WordPress Marketing Articles And How To Guides

Get Found Now is happy to announce it’s new series of WordPress marketing articles written by Victoria Stankard, our content writing expert. Victoria has been writing content and doing SEO since 1998 creating link building strategies for an online shopping center, one of the first of it’s kind! Anyway, Victoria is writing a series on how to best use WordPress from a content and SEO standpoint.

Since we changed our main website to a WordPress system, that gives us two RSS feeds that people can sign up for. This blog, our Internet Marketing blog, will be focused on search engine marketing, website usability, analytics and search engine updates. Our primary website getfoundnow.com, and its feed will be about WordPress, social network marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies. Feel free to subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for email updates to Get Found Now on our home page.

WordPress Marketing Series

Victoria’s first group of articles are a foundation of WordPress Marketing strategies. I would read them in this order:

• WordPress Marketing and SEO Strategies – this is an overview of topic reputation and how it is the core of content planning and execution.
• WordPress Blog Post Writing For SEO – here you will get some great info on how to optimize WordPress articles, set them up for the search engines, write a series of articles and SEO functions within WordPress.
• Using Tags For WordPress Blog SEO – this article is very important because it tells you how to utilize tags for SEO, not just usability. Victoria also calls attention to the differences of opening up tags or categories to the search engine spiders.

We encourage everyone that reads Victoria’s articles to leave a comment and ask questions or debate our strategies. I hope everyone has a productive 2009!

WordPress and Google – Social Network Marketing Meets SEO

By now you all know that I am a strong proponent of WordPress, and using it along with quality content, is a recipe for success. The only problem that I have with WordPress is its self titled moniker, “just another WordPress weblog”. They are selling themselves short by sticking to the label: blogging platform. In reality WordPress is a very powerful content management system with powerful social network marketing tools and a solid SEO foundation, all things that Google loves. The key to success in Google is three-fold: quality content, inbound links and discussion. WordPress does all of those things, and does them well.

If you already have a website, the best game plan is to add a WordPress system as a directory using a quality keyword and having the directory as close to the root as possible. An example would be companyname.com/keyword/. If your domain already has your main keyword in it, don’t make the mistake of using it again as the name of your WordPress directory. In the unlikely event that you don’t already have a website for your business, then WordPress is a great stand-alone system to get going online. If you have a website, but it is under performing, flipping your site to a WordPress system will give you an incredible boost in the SERPS without taking forever for you to see results. Be clear about this one point though, if you choose WordPress as your content management system, you will have to create quality content on a regular basis.

Social Network Marketing as an SEO Tool

The concept of social network marketing as a powerful SEO tool died before it could become a reality when social networks bowed to Google and nofollowed their users outbound links. The fact is social networks that are related to business can still benefit a website through backlinks, but mainstream sites like Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Delicious, etc. do not pass on link juice. This is an attempt by Google and other search engines to weed out spammers who use social networks to raise their inbound links through spam. On one hand I applaud this, but on the other I find it annoying since I have useful content, but can’t promote it on social networks. The bottom line is that the only way to succeed is to create content that your users will link to. You also need to open discussion on your site through comments. We offer plans that kick start commenting. Even though commenting is pretty anonymous, people still feel weird about being the first person to leave a comment or ask what they feel to be a stupid question. Get Found Now researches your content and asks the right questions that you answer promptly. Once the comments start flowing they snowball into a lot of organic activity that will naturally increase your rankings. It’s like your first high school dance,no one wants to be the first one to be on the dance floor. That is why we have come up with a service that gets the discussion going on your WordPress system. Owning The Discussion and Branding Through SEO is an article I wrote a while back that was inspired by Google’s CEO calling the Internet a cesspool. The thing is, he is right, there is so much spam and weak user generated content out there that it is hard for legitimate websites to compete. Again, it is all about content!

If you have any questions about how to go about writing engaging content, getting discussion rolling on your website, WordPress blog design, or social network marketing give me a call at 866-418-3843 or post a comment below.

WordPress comes equipped with a powerful toolset for social network marketing and SEO. By using specific plugins as well as features already inherent to WordPress, you can set your system up to dominate the SERPS. The first place to start is deciding on which content you want to display to the search engines. There are two place to start with that:

1. Robots.txt File for WordPress SEO – the robots.txt file is where you notify the search engines where your sitemaps are as well as which pages, posts or directories that you don’t want the search engines to go. this holds true for all websites, not just WordPress sites. Leave a comment below if you have questions about robots.txt files.
2. On Page Meta Robots Tags- there are meta tags available that will control spiders and how they INDEX and FOLLOW both the content on the page as well as the links that are on the page. The truth is this subject warrants an entire post, but for now I will give you a quick overview. I use a plugin called All In One SEO Pack that will control on page Meta Robots Tags for category page, tag pages, archives and all posts and pages. All of those things lead down a dangerous path of duplicate content. You have to choose which content you are going to show the spiders. I am running 2 tests right now. One that is excluding everything but the original post and tag pages, and another one that is showing just categories and the post. The key here is to limit the amount of content shown on tag pages or category pages to just the tile and the first 300 or so characters. Even though that is not how my site is set up, you can see it in action at dtidata.com/resourcecenter where the category test is taking place. I am launching a new site called seobyyou.com where I will be testing the tag theory. I will keep everyone up to date on how the test goes. The initial results are leaning to the tag pages being opened up because there is more potential for keyword benefits because there are so many more tags.The basic game plan for pages that you don’t want spidered is to use the NOINDEX FOLLOW argument in on page meta tags. All In One SEO Pack does that, but you also have to coordinate that activity with your sitemap tool. In other words you don’t want to put archive and category pages in your sitemap and then tell spiders not to index them. This also holds true for all types of websites, you just have to do it manually. Leave a comment below if you have any questions.

Once you have identified what content you want to show the search engines and you have set up your road maps (sitemaps) and stop signs (robots.txt), you have given Google what it wants, an easy way to spider your site!

The next step is to incorporate into your sidebars links out to your recent comments, most popular posts and latest posts. You will have to tweak your files to insure that WordPress is not nofollowing your links from the sidebars into the recent comments, latest posts and most popular posts. The goal here is to show Google that there is discussion going on within your site. By answering comments quickly and giving good information, you will get inbound links, that is a fact.

If you have any questions or would like to set up a FREE no obligation report on your WordPress SEO, call 866-418-3843 or leave a comment below.

What Google Wants – Branding With SEO – Owning The Discussion

The other day Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt stated that the Internet is a cesspool and that the way to succeed online is through branding and discussion. While I have been complaining for a while about how Google’s SERP’s are watered down, it is nice to see them actually agreeing, and doing something about it. Since Google has cracked down on sites that sell link juice it has been increasingly more difficult to obtain quality inbound links that are relevant to your content. So what is a webmaster to do?

I had a discussion with a friend of mine, Christian Sterner the CEO and founder of Wellcomemat a video portal for videoagraphers, and we were talking about Universal Search and how to best leverage all of wellcomemat.com’s user generated content. I was pushing the commenting, telling him that they need to reward users that ask and answer questions. It was then that he said something that really put the whole thing into perspective: “the best sites online, OWN THE DISCUSSION on their topics”. That really puts the whole thing in a nutshell. I have proven time and time again that sites that push out quality content and that have users that ask question in the form of comments, rule the SERPs for their topics.

How To Own The Discussion

While Google is pushing branding, which I agree with to an extent, I have always pushed content and comments as I have found that WordPress posts historically get into the SERPs quickly, but tend to fade away over time. UNLESS THEY ARE HEAVILY COMMENTED. It was through this information that I found a great WP Plugin that takes the most recent comments and allows you to put them in a sidebar widget. I use that along with another plugin that lists the most popular posts based upon commenting. By putting both of these in the sidebar of the homepage of my client’s blog, I have seen an increase in placement for ALL of the posts that were linked from the home page through BOTH the popular posts and recent comments.

We all hate comment spam, and I am not in any way shape or form suggesting that you spam other peoples sites with comments. I am stating that you need to get comments going on your own site. You need to break the ice and ask and answer your own questions at first so that users see their questions will be answered in a timely manner. If you can get users to ask questions on your posts, you will OWN THE DISCUSSION.

Social Network Marketing at one time was a great source of inbound links, but that has changed since Google strong armed them into nofollowing their outbound links. Now social network marketing is good for exposure and traffic building, and of course branding, but little else except for a couple of document sharing sites. While SMO and social network marketing are still part of the game plan for SEO, we are focused more with on page optimization and commenting to drive discussion. Feel free to give us a call if you want to get started owning the discussion on Google. 727-251-2058

WordPress White Screen of Death

We have all heard of the Windows “blue screen of death”, but when it comes to webmasters and marketers the most feared problem is the WordPress White Screen of Death. This happens usually after you upgrade a plugin or make a change within the WordPress design manager and all of a sudden your screen goes white! Another symptom is if FireFox asks you to either open the php file or save it to disk rather than just let you work on the damn file!

Why Does WordPress Have White Screens Or Ask You To Open Or Save a PHP File

This isn’t a WordPress problem, but really a MySQL – PHP function or rather failure. When a PHP page is loading or trying to load and either an error occurs or a script can’t load, it just dies rather than blowing out bad code. Within the backend of WordPress this causes the WordPress White Screen of Death.

Even though your website will still be displaying content to visitors, you have no access to the backend which is about as bad as it gets next to your site being down. Most of my themes rely on a plugin called Limit Posts and if that isn’t activated, my sites look down right wrong and incomplete. So what do you do when this happens?

Well the first thing is to ascertain where the problem is. If you just installed a plugin and all of a sudden your system is no longer working then it is pretty easy to figure out that the problem is the plugin you just installed! When you are upgrading either your entire WordPress system or a single plugin, the game plan is the same. Always activate our plugins ONE AT A TIME. If you are using the automatic plugin updater, deactivate the plugin prior to updating it.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to follow those rules. Again:

1. Deactivate the plugin that you are upgrading first – if you use the WordPress auto-upgrader, deactivate the plugin before updating.
2. Activate plugins one at a time – after you activate a plugin after a WordPress upgrade, go to settings or mange and hit a couple of links to make sure that your system hasn’t crashed. The problem is  if you log out and log back in after a plugin upgrade, you might get the WordPress white screen of death and not be able to see your backend. If that happens, you will have to remove the plugin from your plugin directory. Another reason to activate your plugins one at a time is so you know which plugin is causing the problem. You can delete it from your plugin directory then you can log back in and see your backend.

I know I am repeating myself here, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to follow those rules. I manage over 17 systems for myself and my clients and  have a lot of experience with screwing up, so trust me when I tell you these things, I have messed up every aspect of WordPress at one time or another! Fortunately I am able to learn from my mistakes and pass that on to all of you.

WordPress Problems That Involve Widgets Or Theme Editor Design Changes

Other than plugins, the next most common issues involve failures with WordPress after you change a file within the Theme Editor, or you have added or changed a widget within the sidebar. If you change something and the screen goes white or you try to access a file and it offers to save it to disk or open it with your default program, you have a php issue.

The question is which PHP function has failed? There are a few methods to check errors and most of them are technical. If you are on a shared hosting like GoDaddy you have to look in the log with c-panel or on other hosting solutions that use plesk you have to view the apache logs. If you have access to the server at a root level they are by default in the /var/logs/. If you set up sites within your home folder, then they might be anywhere. The best thing is to contact tech support at your hosting company and ask where the apache logs are for your site.

When you get the latest log after an error it will look like a bunch of code like this:

PHP Fatal error:  Call to undefined function
force_mod… in /home/mstankard/web/getfoundnow_com/wp-settings.php on
line 160 referer: http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-admin/comment.php?action=approve; etc.

Yours will look a lot different since I had to change a couple of things for security, but this shows the problem was in a comment approval that went bad. I was able to remove the recent comments plugin and everything worked fine. The trick is to identify where the issue is and act upon it.

Another problem I had was with a video display plugin which I was able to troubleshoot with FireFox by viewing source of the error page:

 I loaded up the following URL after logging in to my blog’s management console:

http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=flv-embed.php

There was a section in the page where the player was supposed to be loaded, but it was not appearing. I turned on the error console feature in Firefox to view the Javascript errors and found the following:

SWFObject is not defined
http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=flv-embed.php

I used the “View Source” function in Firefox to view the source of the plugin management page and found the link to the swfobject.js file. It was pointing to the following URL:

http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-content/plugins/flv-embed/swfobject.js

This showed it was looking for code in a different place than before since I removed a plugin that white-screened me, but was able to recreate the directory and copy the file in and it worked.

I am going to continue to update this post

If you are having WordPress 2.6 Upgrade Login Problems go there and read that post.

If you like killer WordPress themes you could go to that link as well!

 

 

 

 

WordPress 2.6 Upgrade Login Problems

If you are planning to upgrade your WordPress system to 2.6, there are a few things that you need to prepare. There is a weird thing that happens after you upgrade: you can’t log in or reset your password. I had a freaking heart attack after upgrading and all of a sudden I couldn’t log back in!

Fortunately, there was already support info on WordPress’ blog. You have to clear out your cookies to log back in. So, what can you do to prepare for the install without getting freaked out or dealing with problems installing multiple systems as I have to do?

First of all, it’s easier to use Firefox to do all this since it has an easy way to clear your cookies, just hit control, shift and delete at the same time and a box will pop up. Make sure the “cookies” box and “authenticated sessions” box is checked and hit “Clear Private Data. You can also reach this in FireFox by going to tools > Clear Private Data.

So the process to upgrade is basically the same as always except that after you do the upgrade, and are asked to log back in, clear your cookies, THEN try to log in. On 3 installs I had to have the password reset, but I didn’t have to on 2 others so I can’t explain the difference. The key is to be prepared for any bad things that could happen.

WordPress 2.6 Upgrade Checklist To Fix Login Failure Problems

Just know that if you are getting ready to upgrade to WordPress 2.6 have the following stuff ready:

• Backup your database! – this is more important than ever since there are a lot of reported bugs with version 2.6.
• Make sure you have your user information – Have the logins, emails and passwords for all administrator accounts. I don’t use the admin account to post articles so all my blogs have at least 2 administrator accounts. You might want to upgrade an account to administrator while doing the upgrade.
• Make sure your WordPress system is sending emails – you will be screwed if your WordPress system can’t send you the password if you need to reset it. Test that your system is sending emails and that you know and have access to the administrator accounts.
• Upgrade WordPress – go ahead and deactivate your plugins and run the upgrade script.
• Clear your cookies! you can use the Ctrl – Shift – Delete keys on your keyboard to launch the cookie clearer in Firefox, or go to Tools – Clear Private Data in Firefox or go to Tools – Delete Browsing History if you must use Internet Explorer.
• Log into your WordPress system as an administrator – once your cookies are cleared you can try to log in as an admin ad start activating your plugins.
• Activate Plugins One At A Time! – do not activate your plugins in bulk mode! If there is a problem with a plugin you will screw your entire system up if you don’t activate your plugins one at a time. If you have a problem with a plugin, but can’t access your plugin page anymore after the run-once screen pops up, you will have use a FTP client to delete the plugin or add a 1 to the extension. Make sure that if you use the automatic upgrade feature for plugins that the plugin that you are upgrading is deactivated before automatically upgrading it.

That should get you through the process of upgrading to WordPress 2.6 and deal with the login problem. Tomorrow I am going to post a tutorial on how to troubleshoot “WordPress White Screen of Death” problems. Remember to back up everything!

If you want to check out the best WordPress thems visit Revolution Themes, they are what I use for all my clients sites.

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