I thought for completeness I would throw out some quick notes on the creative commons and how it relates to both GPL and proprietary WordPress theme licenses.
I am not a lawyer, this isn’t legal advice, and I am trying to make this “non-specific” to any particular theme because it affects users of themes, not just the theme authors.
Read more on Creative Commons Images With WordPress Themes & Plugins…
I am going to prepend this by saying up front that I typically disagree with Matt Mullenweg on many decisions
Read more on Thesis vs WordPress GPL…
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…
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
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.
There are a number of reasons why my old post on Wordpress SEO and Dynamic Linking might not have
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
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.
Read more on WordPress Sponsored Themes – How To Game The System…
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.
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.
Read more on How to Show Top Commenters Only On Your Index Page…
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.
Read more on Custom CSS…
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.
Read more on Where did I get that WordPress theme?…
The Ultimate Way To Show Reader Appreciation
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.
Read more on The Ultimate Way To Show Reader Appreciation…