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LexiConn – February 2010 Newsletter
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In this Month’s Newsletter:
* Google Webmaster Tools
* Featured Client: artplates.com
* From the Blog…

Google Webmaster Tools

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Google Webmaster Tools is an extremely useful service that should be utilized by all website owners. The service is free and is not restricted to just ecommerce sites. Google Webmaster Tools is able to provide detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Google, which can help you optimize your site to improve your indexing.

Specifically, Webmaster Tools allow you to:

* Get Google’s view of your site and diagnose problems
* Discover your link and query traffic
* Share information about your site

One important setting that is configurable within the tools is your preferred domain. Most people choose to have their domains indexed with the ‘www’ prefix. Having all of your URLs indexed under one domain will allow for better ranking as everything gets seen uniformly as opposed to potentially having duplicate content issues if the domain gets indexed both with and without the ‘www’ prefix.

To address this, a rewrite rule can be put in place in your account that will rewrite the domain with the ‘www’ prefix, or without, insuring that the domain is indexed consistently. If you would like this rewrite added to your account, please send an email request to support@lexiconn.com. Having this rewrite in place (coupled with your Google preferred domain setting) will insure that everyone is viewing/indexing your site in the same manner. This can also help with the display of domain specific seals (e.g. a dynamic SSL certificate seal), as the seal may appear on one version of your domain name and not the other.

Another important report available in the tools is your site’s crawl errors. Pay particular attention to the not found (404) errors and you can even see which pages are linking to these not found files (if available). You would then be able to update the links accordingly and/or put in a permanent (301) redirects in place for the file(s) that are not found. Information on setting up permanent redirects can be found in our knowledgebase at:

http://support.lexiconn.com/kb/questions/206/

A relatively new section under the “Labs” menu is ‘Site Performance’. As indicated by the title, this report shows you actual performance statistics on your site. You can use the information to improve the speed of your site, thereby creating a faster experience for your users.

Included in this report is a section on page speed suggestions, as well as a page speed tool. Using these, you would be able to optimize your site, and you would even be able to see the effect of your changes by comparing load times on the adjusted pages. We have a blog post regarding site performance which elaborates on this topic, including what Google does with this data:

http://www.lexiconn.com/blog/2009/12/google-site-performance-no-need-to-panic/

Complete details about the Google Webmasters Tool offering, including signing up for the service, can be found at:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Featured Client: artplates.com

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This month’s featured client is artplates.com. Art Plates is a designer, manufacturer and distributor of decorative handcrafted switch plates, nightlights, and mouse pads for the home and office.

http://www.artplates.com/

For more detailed information on this month’s featured client as well as a listing of all past featured clients, please go to:

http://support.lexiconn.com/news/viewforum.php?f=4

From the Blog…

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Here are some recent posts from The LexiConn Blog:

Getting the Most out of the Oprah Effect – How LexiConn Helped Cosabella Increase Sales 2000%.
http://www.lexiconn.com/blog/2010/02/getting-the-most-out-of-the-oprah-effect-how-lexiconn-helped-cosabella-increase-sales-2000/

Google and Site Performance – Site performance is essential in creating a positive customer experience.
http://www.lexiconn.com/blog/2010/02/google-and-site-performance-why-you-should-treat-this-as-the-most-important-ranking-factor/

Taming the PCI Beast – 7 Steps to Easier Compliance: Simple Tips to Help Pass PCI Scans and Compliance.
http://www.lexiconn.com/blog/2010/02/taming-the-pci-beast-7-steps-for-easier-compliance/

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As always, feel free to contact us with any questions you may have. Complete contact and support options can be found at:
http://www.lexiconn.com/support.html

Sincerely,
- The LexiConn Team

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