Is Your Website AWESOME?

About the Authors

Introduction

Awesome CMS Tools

Search Engine Optimization

Social Media

Design & Compatibility

Site Maintenance

Tracking and Discovery

Wrap-Up Checklist

What Next

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Table of Contents

Andy Forsberg

Director of Marketing

An SEO expert and Web development entrepreneur, Andy

Forsberg is Marketing Director at MentorMate and product

owner of the SaaS product SpyderMate. He has 15 years of

experience developing profitable web sites. Andy considers

SEO to be as much of an art as it is a science.

Ryan Fortune Inbound Marketing Specialist

Ryan joined the MentorMate team in

2012 and quickly began adding his twist

to the company à la written word. A

regular contributor to the MentorMate

blog and website, he is always looking

for new ways to swankify company

material.

Alex Krasny Creative Marketing Specialist

Alex earned his advertising degree

from the U of M and his web develop-

ment skills from the streets. He has been

building websites and blogging for over

ten years. Alex manages MentorMate’s

social media and often contributes to

the blog.

Pete Freeberg

Marketing Manager

Since 2010, Pete Freeberg has served in various MentorMate

positions, including PM, QA, BA, MC, product manager,

and videographer. He finally settled down as manager of

MentorMate’s Marketing department, a role which is pretty

much all the previous positions rolled into one.

Brady Swanson Internet Marketing Specialist

Originally, Brady served on the front

lines of search engine optimiza-

tion, leading an intrepid team of link

building ninjas in daring deeds of SEO.

Since then he has made a transition

into a development role, working with

content management systems.

About The Authors

1

Alex Ryan Andy Pete Brady

Your Guide to an Awesome Website So, you have a website and you consistently produce engaging

content. You think your website is awesome. Now it’s just a

matter of time before it takes off, right?

Well, although it helps, great content is only one piece of this

puzzle. You need more than that to make a website awesome.

It takes great design, usability, user engagement, social

interaction, search engine optimization, maintenance, data

tracking, and lots more. Lucky for us, there are numerous

tools available that help automate, simplify, and accelerate

these tasks.

We get it. Having a successful website is a full-time job. Web

standards are changing, as are search engine algorithms.

Mobile devices are quickly reshaping the way we view the

web. No matter your level of experience, if you have a website,

there are lots of ways you can to make it more awesome.

Favicon Domain Canonicalization Socialization

Mobile-FriendlyResponsive Design

4 SecondLoad Time

99.9%Uptime

2

Awesome CMS Tools If your website uses a content management system (CMS),

there is a good chance it was built with one of these three. A

CMS is a great way to build a website while saving cost and

time, especially if you use a well-designed theme.

Thanks to a sizable userbase and an active developer com-

munity, elements like plugins, modules, components, and

widgets are constantly created and updated to make your

website easier to build and maintain. Here is our roundup of

the top “must install” extras for each CMS below.

3

Wordpress

W3 Total Cache: Use W3 Total cache

to make your Wordpress site lightning

fast. W3 can cache and minify every

aspect of your site’s code, as well as inte-

grate with content delivery networks

for even more speed.

WordPress SEO (Yoast): Yoast’s SEO

plugin takes Wordpress to the next level,

giving you fine grained control over

your site’s search optimization. It also

includes helpful additions like previews

of how your page will appear in Google’s

results.

Gravity Forms: Gravity is, without

a doubt, the best way to make forms

in Wordpress. Gravity has numerous

advanced features, such as conditional

logic, a visual form editor, and multi-

page forms. All form submissions are

stored in a database for easy retrieval.

Joomla

RokPad: There comes a time when

web developers must graduate from

the WYSIWYG editor and start writing

content directly in code. The standard

Joomla code editor leaves a lot to be

desired. RokPad is the solution. Select

different formatting styles, colors, use

shortcuts, and even AJAX save.

Modules Anywhere: This has been an

auto-install on every Joomla site since

we discovered it. This plugin allows you

to insert a module anywhere on the site

instead of just into a module position.

Its versatility cannot be overstated.

J2XML: J2XML is the ultimate migration

tool. It’s really more of a silver bullet

than an auto-install plugin. Upgrading

a site from Joomla 1.5 to 2.5+ is a major

undertaking. The process is more like

building a brand new site than upgrad-

ing an old one. J2XML will migrate all of

your articles and maintain the category

and file structures.

Drupal

Display Suite: Makes it easy to manage

how your Drupal content is displayed,

organized and formatted.

Pathauto: Allows you to make search

engine friendly URLs easily, utiliz-

ing templates for your various unique

content types.

SEO Checklist: A great checklist for

making sure your Drupal web site is well

optimized for the search engines.

Views: Allows for creation of complex,

interactive, database-driven web pages.

It utilizes complex filters, sorting mech-

anisms, displays and relationships.

Administration Menu: The default nav-

igation in Drupal is less than ideal. This

module greatly improves the adminis-

trative interface.

It’s a simple question - if search engines

can’t find your website, who will?

In addition to designing a visually

appealing website

with great content,

one of the keys to

online success is

ensuring that your

website is easily

f o u n d . O n e o f

the most utilized

techniques for driving traffic is the

application of search engine optimiza-

tion, or SEO.

To keep the search spotlight on your

website, you must constantly and

consistently evolve your content. The

nature of search is changing and search

engines are becoming much better at

determining the web content that users

want while penalizing websites that try

to hoodwink search

bots by applying “black

hat” tactics.

The most tried and

true SEO techniques

involve optimizing the

content of your pages,

placing emphasis on particular keyword

phrases, and giving visitors a reason to

land on your website. SEO is as much an

art as it is a science, and takes a lifetime

to master. However, the basics are easy

to learn and implement.

These techniques include:

SEO is a valuable practice that has the

potential to yield outstanding long-

term results.

The following tools will help you get

started with your SEO efforts.

White Hat SEO

Put simply, white hat SEO is the authen-

tic usage of SEO strategies, techniques,

and best practices that adhere to search

engine guidelines and policies. The suc-

cessful application of white hat SEO is

what drives the SEO industry forward and

keeps it relevant. When search engines

give results that people actually want to

click on, it is a win-win in the purest form.

Examples: Creating great, shareable

content - optimized page tit les and

headers - thorough keyword research -

optimized URL structure - optimized site

structure

Grey Hat SEO

If you employ SEO techniques that major

search engines haven’t clearly defined

as a breach of their rules, but that could

be seen as such, chances are good you’re

doing a bit of grey hat SEO. These tactics

are not intentionally misleading, but

are not clean cut either and can be very

risky. Historically, websites that have

applied grey hat SEO open themselves up

to be punished by future search algorithm

changes.

Examples: Intentional duplicate content -

shady directory links - irrelevant comment

or forum links

Black Hat SEO

Black hat SEO is the spam of search. Those

that have used black hat techniques typi-

cally utilize unethical tactics that Google

and Bing haven’t yet caught up with

for short-term gain. The major search

engines actively work toward preventing

and disabling these tactics and penalize

or blacklist websites that use black hat

techniques through frequent algorithm

updates. In the end, if you care about your

online presence, never use black hat SEO.

Examples: Hidden keyword stuffing - link

farming - page cloaking

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is a valuable practice that has the potential to yield outstanding results.

• optimized page titles

• domain canonicalization

• image alt attributes

• compelling meta descriptions

• optimized URL structures

• streamlined code

4

SpyderMate SEO Toolsspydermate.com

Cost: Free trial to $149 per month

What is the purpose of maintaining

a website without discovering how it

performs, and what steps you can take

to improve it? How will you track it’s

success? SpyderMate’s suite of five SEO

tools will help you answer these ques-

tions and more.

The Scorecard is a website assessment

tool that allows you to quickly identify

the online visibility and impact of any

domain. This is where you get a bird’s

eye view of a website’s overall SEO

effectiveness. Essentially, the Scorecard

provides a great point of reference to see

how you stack up to your competition.

The Auditor is a powerful web crawler

that delves 100 pages deep into any

website and reports on any specific SEO

issues found. This tool can be used to

investigate new websites, to guide the

structure of your current website, and

to organize SEO progress in one central

hub. It scans a website for 25 different

types of issues, listing each by category

and severity.

The SERP Tracker is a search engine

ranking tool that can accurately track

keyword rankings in Google and

Bing for numerous languages and

localizations.

Low Hanging Fruit is a keyword optimi-

zation tool that analyzes either a specific

URL or an entire domain. The result-

ing report will tell you what keywords

have the most potential traffic growth,

how well each keyword is optimized in

on-page locations, and all the potential

locations where these keywords are not

being targeted.

SEMRush is the perfect competitor

analysis tool. It helps you uncover

insights into your competitors’ rankings

and keyword value and then uses it to

better focus your own campaign.

5

• SEO Scorecard• Website Auditor• SERP Tracker• Low Hanging Fruit• SEMRush

Marketing Grader

marketing.grader.com

Cost: Free

Is your site a marketing powerhouse?

The HubSpot Marketing Grader will

scan your website and identify problem

areas with your marketing efforts. Are

you blogging enough? Is your content

being shared on social media channels?

Is your copy easy to search?

This free report can be run on any

domain. Use it to discover what you (and

your competitors) are doing well, and

where the cracks are in your strategies.

CheckDog

checkdog.com

Cost: Free Trial to $27+ per month

Use Grammarly to proof your writing

while you’re creating new content,

and apply CheckDog to analyze the

work you’ve already done. CheckDog

scans your entire website, looking

for typos and broken links. Typos can

make your website appear unprofes-

sional. Misspelling important keywords

can also negatively impact your SEO

efforts.

CheckDog sniffs around by page, using

a master list of misspellings. Each

mistake it uncovers can be clicked to

preview and correct.

Use CheckDog to make sure your

spelling is awsom. Or rather, awesome.

Grammarly

grammarly.com

Cost: Freemium or $99 per month

Great writing might be the most impor-

tant part of creating great content. More

and more companies are implementing

content driven marketing campaigns,

and with good reason - if done properly,

it can yield outstanding results.

Incidentally, poor writing can harm

your credibility and online reputation.

Few things are more distracting than a

glaring typo or ignorant grammar.

Grammarly is an automated proof-

reader designed to instantly find and fix

a wide variety of grammatical errors.

More than that, it aims to improve your

writing by suggesting context-opti-

mized vocabulary for you to use. It is a

writer’s best friend (besides a steaming

mug of fresh-brewed coffee).

There are many non-vital, but still beneficial website improvements

that you should consider. Some of these concepts are complex and

sound technical, but with a little research, you’ll find they’re not as

over-your-head as it might seem. We recommend googling these

phrases for more information. The instructions are easy to follow,

and the rewards are worth reaping.

• “Website Favicon”

• “about XML Sitemap”

• “Robots.txt”

• “Custom 404 page”

• “Domain Canonicalization”

• “Search Engine Friendly URLs”

Pro Tip:EducateYourself

6

What About this Social Stuff?One of the greatest indicators of web

success is social buzz. While analyti-

cal numbers indicating you have a lot

of visitors are great, it is particularly

exciting to hear the flattering things

people have to say about your awesome

website.

There are three things to consider as

you begin your social campaign.

First, make sure you are active on as

many social sites as you can manage.

Facebook and Twitter are hands down

the most important platforms, but it

doesn’t hurt to be involved in more.

Google+ activity is considered by Google

when ranking sites. Instagram and

Pinterest are both showing tremendous

growth. If you haven’t yet, familiarize

yourself with each of these.

Second, you want to make it as easy

as possible for visitors to share your

content on their social profiles. Social

sharing is simply one of the best

forms of promotion. It’s free for you,

and the audience it reaches knows it

is endorsed by the person sharing it.

Consider adding social sharing icons

to your website, even if you don’t think

anyone will use them. Sometimes they

are useful simply as a reminder.

Third, once you have started active

social engagement, make sure you are

actively participating in the discus-

sion. This is a great way to make your

visitors feel a personal connection to

your brand, and it allows you to address

concerns about your product or service

in an efficient manner while gaining

social exposure.

One caveat to keep in mind: some

products and services are more likely

to generate social buzz than others. A

financial services company simply isn’t

going to get as many interactions as

a fashion designer or entertainment

brand. It is still a good idea to have a

basic social presence regardless of what

you are offering, so that you are taking

advantage of every avenue to draw

traffic to your site.

AddThis

addthis.com

Cost: Free

AddThis has the perfect balance of simplicity and functionality, outshining every social share plugin we have seen. It is a

breeze to implement on pretty much any CMS. The bar is totally modular, allowing you to decide which social sites are included,

how the bar is oriented, and what the buttons should look like. Detailed analytics of your social shares and social referrals are

recorded. Best of all, it’s free.

Social sharing is simply one of the best forms of promotion.

Social Network Users Jan 2013 Data via expandedramblings.com

Facebook 1 Billion

Twitter 500 Million

Google+ 400 Million

LinkedIn 200 Million

Instagram 100 Million

Pinterest 25 Million

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Mention

en.mention.net

Cost: Free to $19.99 per month

Mention is a tool that monitors social

networks, forums, and web pages

for your brand, your industry, your

company, your competitors, or any

chosen keyword.

The free service includes 500 monthly

keyword alerts and a task system to

ensure mentions are followed up with

by someone in your organization.

The paid options include data export

options, as well as advanced statis-

tics and the ability to track a greater

number of mentions.

Sprout Social

sproutsocial.com

Cost: Free Trial to $39+ per month

Sprout Social is a social media manage-

ment service that provides a sleek user

interface for creating brand-related

Twitter and Facebook updates.

Sprout provides in-depth analytics of

your profiles and social interaction,

in addition to offering many posting

features. You will find a built-in post

scheduler, a link-shortener, and the

ability to cross-post in multiple profiles.

Perhaps the most innovative feature is

the “Smart-Queue” technology. It stra-

tegically auto-posts your content when

your audience is most active, giving you

maximum exposure potential.

KnowEm

knowem.com

Cost: Free to $649

KnowEm is a service that will scan a

staggering amount of social networks

to check for accounts registered under

your brand name.

They also offer a paid service that

will claim your brand name on all of

the social networks. The service will

populate each social profile with infor-

mation you provide - bio, picture, URL,

and a description.

KnowEm is a fast way to make sure that

you have claimed your official brand

name on every viable service out there.

It also blocks others from using your

name.

Google+, Linked-In, andPinterest implementation is in the works!

KnowEm maintains an evolving list of over 550 popular social networks. You don’t need to be in all of them, but it couldn’t hurt to be.

In online marketing, timing is everything.Get alerted in real-time to any relevant news.

8

Design & CompatibilityWhen it comes to impressing visitors, the design and aesthet-

ics of your site are almost as important as the quality of your

content. In fact, sometimes the two are interconnected. For

example, if your site is not designed to be mobile friendly,

you will immediately lose the attention of the ever-growing

number of users who choose to browse using their mobile

device. If you fail to consider browser and screen sizes, you

are effectively waving goodbye to potential customers.

Much of the magic involved in a great design comes from the

creativity and experience of the designer who creates your

page. Unfortunately, no automated tool can measure how

awesome a website looks.

However, the following tools can help ensure your users are

seeing your site the way the designer intended, regardless of

the device being used to browse it.

GoMo by Google

howtogomo.com

Cost: Free

Use Google’s GoMo tool to see what your website looks like

when rendered on a mobile device. You will get recommenda-

tions of what you need to do to improve your website’s mobile

friendliness.

It is more important than ever to cater to mobile users. It is

estimated that 1 in 7 searches now originate from a mobile

device and, according to Google, 61% of mobile users will

immediately leave your site if it is not mobile optimized. How

is that for a rude awakening?

9

BrowserLab

browserlab.adobe.com

Cost: Free Registration

Make sure your website renders

properly in all of the most common

browser scenarios.

BrowserLab (by Adobe) will show you

what any website looks like on all of

the major desktop browsers - Firefox,

Safari, Chrome, and multiple versions

of Internet Explorer.

There are many browser and system

variations, some of which may present

your website differently. You need to

make yourself aware of browser com-

patibility issues before your users

encounter them.

Browser Breakdown

Most modern browsers will get the job done, making your website look as

awesome as you intend. Complex elements of web design, like rounded

corners, drop shadows, gradients, rotation, and most other CSS3 elements,

will work just fine. That is, unless you’re using Internet Explorer...

There is a running gag that the only reason to use Internet Explorer is to

download a different browser. Funny as that may be, the truth is, the latest

version of Internet Explorer is comparable with the best modern browsers.

Older versions of Internet Explorer (IE8, 7 and 6), on the other hand, require

special consideration.

A considerable number of organizations still use Windows XP, which is

limited to legacy versions of Internet Explorer. The cost of upgrading their

computers’ operating systems to a newer version could be prohibitive, and

may introduce compatibility issues. Because of this, a non-trivial percent-

age of internet users are stuck with IE8 or older. If your target market

includes users at such organizations, IE compatibility is crucial.

IE10

- 0

.88

%

IE8,7,6 -

13.0

0%

IE9 - 24.88%

Safari - 13.75%

Other - 1.48%

Fire

fox

- 17.

68%

Chrome - 27.75%13% of North American internet surfers still use Internet Explorer 8 or lower.

10

Site MaintenanceMany businesses fall into the trap of assuming that a well

built website is set to run smoothly for years to come. In

reality, this is rarely the case.

We have already covered the fact that you should keep your

design and copy current, and we highlighted the benefits

of sharing unique, engaging content. This next section will

explain the importance of regular site maintenance. While

not a particularly glamorous task, ongoing site maintenance

is crucial if you want your website to continue functioning at

an awesomely high level.

If your site uses a CMS, the first step is to make sure all updates

are applied as soon as possible after their release. This will

keep your system secure from malicious attacks. You should

also be monitoring your website’s performance, addressing

any concerns as they arise. This may include slow load times,

hosting issues, or problems caused by numerous users simul-

taneously accessing your website. After all, once your site is

awesome, everyone is going to want to see it!

The following tools will ensure your site runs well, no matter

what the internet has in store for it.

GTmetrix

gtmetrix.com

Cost: Free to 149.95 per month

Having a fast and responsive site is

important for keeping your users

happy. Visitors are more likely to

convert on faster sites.

GTmetrix will crawl your site and

identify any loading or speed concerns.

By optimizing your resources, you

reduce the overhead on your servers.

Load Impact

loadimpact.com

Cost: Free to credit-based pricing

Can your website scale properly to

handle a significant number of users?

Load Impact is a free web service that

runs your domain through a live traffic

simulation. It will show you how well

your site handles varying numbers of

visitors, from 0 to 50 simultaneous

users. Also, you will be given advice on

how to better optimize your site for an

even greater load.

Pingdom

pingdom.com

Cost: $9.95-$39.95 per month

Even the most awesome websites are

worthless if users can’t access them.

What if your website goes down and you

are not aware?

The service will monitor your website’s

uptime, notifying you via email, SMS,

Twitter, or a mobile notification if your

site ever goes offline unintentionally.

11

Tracking and DiscoveryIf your goal is to continually improve your processes, tracking your results is critical. It’s challenging to determine where to

apply your efforts if you don’t understand what has worked and what has failed. Don’t rely on intuition. Leverage available

data and analyze your content, traffic, and users. Then, reach out and attract new users.

Webmaster Tools

google.com/webmasters/tools

bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

Cost: Free

Google and Bing both provide services for webmasters to

better understand how their websites are indexed, and to

allow them to better guide the search engines’ understand-

ing. Once set up, you will have access to a number of powerful

features.

Link Disavowing - Have shady links pointing to your website?

Disavow them in webmaster tools and you won’t have to

worry about being penalized.

XML Sitemap Submission - You should make sure to generate

an xml sitemap and submit it to Google and Bing webmaster

tools. The sitemap will help the search engines better under-

stand the structure of your site. Use XML-Sitemaps.com to

generate your sitemap.

Demoting Sitelinks from Search - The only way to control

which sitelinks Google search presents is to demote non-rele-

vant pages within webmaster tools.

View Backlinks - You can see a full list of all sites that cur-

rently host a link back to yours. This allows you to follow up,

or potentially disavow...

12

GetListed.org

getlisted.org

Cost: Free

For any company with regional loca-

tions, it is important to optimize your

local listings. GetListed is a web service

that identifies listings you haven’t yet

claimed, and uncovers listings that

feature inaccurate information.

The process couldn’t be easier. Simply

search for your business and you will

be shown a number of business listing

sources. If your listing is not present,

consider adding it. If it is there, but has

incorrect or missing information, fix it!

Google Analytics

google.com/analytics

Cost: Free

Google Analytics is one of the best all

around free web analytics packages.

Analytics are critical for any business

tracking the ROI of internet marketing.

Google analytics includes advanced

features and segments for further ana-

lyzing your visitor data. Traffic source,

bounce rate, visit duration, pages per

visit, page path, and mobile usage are

just a small sample of the potential

data sets you can analyze.

13

Wrap-UpYou are now equipped with powerful knowledge! You know what tools to use to make your website the envy of every business

on the block. Now the question is, what to use first? Try our handy-dandy website checklist.

If you are feeling overwhelmed and unsure about where to start, focus your efforts in the areas that are most suitable for your

industry. If you are selling a hot new product, build your social presence as soon as possible. If the goal is to pull in leads for

B2B or B2C sales, SEO is a great place to start.

Now when anybody asks you if your website is awesome, you will be able to give an awesome answer. Yes.

Google & Bing Webmaster Tools [12]

Set Up Google Analytics [13]

Optimize Local Listings [13]

YES High GTMetrix Score [11]

Good Heavy Load Performance [11]

Uptime Tracking [11]

Mobile Compatibility [9]

Legacy IE Compatibility [10]

Facebook Company Page [7]

Twitter Company Profile [7]

LinkedIn Company Page [7]

Google+ Page [7]

Social Sharing Enabled [7]

Set Up Social Tracking [8]

SpyderMate Report [5]

HubSpot Marketing Grader [6]

CheckDog Spellcheck [6]

Generate XML Sitemap [6]

Generate Robots.txt file [6]

Domain Canonicalization [6]

14

SEO Social Media Compatibility

Performance &

Maintenance

Tracking &

Discovery

Website

Awesome?

I don’t have the timeor expertise to make an

awesome website.

I have an awesome website,but it isn’t performing as well as it should.

My website is awesome, but I need it to rank higher

in search engines.

Let us be your experts.

(612) 823-4000 15

What’s Next?