mark-potter.com

Today I decided to run an experiment of sorts. On the Maserati of Minneapolis website I’ve pretty much SEO’d the whole thing, but never took the time to write a proper htaccess file, or to setup for pretty URLs. Following a discussion with the guys at Rocket55 web design last night, I decided to take the time today to change this: www.maseratiofminneapolis.com/used_car_details.php?morriesid=BU70002
to this: www.maseratiofminneapolis.com/used_car_details/2007/Bentley/Arnage/BU70002/

This has the benefit of adding keywords to the URL string, and effects approximately 150 pages in total. I ran a keyword SERP test covering about 20 of my indicator search terms just before finalizing the changes, so we’ll run a weekly check to see how this effects pagerank, as well as if there will be any sandbox effect.

I finally decided to bite the bullet and make the change from using Blogger as my CMS to Wordpress.

Previously my reasons for using Blogger:

• Universal search integration within Google
• Preferred search placement within Google (Short-term pagerank inflation for new pages – [see: Google Operating System][and: New York Times] with apparently preferential treatment to their blogs)
• Cross-platform posting – Just about any internet-connected computer, via e-mail, texting, etc.
• Security – Wordpress is vulnerable from time to time
• Flexibility – Blog can be moved from Blogger’s servers to my servers by changing settings and re-publishing.

Drawbacks:

• Lack of quality plug-ins
• Lack of Web 2.0 functionality – tags, categories, etc
• Data ownership – I’m comfortable with much of my data existing in “The Cloud” but I want to own and control my content.

So, why the change? I wanted to host all of my content on my website, seamlessly integrating my professional and personal content, without losing anything in usability. I wanted to add things like tag clouds, keywords, topics, etc. I wanted some of the plug-ins I’ve run into on other blogs – like automatic e-mail replys for messages from first-timers, etc. I wanted a better theme system. And I wanted to use some of the new iPhone apps for blogging on the go.

So far so good. The ‘famous 5-minute install’ took less than that, and I had the bulk of the work done in under an hour. I’ve now got a slightly customized publicly available theme, and I moved most of my important posts from my old blog to this one. Next steps: integrate my professional portfolio, personal photography and other content.

MazdaGear is one of my long-term projects that I am most proud of. Last month we migrated the store onto a new platform, and revamped the design. I wanted to take this opportunity to write about its history.

MazdaGear Conceptual Splash Page

Back in the Fall of 2005 I was given a domain name, a splash page, a vision, and told to make it happen. The domain was MazdaGear.com, and here is the splash page: (click any image to see the full-size version)

The vision was to build a store that will grow to sell $30-40,000 in accessories per month. I started by looking at our competition’s e-commerce sites, expanding to other industry e-comm sites, and finally looking outside our industry at websites that I frequently shopped at for inspiration. When I really had a feel for what I felt would be successful I worked through the process of selecting an e-comm solution for our new site.

Continue reading…