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Stephen Cronin

1 month ago

in Overriding Bing’s country detection on Andrew Girdwood's blog
And don't forget http://www.bing.com/?cc=us to see what the US gets...

1 month ago

in A Geeky Look & Some Simple Solutions To Achieving First Link Priority & Referential Integrity With WordPress (Or Why WordPress SEO Themes Aren't) on Andy Beard - Internet Business Systems Discussion
Hi Zain,

Thanks for very detailed response!

I'm planning to develop my own theme framework (just for me), so I'll try to work your advice into that. I guess it's possible to make the first link (ie the header image) dynamic. Ie:

if (is_home())
{wrap in H1 tags and use keywords plus blog name as anchor}
elseif (is_single())
{forget H1 tags (wrap them around post title lower down via single.php) and use post name as anchor}

and other cases for Category pages etc.

Maybe I could use the tags or the slug (with dashes replaced with spaces) instead of the post name as the anchor for is_single?

If I were to do something like that, there'd be no need to put the header image link lower down in the source would there?

Lots for me to think about - thanks again!

1 month ago

in A Geeky Look & Some Simple Solutions To Achieving First Link Priority & Referential Integrity With WordPress (Or Why WordPress SEO Themes Aren't) on Andy Beard - Internet Business Systems Discussion
Hi Andy,

It's been a long time since I commented here - glad to see you're posting again.

On my site, I have a Home link in the menu, but above that I have the header image also linked to the home page, making it the first link. For this link, I have anchor text I want (though maybe I should lose the blog name from it). The anchor text is then hidden off to the left of the page using CSS. That approach would be fine wouldn't it?

The SEO on the rest of my site probably leaves something to be desired. I have All In One SEO, but often don't use the features - lazy I guess. If I get time, I'll check out Headspace 2, as John Godley is one of my favourite plugin authors.
1 reply
Zain Stephen,

Looking at the source of your site, you've actually got the first link as your site/blog name, followed by your "subscribe" link and then your navigation. This is a problem that most WordPress themes suffer from in terms of SEO - to make matters worse, your main blog name is also inside an H1 tag (and is a link to your homepage). That's not good f or SEO.

One of the aims of good SEO is to ensure that each *Page* is as tightly keyword focused as possible. The goal here is to try and get your keywords and content prominent on the page and not your blog name. This is done by ensuring that your Post/Page titles appear at the top instead of the blog name.

What tends to happen with most WordPress themes is that every page has the H1/link (the site name) is given priority and appears on every single page. This is probably because most theme Developers don't actually know about SEO and simply copy the default Kubrick theme as the basis of their own theme.

While HeadSpace 2 can help to SEO your pages and add tags, keywords, meta titles and descriptions, it still doesn't help you with the basic underlying data structure of your theme. There are some key elements (that I'm sure Andy will be demonstrating on his course) which need to be in place to really help your pages in terms of SEO.

What that boils down to is changing the way the code appears in your headers, index, sidebar and footer of your site theme and to precisely position various tags (like the first link and H tags) so that keyword prominence on the page is maximised.

Is this easy to do?

I'd love to say it was a simple matter of shifting things round. From experience, there's issues with cross browser compatibility when it comes to CSS and stying things properly. Being a bit of a WP theme tinkerer myself, I'm pretty pleased with the overall data structure of my latest site (see the code for the posts/pages) as it's taken quite a while to get the balance between positioning code and making it work for IE6, IE7, FireFox 1.5, 2 and 3.

If you're using FireFox and are serious about SEO, then you should get the Web Developer toolbar - just so that you can strip away all styles and see how your site actually looks without any CSS.

So, basically, hiding links using CSS doesn't change the source of your page. This is really the important point to understand when it comes to SEO.

Cheers,

Zain
PS: ... and that's just the beginning... just you wait - when Andy gets started on things like siloing and contextually related content or how to use different linking structures... Sheesh... that's mindblowing!

7 months ago

in Add to Feed » Ajay - On the Road called Life on Ajay - On the Road called Life!
Sounds a bit like my FeedEntryHeader plugin as well :) - although FEH only adds stuff before the post (though I've promised to update it to do it after as well).

Anyway, I'll be interested to see your new features - good luck!

11 months ago

in Working from Beijing - Squeejee on Locomotivation

I lived in Langfang (a couple of hours out of Beijing) for the last couple of years, until recently.




China’s great! But it’s annoying that websites are blocked. However, it’s easy to get around. If you use FireFox there are several extensions which will help:




- TorButton (you have to download <span class='caps'>TOR</span>): Good but slow.
- FoxyProxy: Works with <span class='caps'>TOR</span> or your own Proxy server (from memory).
- GLadder: Works with several anonymous proxies such as anonymouse.org.




I used a combination of these for 2 years, outside of Beijing (where the restrictions are likely to be tougher) and never had a problem. You’re unlikely to get into trouble!

1 year ago

in Alexa: KiwiPulse Reached The Rank Of 100,000 on Everything Designed By Humans - KiwiPulse // Evolution of Art
Congratulations! And with that many visitors, your Alexa rank will keep getting better.

I got to 87,000 at one point but I've dropped off to 112,000 over the last couple of months when I haven't had time to post much.

Interestingly, my traffic stayed about the same (around about 6000 unique visitors per month) even though I wasn't posting. It may be that social traffic was replaced by search traffic and the search traffic are less likely to have Alexa toolbars, or it may be that it it's getting tougher to rank well in Alexa (ie 6000 won't get you as high now as it did a few months ago).

Stephen Cronin's last blog post..New WordPress Plugin - KeywordLuv

1 year ago

in 7 StumbleUpon Problems I Would Love To See Fixed on Andy Beard - Internet Business Systems Discussion
I think StumbleUpon are missing out with #3. I'd love to catch everything my friends stumble - but it's not practical because of the 10 entry limit.

Personally, I'd love them to dynamically create a feed for my what's new page so I could subscribe to it.

1 year ago

in WordPress: Related Post Tweaking on The Marketing Technology Blog
Chandoo, Simple Tags doesn't use a postdate condition - I believe it creates the related posts live, with each page view (unless you have the cache turned on). That's not the most efficient thing for the server, but it does mean that it will get the best matches, whether they were posted before or after the post being viewed.

Doug - sorry for going off topic a little...
1 reply
Douglas Karr No worries, Stephen! You guys have my curiosity! Now I have to go check out Simple Tags!

1 year ago

in WordPress: Related Post Tweaking on The Marketing Technology Blog
Good hack - although personally I use Simple Tags for related posts based on tags, but I totally agree that related posts are a must.

1 year ago

in Do You Trust My Advice? on Andy Beard - Internet Business Systems Discussion
Andy, I trust you, but I'm not in the market for this report at the moment. If you told me a really good place to buy a car, then IF I was buying a car, I'd go there - BUT I wouldn't go there if I didn't want a car, no matter how much I trust you. Okay, I know the report is free - but it's not really free, as it will eat up time that I don't have right now.

Also, I'm with Shirley on this (and Yaro's probably right). I'm the sort of person who turns off when I see marketing pages, especially long ones with large fonts (I'm going to believe it more because it's in big red characters?). I'd much rather see a short marketing page, with facts rather than hype, but I'm not going to commit, unless I really want whatever's on offer.

I guess that leaves me with a dilemma if I ever get around to writing a report or ebook. Do I market it the way I'd want to see it as a customer, or do I go with the big red letters, because that's what most(?) people want/need to make them commit? Interesting...

1 year ago

in Exclusive: How To Get OPML For Google Reader on Andy Beard - Internet Business Systems Discussion
Andy, Great stuff! And great timing. It's not more than 48 hours since I was poking around Google Reader trying to work out how to connect to the OPML file for an upcoming post about who's in my feed reader (of course you're in there). I was thinking it would be cool if I could create a live blogroll from Google Reader and was disappointed when I couldn't. Seems like this is going to be commonplace very shortly.

Thanks for breaking the news (to me at least) and for following this up and helping to get a better result for us all.

1 year ago

in Feed Locations WordPress Plugin on Development on a shoestring
Interesting. Does this leave the default URLs in place and redirect them when they are called (such as the FeedSmith plugin does)? Or does it actually replace the default URLs in the HTML?

I much prefer the first approach, because then readers are subscribing to YOUR feed URLs, not the FeedBurner ones. With the second approach, you're tied into FeedBurner. If you ever want to leave their service, then you'll have to get your subscribers to unsubscribe from the FeedBurner URL and then subscribe to the new URLs.

While FeedBurner is unchallenged at present, so was Hotmail before GMail came along - okay there were others such as Yahoo Mail, etc, but the point is you may not always want to use FeedBurner. It's better to keep people subscribed to YOUR feed URLs not the FeedBurner ones if possible.

1 year ago

in The Secret Statistics In Split RSS Feeds – Google Reader on Andy Beard - Internet Business Systems Discussion
Andy, interesting post.

I think it is disappointing that Google Reader evaluates the redirects. I'm of the belief that people should always subscribe to your URL, not the FeedBurner one. If a large number of your subscribers use the FeedBurner URL, it makes it difficult for you to stop using their service. Interesting that Google own FeedBurner isn't it?
1 reply
Andy Beard Stephen I always was upset about it, and it is quite possible even if they didn't evaluate it, as long as they don't merge this reporting then it could be used for split testing.

The only problem would then be creating multiple redirects, or possibly adding #12345 tracking links ;) that should redirect correctly.

1 year ago

in Answers.com Answerlinks Plugin – How Much Are Those Links Worth? on Andy Beard - Internet Business Systems Discussion
Andy, I'm waiting for your hacked version of the plugin (it's GPL) with nofollow added to the links. :) I'd do it, but I'm not high profile enough to make a splash...

1 year ago

in Going PlugIM on Sage Blogger
Vlad, sorry I wasn't talking about it affecting my website - I just meant that PlugIM will become a bigger target for spam. When I read the PlugIM feed, there are spam entries in the feed. With the Bumpzee feed there is no spam.

Maybe the PlugIM model with everything going live the instant it is posted is the problem. Sure spam posts can be deleted later, or buried, so they are no longer on the site, but feed readers have already grabbed the spam. I don't know the solution, I'm just pointing out the problem.

1 year ago

in Going PlugIM on Vlad Zabblotskyy - A politically Incorrect Blogger
Vlad, sorry I wasn't talking about it affecting my website - I just meant that PlugIM will become a bigger target for spam. When I read the PlugIM feed, there are spam entries in the feed. With the Bumpzee feed there is no spam.

Maybe the PlugIM model with everything going live the instant it is posted is the problem. Sure spam posts can be deleted later, or buried, so they are no longer on the site, but feed readers have already grabbed the spam. I don't know the solution, I'm just pointing out the problem.

1 year ago

in Going PlugIM on Sage Blogger
I've just signed up for PlugIM. Actually I've been subcribed to their feed for a month - I just didn't signup or submit any of my stuff (not sure why). Your post was the clincher for me to actually sign up.

One thing I noticed with the feed: there's a fair bit of spam in there (maybe 1 in 10). I guess these things have been deleted or buried on the site itself, but my feed reader picks them up before this happens.

Given that PlugIM is nonofollow and quite prominent, I'm a little worried about this getting worse.

1 year ago

in Going PlugIM on Vlad Zabblotskyy - A politically Incorrect Blogger
I've just signed up for PlugIM. Actually I've been subcribed to their feed for a month - I just didn't signup or submit any of my stuff (not sure why). Your post was the clincher for me to actually sign up.

One thing I noticed with the feed: there's a fair bit of spam in there (maybe 1 in 10). I guess these things have been deleted or buried on the site itself, but my feed reader picks them up before this happens.

Given that PlugIM is nonofollow and quite prominent, I'm a little worried about this getting worse.

1 year ago

in Google Toolbar and Pagerank Update on The Friday Traffic Report
Thanks for these tools!
My first ever PR just came in at 0, so I have a long way to go, but I'm working on it. I'll be using these tools as the next update gets close.

1 year ago

in Site Upgrades on dmiessler.com | grep understanding
Hi Daniel, just a note about changing your permalink structure - it breaks your old permalinks (that might be linked to by other sites or indexed in Google, etc). There are plugins such as Dean’s permalink Migration Plugin that you can use stop the old links from breaking.

Also, just a warning about using /category/postname/. Many people suggest this, but using category isn't sensible unless you are very sure that your categories won’t change. If you change them as your blog matures, you break your permalinks. Also, if you post using the wrong category, then you can't change the category without breaking the permalink.

1 year ago

in Site Upgrades on danielmiessler.com | grep understanding
Hi Daniel, just a note about changing your permalink structure - it breaks your old permalinks (that might be linked to by other sites or indexed in Google, etc). There are plugins such as Dean’s permalink Migration Plugin that you can use stop the old links from breaking.

Also, just a warning about using /category/postname/. Many people suggest this, but using category isn't sensible unless you are very sure that your categories won’t change. If you change them as your blog matures, you break your permalinks. Also, if you post using the wrong category, then you can't change the category without breaking the permalink.

1 year ago

in Be Honest, Do You Actually Use Digg? on Jim Kukral
I'm with you on this - I never use Digg. I have too much information coming my way as it is. So the question is, who are the people that actually use Digg?

1 year ago

in How-To Start a Company and Family at the Same Time on Instigator Blog
Great post! Everything you say rings true.

I'm in the same boat - there is so much I want to be doing on the work side of things, but I have to balance it with having a young family. I've come to accept that things will have to happen more slowly now (as you say like chess).

The thing that gets me is that I'm in my mid-30s now. Ten years ago I had more time up my sleeve than I can even dream of now, but what did I do? Wasted it all...

1 year ago

in How To Blog on How To Split An Atom
Great Post! Some really useful tips here. But just a note about changing the permalink structure:

I agree that changing it is a must - but if you're just starting out, be careful about using /%category%/%postname%/, unless you are very sure that your categories won’t change.

I fell into this trap - as my blog matures, I need to tweak the categories, which would break my permalinks.
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