Three Sites Launch with SuperWebCMS Software
Super WebGroup (SWG) recently redesigned and developed websites for Pope Resources headquarted in Poulsbo and Gig Harbor Guide, in GigHarbor, using their SuperWebCMS software. Also, SWG rebuilt Teragren’s website using SuperWebCMS so that Teragren can now make all of their content updates in-house.

Pope Resources is a publicly traded Master Limited Partnership listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the ticker symbol POPEZ. Pope Resources has a heritage as a land and timber owner in the Pacific Northwest that goes back for over 150 years. Today, their assets include 115,000 acres of productive timberland and nearly 3,000 acres of development property, most of which is within a 50-mile radius of Seattle.

Pope Resources site features flashmaps of their property so that visitors can quickly and easily locate property for sale.

Gig Harbor is Washington's MaritimeVillage. Originating from two-miles of walkable harbor front, GigHarbor is the first destination on the KitsapPeninsula after crossing the TacomaNarrowsBridge. This vibrant community is notable for its maritime heritage, marinas, parks, shops, galleries, restaurants, gardens and much more.

Gig Harbor Guide's site features an interactive calendar that is maintained in-house as well as a live weather feed and links to Tacoma Narrows Bridge live webcam.

Teragren manufactures and sells fine bamboo flooring, panels and veneer. They are headquarted on BainbridgeIsland and have been a client of SWG’s for more than five years. SWG helped them transition out of an approximately 100-page static HTML website that was cumbersome and costly to update into a database-driven site using SuperWebCMS that makes updating content in-house fast and easy.

Teragren's site features a retailer locator search, gallery of their installations and distributor information.

All three sites were developed using Super Web Group’s SuperWebCMS, which allows clients to completely maintain their sites in-house – from content and search engine optimization to creating and updating dropdown navigational menus. And, all sites using SuperWebCMS are fully searchable, have dynamically updated sitemaps and resize web pages dynamically for easy printing.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

If it’s really so simple why does it seem so complex to implement?

Feeds are starting to make their way from blogs, technology sites, and large news sites, such as ABC news to more conventional websites.

Often clients ask us to put an RSS feed on their website. “Great.” I respond. “What feeds would you like published to your website? Or, would you like to make some of your web pages available as an RSS feed?” This question is usually met with a furrowed brow and is the reason for this article.

Feeds can be used in three main ways:
1. You can receive feeds and view them using a feedreader (also known as an aggregator) such as bloglines.com;
2. your site can display feeds from other sources for your web visitors; and
3. pages on your website (including images, video, and audio) can be converted into an RSS feed (also known as syndication) for others to enjoy.

Viewing Feeds
If you’ve ever clicked on a little orange feed icon without opening it up in a feedreader you’ve seen a lot of XML. No worries. Next time, just open up a feedreader first, such as bloglines and copy the page URL into the feedreader.

Most feedreaders list all feeds on the left then when clicked, display a list of headlines with a little copy on the right side of the page. They only display the updated content since the last time you viewed the feed unless you specifically request that previously viewed material stays visible. Clicking on a feed’s headline will open up a web page with the entire article or web page. Feeds are a great way to scan the latest news or technology headlines without having to go to a number of different websites.

Collecting feeds from your favorite websites and blogs is a great way to save time and still stay current on the latest news or industry trends.

Creating a Feed to Publish
From the programmer’s perspective, the XML programming that creates a feed is fairly simple. There are three main elements: title, description and a link. In fact, I just created a tiny feed for our website. The nice thing is that your programmer can make feeds very selective from individual web pages to elements on a particular page, such as a video. The downside is that you need a little programming savvy to create the XML file and upload it to your server and finally to create a link to it from your website.

Displaying Feeds on Your Website
Now, you’re ready to read feeds as well as syndicate most of your website, right? But, how do you get feeds to display on your website? Hmmm. It’s time to go back to your programmer. This time for a little JavaScript that will update the feed and display it on your website. There are a number of sites that create the JavaScript needed to display feeds and give you some control over the look (just headlines vs. headlines and a little copy), such as feedroll.com. A word of caution, pick your feeds carefully as you’re giving them real estate on your website to post whatever they want, so make sure the topic represents your site well.

Benefits of Feeds
Feeds offer two main benefits. First, like me, you probably have quite a few great sites bookmarked that you don’t get back to that often. If your favorite sites, blogs, podcasts or videocasts have feeds you can collect them and view them all at once in one place – a feedreader. It will just display the newest updates since the last time you viewed each feed, so you only see what’s current.

Second, if you’d like to offer your web visitors current information but don’t have time to constantly update your website, you can post feeds from other sources to make your site more of a resource.


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Jane Lindley is the president of Super Web Group, Inc., a web design and development firm specializing in content management systems. She can be contacted at 206-340-2519 or online at superwebgroup.com.

Marketing Your Website

This article appeared in the March issue of Bizillion Magazine.

Some of the best methods for marketing your website are inexpensive or free.

A number of the inexpensive ways of marketing your website came about as a result of Web 2.0 online services and concepts.

As you may know, Web 2.0 is the result of a brainstorming session between O’Reilly (a company that publishes programming books) and MediaLive International (a company that produces tradeshows). The dot.com crash had taken place and MediaLive needed a concept for an upcoming conference. Clearly web wasn’t dead but who wanted to be associated with the dot.bomb? To distance themselves, they decided that everything before the bubble burst was Web 1.0 and everything current was Web 2.0. Then they made a list of what was out and what was in. Here’s a sample:

Web 1.0		Web 2.0
DoubleClick (NY firm)		Google Ad Sense
Page Views		Cost per Click
Britannica Online		Wikipedia
Personal Websites		Blogs
Domain Speculation		Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Publishing		Participation
Stickiness		Syndication (RSS feeds)

Many of the new services, blogs, wikis and Google Analytics are free (so far) and can aid in marketing your website. There are many ways to broadcast your product or services message online. This article looks at Organic Search Engine Optimization.

Organic Search Engine Optimization
Years ago there were many search engines and companies who offered site submission services. Today, there are three search engines that count - Google, Yahoo and MSN - and no reason to submit your site to any one of them. Your site will show up on the first page of search results if it has content that is the most relevant for a particular keyword or phrase. Here are some inexpensive ways to make your site more relevant:

Title tags need to reflect the content on each page (don’t use the same title tag for every page on your website. Google is putting more emphasis on title tags now than keywords or descriptions.

Keywords and Descriptions still need to be part of your HTML meta tags. Make sure that you don’t spam the search engines by repeating the same word or phrase over and over.

Add Alt tags to all of your images. Alt tags stand for alternative and were originally used to help people with disabilities or those looking at the web with images turned off, know what the image represented with a brief description.

Add a Sitemap to your website. A link to your text-only sitemap should appear on all pages.
Use text as text instead of text graphics. Search engines have an easier time of indexing your entire site if they can read the text.

Use text-based navigation. Leave the funky navigation graphics to the smaller personal websites.

Add and update content daily. And, here is where bigger is better. A 1,000-page magazine site on the environment will display above a 20-page site with similar content. If you can’t update your site daily, look for relevant RSS feeds that you could feature on your website.

Ask for inbound links from parallel businesses or services. If other businesses and organizations think your site is relevant then Google will too.

Use keywords in your content, navigation and text links.

Start a monthly newsletter with links to different areas of your website.

Start a blog or a wiki about your main service, product or organizational topic.

Create an Email Signature with links back to your site as well as a marketing message or promotion.

Use Google Analytics to track your SEO revisions on an ongoing basis.

If you don’t have a content management system that allows you to update your meta, title or alt tags, you can give title tag, keywords, key description and alt tag content to your webmaster to update throughout your website.

Things to Avoid
Home or landing pages without navigation, sitemap or text.
A content-starved website
An entirely Flash website
A frames-based website
Link generating services
Spamming search engines

Three Things you can do Today to Check your Site’s SEO
1. Search for your site using keyword on the three major search engines. Does it show up on the first page for a generic keyword such as banking, vacation, sustainability? If not, go to step two.

2. See how Google sees your site by clicking on the Cached link on the search results page. It’ll display your site with the keyword or phrase highlighted throughout your home page. Do your keywords show up in your navigation, text links and content? If not, go to step three.

3. Update your content, navigation and text links with keywords in mind. And, if your market is dominated by large players, continue to add relevant content to your website.