Tuesday, May 29, 2012

WooHoo! Site Update is DONE!

It took a month. It took going over things two and three times. I cut, pasted, filled in, wrote pages, checked all the links, uploaded photos - and it's DONE! The navigation is all new, the look and feel is no longer green, but "Rebel Prince," my winking cat, is still there.

http://bit.ly/KXhRxX

The Website is Done! WooHoo! 

Please visit, check it all out and have a good time!
Morgen

Monday, May 14, 2012

Web Work

I've been working on the website. Every day, I'm building and updating the pages. I'm averaging about 8 pages a day. It's slow going, but the results are a clean website, with no duplicated content and good links.

All the products are being re-evaluated, and the referral sites are being checked. Some of the links I've had to other websites are no longer good, and one even got taken over by a webmaster posting konji characters only. So, I've been cleaning up all the stuff.

I'm also removing ads and cleaning the "invisible" code that folks don't see, so maybe the pages will load faster.

I have not yet added any new content, but I have some ideas. I want to expand the "elder cat" area, and post some information I've learned from the diabetic cats in my household. Things about diet, exercise, regularity of meals and routine, that may help others.

I still have to re-organize the navigation. It still looks like a mess, and I have not changed anything there. I'll be changing the linking to use something called a "breadcrumb" link at the bottom of the page. Basically it says that you are "here" and gives you links back the way you got there, one page at a time, or you can jump right to the home page.

Using the breadcrumb link should increase the length of visits, which is something that has needed to improve for a long time.  Folks that come to see one page, then "bounce" to another website hurt the statistics of my site, and that has contributed to the poor performance and decreased traffic from the new Google algorithm. This should fix that.

I'm not updating the RSS feed at all right now. I want all the content to be spidered and listed before I update that.

There was a lot of copying of the website across the internet, and instead of requesting the other webmasters to honor my copyright, I've decided to abandon that and change the content on my site. If the other webmasters get caught with duplicate content, then it's on them.

I'm also taking precautions so that my website is not copied again. That's one of the reasons to not update the RSS feed. I'll have the first listing date in search results, and can "prove" copyright a bit better. I'll also be getting a full copy of my site every 6 months from here on out.

The pdf files that were directly accessed by other websites, the files have been either renamed or just removed permanently.

As for my ebook, it is being reworked and will be released in either Kindle or bound form in a few months. It will no longer be offered free, regardless.  I will probably add a lot to it, including drawings, pictures, and sketches, and extend the content to other areas of cat care.

Benign neglect is NOT the way to run a website, and it's my fault that I've let this happen. So, I'm taking responsibility and fixing the problems. I hope my visitors will like the final result.

Stay tuned. I'll reveal the "new, updated" site in a couple of weeks.