Category Archives: wordpress

WordPress Hacked? Total Security Lockdown

By Andy Beard | Published: December 8, 2009

It is no huge secret that I have had this WordPress blog hacked twice this year but some consolation is that I am not alone.

Helpful resources

Alex recently launched a DVD course on WordPress security that is available for FREE + shipping
Stop – I know what you are thinking – FREE + Shipping these days normally comes with lots of strings attached, forced continuity often hidden etc. Whilst Alex does cross-sell a few related products, the main offer is genuinely free.

Also posted in Google, blogging tips | Tagged 301 redirect, htaccess, http user agent, wordpress, WordPress Hacked, WordPress Security | Comments closed

What Is Quansite?

By Andy Beard | Published: October 14, 2009

This is in many ways one of the most painful blog posts I could write, because it is about a service that is the closest anyone has come in 4 years to the "software as a service platform" I would like to create. The business model is totally different but the front end seems to have many of the features and attention to detail that I would require, and to be honest much of what I want to achieve on the backend & network effect isn't necessary for many business users. If what I want to create is a lion, Quansite is a tiger - different animals, different prey - both killers and could probably co-exist. Quansite is a WordPress based blogging platform for business, but calling it that is really doing it a bit of a disservice. It is the kind of system that will take a huge bite out of the business of high-priced website development shops targeting small business, because so much is done for you.

Quansite Marketing Pro

There are a couple of WordPress themes I know of which can claim drag and drop, but they are not designed for creating sales pages & one-time offers, or "touch of a button" squeeze page creation.

Also posted in Video SEO & Marketing, marketing, web 2.0 | Tagged Quansite, wordpress | Comments closed

Feedburner Feedsmith WP2.8.4 & Caching

By Andy Beard | Published: September 18, 2009

Just a quick note for anyone who has been missing updates for the last couple of weeks. I am not sure exactly what changed within WordPress 2.8.4 to cause this but for a large segment of my readers there might not have been any visible updates on RSS feeds since around 6th September.

Also posted in Google, SEO Blog, web 2.0 | Tagged feedburner, redirects, wordpress, WordPress Supercache | Comments closed

How Google & StopBadware.org Handle Hacked WordPress

By Andy Beard | Published: September 17, 2009

This post hopefully can act as a bit of a counter-balance to all the stories of dread you will find if searching of how hard it is to fix a site after it has been hacked, and what it takes to get Google to reconsider your site after it has been happened.

Also posted in Google, SEO Blog | Tagged Google Webmaster, reinclusion request, Search Quality, Stopbadware, Website Hacked, wordpress, WordPress Hacked | Comments closed

WordPress Comment SEO Solutions

By Andy Beard | Published: July 17, 2009

Changing the way WordPress and other content management systems handle comments for SEO, members areas, aggregated conversations & more.
I am sure some of this post is going to blow people's brains, though this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Also posted in Google, SEO Blog, blogging tips, plugins | Tagged blog commenting, disqus, dofollow, jskit, nofollow, Social Media, syndication, WordPress SEO | Comments closed

Google Screws Up My WordPress Ping List

By Andy Beard | Published: June 24, 2009

This post is likely to cause a little controversy, but it is my honest opinion that bloggers have been led astray for long enough regarding how many services you really should send a ping notification to. My Advice Ignore all the other ping lists published - they are frequently irrelevant and could potentially highlight you as a spammer.

Also posted in blogging tips | Tagged blog notifications, feedburner, ping list, pinglist, pingshot, WordPress Ping List | Comments closed

A Geeky Look & Some Simple Solutions To Achieving First Link Priority & Referential Integrity With WordPress (Or Why WordPress SEO Themes Aren’t)

By Andy Beard | Published: May 21, 2009

Think buying a custom premium WordPress SEO theme will give you perfect SEO? Think again... I don't think there is one "premium" WordPress Theme that doesn't claim to be perfect for SEO "out-of-the-box", so I thought I would bash some theme developer heads around and maybe knock some sense into them. They might achieve 50:50 of what could be expected of a true SEO theme (though I haven't seen the latest Semiologic Pro out in the wild), and potentially with the aid of 3rd party plugins currently available, they could reach 80:20. However most claim they don't need 3rd party plugins to achieve their eminence in WordPress SEO That doesn't leave WordPress SEO plugins off the hook, there isn't one plugin that gets beyond 60:40 or with some tweeking possibly 70:30, depending on what factors you feel are important, or are aware of. Awareness is certainly one of the problems...

Also posted in SEO Blog, themes | Tagged first link priority, pagerank, Referential Integrity, stompernet, wordpress, WordPress SEO, wordpress seo themes, wordpress themes | Comments closed

WordPress.com Bugged XML Sitemaps

By Andy Beard | Published: June 17, 2008

WordPress.com has added XML sitemaps so I thought I would take a glance at their implementation. My immediate though was to take a look at Lorelle's sitemap.xml

Homepage daily priority
Every other page updated on a weekly basis?

That seems like a good way to tell the spiders to index your site less often than they currently do. With Lorelle you would certainly want spiders checking the home page hourly as she is sometimes the source of breaking news.

Also posted in SEO Blog | Tagged Google, msn, sitemaps, wordpress.com, xml sitemap, yahoo | Comments closed

New WordPress SEO Blogging Software

By Andy Beard | Published: May 9, 2008

What a difference 24 hours make.

A few days ago I was honestly prepared to rip a product to shreds. It wasn't that it was a bad product, but it wasn't as well prepared as it should have been, and from what I can tell it was due to an honest communication error between a well respected online marketer and his programming team.

But before I talk about the product itself, I am going to give you a little history lesson.

Wordpress Elite

A few years ago I purchased a script called WordPress Elite. It was pretty useful, and allowed you to point the

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips, plugins, reviews | Tagged search engine optimization, SEO Blog, wordpress, wordpress installation, WordPress SEO | Comments closed

WordPress Possibly Related Posts With Sphere

By Andy Beard | Published: April 27, 2008

The new WordPress.com possibly related posts is game changing - and gaming changing if they get it right. The following are some notes I am taking whilst testing

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips | Tagged related_posts, sphere, widget, wordpress, wordpress plugins, wordpress.com aol | Comments closed

WordPress.com Subdomain Spam With Tags?

By Andy Beard | Published: April 23, 2008

Over a year ago I questioned the use of tagging on WordPress.com to spread link equity around as "a rising tide".

If you use similar tags to a high profile blogger, it can help with faster indexing and rankings, at least from what I have observed.

In many ways the effect is similar to linkfarms, using the tagging as a central hub. Many commentators complain when they see Technorati tag pages appearing in the Google SERPs, because Technorati doesn't have a huge amount of editorial control over the content of those pages, they are more like search results.

In that situation however

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips | Tagged Google, spam, subdomains, tagging, tags, wordpress, wordpress.com | Comments closed

Ken Evoy Attacks Blogging & WordPress

By Andy Beard | Published: April 19, 2008

I have learnt a huge amount from Ken Evoy over the years, he provides some of the best free ebooks to learn about affiliate marketing and pre-selling ever written.

His SiteBuildIt system has created many successful online businesses and was doing this long before WordPress became popular.

In his email to affiliates today he announced a new sales page attacking blogging head on.

Blogging has reached lemming status. Without even thinking, many small businesses equate blogging with having a Web site. This is obviously wrong for small businesses with something to sell (ex., services, e-book sellers, etc.).

But it's also the wrong choice for

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips, web 2.0 | Tagged blogging, blogs, ken evoy, sbi, sitebuildit, wordpress | Comments closed

Viral Marketing Safeguards

By Andy Beard | Published: April 18, 2008

Did your site get banned from Google because of viral widgets?
Has Technorati banned your blog because of WordPress theme spam in their index
Do the links in your viral ebooks now point to an affiliate program or landing page that no longer exists?
Did you recommend a web host that is no longer a good choice?

I would even extend that to buying any form of paid link or sponsored review, and possibly also links from directories, social networks, blog commenting etc.

Last June I provided a very simple guide to avoid being banned from Technorati but the same principle applies to

Also posted in SEO Blog, themes, web 2.0 | Tagged 301 redirect, Google, technorati, technorati_authority, technorati_ranking, viral marketing | Comments closed

Site Structure – SEOs Going Fishing Without Any Bait

By Andy Beard | Published: March 7, 2008

If you don't know what you are doing with nofollow, noindex and robots.txt you can royally mess* things up (face to face I would use a stronger term). Even if you do know what you are doing, you can still mess things up.

I can understand why Matt Cutts might want to change what noindex does, it is not just Koreans making occasional mistake, for instance I just noticed the whole WebProNews video blog is currently noindex nofollow. I am sure that is a mistake, it is easy to make in Wordpress… just one click and save.

All in one

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips | Tagged follow, google juice, linking-structure, nofollow, noindex, pagerank, SEO Blog, site structure, wordpress, WordPress SEO | Comments closed

Dear Jason Calacanis – The Good Citizen Of The Interwebs?

By Andy Beard | Published: March 1, 2008

I honestly want to believe that you are a good internet citizen, and your attacks on search engine optimization and now affiliate marketers are honest, and without any form of prejudice.

So while you are attacking affiliate marketing, please ensure you have first of all cleared up all the problems in the paid links debate, such as what seems to be a company, where you are on the board of directors, buying links.

It is widely discussed that buying links in Wordpress themes is something that might be a signal of web spam, and the same should be true for buying links

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips | Tagged affiliate marketing, blogging, disclosure, jason calacanis, paid links, paid_review, SEO Blog, wordpress | Comments closed

Why TrafficJam.com really…

By Andy Beard | Published: February 23, 2008

I could finish that title in all kinds of ways

does suck
is amazing
can bring you masses of targeted traffic
can be used for market research
can help you optimize your titles
can be used for discovery
is overrated
is underrated
is useful
is a waste of screen pixels

Get the idea? It all depends on perspective and objectives. Even if you have absolutely no interest in TrafficJam or Blogrush, I strongly suggest you read this post, especially if you are interested in viral marketing techniques that are guaranteed to build you an email list.

Also posted in blogging tips, marketing, plugins | Tagged blogrush, rss, subscribers, traffic, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

Visible Linking And Traffic

By Andy Beard | Published: February 19, 2008

Yesterday Joost linked through to me from a guest post on Shoemoney about Wordpress SEO.

In direct referral stats it didn't cause a shockwave until I looked at the specific pageviews of the page he chose to link to, my Wordpress category.

My category pages rarely figure highly in the most viewed, so I could actually attribute the majority of the traffic to that specific landing page, even if the traffic originated from an email or RSS subscriber.

This takes me back to one of the discussions I had with Joost regarding his Google Analytics tracking from RSS Plugin

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips, marketing | Tagged blog_linking, email, email marketing, email_subscription, linking, rss, traffic | Comments closed

SEO Linking Gotchas Even The Pros Make

By Andy Beard | Published: November 27, 2007

I am going to attempt to debunk almost every Wordpress SEO "Expert" article ever written, and in some respects this article even debunks some of the things I have written in the past.

This article does not reference Google Toolbar PageRank in any way

First of all you are going to need to do a little homework.

Eric Enge interview with Matt Cutts

The Eric Enge interview with Matt Cutts was truly exceptional and revealed a number of gotchas that for some reason continue to be circulated.

Key takeaways

Matt Cutts: … Now, robots.txt says you are not allowed to crawl a page, and Google

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips | Tagged digg, goog, Google, Google PageRank, internal_linking, linking_structure, matt cutts, meta follow, meta nofollow, meta noindex, nofollow, pagerank, robots.txt, search engine optimization, SEO Blog, wikipedia | Comments closed

Google PageRank: Joke Of The Blogosphere?

By Andy Beard | Published: October 26, 2007

Andy Greenberg of Forbes got it totally wrong when he wrote Google Scares The Search Crowd

In many ways Google should be a little worried about the blogosphere reaction.

I was the centre of attention more by chance and timing than anything else, as I am sure it wouldn't have taken my worthy SEO colleagues long to make a list of sites that have been hit by PageRank penalties and spot some patterns.

As almost everyone discussing the subject was linking to me, and I was trying to keep up with the Blogstorm, moderating trackbacks and comments, and even trying to respond

Also posted in SEO Blog, blog monetization | Tagged Google, humor, pagerank, paid links, wordpress | Comments closed

Answers.com Answerlinks Plugin – How Much Are Those Links Worth?

By Andy Beard | Published: October 12, 2007

Wordpress.com owners Automattic, working in conjunction with Answers.com and former Wordpress core developer Alex King have just released a new plugin which allows Wordpress.com users, and Wordpress.org users to easily link to topics and definitions on Answers.com.

There are literally hundreds of such plugins for linking to various Wikis and shopping sites, but for some strange reason those haven't been included on Wordpress.com

Users on Wordpress.com aren't really very SEO savvy and thus are most likely to be "link happy" and of course with the plugin being so convenient, they are more likely to link to Answers.com now than rival sites.

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips, plugins | Tagged answerlinks, answers, Automattic, paid links, plugins, wordpress plugins, wordpress.com, wordress | Comments closed

DealDotCom – Feedback and Plugin

By Andy Beard | Published: September 19, 2007

Already on the DealDotCom blog, but many people might not have subscribed to them.

This is a useful plugin until the guys from DealDotCom come up with a solution of their own. They should really be delivering banners of various sizes to us every day without having to change any code, and an RSS or XML feed to play around with. It needs to be a graphic without using any javascript, so it can be used anywhere.

Anyway for now, you might find this DealDotCom plugin useful

Now if this was my plugin, I would be requiring an email address to download

Also posted in blog monetization, plugins | Tagged dealdotcom, plugin, wordpress | Comments closed

Akismet – Auntie Spam

By Andy Beard | Published: September 14, 2007

If you still insist on using purely Akismet for spam control on your WordPress blog rather than other alternatives, then you will be glad to know Engtech has released a new version of Auntie Spam, which helps you manage your Akismet spam more effectively.

Sphinn Greatest Hits – Could The #1 Be Some Useful Content?

By Andy Beard | Published: August 31, 2007

John Andrews currently has the top rated article on Sphinn with a truly brilliant display of link baiting and social media awareness.

I am not sure I am going to be able to knock him off the top spot, and this very post will probably gain him a few more votes, but I would like to think that one of my older articles could at least be a contender.

If This Content Is So Good, Why Hasn't It Been Submitted Before?

There are a number of reasons why my old post on Wordpress SEO and Dynamic Linking might not have

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips, plugins, themes | Tagged payperpost, reviewme, search engine optimization, SEO Blog, sphinn, sponsored reviews, wordpress, wordpress plugins, WordPress SEO, wordpress themes | Comments closed

Are You A Fake Dofollow Blogger?

By Andy Beard | Published: August 27, 2007

Not all blogs that write a post about dofollow, link through to plugins, and stick up a Dofollow logo have actually removed nofollow from their comments.

Over the last few months I have rejected over 100 blogs to the No Nofollow / Dofollow community on Bumpzee, and all but about 20 were because they didn't have nofollow removed correctly from their comments.

Fortunately about 30 of those subsequently either contacted me to have this explained to them, or fixed the problem and then notified me that things were resolved.

Lots of people for some reason don't get back in touch with

Also posted in blogging tips, plugins | Tagged bumpzee, dofollow, no nofollow, nofollow | Comments closed

Pushing WordPress SEO Boundaries

By Andy Beard | Published: August 23, 2007

How many SEO blogs actually write original content?

I am not talking about original words, but original ideas which can be based either on experience from experimentation or what I would describe as reasoned theory? Experience based on following conventional wisdom just doesn't count - you only need to read one SEO blog for accepted best practice, it doesn't really matter which one of the mainstream SEO blogs you choose. You might choose a few more for industry news with differing opinion.

The kind of blogs I love to read are those with substance, even if I can't fully understand all of them

Also posted in SEO Blog | Tagged internal_linking, linking, linking_structures, SEO Blog, WordPress SEO | Comments closed

WordPress Plugin – Custom Query String – UTW Edition

By Andy Beard | Published: August 11, 2007

This is the first release of this modified "classic" WordPress plugin and is based upon the original Custom Query String by Matt Read which has been looking for a permanent home for a while.

It contains some simple modifications extending the operation to include the UTW is_tag() function. The changes made are not unique, as they are the same as have been described on a number of Non-english language blogs such as 082Net - a little hard to find if you don't speak Korean, and as I have found in the past, if hacks are not provided as a

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips, plugins | Tagged Custom_Query_String, custom_wordpress, search engine optimization, SEO Blog, ultimate tag warrior, utw, WordPress Loop, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

Wordpress Plugin: Nofollow Those Dupes (Wordpress SEO Masterclass Continued)

By Andy Beard | Published: August 4, 2007

This is a continuation of my WordPress Search Engine Optimization Masterclass. It is really the one missing component, other than a complete theme with everything built in, to achieve the linking structures I described in my previous article. Sandcastles Theme I am still playing around with my Sandcastles Theme on a test site (based upon Sandbox) - it will be released fairly soon, but not until I have this site moved over onto new servers. I thought I would release this now so that those who don't want to work with a modified Sandbox theme are free to use it, and most people can probably gain some benefit from it anyway, as it will reduce external links on duplicate content pages without having to block them. Pagerank is based upon pages and relevant links

Also posted in SEO Blog, plugins, themes | Tagged Dynamic Linking, mininet, search engine optimization, SEO Blog, siloing, tag, tagging, ultimate tag warrior, utw, wordpress, WordPress SEO | Comments closed

A Dofollow Plugin I Liken To A Subaru

By Andy Beard | Published: July 30, 2007

I was going to liken this plugin to a Ferrari, because it is built to be fast, but it is probably more like a Subaru, not just fast but designed for rugged terrain and can handle the twists and turns of comment spammers without slowing down.

Also posted in blogging tips, plugins | Tagged dofollow, no nofollow, plugin, wordpress | Comments closed

Wordpress Sponsored Themes – How To Game The System

By Andy Beard | Published: July 28, 2007

I have kept quiet on the Wordpress Sponsored Themes debate… for too long, but it was a decision I took a few months ago. Wait until the dust settles and then look at what specific rules are made, and then how they are enforced.

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips, themes | Tagged sponsored_themes, themes, wordpress, wordpress themes | Comments closed

Sphinn Support – Antisocial (SEO Friendly Sociable) Wordpress Plugin

By Andy Beard | Published: July 24, 2007

I have just added support for Sphinn to my hacked version of the popular Sociable plugin.

For those unfamiliar with Antisocial, these are the differences

All links have nofollow added – this might sound strange coming from someone who strongly supports the removal of nofollow from comments, but there is no logical purpose having a followable link to a social bookmark site that just points to a submission form

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips, plugins, web 2.0 | Tagged sociable, social bookmarking, social networking, sphinn, stumbleupon, twitthis, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

By Andy Beard | Published: July 22, 2007

Having just come back from a week in Florida, striving to improve not only my own powers of concentration and focus, but how to grab and maintain the attention of readers and customers, for the last few days I have been thinking a little about Sphinn… some of those thoughts haven’t been pleasant, and to be perfectly honest, the good thoughts had very selfish motives.

Also posted in SEO Blog, plugins, web 2.0 | Tagged attention, bumpzee, mahalo, plugim, reciprocity, search engine optimization, sem, SEO Blog, social bookmarking, social networking, social networks, Social News, sphinn, truemor | Comments closed

Backdate Nofollow On Specific Domains

By Andy Beard | Published: July 11, 2007

There are times when you might want to retro-actively add nofollow to links you have given freely in the past. As an example some time ago I started using the nofollow Wikipedia plugin.

Also posted in blog monetization, blogging tips, plugins | Comments closed

Split Testing With Wordpress

By Andy Beard | Published: July 10, 2007

So you want to build your website with with Wordpress rather than a static HTML page, but you also want the benefits of being able to split test your copy and use it with Google Website Optimizer.
That sounds like a job for lots of custom programming…

Also posted in blog monetization, blogging tips, marketing, plugins | Comments closed

Sociable Plugin Error With Wordpress 2.2.1

By Andy Beard | Published: June 27, 2007

There seems to be a bug with the Sociable plugin, for which I provide a hacked version with a couple of minor modifications. The bug seems to only be for users of Wordpress 2.2.1 (which you should upgrade to for security reasons)

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips, plugins | Tagged antisocial, bookmark_plugin, sociable, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

How To Avoid Being Banned By Technorati

By Andy Beard | Published: June 25, 2007

Technorati don’t like their authority system being gamed. If they feel it is being gamed and made less relevant, whilst they might not totally remove your blog from their system, you might be removed from their Top100 list, and also their search results.

Also posted in blog monetization, blogging tips, themes | Tagged 301_redirect, domain_registration, link_exchanges, paid links, paid reviews, seomoz, technorati, technorati_authority, widgets, wordpress, wordpress themes | Comments closed

Wordpress SEO Masterclass For Competitive Niches

By Andy Beard | Published: June 19, 2007

Take a well optimized Wordpress blog in a competitive niche, rip it apart, and help maximise its chances of ranking in the SERPs and raking in some cash. This isn't lame all-in-one optimization plugins, it is totally geeking it out!

Having previously written that I don't typically undertake consulting work, I do look on any paid blog posts as a form of consultancy. In this particular case Tim from eMonetized decided to order a review of his blog, and we negotiated a little to ensure what you read is totally impartial and any links I choose to give are in an editorial context. The negotiation itself was an interesting process, and I will be writing about that separately. It should be noted that just because I mention improvements here, that doesn't mean that Tim the site owner isn't aware of something, and as also is almost always the case, I haven't applied many SEO tweaks to this site yet. That being said, some of the linking structures I talk about in the more geeky sections of this article I have never seen anyone talk about, and it is my belief that the resulting linking structure is highly unique, extremely powerful, whilst remaining flexible.

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips, plugins, themes | Tagged backlinks, Dynamic Linking, linking strategy, linking-structure, payperpost direct, revenge of the mininet, search engine optimization, search engines, SEO Blog, tagging, wordpress, wordpress plugins, WordPress SEO | Comments closed

Wordpress SEO – Siloing vs Massive Ball Linking With Tags

By Andy Beard | Published: June 14, 2007

This is not the definitive guide to Wordpress SEO, and I highly doubt I am the right person to write one, in fact I am not sure who would be. That being said this partial guide on a couple of aspects of Wordpress SEO might offer a broader perspective on what is possible than I have seen previously published.

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips, vre | Tagged mininet, siloing, synamic_linking, tag, tagging, ultimate_tag_-warrior, utw, wordpress, WordPress SEO | Comments closed

Truemors – More Successful Than Most People Realise

By Andy Beard | Published: June 5, 2007

Everyone is slagging off Guy Kawasaki for his Truemors site (again). I think most of them need to have their head examined because the site is already a raging success and the venture is already profitable, though most of them are Tech bloggers and not SEOs or Niche Marketers.

Also posted in SEO Blog, web 2.0 | Tagged digg, guy_Kawasaki, social bookmarking, truemors, wordpress | Comments closed

Akismet False Positives & Spam Karma Configuration

By Andy Beard | Published: May 31, 2007

Spam Karma for me is the most effective comment and trackback spam management solution because it doesn’t cause me problems with false positives on many blogs where I comment on a regular basis.
As a blogger, it is a huge time saver by sending me email notifications a few times per day if it finds entries that are “possible” good comments and trackbacks, but which tripped up one or more of the various algorithms it uses.

Also posted in blogging tips, plugins | Tagged akismet, artificial_intelligence, blacklist, blog_spam, collective_intelligence, commenting, comments, configuration, geotargeting, sk, spam, spam_karma, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

StumbleUpon Quintuplet From The King Of Blogging Gobshites

By Andy Beard | Published: May 10, 2007

Yes that title makes total sense, but you will have to keep reading to find out exactly why.

Stumble Popup

How often do you read a great blog post and forget to share it with your friends? The Stumbleupon toolbar is often a long mouse move away, and most people don’t use shortcuts when browsing, because they can’t remember them, or because of conflicts between different toolbars and other applications that are running on a system by default.

Also posted in blog monetization, blogging tips, marketing, plugins, stats, web 2.0 | Tagged digg, stumbleupon, stumble_upon, testing, tracking, web_metrics | Comments closed

Results: Top Wordpress Plugins (April 2007)

By Andy Beard | Published: May 7, 2007

It is hard work giving money away, and it seems it is hard work voting for which Wordpress plugin author should receive $100.

Whilst it might appear that there was an increase of votes this time around, with 29 votes instead of 24, that doesn’t allow for the fact that 8 votes were added as a bonus. Thus there were only 21 fresh votes.

Also posted in blogging tips, plugins | Tagged bad_behaviour, Best WordPress Plugins, dofollow, donations, image_manager, paid posts, paid reviews, payperpost, plugin_authors, plugin_developers, spam_karma, Top WordPress Plugins, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

Best Wordpress Plugins (April 2007) | Poll

By Andy Beard | Published: May 2, 2007

I have opened up the voting for the second round of my cash giveaway for Wordpress plugin authors.
Nominations for the Best Wordpress Plugin each month are made by my readers, and half my income from paid reviews is given away as donations to help support development costs of the best Wordpress plugins.

Also posted in blog monetization, blogging tips, plugins | Tagged donations, geek, gpl, pay per post, review_me, sponsored_posts, tech, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

I Have A New Pet

By Andy Beard | Published: April 23, 2007

Tumbleweed

If you happen to click through to my site from your feedreader (I know it is a huge sacrifice) then you will see I have a new pet in my sidebar.
He is actually quite a smart little guy, because unlike you, he knows which posts on my blog you might have missed over the last 3 months, based on the number of comments that were posted, or in this case, lack of comments.

Vlad Ripped Me Apart

By Andy Beard | Published: April 17, 2007

Well more to the point, he asked me some damn tough questions that made me think for more than 5 minutes before answering them. Actually I spent quite some time on the reply, and it wasn’t as straight forward as I was expecting.

The Ultimate Way To Show Reader Appreciation

By Andy Beard | Published: April 12, 2007

If you weren’t already aware, this week is reader appreciation week. Now the idea of reader appreciation is fairly good, give out some prizes, give a reader a link, etc etc.

Also posted in blogging tips, plugins, themes | Tagged ajax, ajax_comments, brians_threaded_comments, btc, buttonsnap, comments, dofollow, myavatars, nofollow, plugin, reader_appreciation, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

Exclusive: Blogcatalog vs Technorati? – Sharing The Love & Tagging (nofollow removed)

By Andy Beard | Published: April 9, 2007

As most of my readers are no doubt aware, I am a strong supporter of sharing the link love, but I always advocate sharing it in a focused manner, preferably from relevant content or from comments and trackbacks. If you trackback/pingback this blog you receive a reciprocal link between highly relevant content automatically, and not only Google and other major search engines count the links as relevant, but also blogging search engines such as Technorati, though with Technorati it is best to do it on a more recent post.

Also posted in Projects, SEO Blog, blogging tips, marketing, plugins, web 2.0 | Tagged Blogcatalog, blogging, blogging tips, dofollow, latent_semantic_indexing, linking_structure, link_love, lsi, marketing, mybloglog, nofollow, related_entries, related_posts, related_terms, relevance, relevant_content, search engine optimization, SEO Blog, tagging, technorati | Comments closed

Results: Top Wordpress Plugins (March 2007)

By Andy Beard | Published: April 6, 2007

Competition was fierce but with only 24 votes, the winner could easily have been decided in the last few hours.

I have checked the ballots and there doesn’t seem to be any scandals – rigged voting would have been news worthy and actually profitable, it just goes to show how honest people in the Wordpress community are.

Also posted in blogging tips, plugins | Tagged bad_behaviour, Best WordPress Plugins, dofollow, donations, image_manager, plugin_authors, plugin_developers, spam_karma, Top WordPress Plugins, ultimate tag warrior, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

Best Wordpress Plugins (March 2007) | Poll

By Andy Beard | Published: April 3, 2007

I have opened up the voting for the first round of my cash giveaway for Wordpress plugin authors.
Nominations for the Best Wordpress Plugin each month are made by my readers, and half my income from paid reviews is given away as donations to help support development costs of the best Wordpress plugins.

Also posted in Projects, plugins | Tagged bad_behaviour, dofollow, donations, image_manager, plugin_authors, plugin_developers, spam_karma, ultimate tag warrior, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

The Ultimate Wordpress Htaccess File?

By Andy Beard | Published: April 2, 2007

Canonicalization is a serious problem for webmasters, just read this latest entry by Matt Cutts or this great post from John Andrews. However telling webmasters that they should fix these issues isn't enough, webmasters & bloggers need solutions.

In Search of the Ultimate Htaccess file

A couple of months ago Alister Cameron posted a simple solution to .htaccess such that you didn't need to use a plugin to convert URLs using www to URLs without.

At the time I suggested a couple of improvements, and also mentioned I would post about it here on my blog, hopefully to help

Also posted in Google, SEO Blog, blogging tips, mininet, vre | Tagged blogging, blogging tips, Canonicalization, htaccess, Htaccess WordPress, htaccess_code, mod_rewrite, search engine optimization, SEO Blog, trainling_slashes | Comments closed

How to Show Top Commenters Only On Your Index Page

By Andy Beard | Published: April 2, 2007

I recently wrote that I don’t like Top Commenters plugins, in fact I used a very strong word… loathe. There are some benefits to introducing Top Commenters to give some level of special recognition, but whatever SEO benefits you think it might offer are discounted by having it placed in your sidebar across the whole of your site including your duplicate content pages.

Also posted in blogging tips, plugins, themes | Tagged code, comments, hack, top_commenters, ultimate tag warrior, utw, wordpress, wordpress plugins, wordpress themes, wordpress_commands, wordpress_logic | Comments closed

TwitThis Causes Pages To Load Slowly – Here is a fix

By Andy Beard | Published: April 2, 2007

Have you noticed my pages loading extremely slowly over the last few days? I am not talking about my sidebars, which appear after my content, but my articles which always load first, and usually quite fast.

Also posted in plugins, web 2.0 | Tagged amazon, amazon_s3, antisocial, page_load, slow_page_load, sociable, twitter, twitthis, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

I Bet You Missed Some of These (March 07)

By Andy Beard | Published: April 1, 2007

These are some highlights (in my opinion) of some of the content I have created over the last month. If I have missed anything out which you enjoyed or gained some value from, please let others know in the comments.

Also posted in SEO Blog, plugins, reviews, web 2.0 | Tagged aweber, blogging, blogging tips, blogs, blogsearch, can_spam, citations, digg, disclosure, dofollow, getresponse, gmail, google_blog_search, mybloglog, nofollow, pay per post, plagiarism, plugins, press, product_launch_formula, reddit, reviews, smm, smo, smpt, smtp_server, sociable, social-bookmarks, social_tagging, sponsored reviews, stampede_traffic, stumbleupon, subscribe_to_comments, tag, tagging, technorati, top_commenters, traffic_strategy, twitter, ultimate tag warrior, wordpress | Comments closed

Spam Karma 2.3 Still The Best Comment Spam System For Niche Websites

By Andy Beard | Published: March 30, 2007

Spam Karma is one of my favorite plugins and despite rumours to the contrary, it is still being supported.

Dr Dave has just released a new version

New in 2.3 of Spam Karma:

Also posted in plugins | Tagged blog_spam, comment_spam, spam, spam_karma, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

Destroy Your Blog Rankings Linking To Digg or Technorati?

By Andy Beard | Published: March 24, 2007

How many blogs link to Technorati on every post they publish? Many blogs also use followable links to social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, and social news sites such as Digg on every single page of their site? Google in their recently disclosed patent are saying that it could be a negative indication of quality.

Also posted in Google, blogging tips, plugins, web 2.0 | Tagged blogsearch, blog_search, delicious, digg, dofollow, Google, google_blogsearch, nofollow, tagging, tags, technorati, wikipedia | Comments closed

Wordpress Plugin: Antisocial

By Andy Beard | Published: March 24, 2007

You could blame this plugin on Lorelle for suggesting this weekend as a “Code Marathon Party“. Honestly though her code weekend idea just gave me a kick up the backside to finally just archive something on my harddisk and stick it on the web for public download.

Also posted in SEO Blog, plugins | Tagged nofollow, SEO Blog, sociable, wordpress, wordpress plugin, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

In Depth: Google BlogSearch | Ranking Blog Documents Patent

By Andy Beard | Published: March 23, 2007

Using Internal tags with Ultimate Tag Warrior

For a long time my blogs have performed amazingly well with Google Blog Search. I always appear in the relevant results quickly, and the results I obtain have some reasonable longevity, even when I am not the original source of a story.

Also posted in Google, SEO Blog, blogging tips, plugins | Tagged backlinks, blogging, bloglines, blogsearch, duplicate content, feedburner, Google, google_blogsearch, google_blog_search, linking strategy, rss, rss_subscribers, search engine optimization, search engines, SEO Blog, subscribers, tag, tagging, tags, technorati, technorati_favorites, ultimate tag warrior, utw | Comments closed

Best Wordpress Plugins – Nominations and Results

By Andy Beard | Published: March 17, 2007

I earn money from this blog, but as I have hinted in the past, that isn't my primary goal. I write paid reviews for products that take a fair amount of time, but nothing compared to the amount of time Wordpress plugin authors spend on their creations, only to give them away for free and often still provide support.

Admittedly I have been a little lax with my donations to other authors, though I have invested money in plugin development, only to publish the plugins myself under a GPL license, thus in my own way giving to the community.

What I have

Also posted in blog monetization, blogging tips, plugins | Tagged donations, geek, gpl, pay per post, review_me, sponsored_posts, tech, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

A List Bloggers in Crystal Palaces Shouldn’t Throw Stones

By Andy Beard | Published: March 16, 2007

There are a number of fatal, hypocritical or naive flaws in almost every attack on paid posts by A list bloggers and it is time to show them their Achilles heel(s).

Also posted in blogging tips | Tagged disclosure, disclosure policy, Matt_Mullenweg, paid posts, paid reviews, pay per post, selling_links, wordpress | Comments closed

Multiple Reasons Why I Loathe Top Commenters Plugins

By Andy Beard | Published: March 15, 2007

I benefit from being a top commenter on a number of blogs simply because I am consistently active on those sites, and I have gained the benefit without changing my commenting habits.
Some of my blogging friends are aware of the problems, but have opted to use such a plugin anyway – I fully respect that decision, but many make that decision “blindly” without being aware of the possible consequences.

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips, plugins | Tagged backlinks, Blogroll, dofollow, google_juice, links, nofollow, search engine optimization, SEO Blog, top_commenters, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

Desmond Decides That Ella Gets Too Much Attention – Wordpress | BBPress

By Andy Beard | Published: February 27, 2007

I am sure a few other people might have spotted this already in their Wordpress console today. I am sure it is a bug that is going to be cleared up rapidly.

Posted in wordpress | Tagged bbpress, rss, wordpress | Comments closed

Wordpress VS Moveable Type – Six Apart Under Attack

By Andy Beard | Published: February 24, 2007

I have never used Moveable Type as a blogging platform. I found Wordpress to be better than Blogger in many ways, and moved a large number of my sites over to Wordpress (but only on my own domains). That being said, I am frequently asked what are the differences between Wordpress and Moveable Type, especially for a business blogger who might experience high traffic load.

Also posted in blogging tips | Tagged Automattic, moveable_type, MT, six_apart, wordpress, wp | Comments closed

Shoemoney Nofollow Plugin

By Andy Beard | Published: February 24, 2007

This plugin retroactively places the rel=”nofollow” tag on all links to Shoemoney.com – you don’t have to modify any links manually, and it is easy to switch off should you feel in the future that the site no longer contains offensive material.

Read more on Shoemoney Nofollow Plugin…

Also posted in Projects, plugins | Tagged adsense, Google, hack, hacking, nofollow, shoemoney, shoemoney_nofollow_plugin, wordpress, wordpress plugin | Comments closed

Introduction To Ultimate Tag Warrior | Lorelle

By Andy Beard | Published: February 20, 2007

Lorelle has posted a great introduction to Ultimate Tag Warrior. She covers almost all the basics on what makes UTW my favorite plugin.

She has also been reporting on feed stats. Now whilst I don’t want to be accused at looking at her “details” again, if you add her Wordpress.com subscribers to her Feedburner subscribers then her total is approximately 2500 subscribers. I am sure she also gains a lot more readers through various other interfaces on Wordpress.com who don’t use a feed reader.

Also posted in plugins | Tagged branding, legacy, lorelle, name_recognition, ultimate tag warrior, utw, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

MyBlogLog Spam Hack Update & Widget Performance | Linkbait Idea

By Andy Beard | Published: February 20, 2007

MyBlogLog Spam

Lots of people are aware that there was a problem over the weekend with co-author requests being sent out, and some forced adding as authors to communities.

It was a long weekend in the US, but it seems the MyBlogLog team have already fixed it, rolled back any changes, and hopefully it won’t happen again.

Also posted in plugins, web 2.0 | Tagged comments, cron, curl, hack, mybloglog, php, spam, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

Ultimate List of DoFollow & Nofollow Plugins – Banish Nofollow From Comments and Trackbacks

By Andy Beard | Published: February 17, 2007

Wordpress by default, just like other blogging platforms, has automatically been adding the "nofollow" microformat extension to all links from user generated content such as comments and trackbacks. To support the growing rejection of NoFollow for blog comments, I have compiled this list of plugins that help you remove nofollow from your blog forever.

Lucia's Linky Love Plugin - I was going to liken this plugin to a Ferrari, because it is built to be fast, but it is probably more like a Subaru, not just fast but designed for rugged terrain and can handle the twists and turns of

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips, plugins | Tagged dofollow, drupal, i_follow, moveabletype, moveable_type, no nofollow, nofollow, wordpress, wordpress plugin, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

Why Do I Blog? (OMG that is a terrible headline that no one will read)

By Andy Beard | Published: February 13, 2007

This seems like a great post to keep all my deepest secrets because no one will ever read it.

Michel Fortin tagged me for this meme.
He was tagged by Ryan Healy who had actually just picked up the meme without being tagged by my friend Mike Sansone.

Also posted in Projects, SEO Blog, blog monetization, blogging tips, memes | Tagged blogging tips, community, meme, why_blog | Comments closed

New Digg Buttons With Wordpress (that don’t work?)

By Andy Beard | Published: February 7, 2007

Digg has introduced some new buttons and here is how to use them with Wordpress.

It’s smart enough to detect whether your link is a Digg permalink or a URL and whether or not the content exists on Digg already. If it exists, you’ll get the familiar yellow Digg box with a real-time Digg count to suggest visitors Digg your story. If the story doesn’t exist yet on Digg, the first person to click on the Digg It link will be walked through the submission process.

Also posted in Projects, web 2.0 | Tagged digg, digg_badge, digg_button, digg_this, wordpress | Comments closed

How to Switch Off All Wordpress Plugins

By Andy Beard | Published: February 6, 2007

I just picked up a very useful tip on Dougal Campbells blog that I thought I should note down for posterity, especially with so many people planning to upgrade to Wordpress 2.1 in the near future.

Also posted in plugins | Tagged function_calls, wordpress, wordpress plugins, WordPress Tip | Comments closed

Custom CSS

By Andy Beard | Published: February 4, 2007

Chris Pearson has just written a dynamite post on how to use custom CSS with a Wordpress theme.
It is especially important if you tweak your themes a lot, and the theme designer is highly active in upgrading themes with new features, and also helps if you tend to switch themes for various custom elements. A lot of plugins for instance ask you to add some CSS to your main CSS file, because they don’t inject it into your header automatically.

Feed Styling Alternative and some Traffic Analysis

By Andy Beard | Published: February 3, 2007

Recently I wrote about how you can customise some of the elements in your RSS feed for correct display.

I just found out about another alternative for those comfortable with CSS called Feed Styler. It allows you to apply CSS to various page elements automatically, effectively using 2 style sheets, one for your blog pages, and another for your feeds.
It achieves this by automatically adding inline CSS styling to various page elements.

Also posted in blogging tips, plugins | Tagged css, css_styling, feed, feed_css, feed_reader, feed_styler, style, styling, wordpress, wordpress plugin | Comments closed

Sociable Beta | PlugIm | Bumpzee | Technorati WTF

By Andy Beard | Published: February 1, 2007

Social Bookmarking and Social Networks - Technorati WTF PlugIM Bumpzee

Sociable has been due for an update for a long time. In popularity I am sure it is among the top 20 plugins in use, maybe even top 10 – it is certainly very visible on blogs, more so than the very discreet Share This plugin.

Also posted in blogging tips, marketing, plugins, web 2.0 | Tagged bookmarking, bumpzee, nofollow, plugim, sociable, social bookmarking, social_tagging, tag, tagging, technorati, wordpress, wordpress plugin, wtf | Comments closed

Wikipedia NoFollow Plugin

By Andy Beard | Published: January 23, 2007

I mentioned I was willing to create such a plugin, I was even cobbling the code together.

Then I noticed a mention over on Matt’s blog (just search for Matt) in the comments that somone had written one.

Read more on Wikipedia NoFollow Plugin…

Also posted in SEO Blog, plugins | Tagged digg, digg_this, nofollow, SEO Blog, wikipedia, wordpress, wordpress plugin | Comments closed

How to Make Corrections When Blogging

By Andy Beard | Published: January 19, 2007

Sometimes you make a mistake when blogging and get the facts wrong. How do you follow up with a correction?

I don’t know the exact terminology that press guidelines or rules use, but generally it is something like

Also posted in blogging tips, plugins | Tagged blogging, blogging tips, corrections, disclosure, ethics, plugin, podcast, wordpess_plugin, wordpress, wordpress_podcast | Comments closed

UTW Wordpress Plugin Upgraded

By Andy Beard | Published: January 19, 2007

UTW must be my favorite plugin

Christine has released an upgrade

Ultimate Tag Warrior 3.1415926

I also submitted it to Digg, so Give It Some Digging

Honestly I see so many junk plugins on people’s top 10 list that take almost no effort to create (though sometimes serve a useful purpose).

Also posted in blogging tips, plugins | Tagged tag, tagging, ultimate tag warrior, upgrade, utw, wordpress, wordpress plugins, wp | Comments closed

Wordpress 2.07 2.1 | BBPress 0.75

By Andy Beard | Published: January 16, 2007

Wordpress 2.07 was just released. We get to update our Wordpress blogs for a week as Wordpress 2.1 is due on January 22nd.
Is it worth it? Yes both for the security and Feedburner fixes.

Also posted in blogging tips | Tagged feedburner, wordpress, WordPress 2.07, WordPress Security, WordPress Update | Comments closed

Paid Reviews Hots Up

By Andy Beard | Published: January 15, 2007

SponsoredReviews.com enters the payed posts arena joining Pay Per Post and Reviewme. In many ways continuing a review model that has been around for more than 5 years. I read it first on Techcrunch, but looks like Blog Herald got the scoop.

Terapad Review | Overview and Bugs

By Andy Beard | Published: January 11, 2007

A new blogging platform has recently launched called Terapad, so I thought I would take a look.

It is designed to be a complete all in one solution, with not only blogging but also more advanced features such as forums and Paypal support.

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips | Tagged blog, blogging, blogging_platform, blogging_service, elance, SEO Blog, start_a_blog, terapad, terapad_review, wordpress, WordPress Training, WordPress Tutorials | Comments closed

Chitika Adverts with Ultimate Tag Warrior

By Andy Beard | Published: January 10, 2007

I talk about how you can use UTW quite a bit from an SEO perspective, but it can also help with monetization. If you have keywords, you can use them for all kinds of things.

Also posted in blogging tips, plugins | Tagged chitika, flickr, keyword, keyword_targetting, monetization, pictures, rss, ultimate tag warrior, utw, wordpress | Comments closed

Wordpress 2.1 Launch date set

By Andy Beard | Published: January 10, 2007

During an interview with Shoemoney(listen to it here), Matt Mullenweg mentioned that Wordpress 2.1 will be released on January 22nd.
It is available as a beta version, and a believe beta2 is due any day now. Lots of people in the Wordpress development community have been running Wordpress 2.1 beta on production blogs, and a lot of the code is shared with Wordpress.com.

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips | Tagged beta, blogging, blogging tips, blogkits, blog_monetisation, jason calacanis, jim_kukral, make_money, Matt_Mullenweg, mybloglog, shoemoney, webmasterradio, wordpress, WordPress 2.1 | Comments closed

Linking for Traffic?

By Andy Beard | Published: January 8, 2007

Rand Fishkin has an interesting post on the benefits of linking to other people.

It is actually quite a sterile look on the practice, and doesn’t mention one important concept.

Community

Wordpress 2.06 Security Update

By Andy Beard | Published: January 6, 2007

The latest stable release of Wordpress, version 2.06 was released quietly yesterday.

Most of the changes are under the hood in the way of security fixes, plus there shouldn’t be a need with Mark Jaquith’s plugin for those that were having server 500 problems with Wordpress 2.05.

Posted in wordpress | Tagged blogging, blogging tips, feedburner, security, wordpress, WordPress Security, WordPress Upgrade | Comments closed

Stomper Net 2.0 – Joint Ventures Redefined

By Andy Beard | Published: January 4, 2007

Lots of people may have watched the launch of the Original Stomper Network a few months ago. From all accounts those who joined are happy they did, but this is definitely a course for people already making serious money online. If a small percentage turnover increase won't pay for the course many times over, it isn't something to seriously think about.

This is now quite an old article

For more recent coverage of Stompernet Going Natural 2.0, Going Natural 3.0 and Stomper Site seer, please check the Stompernet tag.

Stomper Net 2.0 has just launched, boasting a lot of new faculty

Also posted in SEO Blog, marketing, vre | Tagged joint_venture, jv, SEO Blog, seomoz, seo_training, stompernet, stomper_net, stomper_network, WordPress Training | Comments closed

FTC | Word of Mouth and Affiliates

By Andy Beard | Published: December 14, 2006

I was honestly so caught up in other things over the last 36 hours, I totally missed this and it is highly relevant to my Disclosure Policy Plugin.

I am not a lawyer, thus any interpretation of the situation I am going to leave in the hands of lawyers who I have a great deal of respect for, and who themselves are involved in the internet marketing field.

Also posted in Projects, marketing, plugins | Tagged affiliate, affiliate marketing, amazon, clickbank, Commission_Junction, disclosure, disclosure policy, Ebay, ftc, Google, Linkshare, pay per post, techcrunch, word_of_mouth | Comments closed

Disclosure Policy Wordpress Plugin Now Available

By Andy Beard | Published: December 11, 2006

The site is live, the plugin available for download.

I’m exhausted…

There are still a lot of things that need tweaking on the site before I promote it but thought I would at least mention it here before hitting the sack.

Also posted in Projects, plugins | Tagged disclosure policy, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

Blog SEO | Evaluation | Taking action

By Andy Beard | Published: December 6, 2006

One of the most rewarding things about blogging, at least for me, is when you see people taking action based on something you have suggested.

There are actually 2 distinct stages in taking action

Also posted in Google, SEO Blog, blogging tips | Tagged affiliate marketing, backlinks, blogging, linking strategy, nofollow, search engine optimization, search engines, SEO Blog, ultimate tag warrior, utw | Comments closed

Nofollow | SEO & Dynamic Linking | Disclosure

By Andy Beard | Published: December 3, 2006

Here are some more links discussing the use of NoFollow for SEO purposes.

Seo Blog has a solid overview of how each search engine treats nofollow.
I am not sure the final conclusion regarding Yahoo and treating nofollow for ranking purposes is correct. I know many people who have done well with blog comments with Yahoo search, even on blogs using nofollow. I haven’t got any recent data.

Also posted in blogging tips, plugins | Tagged backlinks, disclosure policy, disclosurepolicy, Dynamic Linking, linking strategy, nofollow, paid reviews, pay per post, payperpost, reviewme, review_me, search engine optimization, search engines, SEO Blog | Comments closed

CoComment added in under 5 minutes

By Andy Beard | Published: November 28, 2006

Some things are very easy to install on a blog.

coComment is certainly one of them

They provide some javascript to add to your blog template, or there is a very easy to install coComment plugin for Wordpress.

Also posted in blogging tips, plugins | Tagged blogging, cocomment, javascript, social networking, wordpress plugin | Comments closed

UTW – Tagging SEO Tricks (pt 2)

By Andy Beard | Published: November 25, 2006

This is not a technical trick, but something that many people who confuse categories and tagging really need to get a grasp of.
It is also my belief that this is very much a white-hat strategy, but as with all forms of search engine marketing, it can be abused.

Also posted in Google, SEO Blog, plugins | Tagged backlinks, blogging tips, blog_navigation, duplicate content, folksonomy, Google, google_results, linking strategy, msn, relevant_content, search engines, SEO Blog, tagging, tags, ultimate tag warrior, utw, white_hat, wordpress, wordpress plugins, yahoo | Comments closed

Wordpress Tutorials (business as usual)

By Andy Beard | Published: November 15, 2006

I am making this post to give some “equal weighting” to the level of news coverage, that my previous post on the Worpress Trademark issue received.

This time around it is really good news

Posted in wordpress | Tagged wordpress, WordPress trademark | Comments closed

Wordpress Tutorials Reborn

By Andy Beard | Published: November 15, 2006

Sherman Hu’s Wordpress Tutorials site has just received a massive facelift.

It might be thought that this facelift was due to recent perceptions of the site.

Unfortunately the timeline just doesn’t reflect on the recent situation.

Posted in wordpress | Tagged copywriting, long_form, marketing, sales_letter, testing, tracking, wordpress, WordPress Consulting, WordPress Training, WordPress Tutorials, WordPress Videos | Comments closed

Redirects from Blogspot | Bug in Wordpress Import

By Andy Beard | Published: November 13, 2006

I have finally got my redirects from blogspot working perfectly.

Well almost…

It is not as good as a 301 redirect, as it will not transfer pagerank.

There is also a bug I found which means I will have to go through my imported content carefully checking page slugs.

Posted in wordpress | Tagged blogger, blogspot, blog_import, wordpress, WordPress Bug | Comments closed

Ultimate Tag Warrior SEO Tricks (pt 1)

By Andy Beard | Published: November 11, 2006

On my blogs, I prefer not to use nofollow for comments and trackback.

It is my belief that if someone adds to the conversation on my blogs, the least I can do is offer them a backlink for their trouble.
I prefer people to write a post about me than to add me to their blogroll. I know a blogroll link theoretically gives me more Google Juice, but if they give 200 people a blogroll link, suddenly the value of that link from every page is greatly deminished.

Also posted in SEO Blog, blogging tips, mininet | Tagged blogging tips, Dynamic Linking, linking strategy, nofollow, pagerank, search engine optimization, SEO Blog, ultimate tag warrior, utw, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

Trademarks and domain names (part2)

By Andy Beard | Published: November 9, 2006

Further to the situation with the Wordpress trademark that has caused such a public outcry, I have just read over on Cristian Mezei’s Seopedia that Google is Banning users From Adsense for using their trademark.

Also posted in Google | Tagged adsense, domain_name, Google, subdomain, trademark, wordpress | Comments closed

Share Your Montastic Stats or Not?

By Andy Beard | Published: November 8, 2006

Christian Montoya pointed me in the direction of Montastic today.

It looks like a great service, especially because it is free, and I have lots of domains to monitor that I might not visit personally very often.

Also posted in Google, blogging tips | Tagged digital_rights_management, DRM, montastic, rss-sharing, rss_authentication, rss_syndication, site_monitoring | Comments closed

Wordpress needs an Email system revamp

By Andy Beard | Published: November 6, 2006

Here is a little something I just posted to the Wordpress Hackers mailing list.

If you are using a badly coded plugin to subscribe to comments on a blog, take this as a very serious warning.

Also posted in blogging tips | Tagged email marketing, email_delivery, wordpress, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

Wordpress.com linking structure

By Andy Beard | Published: November 4, 2006

In the comments discussing my objections to the current implementation of Google Reader on Robert Scobles blog, something very interesting cropped up.

Robert was vehemently questioning the morals of people in a blogging network.

Also posted in Google, SEO Blog | Tagged link_strategy, tagging, tags, wordpress, wordpress.com | Comments closed

Revenge of the Mininet | 3rd Party content | Blog Comments | No Follow

By Andy Beard | Published: October 31, 2006

For those that haven’t picked up a copy of Revenge of the Mininet

Bookmark or Subscribe to this post

Download Revenge of the Mininet for free (It is honestly worth signing up to Michaels list)

Also posted in Projects, blogging tips, mininet, niche website, plugins, vre | Tagged articles, blogging, blogging tips, blog_navigation, customization, duplicate content, Dynamic Linking, folksonomy, google-pr, linking strategy, linking_links, mininet, niche website, pagerank, revenge_of_the_mininet, search engines, SEO Blog, site_navigation, tagging, tags, ultimate tag warrior, utw, WordPress Templates, wordpress themes | Comments closed

Wordpress | Mininet membership site

By Andy Beard | Published: October 28, 2006

I have been planning for a long time to launch a membership site based on custom wordpress plugins, and also taking advantage of various mininet strategies, especially those discussed in Revenge of the Mininet (which you can now get free). It is honestly required reading.

Also posted in plugins, reviews, vre | Tagged butterflymarketing, butterfly_marketing, butterfly_marketing_manuscript, launchformulamarketing, launch_formula_marketing, membership_site, membership_site_php, membership_site_script, wordpress plugins | Comments closed

Tagging and page views

By Andy Beard | Published: October 23, 2006

A few days ago on my Wordpress Plugins site, I updated to Wordpress 2.04 (from 1.5.2) and switched to using UTW for tagging rather than Taggerati.

Taggerati and UTW have slightly different functionality. 2.04 is supported by both, but Taggerati isn’t really being updated. I am going to miss a couple of the inline tags I could use when posting using a desktop application, but longterm support I hope is more likely with UTW.

Where did I get that Wordpress theme?

By Andy Beard | Published: October 22, 2006

Just a short plea to all Wordpress Theme authors.

Please make it easy to find who created a theme.

All you have to do is include the correct information at the top of your CSS.

Also posted in Uncategorized, themes | Tagged wordpress, wordpress plugins, WordPress Templates, wordpress themes | Comments closed

Constant problems with plugins and hooks

By Andy Beard | Published: October 21, 2006

A little something for discussion over on my Wordpress plugins blog. I actually have a full-time programmer working on Wordpress plugins for me.

I just asked the following question to the Wordpress Hackers mailing list, and thought it worth publishing it here to a wider audience.

Also posted in plugins | Tagged hooks, plugin_hooks, template_hooks, wordpress, wordpress plugins, WordPress Templates, wordpress themes | Comments closed

Wordpress Plugin: Snowfall

By Andy Beard | Published: December 23, 2005

I launched a new site today, along with a little seasonal gift

Wpplugins.info

I have mentioned using Taggerati in the past, along with Blog Auto Publisher. This site has Taggerati implemented, although the tagging is currently being performed manually rather than by keyword list.

Also posted in niche website, plugins | Tagged christmas, niche website, plugin, snowfall, wordpress, wordpress plugin | Comments closed

RAP Bank

I have just signed up for RAP Bank myself - call this a mini-review.
It seems to be one of the smartest ideas for a long time as a great way to consolidate 100s of affiliate programs under a single entity for promotion.

It is also one of the best implementations of WordPress I have ever seen.
It is not without its bugs, as this is effectively pre-launch. For example I just found a bug in the keyword based search RSS feeds (yes RSS feeds for any term will be hot), but it looks like they might be onto a winner.
Check it out - signup for the basic service is free.

>
P.S. It is not immediately obvious who is running the site, but looking at my Paypal receipt (yes I signed up for Vendor Plus) I believe the site is run by Bill Ortell From Rap-Extras.com who is RAP certified and does the membership add-on that is highly popular.
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