Monday, March 25, 2013

Front-End SEO Editor WordPress Plugin | New WP SEO Plugin 2013 | DOA Web Dsigns

If you've been searching for a front-end SEO solution for managing your WordPress website, you're in luck! After weeks of research and trying to locate a WordPress plugin that allows front-end editing of meta titles, descriptions and H1 titles, nothing turned up. It's king of surprising that nobody has developed a plugin like this before. Outside of plugins, there's a few WP frameworks that have built-in front-end editors but most of them are cluttered with too many options and take your attention away from optimizing. Optimizing meta data and H1's is one of the most important things for any website that you're trying to rank and creating quality content as well.

Most general website admins aren't aware of optimizing their websites meta data or H1's which is why I came up with a solution. My solution is a new plugin called "Front-end SEO Editor" that I've recently developed. My new SEO plugin will make your life easier, encourage you to optimize your website, and will help educate site owners about SEO. As a web developer and digital marketing specialist you appreciate the tools available that enable you to work faster, smarter and not harder. Managing a website takes up a lot of time, especially when you have to manage the SEO on top of coding or creating content. I hope that  developers, SEO gurus and site admins will appreciate my new WP SEO plugin and use it to its fullest potential.

How does the Front-end SEO Editor work and what is it compatible with?

How it Works 
The Front-end SEO Editor is extremely user friendly and looks great. When installing and activating the new plugin, admins and editors will a see a green tab appear on your live page or post called "SEO" in top left-hand corner. The SEO tab is set in a fixed position to follow your actions on the page and is small enough that it will not protrude into your design or layout.  When clicking on the tab, you will be presented with a clean popup form showing you your current meta data and H1 title. You will be able to edit and change your page or post meta title, meta description and H1 page title on the fly.  There's no need to hit save because the form is powered with Ajax. Too see your live changes, a simple page refresh will do the job. After you've had your fun with the editor, you'll know that your life just got easier.



Compatibility
The plugin works out of the box with one of the most widely used WordPress SEO plugins called "Yoast SEO". Yoast SEO is the only SEO plugin that I personally use for all of my web development, it offers everything you need to optimize your WP site from top to bottom. Although the plugin defaults at Yoast SEO, it can actually work with any other SEO plugin that you have installed on your WP site. A simple change of the meta_key's is all you need to do to make this bad boy work with current SEO plugin. (See instructions in plugin file to change meta_key) Plugin compatibly is for WP versions 3.0 - 3.5+.

For more info and a copy of my new SEO plugin, please click here to download and to make a small donation.



Find some more useful WordPress SEO plugins here at SEO Moz: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/roundup-of-35-wordpress-seo-plugins

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Detach From Social Media - Explore New Outlets For More Online Reach

In this article I will be discussing what you need to know about marketing on Facebook, why you should detach from Facebook as a primary marketing resource, exploring other options, and the value of marketing in other useful places online. As a semi-professional in the world of online marketing, I see so many people using social media the wrong way and missing out on other great opportunities. Most opportunities are missed because people are either uneducated or their attention is being pulled away because of social media. We all love social media but its very important to know and understand,  if you're trying to reach more visuals online you need to explore other options. There are so many outlets online and if you're limiting yourself to one resource you're losing in reach.

A few options include: 
  • Locate and post on reputable blogs or sites that allow guest posting. 
  • Commenting on relevant sites and becoming and active member on high traffic blogs or websites.
  • Use popular high traffic Web 2.0 websites like Tumblr, Blogger, Reddit etc.
  • Creating high quality YouTube videos and optimize them with a good title, description, links, tags etc.
  • Creating your own blog and writing engaging content that people will want to share.
  • Creating Press Releases

Why should you put your attention to the options listed above and what is their value?

There are so many reasons for utilizing the options above and for starters let's go over posting on other blogs. If you're able to locate a high traffic blog or website related to your niche or presence online and they allow guest posting, you can score some massive visuals.  

High traffic guest posting blogs give you the opportunity to expose your content, your brand, or your product to targeted viewers that share the same interest. Guest posting can also help you generate some solid one-way backlinks to your own website if  nofollow tags are not being used. No-follow tags on links strip the juice from your link, so if the current website you find has the rel="nofollow" attribute, do not waste your time and move on. When you have found a website that allows rel="follow" on your anchor text links, write a high quality post, include your anchor text links, and make sure to wow the audience with content. "Wow the audience?"...that sounds like a challenge. If you like to write and you're good at it, wowing should not be a problem. 

People want to read good content and not a picture with one sentence underneath of it. If you're like so many people out there that do this and post one image with a one liner or a single word, quit doing this. This has absolutely no value and will only diminish the websites value that you're posting on. As an owner of multiple websites that allow guest posting like TrendVend.com, this is the number one thing that I hate seeing. *Fact: Visitors will bounce in heart beat if a website has low quality content. If you're not a writer there are plenty of options to help you avoid posting low quality content. Hire a writer online that will do a great job for a low cost.  I promise that if you spend the time and do things right, you will see a positive outcome and more traffic will be distributed to your website or blog. 


Blog commenting and active members.

Commenting on blogs and being an active member is sort of similar to guest posting. With blog commenting you can create the same awareness, build trust and connect with new people online. Blog commenting also allows you to inject your website links at times as long as they're not spammy and relate to the current topic. Other members in the same active blog community will most likely click on your link(s) to learn more about you or to check out your website. Some blogs also have top commented member sections on the home page that link right to your profile...score. If you can find these types of high traffic blogs and get on the top comment list, you will generate some great traffic.


Now let's talk a little about exploring popular Web 2.0 sites and how they help. 

Web 2.0 websites are great way to get exposure and a great way to generate links. My personal favorites are Tumblr and Blogger, they both have their pros and cons of course. With Blogger you can create a nice keyword rich subdomain and the same goes for Tumblr too. They also allow for domain mapping if you'd rather use them as your main website. Tumblr and Blogger are pretty powerful if you use them correctly and know the secrets for optimizing your posts. I wrote about this in my article a few days ago called "". Read that post to learn about what works best and how to post effectively, you'll find it useful.

Both Web 2.0 sites have good domain authority and rank very well in Google Search or as an SEO would say, SERPs. These sites also help with page one defense and can help build up your following online, like generating more fans on Facebook. With each platform you have the option to create tags, custom urls, post photos & hyper link photos, add Google+ authorship and lots more. Just make sure that you are creating your content for the reader in order to benefit. Remember that photo posts do not generate sales if you're selling a product, most of the time this type of crowd is only liking and sharing pictures only. Your focus should always be on the readers or targeted buyers and not for the photo share hogs. If your niche is photography, modeling, art etc., then photo posts would actually help you if your focusing on generating fans and not sales.

Create high quality YouTube videos, they're generate lots of solid traffic.

Embrace the power of YouTube videos and dominate in Google search.  With YouTube videos you can drive in some potentially high traffic to your website or blog with a single video. Lately videos are becoming a hot item with online marketing and being used solely to drive traffic and to create subscribers. The nice thing about YouTube videos is that they're extremely easy to create and very simple to optimize. Creating a video does take time and effort, but they're worth it. Let's say you've created a video, uploaded it to YouTube and you are ready to publish.

Here's what you need to do and what to focus on to optimize your video.

1. Make sure that your video is optimized and has links to your website.

2. Make sure to write a good title that somebody would most likely type in as a search using your main keyword first in the title.

3. Add a rich description, add tags, and your links(s).  After you have completed all three steps you're ready to publish. You'll want to give your video sometime before it cycles through and starts showing up in SERPs. Videos will show on up in search results based on the same factors as writing relevant high quality content. Google is very smart at putting two and two together when it comes to searching online and getting results of a videos instead of an articles. Remember, give it time before you start seeing some good traffic coming in your video.



I'll come back tomorrow and update this post and finish up on the left over items. Hopefully you are getting an understanding of why it's important to explore new outlets and that stepping away from social media can in fact help you gain more reach and generate more traffic into your website or blog. If you'd like to leave a comment, please feel free to do so or feel free to leave any feedback if I have missed any important elements in the following resources outlined in this article.





Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Keyword Research & Keyword Variation HowTo



Finding and using the right keyword or keywords is always a challenge. Keywords are used to identify your on-page and off page content. Keywords are also used to help rank your pages and to come up in SERPs. The challenging part is finding and using the right keywords both short tail and long tail. There's a variety of ways to locate the correct topics and keywords to use when creating your content. If you're good at doing research you should have no problem identifying the proper keywords and topics to write about related to your niche. A lot of SEO gurus choose to use Google Trends, Google Adwords Keyword Tool, Googles Preview Tool, popular buzz sites and competitor research by using organic results as a guide to optimize their content.

Here's the process for identifying hot topics, doing competitor research, identifying rich keywords and creating keyword variations.

  1. Pick your topic.
  2. Do an organic search for your topic and locate the competition.
  3. Locate the current trend for your particular topic.
  4. After locating your trending topic check to see what keywords are being used by your competitors and see how they're optimizing on the current trending topic.
  5. Now that you have done all of your research, put everything into play and start writing your content based on the highest used keyword and focus on the details. Little details are important like people's names, model numbers, date etc. The details will help pair your content with the given keyword and help you rank for more variation and specifics when humans are searching the web. Everybody searches differently, so it's important to always remember that you need variation in your content. Also be sure to spin your keyword(s) in variations of how people might be searching the web instead of doing exact match keywords or phrases. Make long tail keyword phrases, quotes or other ways to help create more keyword variations. 
  6. Make sure to write your meta title and meta description to match the keyword and your content. Also make sure that your url matches the keyword or H1 title as well. These play a huge roll when Google indexes your page and when people are searching. 
  7. Just make sure that your content is for the reader. Make them feel welcome and be yourself like I am right now writing this helpful article. People will be more encouraged to share your content and express their thoughts when you do so. Personal levels are better and never come off spammy or look like they're written by bots. Nobody wants to read keyword after keyword, do they? Nope.

I hope you find this keyword research information useful and that you can apply these original strategies to your current work online. Leave your thoughts and experiences with keywords and keyword research, I'd love to hear about your own accomplishments, strategies and experiences.

Follow my work online or connect with me on Facebook and Twitter @SmashArtist

DOA Web Designs
EdgyWebsites.com
TrendVend Media


Edgy Websites


Monday, February 25, 2013

Wordpress SEO - Best Practices For Creating Optimized Posts

Wordpress still remains to be one of most widely used CMS platforms on the web. Wordpress is a great platform for managing massive content as well as running a personal or basic business website. To make Wordpress even better and to make it work for you, you need to post effectively and make sure that you're optimizing each post every time. It only takes a few extra minutes to make your posts more powerful for search, so don't let those few minutes go to waste.

When creating a Wordpress post you want to make sure that you're going to reach your audience. By optimizing your posts the right way, you'll be able to rank your site in Google SERPs no problem. Sometimes even fresh blogs rank on page 1 if the content is useful to the reader and Google respects the page. To optimize your post in Wordpress you want to acknowledge these key items to make the best of your post.

1. Give your post a keyword rich title without using stop words, special characters and keyword stuffing. Give your title some variation.

2.Make sure to write your post for the reader and have keyword variations to your main keyword topic matching what's in your title.

3. Add anchor text links with alt tags that link deep into relevant pages pertaining to keywords or long tail keywords. Don't link words that do not match your URLS or H1 title, there's no value we doing that.

4. Add appropriate tags short or long but don't over do it. Tag pages don't always rank that well but if they do make sure optimize your tag page meta titles and meta data if they do.

5. Make sure to make your posts url (permalink) SEO friendly using hyphenated urls and no underscores. Also keep your url fairly short and remove unwanted words that aren't keyword specific.

I hope that you find this information useful and if you would like to leave your comments please do so. You may also follow me online at Facebook or Twitter @DOAWebDesigns or @SmashArtist

Follow my work online or connect with me on Facebook and Twitter @SmashArtist

DOA Web Designs
EdgyWebsites.com
TrendVend Media


Edgy Websites