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Protect your WordPress Blog with WPSecurity Scan

Protect your WordPress Blog with WPSecurity Scan

by | Nov 30, 2011 | Internet & Technology

Protecting your Blog with WPSecurity Scan

If you have a WordPress blog then you will be aware that from time to time plugins and WordPress itself require occasional updates to be processed. These updates fix security flaws and often provide extra functionality, all of which lead to a better and safer WordPress experience. However, many people forget to update, leaving these security holes open to potential exploits. Once a WordPress blog is open to these exploits, the site is then open to being compromised by a faceless hacker. There is an excellent WordPress plugin called WPSecurity Scan.

WPSecurity Scan can help by prompting you to what might be wrong with your sites WordPress installation. Many website attacks are caused by automated tools which try and determine software versions before launching exploit code. WP Security Scan removes your WordPress blog version in order to discourage some attackers and to mitigate virus and malware programs which rely on software versions.

WPSecurity Scan checks your WordPress website/blog for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions such as:

  • Passwords
  • File permissions
  • Database security
  • Version hiding
  • WordPress admin protection/security
  • Removes WP Generator META tag from the core code

You can also visit the WebsiteDefender Blog for more information.

If you haven’t updated your version of WordPress, then do so now!

I have used WP Security Scan on my site and I found it useful. It was a good source of information for me in relation to areas of the code, updates, file infrastructure or the database which may pose a security risk. This post is an old one which I have left here for historical/reference reasons. If you plan on using this plugin please ensure you have the latest version and that the plugin is suitable for the version of WordPress you are using. I am not responsible for others using this plugin but I myself have found WP Security Scan to be of use. This is not a sponsored post.

Google Trends for SEO Keyword Research

Google Trends for SEO Keyword Research

by | Mar 1, 2010 | Search Engine Optimisation

Its been a while since I posted a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) post and this is quite a useful one for choosing your SEO Keywords or Key-Phrases for you TITLE, DESCRIPTION and BODY content. This tool from Google is called “Google Trends” and it allows you to view relative search volumes and seasonal keyword search trends between two or more keyword phrases. For example if you want to see how people are searching on the web, you can include these keywords into Google Trends and leave it do its work. Below, I have done a search for Golf Course, Golf Club and Golf Links for the past 12 months using the Irish Datacentres.  Golf Club and Golf Course are usually the same thing in reality, but what do people search for? Google Trends for SEO Keyword Research - SEO Tool This can show that Golf Club is used more than Golf Course. This is important when choosing your SEO Keywords. So if you are a Golf Course you can choose to go for the most searched term “Golf Club” or the less competitive term “Golf Course”. Selecting a less competitive search term can help you when you setup a website. If you are promoting a very competitive keyword, e.g. “music download” which is the second most competitive keyword term, you can try combine this into a niche 3 word phrase, e.g. “classical music download” , “free music download” or “irish music download”. You can then use Google Trends to see which keyword combination would be best for you. If you were to search for something like “Festival” or “Mothers Day” you would be able to see the annual trends for these terms, which may be interesting for you when selecting keywords for your business website. This is only one use for Google trends and there is much more that this system offers. For a bit of fun, take a look at this Google Trend : LINK It shows how talk of Recession is going down and Cheating is going up. Especially a huge spike , dated November 19th, when Theirry “Le Cheat” Henry decided he wanted to take up Gaelic Football for a few seconds. Play around with Google trends and you should find some uses to assist your SEO Keyword Research.

PhotoSketch can Montage a Photo Automatically

by | Oct 6, 2009 | In The News, Internet & Technology, Software

Students in China have proposed that a technology called PhotoSketch can create an Internet image montage from other photos. The project from 5 Chinese Computer Science and Technology students at the Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore say that their PhotoSketch research paper can create a unique photo using other photos. All you have to do to create your PhotoSketch is: 1) Create an outline of the figures you want in your photo, e.g. an Airplane, Bird and a Sunset 2) Create and add labels for each of the outlined items in step 1, as well as for the photo background. 3) The PhotoSketch system will then search for web images which match your outline.

PhotoSketch will then complie them into a Photo Montage. Apparently the initial results for PhotoSketch Demo are something beyond what any current automated tool can provide. The Abstract of the system reads as follows; “We present a system that composes a realistic picture from a simple freehand sketch annotated with text labels. The composed picture is generated by seamlessly stitching several photographs in agreement with the sketch and text labels; these are found by searching the Internet. ” – Tao Chen, Ming-Ming Cheng, Ping Tan, Ariel Shamir, Shi-Min Hu, (Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University & National University of Singapore) The students at T.U and N.U.S have results from a PhotoSketch Demo: Visit http://cg.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn/montage/main.htm for details

Optimizing your Website : Organic SEO #2

by | Aug 13, 2009 | Internet & Technology

This is the second post regarding tips and tricks you can use to improve your organic SEO or search engine optimization.

1 – Creating a Useful Web Presence
If you can create a useful web presence then you will be default get some good traffic. More and More, Google is moving towards natural searching patterns, so if an article is written for the audience (people) rather thank being stuffed with keywords aimed at search engines, keeping visitors in mind, then it should do well.

2 – Update your site often
Keep the site well updated, don’t let any content go out of date – this will ensure that your site will not be ignored by the search engines. One trick is to update your site with relevant breaking news or related topics as soon as possible – for example, one email company used Google alerts and on a day when GMail went down, their site was updated within minutes saying “Fed up with GMail Outages – Buy our Email Solution” – this was reflected in their Google AdWords campaigns and showed how an opportunity in their business field was taken advantage of.

3 – The Right Content
Wherever possible try to create sticky content. Sticky Content, or having a sticky site, refers to how longe people will stay on your site. If you can write articles greater than 250 words (some people say 600 words), but which are relevant, well written and “solve the search” for the visitor, then you have ticked off another box for your SEO.
For Example, if you have a Spa website and you are trying to sell Facials, you could list all the facials you currently provide, on your products page. However you could write some articles on why facials are good for the skin, what facials suit certain skin types and perhaps even how to make a homemade facial scrub with oatmeal …. none of this will earn you money though. What you are trying to do is to bring in visitors, this leads to brand awareness and ultimately conversions.
Articles are a great way to supplement your website and enhance what people know about your business.

4 – Making the Site Social
Social Media is a buzzword we now all know. One way to get your website out there is to provide a widget (or button) on your site, which allows people to share your websites link or content. This means your website address, blog post or a snippet of your content, can be sent by email, posted on Facebook or Tweeted on Twitter all for free … and you don’t have to do anything. Just place a button on each page of your site and this can all happen. There are a few major providers, but I found that Add This (www.addthis.com) is best. Visit the site for more information.

5 – Most Important – Don’t try anything stupid
People often try stupid tricks – these are called Black Hat SEO Tricks. These include;
– Keyword stuffing : placing lots of keywords in the text and meta data
– Cloaking : a script which trys to trick the search engines
– Invisible Text : Making the text the same as the background color
– Doorway pages : Invisible pages which try to get the site indexed

SEO requires patience, planning, and monitoring. If you use some SEO keywords and descriptions which bring you a large increase in traffic, you may try to improve on this but changing them further, but a good tip is to retain the old files incase the SEO changes backfire, you can always revert to the last most successful campaign. Try to record your visitor levels and your levels of sales (if you are a business site), in that way you can choose the best SEO combination which produces the best sales from your website.

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.