SEO and User-Friendly Content

As an AYSO webmaster , you have your work cut out for you. Even to many seasoned webmasters, the dos and don’ts sometimes seem to be written by aliens in another language. You probably wear many hats and have many other tasks to perform as well, so making sure that your website is search engine friendly can sometimes fall by the wayside. Today we’re going to briefly discuss SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and how you can perform a few easy tasks in your day-to-day website upkeep to make sure your website stays code-modern and content-focused.

1. Get in the niche

We’re all about soccer! What does that mean for your website? Try to think about terms that folks will search for, and incorporate them into your content whenever possible. Phrases like “Local Game”, “Youth Soccer”, “Pick-Up Games”, these can be valuable for improving your search engine results. If there are ways to make your tour or activity even more specialized, then you might want to consider them. Perhaps you could mention your town, city, state, local fields where games are typically played? Providing a specialized offering means that the content you create for your website content in general will be more relevant to you, and therefore, your target audience.

TIP: As a specialized webmaster, you are the expert! Share your knowledge with good key words and phrases!

The Wild Wild Wonderful World of Tablets!

With more and more people using tablets as their primary window into the internet , it’s critical you understand how your site appears across those platforms, as your sites long-term success rides on this truth.  Responsive design can help your site maintain its look across the various platforms it will be seen on, which will give the end user a cohesive experience. 

This is critical because how users think of your site and how they interact with your content is largely defined by their experience. You can have the best content in the world, but if your end user cant see it or use it, none of that will matter, your sites visitors will dry up, and there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth. That can further impact how they share you  on social networks and whether they recommend you to others.

Today, many sites sense if the visitor is on a mobile device or tablet will redirect to the mobile version of the site.  The trouble with this is, many of those sites sacrifice some content for a simpler interface.  This can kill your credibility with your audience. On the technical side, it can lead to duplicate URL issues over time, so you want to make sure you account for this when it comes time to redesign your site. So remember keep those sites simple and elegant, the sites purpose before everything else is to deliver your content effectively. Don't be afraid to jump into the world of tablet and mobile optomized web building, its the future and we are all on for the ride.

Building a Lean, Mean, Quick, Web Machine!

Building a website can be a time consuming process. If you use the wrong kind of assets in building your site, it will become a exercise in patience and anger management. Here is a few simple tips to keep that site light on its feet, easy to build, troubleshoot, and maintain.


Small pages = Fast pages

The art of building a site that loads quickly and is quick to transition is a tricky one. no matter a persons connection speed there is always content to download. How frustrating is it when you go to a page you want to view only to have to wait sometimes, what seems like forever, for content to load. We have all been there. (modem era anyone?) Do your viewers a favor, keep those pages small no more than a couple hundred kb. (yes you can still have images and content and keep it that small)

Codecademy and Learning how to build websites.

In the last couple of years a wealth of web building software has arrived on the market that allows even the most technically challenged to build a pretty sophisticated website. Software like WordPress is even used by professionals to achieve pretty remarkable and sophisticated websites, sometimes though, a person will want more control they will want to start to lean how to actually code.

Years ago, short of going back to school this was a option that was not realistic to the average novice. These days however the game has changed. http://www.codecademy.com/ is a internet learning tool that will guide you step by step through the process of learning how to code almost every major web based language currently in use. I myself have used it to enhance and build upon the skills I already have.  The lessons are easy to follow, dynamic, and well constructed. Best of all they are free!

If you are a up-and-coming web developer and are looking to expand your skills so you can lean how to build your own sites from scratch I recommend this tool wholeheartedly.

WordPress for Websites & the 7 plugins you will need.

WordPress has become a increasingly popular method to create a website due to its ease of use, fantastic and helpful developer community, and the sheer number of high-quality free modules and plug-ins that can add fantastic features and security to your website. Here is list of the seven I recommend everyone start with.  

Akismet Spam Protection
Akismet is a spam filter plugin for comments. It is automatically installed with WordPress, so you simply need to go to your WP-Admin Dashboard and click on Plugins, find Akismet in the list and click Activate. A message will appear asking for your WordPress.com API key, simply click the link and create a WordPress.com account and then copy and paste the key back into your Dashboard.
 
Quick Cache
When a page is accessed on your site, WordPress performs some database lookups and executes a bunch of code. Ordinarily this isn’t a problem, however if you happen to have a lot of traffic all at once, this can slow your site right down. Quick Cache is a plugin that caches your pages periodically to dramatically reduce the load on the WordPress server. You can find the plugin at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/quick-cache/
Once installed, click on Plugins in the Dashboard and click Activate. You then need to click on Options in the dashboard menu and find WP-Cache in the menu. This leads you to a page where you can enable the caching. Don’t enable just yet, because it’s best to do this after you install your theme and have everything working, otherwise you can sometimes have trouble testing changes.
Note that to get WP-Cache working you may need to create some directories for it to write to. The plugin will give you details of what to do.

Clubspaces Customers: Don't Forget Pending Dark Date!

Don't forget! If your Region uses Clubspaces, you will need to convert your Region website to a new vendor before Sept. 3. As of Sept. 3, all Clubspaces websites will go dark and all information, such as pictures, calendars, and documents, will no longer be available.

Active.com, the owner of Clubspaces is converting its website platforms to eTeamz. For a coupon code for free year of eTeamz, please contact Shea McLaughlin.

Click here for other website options, or for help converting your website.

Does Your Region Have the Right Type of Facebook Page?

I spend a lot of time talking to RCs and Webmasters regarding social media best practices – especially about Facebook.

I get a lot of questions: How often should I post? What if someone posts something bad on my page? How can I keep up with a Region website AND a Facebook page?

But, before answering any of that, I always ask the person: What type of Facebook page do you have? Because if you don’t have the right type of page, you can be stopped before you even start.

All AYSO Regions, Areas and Sections should have a Facebook Business Page. If your Region has a personal profile, Group Page or Community Page, you do not have the correct type of Page.

Here’s why: