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WordPress SEO – Some Simple Tips for better SEO

WordPress SEO – Some Simple Tips for better SEO

by | Oct 7, 2015 | Search Engine Optimisation

WordPress & SEO

I just learned of something WordPress SEO related which might be hampering your attempts to get good levels of traffic to your site if you are using WordPress. This is a great WordPress SEO tip.

One of the best things about WordPress is that you can add a category or two to your post. It turns out that listing your blog post under more than one category might be considered as duplicate content in Googles eyes and your site may be penalised.

I will be posting under only 1 category for a while to see if this helps with the site traffic / SEO on the site.

Any comments – please add them below to discuss the search tricks you use for WordPress SEO. I am trying this on this site, shanemcdonald.ie and hopefully, it will help my SEO efforts.

Also, if you are adding Tags to your site and you have tags which only have one or two posts this could cause issues also. Consider this, your site has 300 posts and you have a blog post with a recipe and a WordPress tag called ‘recipe’. If this tag has never been used on your site apart from this one time, then this tag remains with 1 post attached to it. This doesn’t really have any real impact on your site’s SEO. Perhaps a better approach might be to add this into a tag such as ‘Lifestyle’ or ‘Food’ which might have a higher post count.

If you are working on your WordPress sites SEO then you should also consider SEO plugins such as Yoast or the All in One SEO plugin. I have used both plugins but I can tell you that Yoast works a bit better for my 3 sites. Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress also connects to Google Search Console. As a result, your WordPress SEO can benefit from things like Google and Bing Authentication and also notifications about soft 404 errors and much more.

One final SEO tip for WordPress users is to install caching and speed optimisation plugins. Take a read of this blog post ‘How to setup WordPress caching and image optimisation your website‘.  I saw an improvement in Bounce Rate reduction and also organic SEO visits. Search Engine Optimisation is an ongoing thing for bloggers and website owners and WordPress has many features to take the pain out of this for you.

If you have any comments on website or WordPress SEO Tips please leave a comment below. 

How to Optimize your Website – Organic SEO Tips #1

How to Optimize your Website – Organic SEO Tips #1

by | Jul 17, 2009 | Internet & Technology, Search Engine Optimisation

How to Optimize your Website – Organic SEO Tips #1

Everyone wants to be #1 on Google, #1 on Yahoo and #1 on MSN. Years ago when the internet started to become popular and search engines were not as clever as they are now, getting to No. 1 for lets say the search term SEO on a search engine was easy. You did this…

<meta name="keywords" content="SEO, SEO, SEO, SEO Optimisation, SEO Tips, SEO Advice, SEO tricks, SEO, SEO" />

… basically you crammed the keywords into your website and you got good listings on search engines. Sometimes the keywords might go on for 1,000 characters or more – This is Keyword Stuffing! These days, if you spam keywords (also called keyword stuffing), you can expect a backlash – your site will either be banned or be penalised. Here are 5 primary tips on how you can improve your websites search engine positioning;

  1. Update your website regularly – regular website updates ensure that your content is always fresh and also shows the search engines that this content is being maintained. You will find that sites which are updated more regularly get visited more by the spiders.
  2. Write Original Content – NEVER, copy content from another website. Always write your own content as Google does not like duplicated content. Write the content with the customer or website visitor in mind. Also when naming your website files, don’t call the pages page1.html, page2.html – if it is a page for SEO Tips and Advice, then call the page good-SEO-tips.html so if your website is www.shanes-seo-tips.com your page will be at www.shanes-seo-tips.com/good-SEO-tips.html and not www.shanes-seo-tips.com/page2.html – as this can hel your SEO also.
  3. Include Good Meta data – On each page have a unique TITLE, DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS. The content of these meta tags should identify the content on your website. Choose good Title and Description tags. If you are stuck, try use the first few lines of the pages content as a guide and reduce it to about 200-230 characters. Keep the Title at a length of 50 – 80 characters. 3(b). Include ALT Text – for each image used on your website, include ALT Text, which means when a user hovers over an image or indeed if an image does not load, descriptive text will appear, describing the contents of the image which did not load. Include a keyword or two in your ALT text where possible.
  4. Generate a SiteMap – Include a text based site map on your site, which means the search engine robots can navigate your website and index all your pages. Site maps can be in XML format or in HTML – avan better if you can include both.
  5. Check your site – This is a simple thing but often overlooked. Check your website for spelling errors, HTML Errors, Broken Links, Server Side Includes (SSI) which are not loading, Images which are not loading.

Before you implement these on your site…

(1) make a backup of your site – if you mess up the meta data, better going back to something which works rather than starting from scratch. and (2) record your current positions in search engines – that way you can measure your success rates, e.g. we were in position 56 last week and now we are at position #11 for the keyword “SEO Advice”. Keep monitoring your progress. Eventually this progress will slow down and you may need to implement some more advanced SEO techniques. The tips above are all suited to those who have a basic knowledge of HTML syntax and are aimed at websites which have little or no SEO work done on them. If you require a basic HTML introduction, leave a post with your comments and I will upload one. Tips for Organic SEO #2 will appear on the blog soon – bookmark the tab “Search Engine Optimization” on this site.

The tips above have been used on many sites before and are known to work – however I accept no responsibility for anyones individual implementation or incorrect implemetation of these tips – I know they work and I would be very surprised if they did not work on any website which has decent textual content and which has not been optimised previously.
Google to launch Google Operating System: Chrome OS

Google to launch Google Operating System: Chrome OS

by | Jul 8, 2009 | Software

Google is set to launch an Operating System, to compete against Microsoft Windows, promising a lightweight but fast operating system called Chrome OS which will allow for speedy access to the internet and to be virus free. google-versus-windowsWindows (Microsofts operating system) runs about 91% of the world’s personal computers and this threat from Google should not be taken lightly. Google ìs promising a change to PC frustration and an end to conflicts and slow PCs. Also with the drop in PC sales and increase in smartphones a Google Operating System seems very apt and timely. Windows Vista was never really the best and Windows 7, which is due to go on sale this autumn is considered a Windows Vista Replacement. However, Google is unlikely to charge for the new Chrome Operating System. Why would they do this? Well the more people using a Google Os means more people using their services, such as search, email, photo galleries and you tube videos…. this means a better market awareness and better revenue long term for Google. Google has a reputation in having some of the best software on the market so the new Chrome OS will probably be very good when launched. However, all that said, if you like Microsoft Flight Sim or using MS Word or even Adobe Illustrator, you will probably not be able to use this on the new operating system. Compatibility will be an issue. The Chrome Operating System is due for release in summer 2010 and will use parts of the open source Linux operating system kernel. As a result, those on Linux may be able to get a version which would run on a Linux platform … we’ll have to wait and see on that one. It will be interesting to see if the cut Google makes on the market is just a graze or a deep near fatal wound to Microsofts dominance.
Check your access logs and server logs for possible hack attempts

Check your access logs and server logs for possible hack attempts

by | Apr 26, 2009 | Internet & Technology

A lot happens on your web server that you don’t know about. I just checked my web server logs and saw many many entries of attempted access to the following areas of my site;

www.shanemcdonald.org/administrator

www.shanemcdonald.org/control-panel

www.shanemcdonald.org/CMS

These pages don’t exist and never existed so I think these are probably hackers who were trying to find a way into the site. If you have coded your site yourself you should be aware that some attempts may be made as part of an SQL Injection or Brute Force attack on your system. If you know the web coding language PHP, you may think you are doing a good job but if you don’t code your website correctly you may be giving hackers an easy way in to your website. 

The IPs on this occasion were from Norway, Russia, Ukraine, the USA, and a few Asian IP addresses.

It was through the error log (one of the many server logs recorded by your site) that I could see these items. I actually blocked one IP Address because there were so many attempted accesses from that IP. By sealing off all potential access points you can protect your website.

Also, check your PHP code – ensure you don’t automatically register variables, and check all form submissions, and anything that interacts with your database. I always ensure that all forms of error checking are in place. So if you are taking an email address for example, run some regular expression checking to ensure it conforms to an email address format and check the length of the address so it is a logically reasonable email address length. Likewise if you are taking data from a HTML Textarea, run some checks here to ensure the data is not possibly going to trigger or run some database commands.

I have seen some websites out there (businesses) that have text on the website, and slap bang in the middle of the text links to Crack websites or Adult sites. I believe these sites have been compromised by poorly secured web servers (of which I have had a few) and poorly coded websites that have PHP or ASP code.

When I moved web servers back in 2010, moving from a dodgy US server to the excellent Blacknight servers in Ireland, I was been trying to bring the site back up the Google rankings and also re-develop the site, mainly since I had not added much to the site in the few months since the move.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes after 20th April (when I made the changes in line with the Google Webmaster Guidelines) to get re-listed highly on the world’s most popular Search Engine.

Some other security tricks you can employ to make your site more secure involve the following;

  • If you have a WordPress site, use Jetpack to help stop Brute-force attacks
  • If you have a WordPress site, ensure your plugins are from a reputable source and you have then constantly updated
  • Again, on WordPress, log in every 2-3 days and run any updates that are pending, as these have security updates designed to keep your site up-to-date and secure.
  • If you have coded the site yourself, run some security checks on the code and perhaps add some extra security checking. Also, ensure your version of PHP is up to date also.
  • Finally, take a look at the security logs and see if there is any unusual activity. It may only be a website hot-linking to your images, but you can stop that also to stop a drain on your monthly data usage quotas.

 

This is an old post that was originally on my old shanemcdonald.org site and now resides here on shanemcdonald.ie

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