As a business owner you understand your targeted market the best as well as have a greater sense on how your potential customers feel and act. It's not just about optimizing your website titles and descriptions for Search Engines but also for the people (that's why your input is extremely important).

Our very popular article on How to Change Titles and Descriptions in Joomla demonstrated the mechanics of improving titles and descriptions but not explained how to write them.

Title Tips for optimal SEO:

1. Each of the pages on your web site should be given a title.
2. Title information identifies and describes your pages.
3. Most web browsers display a document’s title in the top line of the screen.
4. Every page of your web site should have a unique title and each title should accurately describe the page content.
5. Your target market should be able to read the title and understand what the page they are about to view contains.
6. Keep your titles brief - in the realm of five to ten words (Google shows up to 66 characters, so we would mostly like to achieve this).
7. Match the keywords you use in your meta-tags with the words you use in your page titles.
8. Position your keywords near the beginning of your page titles to increase your keyword relevancy. You can see this better from the following the example:

The title "Reusable Shopping Bags Environmentally Friendly - Bulletin Bag" would rank you higher than "Bulletin Bags: Environmentally Friendly Reusable Shopping Bags - Home" with everything else being the same.)

Metadata Description for optimal SEO:

1. Should be included on every page of the web site.
2. The description is used to supply an accurate overview of the page to which it is attached
3. It is best to keep the description to somewhere between 160 to 164 characters, and if necessary up to 200 characters in total
4. Do not duplicate your title tag in your description meta-tag
5. It helps to include a call to action encouraging the target market to visit your Web site or take some other action

I hope this was helpful and not too overwhelming. If you have any questions or comments, please post in the comments box below or send me an email.
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Ogy Nikolic | Managing Director | OGO Sense
tel.+1 (617) 418-4646 | send me an email | skype: ogosense 

Almost a year ago, I have made a decision for OGO Sense to use vBulletin as our support system where each client is assigned its own private area (or forum).

I have to say the support system has been a total success. All OGO Sense developers may view and respond to any of our clients  inquires quickly and efficiently while our clients would receive instant email notifications when there were messages posted for their review. Email communication is generally insecure and messages sometimes may end up in spam. Therefore, our support system is a perfect solution where it uses encryption, messages never end up in spam and are always well organized. 

I would like to thank our developer Pop for completing all vBulletin updates in a timely manner and a few clients for their patience who have never used other internet communication tools except their email. Obviously, if we ever got in trouble communicating with them or if we found it more efficient, we would use phone, skype and screensharing software. So no need to worry, right Bea!? 

At some point early tomorrow, I will be posting my 3,000th post  in our support system! As I feel so happy today, I'm offering 1 hour of free consulting to anyone who contacts me first with the following code: 3000

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Ogy Nikolic | Managing Director | OGO Sense
tel.+1 (617) 418-4646 | send me an email | skype: ogosense 

• Keyword Analysis
• Search Engine Friendly URLs
• Custom Titles and Metadata Descriptions
• Site Map Submission to Search Engines
• Web Site Traffic Reporting of Your Site
• Site Architecture Optimization
• Preventing Duplicate Content
• Keyword Use in Title Tag and Body Text
• Rate of New Pages Added to Site
• And Much More!

After designing 8 online shops with Virtuemart Shopping Cart, I thought it would be helpful to provide some additional tips for those sites, other Virtuemart webmasters hosting elsewhere as well as those prospective clients who may consider developing their online shop with OGO Sense.

If my tips are too brief for you or don't know how to implement them, you may contact me and/or leave comments/questions in the comment box below . My list of recommended improvements, which includes SEO, web strategy, functional and other tips is pretty comprehensive so let's get started:

1. Create unique and keyword rich friendly URLs for your product pages. Make sure that they are unlikely to change.

2. Try not to swap your products in-and-out. If a product is out of stock, don’t unpublish it.

3. Create unique keyword rich titles and interesting metadata descriptions for your Virtuemart pages. Consider what you would use if it was your ad in newspapers.

4. Regularly check sh404SEF urls that your site is generating. Virtuemart can sometimes produce some odd extra URLs, but if you check them regularly you’ll be able to quickly solve any problems.

5. Use <h1> headings instead of wrapping page titles in code such as <td class="contentheading">.

6. Remove all unnecessary links including PDFs, email and print buttons, Vendor Information (if theres only one vendor) and Manufacturer link.

7. Activate Silent User Email Activation so users do not have to validate their email before checking out.

22. Make sure your online store is cross browser compatible. 80% of web users are using IE on Windows, which means that an average site that doesn't work in anything else could easily be losing 20% of sales.

23. Be Bold! What happens when a user decides to buy a product? They add it to a shopping basket. What happens when they can't see the button?

24. Have a Clear Returns Policy. Users are impressed with sites with a good returns policy and are more likely to buy from them. Have people phone for returns. Free return shipping is usually a good option, if commercially viable. Finally, give the user plenty of time to return things. 28 days from the date of delivery.

25. Keep the User Informed. When somebody buys something online, they want to know when it's going to arrive at their door. Giving an estimated delivery date during the checkout process is good. Emailing them when their product is dispatched is great. Keep the user informed at every step of the process. Leaving the customer happy once they have made a sale means they are more likely to speak well about you later.

26. Offer Different Payment Options. It might sound obvious, but you should offer the user a reasonable selection of methods of payment. Make the user's life easy and give them what they want.

27. Consider Upselling and cross-selling. People that buy from you are doing so because they like what it is they see. If a user adds a product to a basket, show them other things they might like as well. Upselling and cross-selling are tried and tested sales techniques, and there is no reason not to use them on the web.

28.  Be Memorable. A good site will include information. A poor one is just an online catalogue. Users start with research online, just as they do offline. Information (articles, advice, reviews and so on) all help the user early in their buying process. Make contact with the user at that stage of their process and succeed.

29. You must have a Unique Selling Point (USP). Branding is important, as well as the quality of your site and information. Your USP is what sets you apart from your competition. Great customer service, low prices, products that can't be bought elsewhere, free delivery, great support - all of these are USPs. Make sure everyone knows what yours is. 

30. Be trusted. An address is a good start. A phone number, with people answering the phone, also helps.

31. Have a privacy policy. Showing a privacy policy and explaining shipping procedures clearly can also help the user to trust you. Design and content also play a part in trust. A poor design gives off an unprofessional feeling. If content is inaccurate or badly written, the same applies.

32. Use Google Analytics to measure your conversions and increased sales. 

Have additional Virtuemart tips that you would like to share? Please use the comment box below .

To learn more about implementing above tips, implementing an entire online store for your business, increasing your sales and learning how you could save time and money with OGO Sense, please contact me today for a free consultation.

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Ogy Nikolic | Managing Director | OGO Sense
tel.+1 (617) 418-4646 | send me an email | skype: ogosense

  The following text is a real client inquiry without identifying the source: 

Hello, We have a web site that we built with joomla 1.5 and we are looking for help with joomla support such as joomla security, updating joomla, backups/recovery . As far as maintaining our site, updating content, and adding new extensions we are fairly proficient, but we need help in the support as we were recently hacked and it took us a day or so to get back online. Is this something you do for sites that you didn't build? Thank you

Business users must take disaster planning and recovery seriously to avoid data loss, strengthen data security and keep business continuity in a time of a technical disaster. Unfortunately, business users are often too busy with their daily operation to always keep an eye on mission critical security and data loss prevention. 

  If you answer NO to any of the questions below, then you are not doing enough to protect your Joomla web site:

1. Do you meet Joomla security checklist guidelines?
2. Do you have unrestricted access to server log files which you often check?
3. Do you have 24/7 automated site monitoring?
4. Do you use appropriate server configuration for Joomla hosting?
5. Do you use secure server access (shell)?
6. Do you use a reliable server host?
7. Do you complete and periodically test daily backups of your database and weekly backup of files?
8. Do you have, improve and practice a disaster recovery plan?
9. Do you have a test site for testing updates?
10. Do you check regularly for security updates of Joomla core and addons? 

If you would like to know more about disaster planning/recovery for your Joomla site and how you could save time and money with OGO Sense, please contact us today for a free consultation.

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Ogy Nikolic | Managing Director | OGO Sense
tel.+1 (617) 418-4646 | send me an email | skype: ogosense