual Design & Ease of Use Changes

The original site’s navigation-bar is one of the areas that needed development. It has a very poor design and has been placed in a strange position that does not always stand out. It also has the problem that sometimes it is not obvious to operate. I very much dislike the colour choice for the navigation-bar, especially the yellow used to make the link noticeable when the mouse overlays it. This makes it worse, as then the words are not readable. I think that yellow does not mix with the other colours because it is far too light.

Too large a proportion of most pages are filled up with advertising and the adverts dominate the site. This only leaves a very small amount of space for the text box. The navigation-bar takes up the whole of the right side when it would have saved space and looked better if it was fitted neatly into the top of the page.

I do feel that having the page box too thin causes a big problem and makes the site look very weak. They have also included far too much text in small areas of the site, which makes it look cluttered. I would always prefer to have a lot more space in a site by keeping it simple and using creative, exciting and inventive ideas.

On the original ‘St Francis Persian Rescue’ site, the images that have been used look cheap and old-fashioned. The display of photos shows that the site creator had not used Photoshop many times before!

The font used is plain and quite faint (Arial). I sometimes prefer to use more unusual texts from ‘Google Webfonts’, so that they have not already been seen too many times before and gives a more personalised look.

One of the first tasks when I started redesigning the website was to choose the analogue colour scheme. I selected a Persian Blue colour (to go with the theme), Dark Magenta and Dodger Blue.

New Design

Colours

On one of the sites that I was using called www.colorhexa.com (to find out information about are the closest colours to the ones that I have used) it said that what I call ‘Persian Blue’ (roughly #412fe3) is 26.3% Red, 19.6% Green and 88.6% Blue in RGB. For CMYK it has 70.4% Cyan, 77.9% Magenta, 0% Yellow and 11.4% Black. ‘Dark Magenta’ (#ca1fc6) in RGB is 80% Red, 20% Yellow and 80% Blue. In the site it also says that ‘Dark Magenta’ for CMYK is 0% Cyan, 75% Magenta, 0% Yellow and 20% Black. ‘Dodger Blue’ (roughly #0093ed) was given for RGB 0% Red, 57.6% Green and 92.9% Blue. Whereas for CYMK it is composed of 100% Cyan, 38% Magenta, 0% Yellow and 7.1% Black!

Improvement Program

I improved the official site’s layout, by making changes to how the adverts and navigation-bar are positioned.

I have moved the adverts to the right side, as the left would be where your attention would go first. I prefer to use this area to better for users and trust the ads will be sufficiently impactful so that the advertisers are not too concerned by this. Because of this I have positioned the second part of the navigation-bar there, so that they are both very clear to the users. I have also researched the Online Advertising and the companies that I liked best are AdSence and Kontera. I have tried to find a cheaper version of AdSence that is just as professional though.

The headers I have chosen to put in a large text size, I did this by setting them as size h1. It looks good on all web browsers, but especially Firefox! When sharpening up the look, as well as reducing the clutter of too many words in ‘Fund Raising Donations’ I used the toggle tool. The technique I used was practical, as you can see the start of the sentence, but you need to click on a button to see the rest. I also eventually managed to make the text box get longer when the toggles are used. I have updated and modernised the adverts, now some of them take the user to the destination. The font that I am used to make it look more professional is called “Lora”. I also decided that I had to keep using a photo of a cat inside the logo. This is because it shows users an example of how cute they look instead of a cartoon drawing. I am hoping that it will attract people to adopt them more often. I also changed the photo for a clearer one that appears more attractive. Then I used Photoshop to fade the edges to avoid the “cut from a magazine look”.

Coding Standards

I have also made an easier to understand and read code, especially compared to the original site’s html 4.1 transitional versions. The main change I made was to adapt to XHTML 1.0 Strict. This is a more modern language, which is far easier to work with, use and sustain. Strict is used as the professional attribute of today. A main reason for this is the way that elements and design are separated. This makes it a lot easier to change the site’s layout.

DOCTYPE documents now say to avoid using HTML 4.01 Transitional if possible.

Also W3C have said, “Authors should use the Strict DTD when possible, but may use the Transitional DTD when support for presentation attribute and elements is required.”

Final Design Comments

I added onto each of my pages a Google toolbar, at the top. I feel that it is a great feature. Sometimes it can stop users from leaving, when they cannot find an area.

The jQuery Image slider can also add a lot of appeal to the website. For example it makes the page look more up-to-date; it shows some areas the site covers – without searching it!

The toggle helps not to use as much room and keeps it looking more acceptable i.e. not too full of text. They can also be quite interesting for the users. An attractive, colourful navigation-menu is also a very important part to be included. I used a gradient of purple and pink, which stands out, looks good and is easier to use. Overall, the website is easier to use and looks more professional in my opinion.

Ecommerce content management systems (CMS) are critical for online retailers. Many ecommerce stores rely on CMS systems to maintain customer and product catalog data, perform payments and transactions, deliver online shopping cart features, marketing and search analytics, as well as SEO support.

• platform functionality (many look simple and clean but are not functional)
• SEO friendliness (slim – minimal in their code; easy – simple to implement on-site optimization)

Some of the most SEO-friendly content management systems provide a URL, page Title, meta description and meta keywords field for each page of the site. The ability to add these SEO elements uniquely to each page is a critical one-up for ecommerce optimization.

• shopping cart checkout

Sometimes the process is too long and asks for too much information on too many pages, whereas other CMS are too brief with their checkout process, giving buyers a lack of confidence and motivation to shop elsewhere.

eCommerc CMS key features

• add / edit / delete categories / sub-categories
• standard CMS functionality for pages (e.g. about us, terms and conditions)
• postage and packaging price management
• e.g. by weight, by price, by country
• tax management
• e.g. VAT applied to EU destinations, not worldwide
• stock control
• options to take products off sale / leave available for back-order when stock depleted
• cross selling facilitation
• “if you like this you might also like this”
• customer account management
• emails: order received / order dispatched
• payment gateway integration
• discounts
• offer codes
• typical feature list: http://www.jshop.co.uk/features

other selling solutions

• eBay
• Amazon Market place
• E-junkie
• PayPal
• Affiliates
• Price comparison sites
• Voucher code / cashback sites

Conversion rates

• only 2-3% of eCommerce website visitors buy something – this is the conversion rate
• cart abandonment rates are 75%

 Turn visitors into customers – How to increase conversion rate

targeted market (low traffic with high conversion rate rather than high traffic with low conversion rate)

long tail searches are more rewarding

social media following (FB with many ‘likes’, also builds trust)

price (if your price is higher its obviously less likely customer would buy, unless you are trusted site – loyalty)

hidden charges (shipping, tax etc) – no no! combined postage – yes!

promotions – vouchers after buying in the delivery box

usability (‘don’t make me think!’)

make sure your site search works!

quality of information (large images, 360’ view, video, accurate text, add to cart)

customer service (ph nr, this adds trust as well)

clearly publish return policy

may be to publish delivery time?, guarantee?

customer reviews

secure server connection (padlock)

display security badges

get listed directories (human edited)

put little widget to your site if you got lot of FB fans (how many ppl have ‘liked’ your page widget)

analytics is the key!

Cart abandonment

• strip out navigation and other distraction
• registration optional (even though its beneficial for customer) give an option
• not too much data on check out (you only need addresses and name…)
• show the progress to check out on the top
• postcode look up
• could detect country of origin
• make form completion as user friendly as possible
• foundation using jQuery (consider inline validation)
• offer different billing address
• some carts will time out – no no!; set the time for a day or 10hr or…
• gentle cross selling but no aggression
• provide link back to product
• link back to product as a pop up window so basket wont be abandoned
• review basket
• payment gateway (lot of technical stuff involved but CMS will do it for you) internet merchant account needed for other than PayPal, 10% from the money is held back from you for 6 month in case of any claims – merchant is always at risk for fraud purchases (fraud credit cards etc) [PayPoint - 2.59% transaction charge + 25p fraud scoring + £18 per month service charge + 10% you will see after 6 month]

SEO

search engines’ aim to present the user with the most relevant web pages; ranked by popularity

• on-site SEO (website content itself) – within the direct control of webmaster

- conduct kw research early on in website development

- each page on website is an opportunity to write powerful unique content

- make sure engine knows what your site is about

kw should be in

- <title> tag

- <h> tags (h1 has more weight than h2, h3 etc)

- <meta name=”description” content=””/> (used by search engines on search result page, not for to influence ranking)

- <meta name=”keywords” content=””/> (ignored by main search engines, strong reason no to use as it gives away kw research for competitors)

- <strong>, <em>(highlight important keywords but don’t overdo it!

- descriptive <a href=””> (should describe the destination page; gentle kw can be useful to search engines, heavy can result penalization!)

- images (kw in file names, alt text – don’t forget alt main function!)

- URL form (kw’s in URL may influence ranking; where possible it should reflect site structure

- content (search engines love unique, continuously updated content! More content – more web spread!)

• off-site SEO (outside influence – inbound links, social media)

- inbound links (good quality inbound links (authoritative website in same industry, or related industry; one-way links preferred)

link generation

• good content has possibility to share!

• share buttons

• link exchange

• directories

• partnership links

• links from suppliers

• shares from social media

avoid!

• buying links

• companies who sell links ( x links for x£)

• link farms

• ‘too good to be true’ deals or anything!

Niche directories (specialize in a particular industry or subject – have relevant factor!)

• DMOZ (Open Directory Project) – get listed! (try once a year, it really can take months to get listed

if you don’t get listed, try again but don’t fret, many amazing sites can’t get listed due to inconsistencies in the process)

• SEO free directories to list your website

• anchor text (the text on which the hyperlink is placed, its “anchor text” can be very powerful)

Keyword research

The aim of KW research is to find out what people type in to search engines

• Google Keyword Tool

• Google suggests: predictive search

• wordtracker

An important marketing concept known as “The Long Tail” is used to describe the hundreds to thousands of keywords and key phrases that a website is found for, yet rarely noticed or exploited by owners of the website. The principle of the Long Tail is the opposite of focusing on the top 10-20 keywords for marketing your website. The “top keyword” concept is reinforced by agencies that contract to gain rankings for 10-20 terms, maybe 30. However, when studying the referrals from the search engines and the traffic they generate, those that focus on the top 10-20 terms may be missing the majority of their market.

Top search engine ranking for specific searches in incredibly hard to achieve, particularly for brand new websites. It is much more realistic to target long tail / niche searches.

Once success has been achieved with niche / long tail searches, the webmaster can set his sights on a more generic term.

Search engine advertising

• pay per click (pays only when clicked)

• contextual (highly targeted – advert only appears when someone is searching for that product or service)

• price influences (position of advert, top more expensive)

• position influences (keyword bid amount)

• management

• Facebook advertising (offers pay per click that is linked to FB user’s profile and ‘likes’)

Article marketing

Check article directories (should it really be a part of marketing strategy??)

Guest blogging

Contact bloggers in a related industry and offer to write an authoratitive article for them, in which you can include links to your site

PR

All internet marketing activity could be considered “PR”, particularly social media, article marketing and blogging

services exist that will distribute a press release to an established network of news sites, search engines and bloggers

press releases will include a link back to your website.

Social media as a powerful tool to influence SEO

- YouTube

- Facebook

- Twitter

- Google+

RSS feeds

Ideal for frequently added content. Embed RSS feeds. (see Feedburner) Many CMS generate RSS feed automatically (WordPress), some need plug on.

Viral marketing

Marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.

Email marketing

- less costly than other media advertising

- instant, global

- hyperlinks create dynamic user experience

- forwarding option for user

- building relationships – weekly newsletters

- target specific customers (due to their registration forms)

- gathering customer feedback

- easy access to dynamic information on the success of your marketing campaign

- eco friendly – boosts your ‘green’ credentials

NB! HTML email designs must use “tables for layout” (no DIVs) and very simple CSS, due to archaic HTML support from Outlook and others

*Interspire Email Marketer,  MailChimp, dotMailer

Offline marketing – do not neglect!

Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content

A content strategy defines:

• key themes and messages

• recommended topics

• content purpose (i.e., how content will bridge the space between audience needs and business requirements)

• content gap analysis

• metadata frameworks and related content attributes

• search engine optimization (SEO)

• implications of strategic recommendations on content creation, publication, and governance

Content should be

• useful

• unique

• authorative

• influence SEO

Content planning

• websites are living things, update content regularly

• define a content release schedule and stick to it

• out of date / unchanging sites lose trust / ranking

• blogs are important because they provide new content regularly

• plan content carefully, remember: useful, unique, authoratitive!!

Writing for the web

• text should be easy to read and follow

• remember who you are writing to (audience demography)

• calls to action

- understand your user’s goals – what action do they want to take?

- understand your goals – what action do you want them to take?

• alternative ways of information presentation

- images (HD, high resolution, wide screen, check the quality! alt text for accessibility. Descriptive filenames aid SEO! Larger images, with descriptive file names and alt text are more likely to rank higher in Google Image Search)

- photography

- diagrams

- videos (HD, host on YouTube and embed in site, no format/compatibility issues – playable on no-flash devices. HTML 5 video coming soon!)

- audio

- NB! accessibility!!!!

Information architecture

• ‘navigation by category’ architecture (sub, sub-sub categories…)

avoid having a particular content page in more than one category

• tagging – tag with keywords! (provides another navigation system, aids site search

- clear heading and title

- ‘active page’

- breadcrumbs

- site map

NB! do not relay on colour alone!

• version control (to restore backup, resolving errors, quality control, customer service)

• meta data (author’s name, date published, date updated)

Style / brand / tone of voice / personality

• brand is more than just a logo and name, it’s the way company’s staff communicate and behave, the style company uses to market itself! Website should be 100% aligned to its offline brand

- refer to documents produced by the brand teams

- define colour schemes

- font style and size

- use of logos

- tone of voice (formal/informal, adults/children; or everyone?)

- personality

a web based software application used to manage content on a website:

• User-friendly interface for non-technical website manage

• for faster development for web designers

Features and benefits:

• common functions – image galleries, forms etc

• user friendly, no technical knowledge required

• each page gets the design from a pre-built HTML/CSS template, custom coded by web designer or as a ready template

• add/edit/delete/unpublish pages or categories

• add/edit text

• upload images, pdf documents etc to page to page

• updates navigation links automatically for new pages

• social media plug-ins

• universal accessibility

CMS types

• WordPress

• Joomla!

• Drupal

• Perch

• Expresion Engine

• ModX

WordPress is most advanced

Image gallery CMS

• Zenphoto

• Menalto Gallery

• Pizel Post

eCommerce CMS

• PrestaShop

• Magento

• osCommerce

• jshop

Specialist CMS’s

• Moodle (learning management)

• WikiMedia (wiki)

• booking systems

Most CMS’s are free (WordPress, Joompa!, Drupal, ModX) – feedback comes from community therefore answers for problem may take time or not come at all L

Paid CMS (Perch £42; Expression Engine £65; CMS Builder £125) comes with professional support J and extensions are well tested

CMS usage

• In some cases CSM is not used

• standard (“out of the box”)

• standard + plug ins

• standard + own theme + custom built plug ins

• custom built CMS (Very large companies may use very expensive custom built CMS’s)

CMS installation

What to check:

• make sure your web host supports CMS you will use (check the list of requirements)

• amount of memory allocated to PHP (mostly for image galleries)

• availability of mod_rewrite Apache mpdule (required to produce search engine friendly URLs)

Preparing:

• download & unzip

• create new, empty MySQL database (usually via hosting control panel – Cpanel or Plesk)

• connect your website using FTP (Filezilla for example, its free!)

• some CMS ask to type the database connection details before uploading, some after

• may need to change permissions on certain directories (Drupal requires to change the sites/default directory permissions to 777)

• administrator username and password to set during installation

Some CMS hosting companies offer to install it for you (Fantastico, Softaculous), check they are using latest version of the CMS!! In this case you do not need to create a database or connect by FTP, its all done for you, just set username and password.

How to choose

• easiness for your client

• does it has what you need?

• you can combine CMS’s

• For your thesis project, you are expected to design and code your own HTML/CSS templates, to demonstrate your learning

• free with community support

• affordable with commercial support

• search engine friendliness (does the CMS create keyword-laden URLs, for example www.website.com/services rather than www.website.com/index.php?id=5485. Most modern CMSs create search engine friendly URLs with the help of the “mod rewrite” function of the Apache web server.)

Suggested workflow

• define content strategy

• select CMS by researching its functions

• install & check functionality

• design the look and feel

• use HTML, CSS and JavaScript to build web templates

• make the templates available for use in CMS (download and study examples)

• test. And test again!

• review & correct

• launch

• client training and ongoing support

Template anatomy

…

<link href=”style.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />

<title>{{title}} = [[sitename]] </title>

[[scrips]]

</head>

<body>

<div id=”wrapper”>

<div id=”header”>

[[header]]

</div>

<div id=”sidebar”>

[[navigation]]

</div>

<div id=”content”>

<h1>{{title}}</h1>

{{content}}

</div>

<div id=”footer”>

[[footer]]

</div>

</div>

</body>

</html>

Elements with curly brackets {{}} are unique to this page

Elements with square brackets [[]] are common to other pages too

Extensions

• free add-ons

• extend with writing your own PHP code

• hire programmer to do it for you (offshore are often high quality and inexpensive – Elance)

• participate on support forums!

Also available as a PDF file

Also available as a PDF file

Also available as a PDF file

Also available as a PDF file