Website Vantage designed a website for the lacrosse tournament. The tournament is called the Catawba Classic.  The site is built on Wordpress and primarily a static site except for the news page.

You can visit the site at catawbaclassic.com.

Website Vantage has recently finished creating Photoartsshop.com. The site is simple and easy to navigate.  The site uses Next Gen Gallery to feature Steve’s photos. In addition,  WP estore has been set up inconjunction with Next Gen Gallery to sell the photos via an online shopping cart.

PhotoartsShop.com is targeting designers, home and business owners, and decorators around the globe to see and purchase his photos. See Steve’s work at PhotoArtsShop.com

Heatherspeerphotography.com was created by Website Vantage to fulfill her website needs. With the direction of Heather, the website has been designed to be simple as not to distract or take away featuring her work.  Next Gen Gallery is used to feature Heather’s art work and photographs via slide shows and image thumbs.

The website has a blog to allow Heather the ability to info her clients and fans where her next show or gallery showing will be.

Heather Speer is a artist and Photographer loacted in the Charlotte Metro area specifically in the Fort Mill and Rock Hill SC arera. Visit her site at HeatherSpeerPhotography.com

Pepsi has decided not to run an ad during the Super Bowl like 2009 Super Bowl Ad below.

Pepsi has been running Super Bowl ads for 23 straight years and has decided to invest in other forms of advertising like cause-oriented marketing campaign most likely promoted in part via the internet.

Has the recession affected TV advertising or has the internet? I found several articles with headlines like:

Internet Advertising is gaining momentum over Television Advertising

Is the Game Over for TV Advertising?

Internet Advertising Robust Even in Recesssion

I saw another article claiming TV advertising will continue to grow and be a large share of advertising expenditures but the growth will come from internet delivered programming. Sounds like internet advertising to me.

My point is the internet is and continues to be the “medium” to invest in advertising and promoting your business or product. Contact me if you want a website or blog for your business or product.

Scott Miller

The Hunting Club website will be used for hunting information for the club. The website consists of blog, calendar for events, and a forum for hunting brags, pictures, and other information.

I am sure the site will evolve and one or all members of the hunting club can access the Wordpress based website to post, add pictures, forms, or simply post topics in the forum. Happy Hunting!

If your club or organization is interested in your own website, please give me a call.

Scott Miller

Are you a smoothie lover? If so Debbie Smoothies in Charlotte NC has over 28 fruit flavor combinations to choice from.

There are two distinct things that make Debbie’s Smoothies special. One, Debbie Smoothies are delicious. Two, Debbie’s Smoothies are delivered to your home, business, event, etc.

Debbie Johnson created Debbie’s Smoothies after trying to create an extra special treat for her friends and family. Her family and friends loved the smoothies. Due to the phenomenal success of her passion, as well as the tireless support of her husband Michael, Debbie prayerfully decided to expand her business and offer her smoothies to the public.

Debbie’s Smoothies has been in business over 2 years and Debbie decided she wanted to improve her website’s internet marketing. So Website Vanatge has designed an all new website for Debbie’s Smoothies including two new domain names charlottesmoothies.com and carolinabestsmoothie.com. Within a few days after the launch of her new website, charlottesmoothie.com quickly landed on the first page search results for Charlotte smoothie and Charlotte catering search combinations.

Tega Cay Speaks is a Fort Mill and Tega Cay based Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, and Speech-Language Therapy service. Tega Cay Speaks continues to grow and is always looking to add Therapists to their staff.

Tega Cay Speaks owner and founder Ann Marie May who is also a certified Speech-Language Pathologist decided it was time to develop a new website for her growing business.

Tega Cay Speaks website is also a Wordpress blog. Ann Marie’s plan is to blog about disorders and treatment in the occupational, speech-language field. Tega Cay Speaks also supports may charities and wants to further promote those charities in the future.

The website is a work in progress but we invite you to test drive Tega Cay Speaks new website and visit often at Tegacayspeaks.com. (update Feb 2010, TC SPeaks has been sold and the website has been changed by the new owners)

If you have used Wordpress to blog for a while you have most likely run into the duplicate content problem I have had with Google post rankings. When I first started experimenting with Wordpress I could not understand why I was not seeing better Google search placement of my posts. After reading many posts about duplicate content issues with Wordpress and taking the appropriate action I saw better search engine ranking results of my posts.

Let me explain what I mean by duplicate content issues with Wordpress. When you publish a post, depending upon the way you have set up your Wordpress website, your post can be found on many different pages within your site. Some examples of where your post will be found are:

• Front page if your use the default home page setting or your post home page.
• Categories
• Tags (even the more tag)
• Authors
• Archives
• etc.

No there is not an error in the design of Wordpress. Wordpress is designed to be flexible and set up in many different ways.

What Is Duplicate Content According To Google?

“Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.”

Why Does Google Care About Duplicate Content?

“Our users typically want to see a diverse cross-section of unique content when they do searches. In contrast, they’re understandably annoyed when they see substantially the same content within a set of search results.”

What does Google do when it recognizes duplicate content? Google will try and index the page with “distinct information” and not index the duplicate content pages. But Google may take the duplicate content one step further. If Google perceives the duplicate content may have the intent to manipulate the rankings, Google we’ll make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the site.

Ways To Fix Wordpress Duplicate Content

There are many ways to prevent Google or any search engine from trying to determine on their own which page to index and which page to not index. The one tip I will focus on in this Wordpress tip is using the “more tag” when you write and publish a post.

When you place the more tag in a post, lets say after the first 3 sentences, it will cut off the rest of the post on the front page or the post home page and insert a “read more” link at the spot you inserted the more tag. Its like a short teaser. Your readers can click on the read more link and go to the post page to see and read all of your post. This will reduce Google from seeing the same content on the post home page and the post page, in this case the same exact post word for word.

There are two ways to add the more tag when writing your post. If you are in the visual edit mode when writing a post, put your cursor where you want to insert the tag and click on the more tag button (see picture below).

If you use the HTML mode click on the more button or type in the tag < !–more– >.

I would suggest to modify or enhance your “read more” text that actually prints out on the post home page to something that supports your sites keyword strategy instead of just “read more”.

Are There Other Ways To Reduce Duplicate Content On My Word Press Site?

Yes there are many other ways to reduce duplicate content. Using the excerpt function of Wordpress is somewhat similar to the more tag depending upon your theme template.  Installing All in One SEO Pack plug-in is another way of reducing duplicate content. And you can use robots.txt to stop Google from indexing certain pages or URL’s. And search engines now recognizes the use of canonical tags

Here is a link to other search engine optimization (SEO Tips) suggestions for Wordpress.

The Pet Nanny in Tega Cay SC is no exception. Michelle Shirley’s, aka the Tega Cay Pet Nanny , business continues to grow. She has a trusted, established business.

Michelle came to me when she first started her pet sitting business a couple years ago and we have both grown since then in our skills and experience. I have really enjoyed learning more about the pet sitting business.

The first website I built for Michelle was a traditional what I call a “flat file” multiple page static website. Then Michelle wanted a reservation form so her clients could fill out an online form and she could get instant notification about the reservation request. At that point I felt a CMS (content management system) type design would be best to store her client information in a database for future reference . We then made the switch to Wordpress.

Now most of  Michelle’s website pages are part of the Wordpress CMS system while the front page is still a single static flat file.

Internet marketing and top ranking search engine placement of a local businesses is easy if you focus on the local service area. Michelle’s website ranking has been and continues to dominate the front page of most pet sitting or pet care searches in her local area of service.

I am proud to be the Tega Cay Pet Nanny’s website developer and internet marketing guru. View the Tega Cay Petnanny website www.tegacaypetnanny.com.

Ethel has decided to teach bridge at the Charlotte Bridge Association. Ethel wanted a website to help market her bridge classes and regularly communicate to her fellow bridge players and students via the web.  Wordpress is a perfect fit for Ethel’s objective.

Ethel will be able to update the websites/blog on her own.  She can also regulary post lesson informtation, bridge tips, class schedules, and events on her website/blog.

Please visits Ethel’s website and you are welcome to comment on her plog posts. Here is a link to her first blog post

http://bridgecarolinas.com/bridge-classes/learn-to-play-bridge-in-charlotte-nc/

And of course the website is by websitevanatge.com