WordPress Tutorials about Search Engines
Help and ideas for improving Search Engine Optimization on your Wordpress blog or website. Information on WordPress SEO plugins such as Google XML Site Map plugin and Google Analytics for WordPress.
Analytics for WordPress E-Commerce
January 31, 2012
Most WordPress e-commerce plugins include reports showing what has been purchased on your website, but what you really want to know is how many times did they visit your website before deciding to make a purchase and how did they get to your website in the first place.
The new Ecommerce section in Google Analytics tells you all this as well as letting you filter your results to find out details about each individual purchase such as country of residence, landing page, exit page, device used to access your website and much more.
In this tutorial, you will learn
- How to enable ecommmerce tracking on your e-commerce plugin and on Google Analytics (covers cart66 and wp e-commerce)
- What each report in the ecommerce sections tells you
- How to get detailed information on individual purchases
- Tips for easy summaries of online shop statistics
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Create Custom Landing Pages in WordPress
September 13, 2011
A landing page is a webpage with a single focus which helps close your sale. Landing pages also allow you to focus your page titles and meta information for the best possible search engine optimisation for your key phrase.
This is the sort of page you want people responding to your advertising to land on rather than your homepage. Landing pages bypass your website layout so there is as little distraction as possible.
Common uses for landing pages:
Generate a newsletter signup, Sell a single product, Generate enquiries about a single property, Sell tickets to a special event, Introduce a product to a particular target market.
The Max Landing plugin lets you create custom landing pages from inside your WordPress admin choosing from a whole variety of different layouts including forms, photos and video. Keep reading to find out how…
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Linking Your Posts the Easy Way
March 19, 2011
It’s important when you are adding content to your website to include click-able links whenever you reference another post you’ve written or refer to a service you offer.
The latest version of WordPress has greatly improved linking functionality so you can easily place links to any of your posts and pages from within the page you are editing. If you write a lot of blog posts or subtly promote your services (website pages) within your posts, this is going to save you a huge amount of time as well as making it easy for you to add links to keep your audience reading.
Find out how to add internal links in WordPress and how to use them to make your website better for both people and search engines to navigate.
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Notes from WordCamp New Zealand 2011
February 19, 2011
I spent today at WordCamp New Zealand at Te Papa in Wellington listening to a diverse range of speakers all connected by WordPress. Here are a few of my notes, useful links and highlights…
#1 Speaker – Vaughn Davis from The Goat Farm
Wrote and published an e-book called Tweet this Book – added each chapter as a blog post on his website and used ‘Pay with a Tweet‘ enabling people who tweeted a link to his book to download a copy of the book from DropBox.
#2 Speaker – Gwen from Minimonos
Minimonos is an online game for kids focused on green living – kids can create their own monkey character. Talking about blogging for kids – lots of graphics to break up text, positive tone, use the comments section for feedback and competitions. Many kids (aged 8 onwards) create their own fan blogs often using WordPress. Polls are a useful tool plus a weekly video with contributions from the kids.
#3 Speaker John Ford from Automattic
Talking about WordPress security and VaultPress (as well as people forgetting the capital ‘P’ in WordPress). Fun presentation with the usual suspects such as easy to guess passwords and not updating your wp version or plugins. Also covered file permissions, what hackers do and what to do if your website is hacked. Mentioned some useful links below…
- Changing file permissions
- Hardening WordPress
- Exploit Scanner Plugin – Check for bad code to see if your site has been hacked
#4 Speaker Michael Brandon from Search Masters
Talking about search engine optimisation for WordPress. Search Phrase selection important (use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool). I took lots of notes at Michael’s SEO talk last year so notes below are just a few extras…
- Think about categorisation as well as regionalisation in your search terms
- Your meta description is all about getting people to click through to your website so should include your unique selling point
- Each word from meta title should also be included in description
- Your opening paragraph should also include your title search phrase
- use bold and italics to emphasise first 2 instances of search phrase
- Don’t make the first paragraph on your homepage a list of links or Google will think its a menu
Michael also talked about the impact of Facebook on inbound links. More people using Facebook rather than blogs for commenting so links are not visible to search engines. Try writing articles for other websites with a link back to your own site. His WordCamp presentation has been posted here.
#5 Speaker – Julie Star from the Evolving Newsroom
Spoke about her new project AllAbouttheStory.com. People post their blog posts and stories and publishers can login to the site and purchase them. They take both exclusive and syndicated content, much of it purchased by smaller publications. Trying to help journalists, writers and bloggers get paid in the changing world of media.
#6 Speaker – Paul Gibbs from BuddyPress
Talked about BuddyPress (a plugin which adds a social networking component to your WordPress website). Members component lets you extend user/member profiles – you can add your own fields for users to fill in to create their profile. Groups can be public (anyone can see and participate), private (participation is invite only) or hidden (administrator discussions, intranet etc).
To test drive BuddyPress , go to www.testbp.org and create your profile. Slides from Paul’s presentation available here…
Some useful BuddyPress plugins…
- Buddy Stream – links your BuddyPress, Twitter and Facebook updates
- BP GTM (Group Task Management) – use BuddyPress for project management
- Group Documents – upload documents to groups for members of that group only to access
- Achievements – lets you set tasks and rewards for members
#7 Speaker – David Farrar from Kiwi Blog
Talked about building and day to day running of a large and popular blog. Tips included: write for yourself, not your audience; inject personal stuff and personality into your posts; respond to comments. Covered some of his solutions for dealing with large numbers of comments – check his blog for a list of best plugins to use for improved comment moderation etc.
#8 Speaker Ryan Allen from Envato
Talking about scaling WordPress for performance. Some important stuff especially if your website/blog gets a lot of traffic. More info here.
#9 Speaker Justin Sainton from Zao Web Design
Talking about the new Group Deals plugin, an add on for wp e-commerce plugin. Adds Groupon style functionality to your online shop.
Here a quick summary of Day 2 at WordCamp…
#1 Speaker Dan from Instinct
Talked about using the wp e-commerce plugin for selling music downloads. New features include mass upload capability, preview of music and downloads box. Store music on Amazon S3. Manage music on several platforms – own website plus iTunes, bandcamp etc. Buy audio player premium plugins here.
#2 Speaker Stacey from E2 Digital
Talked about custom theme design. Showed a few websites and talked about theme features and plugins used to create them. Stacey also designed the WordCampNZ website and used TikiPress plugin for event management. TikiPress works in conjunction with BuddyPress and wp E-Commerce plugin.
#3 Speaker Ryan from PixoPoint
Ryan talked about a new system he’s developing to allow editing of WordPress templates using shortcodes. This would avoid security issues plus negate the need for ftp software or knowledge of php. Option for multi-site installation (for designers and developers managing multiple WordPress websites) a bit like WordPress.com and better than shared hosting.
#4 Speaker Paul Gibbs from BuddyPress
Talking about the new Achievements Plugin for BuddyPress. A system of rewarding your members for types of action within BuddyPress such as posting comments, creating groups etc. Example of website using this at www.operationhq.com
Search Engines Love WordPress
October 28, 2010
Find out which are the best SEO plugins for WordPress, what to write in your titles and descriptions and what the next steps are for optimising your website. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and since the vast majority of online searchers use Google, I recommend optimising your website for Google.
Plugins to Help Optimise your website
If you are using the Genesis framework, SEO options are built in. You can add your overall and homepage SEO to the SEO Options section under Genesis in your admin sidebar and to the SEO Options section underneath all the pages and posts. If you are moving from a standard theme to Genesis, use the SEO Data Transporter to bring across your existing SEO info.
On any other theme, you need to upload one of the following SEO Plugins:
- WordPress SEO Plugin – http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
- All in One SEO Plugin – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
- Headspace Plugin – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/headspace2/
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WordPress Planning Checklist
October 16, 2009
If you are planning a new website using WordPress, here are some things to think about before you start. Planning or at least considering these will make the entire process easier and will ensure that you make the most of all of WordPress’ features and functionality. Plus, your website will be fabulous!
Design and Layout
Header - Logo and tagline, include ad banner or call to action
Sidebars
- 1 or 2, left or right, same on pages/posts/homepage or different
- What should be in them (recent posts, author box, social media links, twitter updates, newsletter signup, photo slideshow, YouTube video clip, graphics linking to other sections of your website)
Homepage – What should be on there (excerpts of certain categories, intro to business, featured content gallery)
Footer – What should be there (contact info, login button, copyright note)
Navigation
- 1 bar or 2, categories in a navigation bar
- What pages will you want in the navigation bar (what order, parent pages or child pages)
- Do you want a blog page with all categories or categories in the sidebar
- Do you want an Archive Page (grouped by categories, month, per post) [Read more]
Register a Sitemap with Google
November 13, 2008
A sitemap is like a Table of Contents for your website except instead of flipping pages to get to the page listed, you just click and you’re there. Sitemaps list all pages on your website and are a great way to help your customers find your information quickly and easily.
What many people don’t realise is that search engines also love sitemaps. Instead of crawling through your entire website trying to find everything, they can go directly to your sitemap. When you make updates to your website, your sitemap updates automatically so search engines and customers always see an up-to-date list. This is especially useful if you write blog posts or news.
To get more of your webpages listed on Google (not just your homepage) and to keep Google up to date with any changes to your website content, you should:
- Create a Search Engine-friendly Site Map
- Register the sitemap with Google through Webmaster Tools
How to Create a Sitemap for Google
(you may need to ask your Website designer to upload your sitemap files if you don’t have ftp access to your site)
- Download the XML Sitemap Plugin
- Activate the plugin on your website
- Create 2 empty files called sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz and upload them to your main WordPress directory (the same place as the wp-config.php file)
- Change the permissions on these 2 files to 666
- Go to the new XML Sitemap page under your WordPress settings menu
- Click on build sitemap link at the top
- Change other settings as required
How to Register Your Sitemap with Google
(You will need a free Google account)
- Go to Google’s Webmaster Tools homepage
- Login using your Google username and password
- Click the Add Site button
- Type your website address in the box
- Verify Your site (upload an html file and upload using ftp or add a metatag to your WordPress theme’s header file above </head>)
- Select the Sitemaps tab on the left
- Click on Add General Sitemap
- Type sitemap.xml after your website address and submit.
The Results
Check back in about 24 hours to see if your pages have been listed.
Sitemaps for People
The sitemap detailed above is formatted for search engines, not people. There is a great Sitemap Plugin for WordPress by Dagon Design and all Studio Press WordPress Themes include an Archive Template option which turns your page into a SiteMap like the Articles page on this website.
Create a custom Favourites icon
December 1, 2007
A Favicon is such a little thing (16 x 16 pixels to be exact) but having one on your website/blog really makes you feel like you’re moving up in the world. A favicon is the little icon which appears next to your website title on the menu bar in Internet Explorer/Firefox etc. It also appears next to your website title in the Favourites menu if someone saves your site to their favourites.
By creating a custom favicon of your own using your logo or part of your logo, you both reinforce your brand and make your website stand out amongst the sea of Internet Explorer blue ‘e’ icons which most websites feature by default. Note the tiny black circle with the green ‘W’ next to my website address at the top of this page. Now save this website to your favourites and see what happens….
How to Create Your Own Favicon
- Decide what image you’d like to use. It is going to be really small so you may want to use only part of your logo. You want it to be clear whether it’s an image or a letter. (See my best favicons list below for ideas)
- Go to http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ to create your Favicon.
- Upload your image and create favicon
- Using an ftp program (see my post on ftp of you don’t have it already) upload your new favicon called favicon.ico to your main website directory.
- Insert the code below in the head section of your main index page (homepage).
- <link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”/favicon.ico” mce_href=”/favicon.ico” />
- It took a couple of days for my new favicon to appear online so just keep checking.
My Favourite Favicons
- http://www.springwidgets.com/
- http://www.clipart.com/en/
- http://createpdf.adobe.com/
- http://www.shopnewzealand.co.nz/
- http://www.nhf.org.nz/
NOTE: I originally read about favicons on the Java Script Kit website.
What is a Website Slug?
September 12, 2007
The title of each post you write on your blog is not just something catchy which appears above your content! It is very important when it comes to search engine ranking and blog searchability.
Whatever title you publish a new post or page in WordPress, a Post Slug is automatically created to make up a stand alone website address for that post/page. For example:
Post Title = Titles and Slugs for Blog Posts
Post Slug = titles-and-slugs-for-blog-posts
The post slug is then added onto the end of your blog address when visitors are veiwing that particlular post. The webpage address (url) for this post is therefore http://www.creative-web-ideas.com/index.php/2007/09/titles-and-slu…for-blog-posts/
For this reason, naming your posts using keywords and keyword-rich phrases makes it much more likely that your blog will be listed on search engine results for searches by your target markets.
How to change your post slug
You can change your slug to something different to your post title as long as you have no spaces and include dashes between words. If you are not sure where to find the post slug field when writing a new post, click on the image on left to see a screenshot.
The latest version of WordPress has a special box (near the bottom of the page) for setting the post slug. If you can’t see it, click on screen options at the top right of your screen and tick the slug box to show this option.
