The document provides an extensive overview of essential elements for maintaining an awesome website, including content creation, SEO practices, and design compatibility. It introduces key tools and strategies for optimizing the website's performance, user engagement, and visibility, emphasizing the importance of social media interaction as well. Authored by experts from Mentormate, it highlights both technical aspects and creative considerations necessary for online success.

1. Is Your Website
AWESOME?

2. About the Authors
Introduction
Awesome CMS Tools
Search Engine Optimization
Social Media
Design & Compatibility
Site Maintenance
Tracking and Discovery
Wrap-Up Checklist
What Next
1
2
3
4
7
8
11
12
14
15
Table of Contents

3. Andy Forsberg
Director of Marketing
An SEO expert and Web development entrepreneur, Andy
Forsberg is Marketing Director at MentorMate and product
owner of the SaaS product SpyderMate. He has 15 years of
experience developing profitable web sites. Andy considers
SEO to be as much of an art as it is a science.
Ryan Fortune
Inbound Marketing Specialist
Ryan joined the MentorMate team in
2012 and quickly began adding his twist
to the company à la written word. A
regular contributor to the MentorMate
blog and website, he is always looking
for new ways to swankify company
material.
Alex Krasny
Creative Marketing Specialist
Alex earned his advertising degree
from the U of M and his web develop-
ment skills from the streets. He has been
building websites and blogging for over
ten years. Alex manages MentorMate’s
social media and often contributes to
the blog.
Pete Freeberg
Marketing Manager
Since 2010, Pete Freeberg has served in various MentorMate
positions, including PM, QA, BA, MC, product manager,
and videographer. He finally settled down as manager of
MentorMate’s Marketing department, a role which is pretty
much all the previous positions rolled into one.
Brady Swanson
Internet Marketing Specialist
Originally, Brady served on the front
lines of search engine optimiza-
tion, leading an intrepid team of link
building ninjas in daring deeds of SEO.
Since then he has made a transition
into a development role, working with
content management systems.
About The Authors
1
Alex Ryan Andy Pete Brady

4. Your Guide to an Awesome Website
So, you have a website and you consistently produce engaging
content. You think your website is awesome. Now it’s just a
matter of time before it takes off, right?
Well, although it helps, great content is only one piece of this
puzzle. You need more than that to make a website awesome.
It takes great design, usability, user engagement, social
interaction, search engine optimization, maintenance, data
tracking, and lots more. Lucky for us, there are numerous
tools available that help automate, simplify, and accelerate
these tasks.
We get it. Having a successful website is a full-time job. Web
standards are changing, as are search engine algorithms.
Mobile devices are quickly reshaping the way we view the
web. No matter your level of experience, if you have a website,
there are lots of ways you can to make it more awesome.
Favicon Domain Canonicalization Socialization
Mobile-Friendly
Responsive Design
4 Second
Load Time
99.9%
Uptime
2

5. Awesome CMS Tools
If your website uses a content management system (CMS),
there is a good chance it was built with one of these three. A
CMS is a great way to build a website while saving cost and
time, especially if you use a well-designed theme.
Thanks to a sizable userbase and an active developer com-
munity, elements like plugins, modules, components, and
widgets are constantly created and updated to make your
website easier to build and maintain. Here is our roundup of
the top “must install” extras for each CMS below.
3
Wordpress
W3 Total Cache: Use W3 Total cache
to make your Wordpress site lightning
fast. W3 can cache and minify every
aspect of your site’s code, as well as inte-
grate with content delivery networks
for even more speed.
WordPress SEO (Yoast): Yoast’s SEO
plugin takes Wordpress to the next level,
giving you fine grained control over
your site’s search optimization. It also
includes helpful additions like previews
of how your page will appear in Google’s
results.
Gravity Forms: Gravity is, without
a doubt, the best way to make forms
in Wordpress. Gravity has numerous
advanced features, such as conditional
logic, a visual form editor, and multi-
page forms. All form submissions are
stored in a database for easy retrieval.
Joomla
RokPad: There comes a time when
web developers must graduate from
the WYSIWYG editor and start writing
content directly in code. The standard
Joomla code editor leaves a lot to be
desired. RokPad is the solution. Select
different formatting styles, colors, use
shortcuts, and even AJAX save.
Modules Anywhere: This has been an
auto-install on every Joomla site since
we discovered it. This plugin allows you
to insert a module anywhere on the site
instead of just into a module position.
Its versatility cannot be overstated.
J2XML: J2XML is the ultimate migration
tool. It’s really more of a silver bullet
than an auto-install plugin. Upgrading
a site from Joomla 1.5 to 2.5+ is a major
undertaking. The process is more like
building a brand new site than upgrad-
ing an old one. J2XML will migrate all of
your articles and maintain the category
and file structures.
Drupal
Display Suite: Makes it easy to manage
how your Drupal content is displayed,
organized and formatted.
Pathauto: Allows you to make search
engine friendly URLs easily, utiliz-
ing templates for your various unique
content types.
SEO Checklist: A great checklist for
making sure your Drupal web site is well
optimized for the search engines.
Views: Allows for creation of complex,
interactive, database-driven web pages.
It utilizes complex filters, sorting mech-
anisms, displays and relationships.
Administration Menu: The default nav-
igation in Drupal is less than ideal. This
module greatly improves the adminis-
trative interface.

6. It’s a simple question - if search engines
can’t find your website, who will?
In addition to designing a visually
appealing website
with great content,
one of the keys to
online success is
ensuring that your
website is easily
f o u n d . O n e o f
the most utilized
techniques for driving traffic is the
application of search engine optimiza-
tion, or SEO.
To keep the search spotlight on your
website, you must constantly and
consistently evolve your content. The
nature of search is changing and search
engines are becoming much better at
determining the web content that users
want while penalizing websites that try
to hoodwink search
bots by applying “black
hat” tactics.
The most tried and
true SEO techniques
involve optimizing the
content of your pages,
placing emphasis on particular keyword
phrases, and giving visitors a reason to
land on your website. SEO is as much an
art as it is a science, and takes a lifetime
to master. However, the basics are easy
to learn and implement.
These techniques include:
SEO is a valuable practice that has the
potential to yield outstanding long-
term results.
The following tools will help you get
started with your SEO efforts.
White Hat SEO
Put simply, white hat SEO is the authen-
tic usage of SEO strategies, techniques,
and best practices that adhere to search
engine guidelines and policies. The suc-
cessful application of white hat SEO is
what drives the SEO industry forward and
keeps it relevant. When search engines
give results that people actually want to
click on, it is a win-win in the purest form.
Examples: Creating great, shareable
content - optimized page titles and
headers - thorough keyword research -
optimized URL structure - optimized site
structure
Grey Hat SEO
If you employ SEO techniques that major
search engines haven’t clearly defined
as a breach of their rules, but that could
be seen as such, chances are good you’re
doing a bit of grey hat SEO. These tactics
are not intentionally misleading, but
are not clean cut either and can be very
risky. Historically, websites that have
applied grey hat SEO open themselves up
to be punished by future search algorithm
changes.
Examples: Intentional duplicate content -
shady directory links - irrelevant comment
or forum links
Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO is the spam of search. Those
that have used black hat techniques typi-
cally utilize unethical tactics that Google
and Bing haven’t yet caught up with
for short-term gain. The major search
engines actively work toward preventing
and disabling these tactics and penalize
or blacklist websites that use black hat
techniques through frequent algorithm
updates. In the end, if you care about your
online presence, never use black hat SEO.
Examples: Hidden keyword stuffing - link
farming - page cloaking
Search Engine Optimization
SEO is a valuable
practice that has the
potential to yield
outstanding results.
• optimized page titles
• domain canonicalization
• image alt attributes
• compelling meta descriptions
• optimized URL structures
• streamlined code
4

7. SpyderMate SEO Tools
spydermate.com
Cost: Free trial to $149 per month
What is the purpose of maintaining
a website without discovering how it
performs, and what steps you can take
to improve it? How will you track it’s
success? SpyderMate’s suite of five SEO
tools will help you answer these ques-
tions and more.
The Scorecard is a website assessment
tool that allows you to quickly identify
the online visibility and impact of any
domain. This is where you get a bird’s
eye view of a website’s overall SEO
effectiveness. Essentially, the Scorecard
provides a great point of reference to see
how you stack up to your competition.
The Auditor is a powerful web crawler
that delves 100 pages deep into any
website and reports on any specific SEO
issues found. This tool can be used to
investigate new websites, to guide the
structure of your current website, and
to organize SEO progress in one central
hub. It scans a website for 25 different
types of issues, listing each by category
and severity.
The SERP Tracker is a search engine
ranking tool that can accurately track
keyword rankings in Google and
Bing for numerous languages and
localizations.
Low Hanging Fruit is a keyword optimi-
zation tool that analyzes either a specific
URL or an entire domain. The result-
ing report will tell you what keywords
have the most potential traffic growth,
how well each keyword is optimized in
on-page locations, and all the potential
locations where these keywords are not
being targeted.
SEMRush is the perfect competitor
analysis tool. It helps you uncover
insights into your competitors’ rankings
and keyword value and then uses it to
better focus your own campaign.
5
• SEO Scorecard
• Website Auditor
• SERP Tracker
• Low Hanging Fruit
• SEMRush

8. Marketing Grader
marketing.grader.com
Cost: Free
Is your site a marketing powerhouse?
The HubSpot Marketing Grader will
scan your website and identify problem
areas with your marketing efforts. Are
you blogging enough? Is your content
being shared on social media channels?
Is your copy easy to search?
This free report can be run on any
domain. Use it to discover what you (and
your competitors) are doing well, and
where the cracks are in your strategies.
CheckDog
checkdog.com
Cost: Free Trial to $27+ per month
Use Grammarly to proof your writing
while you’re creating new content,
and apply CheckDog to analyze the
work you’ve already done. CheckDog
scans your entire website, looking
for typos and broken links. Typos can
make your website appear unprofes-
sional. Misspelling important keywords
can also negatively impact your SEO
efforts.
CheckDog sniffs around by page, using
a master list of misspellings. Each
mistake it uncovers can be clicked to
preview and correct.
Use CheckDog to make sure your
spelling is awsom. Or rather, awesome.
Grammarly
grammarly.com
Cost: Freemium or $99 per month
Great writing might be the most impor-
tant part of creating great content. More
and more companies are implementing
content driven marketing campaigns,
and with good reason - if done properly,
it can yield outstanding results.
Incidentally, poor writing can harm
your credibility and online reputation.
Few things are more distracting than a
glaring typo or ignorant grammar.
Grammarly is an automated proof-
reader designed to instantly find and fix
a wide variety of grammatical errors.
More than that, it aims to improve your
writing by suggesting context-opti-
mized vocabulary for you to use. It is a
writer’s best friend (besides a steaming
mug of fresh-brewed coffee).
There are many non-vital, but still beneficial website improvements
that you should consider. Some of these concepts are complex and
sound technical, but with a little research, you’ll find they’re not as
over-your-head as it might seem. We recommend googling these
phrases for more information. The instructions are easy to follow,
and the rewards are worth reaping.
• “Website Favicon”
• “about XML Sitemap”
• “Robots.txt”
• “Custom 404 page”
• “Domain Canonicalization”
• “Search Engine Friendly URLs”
Pro Tip:
Educate
Yourself
6

9. What About this Social Stuff?
One of the greatest indicators of web
success is social buzz. While analyti-
cal numbers indicating you have a lot
of visitors are great, it is particularly
exciting to hear the flattering things
people have to say about your awesome
website.
There are three things to consider as
you begin your social campaign.
First, make sure you are active on as
many social sites as you can manage.
Facebook and Twitter are hands down
the most important platforms, but it
doesn’t hurt to be involved in more.
Google+ activity is considered by Google
when ranking sites. Instagram and
Pinterest are both showing tremendous
growth. If you haven’t yet, familiarize
yourself with each of these.
Second, you want to make it as easy
as possible for visitors to share your
content on their social profiles. Social
sharing is simply one of the best
forms of promotion. It’s free for you,
and the audience it reaches knows it
is endorsed by the person sharing it.
Consider adding social sharing icons
to your website, even if you don’t think
anyone will use them. Sometimes they
are useful simply as a reminder.
Third, once you have started active
social engagement, make sure you are
actively participating in the discus-
sion. This is a great way to make your
visitors feel a personal connection to
your brand, and it allows you to address
concerns about your product or service
in an efficient manner while gaining
social exposure.
One caveat to keep in mind: some
products and services are more likely
to generate social buzz than others. A
financial services company simply isn’t
going to get as many interactions as
a fashion designer or entertainment
brand. It is still a good idea to have a
basic social presence regardless of what
you are offering, so that you are taking
advantage of every avenue to draw
traffic to your site.
AddThis
addthis.com
Cost: Free
AddThis has the perfect balance of simplicity and functionality, outshining every social share plugin we have seen. It is a
breeze to implement on pretty much any CMS. The bar is totally modular, allowing you to decide which social sites are included,
how the bar is oriented, and what the buttons should look like. Detailed analytics of your social shares and social referrals are
recorded. Best of all, it’s free.
Social sharing
is simply
one of the
best forms of
promotion.
Social Network Users
Jan 2013 Data via expandedramblings.com
Facebook
1 Billion
Twitter
500 Million
Google+
400 Million
LinkedIn
200 Million
Instagram
100 Million
Pinterest
25 Million
7

10. Mention
en.mention.net
Cost: Free to $19.99 per month
Mention is a tool that monitors social
networks, forums, and web pages
for your brand, your industry, your
company, your competitors, or any
chosen keyword.
The free service includes 500 monthly
keyword alerts and a task system to
ensure mentions are followed up with
by someone in your organization.
The paid options include data export
options, as well as advanced statis-
tics and the ability to track a greater
number of mentions.
Sprout Social
sproutsocial.com
Cost: Free Trial to $39+ per month
Sprout Social is a social media manage-
ment service that provides a sleek user
interface for creating brand-related
Twitter and Facebook updates.
Sprout provides in-depth analytics of
your profiles and social interaction,
in addition to offering many posting
features. You will find a built-in post
scheduler, a link-shortener, and the
ability to cross-post in multiple profiles.
Perhaps the most innovative feature is
the “Smart-Queue” technology. It stra-
tegically auto-posts your content when
your audience is most active, giving you
maximum exposure potential.
KnowEm
knowem.com
Cost: Free to $649
KnowEm is a service that will scan a
staggering amount of social networks
to check for accounts registered under
your brand name.
They also offer a paid service that
will claim your brand name on all of
the social networks. The service will
populate each social profile with infor-
mation you provide - bio, picture, URL,
and a description.
KnowEm is a fast way to make sure that
you have claimed your official brand
name on every viable service out there.
It also blocks others from using your
name.
Google+, Linked-In, and
Pinterest implementation
is in the works!
KnowEm maintains an
evolving list of over 550
popular social networks.
You don’t need to be
in all of them, but it
couldn’t hurt to be.
In online marketing,
timing is everything.
Get alerted in real-time
to any relevant news.
8

11. Design & Compatibility
When it comes to impressing visitors, the design and aesthet-
ics of your site are almost as important as the quality of your
content. In fact, sometimes the two are interconnected. For
example, if your site is not designed to be mobile friendly,
you will immediately lose the attention of the ever-growing
number of users who choose to browse using their mobile
device. If you fail to consider browser and screen sizes, you
are effectively waving goodbye to potential customers.
Much of the magic involved in a great design comes from the
creativity and experience of the designer who creates your
page. Unfortunately, no automated tool can measure how
awesome a website looks.
However, the following tools can help ensure your users are
seeing your site the way the designer intended, regardless of
the device being used to browse it.
GoMo by Google
howtogomo.com
Cost: Free
Use Google’s GoMo tool to see what your website looks like
when rendered on a mobile device. You will get recommenda-
tions of what you need to do to improve your website’s mobile
friendliness.
It is more important than ever to cater to mobile users. It is
estimated that 1 in 7 searches now originate from a mobile
device and, according to Google, 61% of mobile users will
immediately leave your site if it is not mobile optimized. How
is that for a rude awakening?
9

12. BrowserLab
browserlab.adobe.com
Cost: Free Registration
Make sure your website renders
properly in all of the most common
browser scenarios.
BrowserLab (by Adobe) will show you
what any website looks like on all of
the major desktop browsers - Firefox,
Safari, Chrome, and multiple versions
of Internet Explorer.
There are many browser and system
variations, some of which may present
your website differently. You need to
make yourself aware of browser com-
patibility issues before your users
encounter them.
Browser Breakdown
Most modern browsers will get the job done, making your website look as
awesome as you intend. Complex elements of web design, like rounded
corners, drop shadows, gradients, rotation, and most other CSS3 elements,
will work just fine. That is, unless you’re using Internet Explorer...
There is a running gag that the only reason to use Internet Explorer is to
download a different browser. Funny as that may be, the truth is, the latest
version of Internet Explorer is comparable with the best modern browsers.
Older versions of Internet Explorer (IE8, 7 and 6), on the other hand, require
special consideration.
A considerable number of organizations still use Windows XP, which is
limited to legacy versions of Internet Explorer. The cost of upgrading their
computers’ operating systems to a newer version could be prohibitive, and
may introduce compatibility issues. Because of this, a non-trivial percent-
age of internet users are stuck with IE8 or older. If your target market
includes users at such organizations, IE compatibility is crucial.
IE10-0.88%
IE8,7
,6
-13.00%
IE9
-24.88%
Safari - 13.75%
Other - 1.48%
Firefox-17.68%
Chrom
e - 27.75%13% of North
American internet
surfers still use
Internet Explorer
8 or lower.
10

13. Site Maintenance
Many businesses fall into the trap of assuming that a well
built website is set to run smoothly for years to come. In
reality, this is rarely the case.
We have already covered the fact that you should keep your
design and copy current, and we highlighted the benefits
of sharing unique, engaging content. This next section will
explain the importance of regular site maintenance. While
not a particularly glamorous task, ongoing site maintenance
is crucial if you want your website to continue functioning at
an awesomely high level.
If your site uses a CMS, the first step is to make sure all updates
are applied as soon as possible after their release. This will
keep your system secure from malicious attacks. You should
also be monitoring your website’s performance, addressing
any concerns as they arise. This may include slow load times,
hosting issues, or problems caused by numerous users simul-
taneously accessing your website. After all, once your site is
awesome, everyone is going to want to see it!
The following tools will ensure your site runs well, no matter
what the internet has in store for it.
GTmetrix
gtmetrix.com
Cost: Free to 149.95 per month
Having a fast and responsive site is
important for keeping your users
happy. Visitors are more likely to
convert on faster sites.
GTmetrix will crawl your site and
identify any loading or speed concerns.
By optimizing your resources, you
reduce the overhead on your servers.
Load Impact
loadimpact.com
Cost: Free to credit-based pricing
Can your website scale properly to
handle a significant number of users?
Load Impact is a free web service that
runs your domain through a live traffic
simulation. It will show you how well
your site handles varying numbers of
visitors, from 0 to 50 simultaneous
users. Also, you will be given advice on
how to better optimize your site for an
even greater load.
Pingdom
pingdom.com
Cost: $9.95-$39.95 per month
Even the most awesome websites are
worthless if users can’t access them.
What if your website goes down and you
are not aware?
The service will monitor your website’s
uptime, notifying you via email, SMS,
Twitter, or a mobile notification if your
site ever goes offline unintentionally.
11

14. Tracking and Discovery
If your goal is to continually improve your processes, tracking your results is critical. It’s challenging to determine where to
apply your efforts if you don’t understand what has worked and what has failed. Don’t rely on intuition. Leverage available
data and analyze your content, traffic, and users. Then, reach out and attract new users.
Webmaster Tools
google.com/webmasters/tools
bing.com/toolbox/webmaster
Cost: Free
Google and Bing both provide services for webmasters to
better understand how their websites are indexed, and to
allow them to better guide the search engines’ understand-
ing. Once set up, you will have access to a number of powerful
features.
Link Disavowing - Have shady links pointing to your website?
Disavow them in webmaster tools and you won’t have to
worry about being penalized.
XML Sitemap Submission - You should make sure to generate
an xml sitemap and submit it to Google and Bing webmaster
tools. The sitemap will help the search engines better under-
stand the structure of your site. Use XML-Sitemaps.com to
generate your sitemap.
Demoting Sitelinks from Search - The only way to control
which sitelinks Google search presents is to demote non-rele-
vant pages within webmaster tools.
View Backlinks - You can see a full list of all sites that cur-
rently host a link back to yours. This allows you to follow up,
or potentially disavow...
12

15. GetListed.org
getlisted.org
Cost: Free
For any company with regional loca-
tions, it is important to optimize your
local listings. GetListed is a web service
that identifies listings you haven’t yet
claimed, and uncovers listings that
feature inaccurate information.
The process couldn’t be easier. Simply
search for your business and you will
be shown a number of business listing
sources. If your listing is not present,
consider adding it. If it is there, but has
incorrect or missing information, fix it!
Google Analytics
google.com/analytics
Cost: Free
Google Analytics is one of the best all
around free web analytics packages.
Analytics are critical for any business
tracking the ROI of internet marketing.
Google analytics includes advanced
features and segments for further ana-
lyzing your visitor data. Traffic source,
bounce rate, visit duration, pages per
visit, page path, and mobile usage are
just a small sample of the potential
data sets you can analyze.
13

16. Wrap-Up
You are now equipped with powerful knowledge! You know what tools to use to make your website the envy of every business
on the block. Now the question is, what to use first? Try our handy-dandy website checklist.
If you are feeling overwhelmed and unsure about where to start, focus your efforts in the areas that are most suitable for your
industry. If you are selling a hot new product, build your social presence as soon as possible. If the goal is to pull in leads for
B2B or B2C sales, SEO is a great place to start.
Now when anybody asks you if your website is awesome, you will be able to give an awesome answer. Yes.
Google & Bing Webmaster Tools [12]
Set Up Google Analytics [13]
Optimize Local Listings [13]
YES High GTMetrix Score [11]
Good Heavy Load Performance [11]
Uptime Tracking [11]
Mobile Compatibility [9]
Legacy IE Compatibility [10]
Facebook Company Page [7]
Twitter Company Profile [7]
LinkedIn Company Page [7]
Google+ Page [7]
Social Sharing Enabled [7]
Set Up Social Tracking [8]
SpyderMate Report [5]
HubSpot Marketing Grader [6]
CheckDog Spellcheck [6]
Generate XML Sitemap [6]
Generate Robots.txt file [6]
Domain Canonicalization [6]
14
SEO Social Media Compatibility
Performance &
Maintenance
Tracking &
Discovery
Website
Awesome?

17. I don’t have the time
or expertise to make an
awesome website.
I have an awesome website,
but it isn’t performing
as well as it should.
My website is awesome,
but I need it to rank higher
in search engines.
Let us be your experts.
(612) 823-4000 15
What’s Next?