Sherryl Perry – Keep Up With The Web

Case Study: Consolidating Multiple Websites Into One

When I posed the question “Do You Want to Consolidate Multiple Websites?”, I didn’t expect such clear lines to be drawn between people who strongly believe in maintaining separate niche sites and those who themselves are dealing with whether or not to combine WordPress blogs into one main site. While everyone wasn’t in total agreement, most everyone agreed that there can be situations where consolidation is the best route to go.

Was my post controversial? Yes. Not everyone agreed with our strategy. Some readers felt that clearly defined niche sites are the route to go. Other readers were considering the same strategy. The thing is that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy for deciding if you need one website or multiple sites. This week, let’s take a closer look at the thought process behind the decision to merging multiple blogs into a new cohesive brand.

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Do You Sell Online? Want To?

Building an eCommerce website or simply adding an online shopping cart to an existing site can seem like an overwhelming task. There are so many options available including: selling on popular online marketplaces (like eBay, Etsy or Amazon’s Handmade Marketplace), adding WordPress plugins to an existing site, using services such as PayPal, or creating an online store using eCommerce software. Many of the eCommerce solutions available today will handle many (if not all) of the components you need.

In addition to an online storefront (or simple shopping cart), you need: payment processing, website building & hosting, inventory management, marketing and even CRM (customer relationship marketing) tools. Given the wide variety of options, you should be able to find a solutions that requires either zero technical skills or build-it-yourself options. With the right solution, you can get a store up quickly and easily.

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Do You Want to Consolidate Multiple Websites?

Do you have multiple blogs and struggle to maintain them? Have you ever thought about rebranding and combining your websites under one brand? How would you begin? Could it have a negative impact on your SEO efforts?

These are interesting questions and consolidating multiple websites into one is not a strategy that should be taken lightly. It is also a journey that I just went on with Doreen Pendgracs (a published author, travel blogger, speaker and freelance writer).

Over the years, Doreen found herself with four separate websites. Not only was it time consuming to create content for each site, she also found herself torn between which site the content belonged on. Was it about chocolate, travel, writing, lifestyle or one of her books? Sometimes, the answer was yes to all.

So, how and why did Doreen and I decide that the best strategy would be to consolidate her sites? Come along with us as I show you how we made the decision. Hopefully, you’ll gain some insight by taking a look behind the scenes.

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SEO Resources Bloggers Can Use #FridayFinds

SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the most talked about topics that bloggers hear about. Whether we want to understand it or not, bloggers need to be aware of the basics of SEO. If we choose to ignore it, we’ll either miss the opportunity to get free organic search traffic or (even worse) risk being de-indexed by Google completely.

Today, in this episode of my #FridayFinds series, let’s take a look at some of the basics of SEO. My first find is chock full of SEO tips for publishing on LinkedIn and my second find recaps a roundup of eleven articles from bloggers including Dr. Peter J. Meyers (MOZ.com), Christopher Ratcliff (eConsultancy.com), David Shiffman (SEMRush.com), Garrett Moon (CoSchedule.com), Danny Sullivan (SearchEngineLand.com), Jayson DeMers (AudienceBloom.com) and Rizvan Ullah (Ranktactics.com).

You’ll also find some videos from Matt Cutts and John Mueller. Some of these posts are older but (I believe) they’re evergreen.

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What Is Your Response to Google’s Mobile Friendly Update? #FridayFinds

We’re less than a week away from Google’s April 21^st date to have our sites mobile-friendly. Hopefully, by now, your site already passes Google’s test, you’re implementing a plan to meet the deadline, or you have come to the conclusion that you’ll be okay if your website is not returned in the SERPs (search engine result pages) that are performed from mobile devices. The decision is individual. What we don’t want to do is make rash decisions that could derail our overall business strategy. We need to take a common sense approach to this and not fall prey to the #Mobilegeddon hysteria.

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Are You Confused about Google’s New Ranking Signal?

Last week, in my post Are You Ready for the Google Mobile Friendly Algorithm?, I shared resources about Google’s announcement that on April 21^st, they plan on including mobile responsiveness as a ranking signal. This week, let’s take a closer look at what Google is really trying to achieve here and that is to focus on UX (user experience).

Well, (as I’m sure you know), once Google stated that this change “will have a significant impact in our search results”, the blogosphere went abuzz. Understandably, that sent a lot of us to test our sites using Google’s Mobile Friendly Test. People who were confident that their website looked great on mobile devices suddenly questioned whether they really were.

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Are You Ready for the Google Mobile Friendly Algorithm?

Chances are, you’ve already heard that Google has announced a new algorithm update that will include “mobile friendliness” as a ranking factor. The expected “date” for this algorithm will be April 21, 2015. So what does that mean to you and me? Is the solution to use a responsive WordPress theme? Will a WordPress plugin meet your needs? If you don’t make your site friendly for mobile devices, will this Google algorithm update affect how your site ranks in the SERPs (Search Engine Result pages) for desktop computers as well?

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Does SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Confuse You? #FridayFinds

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just write content for our blogs and websites and not worry about SEO? Is SEO even important in 2015? What if you don’t do anything special about optimizing your content for the search engines? What if you just write?

Sure, your content may or may not show up in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) but if you totally ignore meta-tags, descriptions and alternate text tags, would it matter?

If you don’t pay attention to backlinks (both to and from your site) are you putting yourself at risk of a Google penalty or a manual webspam action or being totally de-indexed by Google? Let’s take a step back today and look at the overall picture of SEO through a #FridayFinds round-up of some great articles that I found for you.

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What SEO Tools Do You Use? #FridayFinds

SEO is one of my favorite topics to cover here in my #FridayFinds series. In the past, I’ve talked about how the Google Panda 4.1 update rewards quality content, how to optimize your sites for SEO, the differences between manual web spam actions and algorithm changes and the importance of Google semantic search to website owners. (Thanks to Jeannette Paladino for authoring that article..)

This week, let’s take a closer look at the SEO PowerSuite tools by Link-Assistant. Also, for those of you who have ever noticed a drop in your organic search traffic, I found a fun infographic that’s actually a flow chart that could help you figure out if you’ve fallen victim to a Panda or Penguin update (or possibly something else like a dreaded manual webspam action).

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