Pixelsilk Blog

Search Advice is a revolutionary tool that gives you search engine advice as you put content into your website. Instead of waiting to add SEO keywords until after content is created, you receive your search engine advice in real time.

CMS and SEO should work together to get your site found, and that’s what Pixelsilk does with Search Advice. Figure out the keywords you need, how much content is required, and how to fill up your META tags—every time you log into your Pixelsilk website.

Check out our Search Advice video to learn more about how this tool makes Pixelsilk an even more SEO-friendly CMS.

Every Pixelsilk site has the potential of adding on Search Advice—if you’re interested in adding it to your website, or creating a new website with Pixelsilk and its Search Advice tool, we’d love to talk to you. Give us a call at 541.317.3583 or send us an email.

The Bend WebCAM conference, two weeks ago, was a success for everyone who attended. Networking at the Brew-Ha-Ha, lessons in SEO, workshops in creativity and bagels from Rockin’ Daves all came together for an enjoyable two days.

Bend WebCam 2011

The conference was created to expose designers to Internet marketing best practices and Internet marketers to the power of creating a brand image and voice.  Individual session tracks catered to both disciplines: Geek (left brain) and Chic (right brain). Plus, there was a third session track, Super Freak, which offered a combination of sessions. The inseparability of technology and creativity has never been timelier. And no other conference pulled these two disciplines together better than Bend’s WebCAM.

If you didn’t have the chance to attend WebCAM, you can still get a taste of the lectures and workshops that were presented via our online bloggers. Todd Mintz of PPC Associates, and Wendy Roe of Byron Roe Photography tweeted and blogged about two of the WebCAM tracks—giving you a chance to learn what you missed:

Todd Mintz, Shares the Geek Track

Bend WebCam 2011

• Choosing Your Keyword Battles -  Todd Malicoat of Stuntdubl, showed us how to do a proper cost to benefit analysis on keywords that will be most effective to our website.

• Double Your Paid Search ROI  -  Adam Audette of Audette Media, offered 9 steps to stop the insanity and increase profits on Google.

• Tools of the Trade  – Scott Hendison of Search Commander & Taylor Pratt of Awesome SEO, gave advice on how SEO, PPC, social media and content marketing team can work together.

• One Site, Many Sizes – Hans Sprecher of G5, shares his secrets about creating one website to cater to different device types using a techniue called responsive design.

Wendy Roe, Shares the Super Freak Track

Bend WebCam 2011 at Tower Theatre

• Creative Research + Killer Briefs - Lynette Xanders of Wild Alchemy, provided ideas and skills to help you get into the right “zone” to write a killer creative brief.

• Local University Search  and Social Workshop - David Mihm, Andre Jensen  and Will Scott, offered their insights and perspectives on improving a company’s local and social media efforts.

• Opening Keynote: The Four Pillars of Building Instant Trust Online – Tim Ash, CEO of Site Tuners, talks about the 4 pillars of building trust online.  Before people will act or transact, their concerns and anxieties must be alleviated.

• Facebook Don’ts – Will Scott of Search Influence, shares with us “what not to do” with Social Media.  Will shares the good, the bad, and the ugly way businesses are engaging online.

• Online Reputation – Todd Friesen & Conrad Saam, teach us how to protect our brand online.  Online reputation management is getting harder everyday.  Follow these tips on cleaning up the mess and protecting your reputation.

• The Advent of Social Film: The Inside Experience with Jamie Robinson – Jaime Robinson, presents “The Inside Experience,” a social film project which drives successful audience participation in this unique Hollywood Thriller.  Learn how to engage the audience, product placement, and how far viewers will go to become participants in the big picture.

We would like to give a special shout out to Visit Bend and AdFed of Central Oregon for helping make Bend WebCAM 2011 a huge success!

To stay up-to-date on the conference all year, follow Bend WebCAM on Facebook or on Twitter.  Start making your plans to attend the Bend WebCAM in 2012.

Web and business professionals will be flocking to Bend, Oregon for the third annual Bend WebCAM Conference, September 29-30, 2011. The conference was created three years ago to expose designers to Internet marketing best practices and Internet marketers to the power of creating a brand image and voice.  Considering the inseparability of technology and creativity in today’s business world, their vision was spot on.

This year’s agenda includes sixteen informative, idea-generating sessions and two killer keynotes that will discuss the latest and greatest strategies for search, social media and brand communications. Here’s more on the planned keynotes, sessions and why you don’t want to miss out.

Tim Ash and Rand Fishkin to Keynote

Tim Ash, President & CEO of SiteTuners, will offer the opening keynote on Friday, September 30 discussing, “The Four Pillars of Building Instant Trust Online.” Tim is best known for his e-commerce bestseller, Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions. Closing keynote, also on September 30, will be given by Rand Fishkin, Co-founder and CEO of SEOmoz, who will offer his perspective on “The Death and Rebirth of SEO.” Besides being CEO of the web’s most popular SEO software provider, Rand co-authored The Art of SEO and The Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization.

Other industry innovators and specialists will lead in-depth sessions catering to both Geek (left brain) and Chic (right brain) disciplines. Plus, there’s a third session track, Super Freak, which offers a combination of sessions.

All conference attendees are invited to the Brew-Ha-Ha, Thursday, September 29, from 5:30-8:00 p.m. at the Blacksmith restaurant for socializing and sampling of Bend’s finest beer.

Register here.

A lot of thought and effort goes into building and designing certain aspects of one’s website. A website can include interactive calendars, brand enhancing banners or slides shows—or unique and stylized content. Leveraging these items and ensuring their consistency across one’s web properties can save an enormous amount of time and add quality assurance to site.

Pixelsilk allows you to use web tokens to save all kinds of work and let others use it to, which is especially helpful for those building and managing multiple sites. A web token is code that inserts something like this [[“and”]], so the CMS knows what to show where.  After creating web tokens, all approved users can just start typing [[name of token]] in editor window and the Pixelsilk token sense window will come up. The window allows you to confirm selected web token. Once you do, it will instantly render element or content right there.

Web tokens can include controls, themes, skins or content—really what you can think up and build using CSS, HTML, JavaScript or a plug-in.  Another time-saving benefit is after a token is updated, the update can be easily rendered across multiple sites by a click.

When you consider these benefits, you can see why use of Pixelsilk tokens make a lot of sense and makes a lot of customers happy.

OK we know why management is lovin’ CMS multisite management because of cost-savings and time-savings but what about developers? Well, they are too. They know that multisite management is more than just being able to duplicate site content like Drupal, Jentla and WordPress allow. Some of these sites maintain separate code-based instances of each site, which is cumbersome to manipulate. Others have multisite features built around a core that was really designed for single site installation, which adds restrictions.

On the other hand, Pixelsilk was built to handle and efficiently manage multiple sites from the start. Managing both site content and site resources is at its core. And it makes sharing themes and the HTML of important brand elements simple.

Can’t wait for more developers to get it! I’m Susan Sano Berado.

The discussion of multisite management is an important one for companies and agencies who manage multiple websites. Here’s why: A CMS that offers it is more efficient. Its functionality allows one developer to literally do the work of 10 developers because they don’t have to “touch” each site. Site resources, such as a company’s brand look and feel, controls, plugs-ins, images, Java script files can be published—or updated—simultaneously.

When you consider the management of 100 or 1000+ sites, the benefits are huge. Businesses enjoy cost-savings and time-savings; the ability to get the work done with less manpower; and the quality assurance that assets are transferred correctly.

No wonder comparisons are taking place between Pixelsilk, Drupal, Jentla, Plone and WordPress. And no wonder Pixelsilk’s true multisite management is coming out ahead.

Stay-tuned for more. I’m Susan Sano Berado.

If you’re like most business professionals, you’re looking for ways to utilize the power of the Internet to your advantage. You’re reading search marketing blogs for tips; you’re getting social media ideas from colleagues. The upcoming SES Conference 2011 in San Francisco can provide you with timely search and Internet marketing strategies to help feed your desire to learn more.

SES San Francisco runs August 15-19 and is considered the leading search and social marketing event. It offers tactical advice and best practices from top experts—in their fields—on how to grow traffic and improve business online. The multi-day event draws thousands of marketers and agency professionals and includes basic and in-depth tracks on SEO, PPC, social media, analytics and more.

If you register for SES conference 2011 before July 22, you can save 20%. Just enter priority code 20PIX. You’ll also be able to join Mark Knowles, president of Pixelsilk and two SES speakers for a private cocktail party on August 17 at 7:15 p.m. RSVP before July 30, 2011, at events@pixelsilk.com. Private party is for confirmed conference participants only.

Publishing made easy is the goal of every content editor. After working hard to research and write a great white paper, produce a compelling video or purchase the perfect photo, the last thing any of us want to do is spend a lot of time and effort to publish it. Fortunately, for those using Pixesilk this isn’t the case.

Pixelsilk offers a handy library where you can easily upload document files, media files and image files. And once loaded, the files can be easily found, placed and published right from the content editor. OK, it may not be as simple as adding bullets to text—but it is close.

Ease of use, for those who are less technically-savvy is best. Thank goodness Pixelsilk developers knew this.

I’m Susan Sano Berado. Thanks for letting me share.

Not sure about you, but sometimes I look for an “edge” personally. It can come from purchasing a new pair of glasses that are more up-to-date, utilizing some newly acquired knowledge, or just feeling more positive about my contributions in life. Any one of these things can help me function in higher gear.

The same can be said for a website. A consistently high performing and highly available website is one that is functioning in high gear. And one way to get this degree of functioning is with Pixelsilk Edge.

Pixelsilk Edge gives customers an “edge” in performance, speed, and security. It’s an alternate hosting product offered by Pixelsilk and powered by Akamai, the industry network provider who delivers 10-20 percent of all Internet traffic, which is tens of billions of online interactions daily.

If your business is geographically dispersed across the nation or experiences a high volume of traffic, you’ll want to check out this 3-month trial offer: http://www.pixelsilk.com/edge/

Thanks for listening. I’m Susan Sano Berado.

Content organized well on the web is becoming more important.  If a page is too difficult to navigate through or too hard to find the information one needs, a visitor usually gives up and goes elsewhere. Having certain pages be created as a “list section” rather than just an HTML page helps you avoid this problem.

A list section is a “page type” that displays structured or record-like information really well. Articles, news items or photo/video galleries can be displayed cleanly—and better yet—can be sorted and searched by your visitors. Numerous book listings, for example, can be sorted and found based on a title or author’s name. The ideal vacation property can be pulled up first based on a visitors’ query.

Most Content Management System’s (CMS) don’t offer a list section, but Pixelsilk does. If your CMS doesn’t, you basically have two options: go research possible plug-ins or go hire a developer to build you the right fields for your list section.

With Pixelsilk, you won’t have to do either because it comes with default property fields that can work for any list section type right out of the gate. Pixelsilk lets you define how you want your list section displayed and used. Personalization can be done on a section-by-section (or page-by-page) basis giving you and your visitors many options.

I’m Susan Sano Berado—here are some samples:

http://www.blackbutteranch.com/accommodations/vacation-rentals/

http://www.blackbutteranch.com/Recreation/Whats-Happening-at-the-Ranch/

http://www.smartz.com/about/testimonials/

http://www.ironhorseprineville.com/Available-Properties/listings/