Webmaster Blog

WordPress is the best blogging software available! My recent studies shine!

I haven’t posted here in a while, and firstly I’d like to apologise for that. And secondly, I’d like to briefly explain what this post is really about.

Eager to improve the experience of this blog, I decided to look into the brains of wordpress and all it stands for, and see if it is truly as good as people say it is.  Before now, I just took people’s word for it – and it turns out I was right to do so – but I wanted to really see what makes it so special.

I’m not going to talk about the usual, ie; Easy CMS, Plugin Systems, Widgets, Admin Panels etc – Instead I looked for what I think really matters to a webmaster.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

WordPress’s SEO URLs are undoubtedly phenomenal, we all know that!  But more so than that, the actual on-page SEO standards really are top-quality.  I guess you could put this partly down to the XHTML compliance – that always helps.  But it’s more than that, the use of perfect header tags, quality navigational links, and the absolutely perfect hierarchy of mark-up, search engines LOVE WordPress!

Without any real off-site SEO, I am high up on page #1 on Google for the search term “Webmaster Blog“, and my position is strengthening.  And the best part is, to achieve this, away from the odd link here and there on forum signatures and blog feeds, I am doing NOTHING but posting content!  Wordpress is a fully automated top-ranker!

Functionality:

There is nothing worse than a dysfunctional website.  Nobody likes to have to ‘figure out’ a website before they can use it.. And with so many competitors around, why bother? “I’m sure another blog will be easier to navigate..” – GONE.  Unless your blog is perfectly functional and navigable, you’d be losing out on a LOT of potentially loyal users.. WordPress offers perfect navigation, perfect functionality, and super-light loads.  Obviously this can be compromised by terrible themes and widgets, but the basic structure of WordPress is unbeatable!  As long as you choose a theme which complements the original structure of WordPress, you’re in business!

Speaking of which, I hope to create or buy (if my budget allows it) a nice new unique theme for this blog – I think it needs it!

My advice to you, as a happy and successful blogger, is go for WordPress!  And with the new WordPress 3 bringing even better functionality, now really is the time to soak up those perks!

Popularity: 4%

This article will explain the best ways to utilise the Title tag of your web page effectively in terms of Search Engine Optimisation.

Right, assuming you know your targeted keyword, it is vital for it to be in the title element of your website. But where?

The biggest mistake of all is to think that only the homepage needs the main keyword.  WRONG!

You want your keyword(s) to be on every single page, along with the page’s header.  For these pages, you have a choice to make in terms of what you value more.  Having the keyword present in your title is one thing, but its position does matter.

If you want the main focus to be your main keyword, across every page, you must place it before the title of the current sub-page.   So for example, I would have  ”Webmaster Blog” at the beginning of the title on every page of this blog.

However, personally, I want the main target for my articles to be the content of each article rather than the general content of the site… So I put Webmaster Blog at the end of my Title tag.

This means that the main focus is on the keywords in my headers (as “SEO Tips” or “SEO titles” is what people will  be searching for, if they are to land on this page; so that is instantly given priority over “Webmaster Blog” in my opinion).

How to separate the page title vs. the site-wide title / keyword.

Now you’ll be wondering if there’s any distinct way of separating the two – well, not really.. But what I do know is Google prefers characters like “-” and “|” to separate page title segments.. Characters like “»” can be incorrectly displayed in title bars so it’s best to avoid them and stick to simple characters.

You can however, in the event that you’re using the page keyword then the main keyword (in that order!), you can also use the structure *Page Title* on *Site Title/Keyword*.

This has proven effective for me on a number of sites, but you really do need to just go with what you prefer, and experiment a little!

Good luck with your SEO!  Stay tuned for the next SEO article!

Popularity: 15%

This SEO article will explain how to search engine optimise images, and how it can help drive traffic to your website.

Most webmasters do not realise it, but SEO can be implemented with images on your site, and it is a very good idea to do so.

Why? When users search for images and you have images of the searched description, you will more than likely receive at least one visit from that person.

How to SEO your images.

When displaying images on your website, generally you will have something that looks like:

<img src=”http://yoursite.com/path/to/image.jpg” />

Whilst this is fine for showing a picture to your already acquired audience, it’s not bringing you the full potential audience of those people who actually search for those images – even if you give the page a really good title!

So instead of having your standard picture code as shown above, give it an ALT attribute (alternate text).  The true purpose of this is for when the image cannot be displayed, it will show the alternate text instead to give the audience a rough idea of what the image was supposed to be..

BUT it’s true value to you – the webmaster – is how the search engines use it!

Using ALT text on your images allows top search engines like Google to apply a real title to the image.  Okay you might have a post title which the image is relevant to, but the image isn’t necessarily going to be named the same as your post.  So to name it accurately in the eyes of the top search engines, use the ALT attribute.

So how do I SEO my Images?

Well instead of using your standard “<img src=”http://yoursite.com/path/to/image.jpg” />” image code, use this:

<img src=”http://yoursite.com/path/to/image.jpg” alt=”The SEO Title of the Image” /> – obviously replacing “The SEO Title of the Image” with the relevant text to describe your image.  Keep it short though – a paragraph wont help you, think of it as naming a file, it just needs to be a title for the image, but a relevant one.

Now, go get recognised on Search Engine’s Image Searches now by implementing this handy SEO method!

Popularity: 8%

One of the biggest requests here is for SEO articles, so finally I’m going to start on the band wagon and give some useful tips to get your website high up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

The first thing to realise with SEO is that you want to take full advantage of every possible place you can in terms of relevant keywords.  This includes your URLs

Search Engine Optimising URLs

The first thing to understand with URLs / links is that if you can’t read them and get a small insight as to what the page is about, how will the Search Engines?  Sure the crawlers will pick up the content on the page but they do take the URL keywords into account!

So, you want relevant keywords in your URL, not /page.php?id=1

Let’s say you have a website about vehicles.  Each vehicle  is listed under the categories for ‘type’ and ‘manufacturer’.

You have a page for a Ferrari F430 Spider under the category “Ferrari”.  A search engine optimised URL for this would be something like:

chuckunvehicles.com/sports-cars/ferrari/ferrari-f430-spider.htm – See the hyphens (-) in between the words? It’s always a good idea to use hyphens in URLs.  Why?  Well simply to define your actual keywords… If you didn’t use hyphens, a search engine crawler may read this as “sportscars” and “ferrarif430spider” – See the problem?  We want to define our keywords without mistake or misinterpretation!

Also, notice the order of the categories? It’s only sensible to make sure your categorised URLs are in a logical hierarchy!  This shows search engines that the page is under ferrari, which is under sports-cars.  You want to build understandable relevance with your URLs.

To create good SEO URLs without making each page individually you’ll need to know how to use Apache’s .htaccess file to retrieve the content.. I will write a post on .htaccess soon!

All the best with your SEO! Come back for more soon!

Popularity: 18%

Hooray! Today is a good day!

Why? I have reached page 1 on Google for the keywords: Webmaster Blog!

I have been straining to get on page 1 for a long time, and it seems all that effort has paid off.

Thanks to everyone who has linked to my best articles, I am sure this has no doubt helped a lot

As a celebration I feel I must do something.. So expect some big change or offer here over the coming week!

Thank you all!

Popularity: 4%

Today saw the release of the first ever full, manageable Game Reporting System for AV Arcade Pro, written by me!

The system is available for just $5 $3!!!

Current features include:

• Manage Reports as Administrator
• IP Address Logging for spammers with IP lookup when clicked (uses network-tools.com)
• View Game, Edit Game, and Delete report all from the Report Manager
• Enable or disable the reporting system
• Choose who can report games (everybody, members only, nobody)
• Stylish gliding report form which nulls itsself and hides away once the game is reported to avoid spam.
• Free Support

Please visit my digital download store to purchase at this great price!

Popularity: 5%

You may have read my last post on Using Facebook to promote your website; this is basically a follow up on that, only using Facebook in a different way for website promotion!

In the last post I was explaining how to use Facebook Groups to promote your website, whereas this article is for promoting your website using Facebook Fan Pages.

What are the advantages of using Facebook “Fan Pages” over “Groups”?

The main advantage is, when you make a wall post to your own wall (also known as a status update), the post is submitted to every fan’s Homepage Feed.  This means every “fan” of your page will see all posts you make on your Fan Page.  This can generate a lot of interest towards your group – but remember, do not spam your fans with status updates because it will cause people to become very agrivated and they may stop being a fan! (NOT GOOD!)

The other great think about Fan Pages is the Discussion boards.  Every time anyone talks on a discussion topic on your Facebook Fan Page, it will send a notice to their profile “wall” saying they have participated in a discussion on *topic title* at *Fan Page name*.. This also attracts people to your page!

Get on with it!  Tell me how to promote my site using Facebook Fan Pages!

Okay… To begin; Click here to make your Facebook Fan Page.

Now, you need to follow the steps it gives you to build your Fan Page.  Upload a decent, meaningful page display picture, fill in ALL the information secions that you can, and update your Page’s info box because this is displayed on every section of your Fan Page making it extra important!

Now go to the Invite Friends link.  Here you will be able to select friends from your friends list to invite to the group – and you will run into TWO MASSIVE annoyances – It limits you to inviting a maximum of 20 people, AND you have to select them all manually! Ugh!

However; I do have a tip to avoid this limitation!  Simply add all your friends to a custom contact list.. Then, when inviting friends, choose that friend list in the “Filter” of who you want to add – then it will let you simply click “Select All” – And with that, the limit also disappears! Genius!

Then wait for people to join!   It helps if your “Friends” are genuine friends because they will be more likely to join if a real friend has invited them!

Now, once a few people have joined (whether it be ten or one hundred), create a discussion topic, and give people inscentive to discuss the topic, even if it doesn’t match your page’s content, just make a discussion topic people will like to respond to, because at this point, what you want is interest!  The benefits of being able to get people to your site only appear once you have those valuable fans!

There you have it, the basics of getting a Facebook Fan Page started and populated.  All questions are welcomed!

Thank you for reading!

Popularity: 32%

Everybody has seen the Facebook Connect feature on Jelsoft’s vBulletin software, but what about an Open Source version?  I asked myself the same and to much disappointment never found anything, but not anymore!

FINALLY somebody has made a Facebook Connect MOD for phpBB3!

Currently undergoing heavy (and fast) construction, the MOD is flying through ALPHA stage and will soon be released for BETA!

Click here to view the MOD thread on the phpBB community forums!

I will keep you updated here when the MOD is available in BETA, and when it’s out of BETA, etc..  So subscribe to the Webmaster Blog RSS Feed for updates!

Wooohooo!

Popularity: 98%

There are many ways of promoting your website using various social networking promotion techniques.  But today I’m going to focus on Facebook’s “Group” pages.

If helps if you already have a facebook account with lots of friends who are likely to join your group if they get a personalise invite from you (I will explain this later on in this post).  However, you don’t actually need ANY friends, because you can invite your entire email address book, or to selected email addresses.  I will explain all this within the post.

Firstly you need to create a facebook group.

+ Create a Facebook Group

Choose a relevant group title, and add a brief but detailed description of what your website is all about.

There is a “Recent News” box in the group setup.  You should use this wizely as people like to be kept up to date on important issues / news to do with a product, service, or website that interests them (presuming people who join do so because they are interested in the topic your website is based on).  Make sure you keep this updated with all events and news to do with your site.  Do not waste your time updating it with irrelevant information however; You are better off updating it less regularly than you should, whilst maintaining a quality news update which people will actually appreciate.

Upload a relevant image for your group.  This may be your logo or advertisment banner which hopefully you will already have at your fingertips.

Now, when it comes to inviting people you have two options (or you can do both, of course).

You can manually select all of your existing Facebook friends, which may take you up to 5 minutes depending on how many friends you have, but it is definitely worth it.  It is highly recommended that you choose to add a “Personal Message” to your invite… This ensures that your friends are invited properly, not just with a standard invite notice; it raises the chances of people accepting your invite.

Your second option is to invite via emal.  Here you have two separate choices.  You can either import your contacts and send the invite to everyone in your email address book, or you can manually add emails to a list.  This is up to you, but the manual method will take a lot longer and will be somewhat tedious.

You should now be ready to publish your group and post an automated update message to your profile (which will be seen by all of your friends too, which is handy if they don’t check their invites), so don’t skip this process!

Now, sit back and watch your member list grow!

Check back here for part two of the Facebook promotion guide, where I will explain how you can convert those group members into active members on your website!

Popularity: 40%

Need an SEO analysis done on your website but can’t afford to pay for it?  Well I have the perfect solution for you!

I recently discovered a perfect All-In-One SEO Analysis tool, handy for any level webmaster looking to perfect their website for the almighty search engines!

The tool is by PineBerry, and can be found here.

This SEO analysis tool provides you, the webmaster, a complete run-down of your websites SEO properties.  It shows you in simple, easy to understand terminology, how to improve your Search Engine recognition.

What I really love about this tool is that it gives you a “points” system, which makes it easy to determine which factors of the analysis are most important, and which ones you can focus on at a later date once you’ve consulted the more severe parts which have deducted you the most “points”.

So go ahead and get a completely free analysis of your websites SEO situation now.

http://www.pineberry.com/en/skills/seo/analysis-tool

Popularity: 14%