June 2009

• Google Analyticator for inserting your Google Analytics tracking code. It knows not to count your own visits if you’re logged in as administrator. (Still compatible with 2.9.2)
• Calendar lets you insert a calendar for appointments using a shortcode. (Compatible up to 2.8; may or may not work with 2.9)
• Bad Behavior helps keep out the spambots (and other malicious bots). (Compatible up to 2.9.2)
• Contact Form 7 lets you build contact forms easily and insert them into posts and pages with a shortcode. Includes Akismet integration and captcha to keep you from getting overloaded with spam forms. (Compatible up to 2.9.2)
• FormBuilder is the plugin you want when you need forms beyond what Contact Form 7 can create. (Compatible up to 2.9.2)
• YSlow is a plugin for Firefox, not WordPress, and it’s actually an addition to the Firebug plugin, but you’re going to want both of them if you do any site development. They’ll help you figure out why your site (or someone else’s) is running slowly, and how to fix it.
• All in One SEO Pack is still a favorite, though our SEO expert prefers Headspace 2 (see below). (Compatible up to 2.9.2)
• Google XML Sitemaps makes it easier for Google to index your site. (Compatible up to 2.9.2)
• Shopp is a commercial (meaning you have to pay for it) e-commerce plugin to integrate a shopping cart and payment gateways into your WordPress installation. Many people prefer it to the free WP e-Commerce, which nevertheless has lots of features. (Both compatible up to 2.9.2)
• WP Super Cache can help speed up your site and protect it from a sudden rush of visitors. (Compatible up to 2.9.2.)
• WP Widget Cache does the same thing for your widgets. (Compatible up to 2.8.1)
• WP Limit Posts Automatically gives you more control over where to use excerpts and how long they should be. (Compatible up to 2.3; I’d be surprised if it worked with 2.9, but you can always try.)
• WordPress Mobile Edition automatically creates a mobile-friendly version of your site for smartphones. Last updated in June 2009 and largely superseded by other plugins; see my post on mobile plugins.

February 2010

• Akismet. This goes without saying, or should, and comes installed with WordPress. Just don’t forget to activate it. (Compatible up to 2.9.2)
• Broken Link Checker monitors your blog for broken links. (Compatible up to 3.0 alpha.)
• Headspace2 SEO has even more features than All in One. (Officially compatible up to 2.8.1, but works with later versions.)
• Redirection is a lifesaver when 404 errors pop up or when you have to send someone from an old blog installation to a new one. (Compatible up to 2.9.2)
• Search Unleashed. Everyone knows the search engine is the worst feature of WordPress. This plugin helps. (Compatible up to 2.9.2)
• WordPress Database Backup is the first backup plugin I ever used and a good, solid, reliable one. I actually made a donation to the developer. On the other hand, it only backs up the database.
• pageMash lets you arrange your static pages easily by dragging and dropping them. You can even hide pages. The new menu system in WP 3.0 might make it obsolete. (Officially compatible up to 2.7.1, but I’ve been using it on 2.9.2 with no troubles.)
• Display Widgets lets you create custom sidebars for each page without having to create multiple sidebar.php files and multiple page templates. Amazing! (Compatible up to 2.9.2)
• AnyFont lets you upload fonts and use them for headers. (It converts the text to images.) Not suitable for long blocks of text, but nice for those with typographic leanings, at least until CSS 3 is widely supported. (Compatible up to 2.9.2)
• BackupBuddy is a new commercial plugin. It doesn’t yet work on all web hosts, but when it works, it’s amazing. Read my review here. (Compatible up to 2.9.2; requires PHP5; new builds at least once a week.)

Pete Mall, a WordPress core developer, has volunteered to speak to the Meetup about plugin development. Stay tuned for details.

Postscript 3/27/10

Two things I forgot to mention. One is the new Plugin Picks series from the WordCast Network, where Dave and Kym discuss a different plugin each Monday and Wednesday. Another is the Find Replace plugin, which sounds like a candidate for the Most Valuable list, though I haven’t tried it yet.

More than 200 factors go into determining your site’s ranking in Google.

You see results from optimization faster with WordPress than with HTML sites.

Lou Anne took her example client from 189 to 1055 keywords—those are the terms real people actually used to find the site.

Keyword research is critical. The most searched term was “weight loss”, which the client thought was 90% relevant. “Fitness” was 100% relevant.

The trick is to find the words that people haven’t found your site with, that you want them to.

Tip: When people phone you, they may actually tell you the keywords they used, or would use, e.g. “I’m looking for a 3-bedroom home in…”

KEI: Keyword Effectiveness Index

From her keyword research, Lou Anne creates categories so she can organize the site. She works with the web designer in the early stages. If the only pages you have are services ABC, you’re only appealing to people who are already ready to buy. Use the terms people use when researching. The site will end up larger, but it will appeal to a greater range of people.

Ellen asks how SEO for WordPress differs—Lou Anne says in the implementation. (Regular websites don’t necessarily have categories and tags.)

Lou Anne doesn’t know how much tags affect SEO. But think of them in terms of keywords anyway.

Note: No search engine uses the keyword meta tag field. Lou Anne only uses them to keep track of what her client is trying to optimize on.

Permalinks

Don’t change your permalink structure without setting up 301 Redirects. (You can use the Redirection plugin (see list below) for this.)

Lou Anne’s preferred permalink structure is %category%/%postname%
Metadata

• Page title—THE MOST IMPORTANT
• Page slug
• Description—Not used for ranking, but people will click based on this.

Search for “site:yourdomain.com” to see what your page descriptions look like now.

You want every page’s title and every description to be unique.
Plugins for SEO

• Headspace2 rather than All in One SEO. It lets you put your Google Analytics code and other IDs
• Robots Meta plugin helps take care of duplicate content
• Automatic SEO Links
• SEO Smart Links
• SEO Friendly Images
• Google Sitemap Generator
• MaxBlogPress ping optimizer
• Redirection to fix broken links and otherwise create 301 redirects
• Surveys (search-friendly) http://wordpress.org/…
• PollDaddy (not searchable, if you’re asking about something not relevant to searches)
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
• Folding Category Widget

Video

• Noel recommends FastTube plugin for YouTube:
• Marco suggests WordTube

Resource
103bees.com $10/year

Notes

Work on the words/phrases in 5th to 9th position. Those are the ones you can move, and make a difference with.

The reason you might use “noindex” is if you’re writing something not related to your main topic.

For more SEO expertise, contact
Lou Anne McKeefery,
Be Found
http://be-found.net/…
408 946-8632

www.author-izer.com

Relationship to WordPress Asylum

The Author-izer is Sallie’s other business.

Theme

Authorizer2 by Sallie Goetsch, created with Artisteer

Active Plugins

November 12, 2009

• ©Feed
• Advanced Blogroll
• Advanced Category Excluder
• Advanced Text Widget
• Akismet
• Amazon Showcase
• Bad Behavior
• Collapsible Archive Widget
• Collapsing Pages
• Comment Notifier
• Comments Policy
• Customizable Search Widget
• Dagon Design Sitemap Creator
• Extended Category Widget
• Google Analyticator
• Google XML Sitemaps
• LinkedIn Resume
• pageMash
• Podcasting
• Postalicious
• Query Posts
• Search Everything
• Search Meter
• SEO Smart Links
• SEO Ultimate
• SimplePie Core
• Simply Show IDs
• Sociable
• Woopra
• WordPress Backup (by BTE)
• WordPress Database Backup
• WordPress Mobile Pack
• WP Render Blogroll Links
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Notes

The plugin that deserves honorable mention here is Redirection, because I installed it on my old authorizer.fileslinger.com site to redirect the original Author-izer blog to the new author-izer.com location. Depending on the kind of 404 messages I start to get from SEO Ultimate (I just switched from All in One SEO Pack), I may install it here, as well.

I did more than move the Author-izer site from a subdomain, however. I expanded the static pages from three to 26 (at last count). That makes a plugin for organizing pages absolutely critical. PageMash works wonderfully. It makes the back end of WordPress look a lot more like the mind map I used for my site redesign.

Another great tool for a large site is Dagon Design Sitemap Creator. Where Google XML Sitemap Creator builds sitemaps for search engines, Dagon Design builds them for humans. You insert one short code phrase into the HTML editor of your sitemap page, and it does all the rest.

I used Podcasting rather than PowerPress mostly because I had never tried it before. As a podcasting consultant, I thought I ought to know how the plugin worked, even though PowerPress is now the podcasting plugin of choice. It works, but I won’t be switching any of my other sites over to it.

Query Posts lets me show recent posts without including the posts that are just collections of Delicious bookmarks inserted by Postalicious. (It lets you do other things, too, but it’s very handy for excluding certain post categories.) While I think it’s useful to have those links collected in my blog, I don’t think they’re the items of most interest to visitors.

I may be taking the Collapsible Archive Widget out, not because there’s anything wrong with it, but just because the current thinking seems to be that including your archives takes up space you could use for something more interesting to your readers. (Also, a colleague told me that all those links to archive pages can slow down your page loading.) Expect to see some updates in the plugin list.