Blog posts like this are a dime a dozen, that’s why I’m not going to pretend that I’m teaching you something new, I’m just going to tell you what works for me when it comes to WordPress SEO.

Wordpress SEO Tips

WordPress is the blogging platform of the gods, IMHO. Even at it’s most basic form, search engines gobble up content that sits on WordPress like a fat kid eating donuts. There are ways to make your WP driven site better, at least from an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) standpoint.

I took some time putting together a list of WordPress plugins that I use/have used, that I believe will help you outrank your competitors. Take a look, and if you have any other suggestions, leave them in the comments, and I’ll add them to the list when I get a chance.

Read the rest of this entry

If you are new to the world of Search Engine Optimization, let me tell you about the importance of linkbuilding. Linkbuilding is more critical than ANY onsite optimization, don’t let anyone tell you different. Sure onsite optimization is important, but it’s actually about 5 percent of the big picture of SEO. The main ingredient that matters is linkbuilding.

Creating backlinks to any website is a tedious task. You have to email site owners, submit to directories, manually submit links to social bookmarking sites, comment on blogs, and so on. Sometimes, building 1,000 backlinks can take weeks. There are programs that automate the process that run the risk of getting your site banned permanently from Google. There are some great semi-automated software packages, but they are very expensive, and lack the speed of professional level linkbuilding packages.

There is a solution to every problem listed above. It’s called Social Bookmarking Demon. It’s a very inexpensive linkbuilding program. Social Bookmarking Demon can literally give you thousands of links in just a few days.

My favorite feature of social bookmarking demon is the site crawl feature. You enter a URL, it crawls your entire site, and submits every page of your website to social bookmarking services. This is great because it helps to ensure that every page of your site is indexed in the search engines. Plus, it will help you build pagerank. You can also add your own social bookmarking sites into the list. It’s great.

Social Bookmarking Demon offers a 60 day money back guarantee. You should try it!

Ok, so a few months ago, Google penalized me and I dropped from PR3, down to PR1. I don’t know why it happened, maybe I lost some links or something, but who cares. I am now back to PR3 and I’m a little confused. It’s been about 6 months, and I’m back where I began, with little or no new links.

My concern/question is this: Back when my site dropped from PR3 to PR1, I was aggressively obtaining links from other bloggers and directories. Once the reduction happened, I focused my linkbuilding efforts on other projects, and basically ignored my blog (aside from writing new posts and socializing them). I integrated several new plugins for ping.fm, Twitter, and a few others to notify the blogosphere of my updates. So needless to say, my blog has still been getting a buttload of traffic, which I like, it’s social media traffic, which I love; however, what I am trying to do is maintain and increase Google PR, but it’s pretty much impossible to do. Is it best to just do things the same way I am right now, or should I still be aggressively building links?

There are a few reasons why I think I was hit in the first place. I probably had links coming from spammy blogs, or spammy directories. I also installed the dofollow plugin, which caused PR to be passed from my homepage to other sites, so that could have impacted my overall PR. I also shifted the overall topical nature of my blog from being “All about web design and SEO” to “the adventures of Nick Norris.” So I think I may have become less of an authority in my niche. All of these reasons are possible and probable, but none of them bother me.

I think that Google PR is way overrated, and I don’t think it really proves anything; however, when you have good PR, it makes you look and feel cooler, and if you lose it, you look like a bum. Let’s hope that I can maintain my current PR and get it raised up to a PR5 before next year (wishful thinking, but don’t count me out).

I’m not going to lie to you: I am not a die-hard directory submission advocate; however, directory submissions are a critical part of search engine optimization. They may not be the highest quality links, but they are better than spammy links, and they are seen by most search engines as legit. The problem with directory listings, is that it takes a lot of them to make any impact on your rankings, and the process of submitting listings is rediculously boring. In most cases it takes a long time for your listing to be approved, that’s if it ever gets approved at all. I generally have between 1/5 to 1/10 get approval pretty quickly, but the remaining listings are chalked up as a waste of time.

As most companies feel the same way as I do, they normally opt for outsourcing, which can be a huge mistake in some cases. Don’t get me wrong, I think that outsourcing can save a great deal of money, and it can provide great benefits for the cost. There is a better way to do things. I recommend SubmitEaze. SubmitEaze is a program that was created for semi-automated directory submission. It makes life so easy.

SubmitEaze has a function called the Turbo Lister. This single feature is worth the cost of submiteaze.

Here’s how it works:

What SubmitEaze does now is pre-load (or cache) several directories in advance, so as soon as the ‘submit’ button is pressed to submit to one directory, SubmitEaze will attempt to immediately display the submission form for the next directory. In the meantime, the submission is being made to the directory in the background, and the directory list is then updated once the submission has been made.

In testing I’ve been able to submit to 10-15 directories per minute (I peaked out at 18), which is way better than submitting manually. In most directories, all I had to do was fill out the CAPTCHA, and some directories were CAPTCHA free, which means submission took less than 1 second.

There would be nothing better in this world than to be coddled by Mr. Mom himself. Actually, when I was looking for the picture above, there were some disturbing search results, most of which were NSFW and included Tony Danza nude… I now feel that Tony Danza is a total creep, but that’s not what I am writing about. I just needed a clever title, and since I was listening to the radio on my way to work, and the song was “Tiny Dancer” by Elton John – I decided this title would suffice. I know, I’m retarded..

Some Simple SEO Talk for You

So, you like to build links right? Well lately, I have been doing more in the way of research than practice. I have been looking at sites from a linkbuilding standpoint, and trying to find good ways to legitimately build links without spamming people. I found out that a site I have been on for a couple years is actually a linkbuilding goldmine, at least at face value it is.

I have been on VOX for almost 2 years. I like VOX because it integrates very well with my Palm, and I can post photos and videos on the fly. I also like the social network/blog feel that a lot of sites tend to over-do. In my opinion, VOX is what would happen if Tumblr, TypePad, and Blogger had a crazy night out and 9 months later, well, you get it. All cliche’s aside though: Vox does not use nofollow or noindex. In fact, whenever I post a blog on Vox, it is indexed in Google the same day (usually). Since Vox indexes and follows everything, it makes it a great place to start a new blog. Plus, the social aspect of Vox is pretty nice, and the ease of use is awesome.

Benefits:

• Canonicalized URLs
• DoFollow/DoIndex
• SEF URLs
• Post Links (and it uses the website’s meta info)
• Photos (no ALT text though, boo)
• Streaming and Uploading Videos
• Easily Socialized Content
• Ease of Use

There are a lot of other benefits that make Vox better than most of the other platforms out there, but you won’t fully understand what they are until you give it a shot.

Now, back to Tony Danza for a minute:

DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT do a google search for Tony Danza. Apparently back in the 1980s, Tony was a guy who posed nude. Go figure.. I thought he was a baseball player from Brooklyn, but I guess I was wrong about that… If only it was possible to gouge out my minds eye..