J.R. Farr - Keep it real.

Search Engine Strategies – San Jose 2008

Whew, so the first day of Search Engine Strategies is finally complete.  What a crazy day, I have so much in my brain right now it’s almost overwhelming.  There are so many things I can apply to what I am doing currently, let alone what I haven’t already implemented.

The sessions I sat in today we’re extremely valuable to me.  I was able to get an insiders look from high end experts deep inside the search engines themselves as well as reputable website conversion experts such as Bryan Eisenberg from Future Now and Grok Dot Com.

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It seems like since tag clouds are getting more and more popular with WordPress blogs everyone is getting those mixed up with their categories.

You should choose your blogs categories carefully.  Not that I am some self-proclaimed “blogging pro” (haha) but I do know a bit about site functionality and allowing your visitors an easy way to navigate your site.

I don’t know… maybe I shouldn’t jump the gun like that but don’t you agree with me?  I mean some blogs are just getting ridiculous with their category list.

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If you follow my blog regularly you noticed last night I decided I would start featuring WordPress themes on my blog.  Particularly ones I felt like were decent, functional and professional looking wordpress themes.

I wrote a post last night featuring the Aesma Pro WordPress Theme

Today I was going through my Google Analytics account like usual and notice a ton of traffic already from terms like, wordpress, wordpress themes, pro wordpress themes.

I did a quick check in google for a few different variations on the above keyword terms.  So, I come to find out that I am on the 1st page of Google for the keyword, pro wordpress theme and pro wordpress themes

Anyway, not that I haven’t been ranked for any keyword variations in Google before but for such a competitive niche I thought that was pretty crazy to be on the first page of google for.  I am going to dig some more into other keyword variations but pretty cool stuff huh?

I had a buddy of mine talking to me about the Social Media craze and he asked a pretty good question.

Can you automate your social media?

For example, you have a blog right?  Then you have a twitter account right?  Then Facebook account, MySpace account, Digg account, Flickr account… AH!

It’s hard enough for most of us to keep track of our usernames and passwords.  But social media truly can helpful and if you use them right they can be very powerful to promote yourself, business or ideas.

Here’s where I am getting at… sometimes it gets overwhelming to have to re-write everything you just wrote in your blog in all of your other accounts, sites, etc.  So what can we do to help automated this?

I have been doing some research about this particular topic and I have chosen to start with Twitter.  Twitter seems to be the hottest thing right now since Big League Chew (love that stuff, especially the grape flavor) so I thought that would be a good place to start.

Right now I am testing out 3 Twitter Widgets or Plugins that work with WordPress.

Not only do they work with WordPress but… of course it talks back and forth with Twitter.  Here are the plugins I have installed.

Twitter Tools – Alex King

WP Twitter

Twitter Updater

Now, unfortanetly the theme I use currently doesn’t allow me to use the plugins with all their features. (Displaying in my sidebar.)  But, I have used these themes to see all of their features.

Already Twitter Tools is leading the race.  I noticed with others, my site would take some time to load because the Twitter Updates on the sidebar were taking so long to load. (If you use Twitter you know that their servers sometimes can’t take the traffic!)

Twitter Tools, like I said is great!  It automatically updates your Twitter account when you are posting blog post, editing, and so forth.

But, here is my favorite part so far. When you are in your WordPress Dashboard and you click the “Write” tab you are giving a new sub option.  The usuals are new post, new page, new link and now a new one shows up, “Write Tweet”  How cool is that?  So right from my blog dashboard I can make an update on my Twitter account.

I think this one might pull away with my vote but I am interested to see what others have thought?

Anybody have comments or found something better for WordPress and Twitter to communicate?

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P.S. – You can Follow Me on TWITTER.

It’s time to create some SEO friendly URL’s! Woo Hoo!

Lately, I have noticed quite a few blogs/sites that are not taking advantage of the permalink feature in WordPress. With how competitive it’s getting to be out there SEO wise, every little bit helps.

Lets take this post I am writing right now as an example – the URL that displays to all users and the search engine is:

Permalink: http://www.jrfarr.com/creating-seo-friendly-urls-using-wordpress/

Now some of the site’s I have seen are looking more like this:

Permalink: http://www.thisiswhackjack.com/?p=17

You can see that URL is not getting the advantage it can from a keyword targeting standpoint because the URL structure is not properly structured.

AH! My URL’s look like that… What can I do to FIX THIS!?

Luckily for anyone new to WordPress with the most current download or anyone who has upgraded to version 2.5 or 2.5.1, wordpress now displays the permalink structure as you input the title of the post. Plus you can even edit it right o the spot! Sweet!

Click the image to view larger if you can’t see it well enough.

Now, for anyone using an older version of WordPress, don’t worry you can still change your non SEO friendly URL ways! Sweet!

The following is an example of how to change your permalink structure in WordPress version 2.0. I believe all of the version’s leading up to 2.5 are pretty similar to this version. If you go back even further then that, then dude you need to update your WordPress version ASAP! No I am kidding, let me know and I’ll see what I can do to help.

Ok so here we go…

Login into your dashboard, and click the options tab. Then click the permalink tab.

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