Wrodpress and the Trailing Slash

As WordPress users, SEO Chiangmai is very interested in such suggestions as WordPress automatically adds trailing slashes to pages. Nicely, WordPress also adds the 301 (permanent redirect) and the 200 (success) codes when a page without a trailing slash is used.

PageRank and 301 Redirect Boundaries

We have witnessed cases where 301 Redirects -- at both the domain and the page level -- effectively block or somehow mitigate the flow of PageRank. This means that it is vital to include trailing slashes in link-building activities, as well as to have well-thought-out page-naming and url development in site plans.

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International SEO Offerings and Experience

SEO Chiangmai is an SEO/SEM/Internet Marketing/Ecommerce consulting company. We've taught marketing, innovation and entrepreneurship, public relations, and organizational communication at the university level for 7 years. We've done IT consulting for 10 years and Internet marketing consulting for 5 years. The point is that this experience and expertise is brought to bear specifically in Internet Marketing where we do SEM (paid search/advertising) and SEO (site optimization and link-building).

Seven-Part Strategy

We have found a seven-part strategy works best:

• Keyword research, including competitor and market research
• Modern, open-source content management system and search engine integration (WordPress + SEO plugins)
• Content, content, content - updated, relevant, on-page SEO-ed content
• Social media integration, including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube
• Linkbuilding
• Advertising (paid search and banner ads)
• Analytics, to provide feedback and progress measurements

Case Study - 140 Hours / 4 Months / $5,000 USD

Our most recent success story we engaged with a client for 140 hours over 4 months and achieved a 300% increase in traffic and keyword ranking. One thing that is an advantage is our cost structure, being located in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Our price for this work was $5,000 USD (at $35/hour). This client also conducted an ongoing Google Adwords campaign of approximately 1,000 USD/mo. This campaign is one crucial element of the overall SEO/SEM efforts.

SEO Scalability

As far as our scalability, we are a small shop but could take on new select clients. We are a little picky because it is important that the client believe in and adopt appropriate content creation activities, and be willing to conduct an ongoing Google Adwords campaign.

Copy Writing and Content Strategy Requirement

We can do copywriting if the client so desires, but the point is that someone has to create regular content. The effectiveness of our strategy requires regular (if only weekly) content creation according to specific SEO guidelines. We have had clients who simply do not take this step and therefore see only small, incremental improvement in their rankings, organic and paid traffic. This as you can imagine is quite frustrating, and so we generally "out-counsel" them.

White Label

If SEO/SEM firms have clients who are willing to engage with us on all seven elements of our strategy, then we are interested in discussing further. We can do all work white label.

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Markdown WordPress Plugin

Markdown is a fantastic tool for providing document markup that is then transformed into HTML. Storage space is reduced from storing HTML, therefore queries to retrieve are reduced, and most importantly readability is increased.

The Markdown WordPress plugin (v.1.2.2 in any case) works great though in our current template we have trouble with it executing from within certain blocks such as inside of tables, widgets and in shortcode-supported footers.

As stated, Markdown does require learning (and remembering), that is recognition vs. recall. However, once learned the use of Markdown in offline documents (such as email) can be an even better markup than either something made up, or the requirement to use a rich text editor. WordPerfect 5.1 still beats MS Word, in our humble, old-school opinion.

Flickr Gallery WordPress Plugin

The use of shortcodes in general, such as those produced by Flickr Gallery require some initial configuration and there is a learning curve, however they dramatically simplify text editing.

Lightbox 2 WordPress Plugin

Flickr Gallery supports various lightbox plugins. Currently we prefer the excellent Lightbox2.

Smart YouTube WordPress Plugin

Smart YouTube by Vladimir Prevolac is another goodie which has some great advantages over copying-and-pasting embed code.

SlideShare WordPress Plugin

Yoast's Slideshare plugin (one of the few of his that works on a symlinked /plugins/ installation) allows for setting an override width and use the wordpress.com SlideShare shortcode. Worthwhile to use.

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