Apr 13, 201012

Site Speed is Now a Search Ranking Factor for Google Search

Categories: Site Optimization Tips, Web development
Site Speed is Now a Search Ranking Factor for Google Search
Google has officially made site speed one of the factors for search rank (there are over 200 ranking factors). So now is a good time to read the WordPress site optimization tips post and put some plan of action in place. Now, you have no reason to go into a panic mode just yet. Optimizing your site for better performance is always a good thing from a usability point of view but Google has indicated that only about 1% of search queries and even fewer search results will be affected from this change at this stage. There are several research statistics that show that decreasing your site load time on pages leads to an increase in sales which we all want. There are three things to take away from what Google is doing. Speeding up your website is a good general practice. Think about how many times you have waited for a site to load. When the site takes too long you usually end up closing the browser and moving on. This change will have a small impact on most sites, so don't panic. Small constructive changes can have a direct impact on improving your site and user experience. Instead of wasting time where it ...
Apr 6, 20106

Web Analytics 101 – Learn Which Analytics Data You Should be Using

Categories: Site Optimization Tips, Web development
Web Analytics 101 – Learn Which Analytics Data You Should be Using
If you are running a small website, chances are you've already heard of Web Analytics. If you haven't, it is a tool for measuring traffic of your website. It provides data on the number of visitors, page views etc to gauge the popularity of the site. For many people, using analytics is limited to watching how many more visitors have come to the site, and repeating the figures to potential advertisers. If used smartly, analytics is also a marketing tool, an e-commerce tracker, an ad tool, and the list goes on. In this article, we'll have a look at basic ways to use the analytics. Choosing an Analytics Software First of all, you need to have an analytics software set up for your website, which mostly means signing up for an account of an analytics provider, and adding a few lines of javascript code to your pages. Google Analytics is the most widely used analytics tool. It's also free and integrating it in a WordPress site is just a matter of adding a plugin to your site! If you like to have choices, you can search the Internet looking for some other alternative solutions. This article lists a number of analytics software ...
Mar 10, 20092

Handy YouTube Tips and Tricks for Bloggers

Categories: Tech Tips
Handy YouTube Tips and Tricks for Bloggers
If you use YouTube videos in your blog then you might find some of the following tips and tricks pretty handy if you don't know them already. Link to a Chosen Start Time of a YouTube Video Say for example, you want to link to a nice video that you found on YouTube but it has some crap at the start which you don't really want your visitors to watch. In a situation like that you can just link to a specific time of that video so when the video starts it will start from that specific time and skip everytime before that. So if I wanted to link a YouTube video and wanted it to start playing from 1 minute and 17 seconds when someone follows the link then all I have to do is append #t=1m17s to the video URL. Original video URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFoe6oS0Np0 Vidoe URL linked to a specific time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFoe6oS0Np0#t=1m17s Below is a link for a demo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFoe6oS0Np0#t=1m17s Add a Video to Quick List for Future Viewing This is particularly useful when you are trying to find some videos on a specific topic but along the way you discover something interesting that you want to watch too but if you don't want to get distracted at that ...
Feb 5, 20090

Track your Friends and Family with Google Latitude

Categories: General
Track your Friends and Family with Google Latitude
You can now track where your friends and family are with Google's new feature for Google Map called "Latitude". Google Latitude can be used on the following compatible mobile devices: Android-powered devices, such as the T-Mobile G1 iPhone and iPod touch devices (coming soon) most color BlackBerry devices most Windows Mobile 5.0+ devices most Symbian S60 devices (Nokia smartphones) Java-enabled (J2ME) mobile phones, such as Sony Ericsson devices (coming soon) If you don't have any compatible mobile devices, you can still use it as an iGoogle gadget and track your friends from you computer. This service is available for use in 27 countries at the moment. A lot of people are concerned with the privacy issue but everything about Google Latitude is opt-in. You can control exactly who gets to see your location. You can also decide the location that other people see. Google Latitude in Action Privacy Tips for Google Latitude The following video on privacy tips shows how you can adjust your privacy settings on Google Latitude. Remember, Google stores the most recent updated location on their servers. So if you don't want Google to store your location simply hide your location.
Jan 19, 200946

Top 15 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques I Forget to do

Categories: Featured, SEO
Top 15 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques I Forget to do
Search Engine Optimization is a very hot topic in the World Wide Web. After all, everybody wants to rank higher and come up on the first page of Google search and get more traffic. I have identified and made a list of top 15 SEO practices that I tend to forget quite often. These simple SEO techniques if practiced properly can make a significant difference as to how my pages are ranked in the Search Engine Queries. Use rel="nofollow" tag on low value links to not pass the page rank juice. For example 'Read the rest of the entry', 'About', 'Contact' etc. Use proper anchor text for interlinks. Don’t use 'here' or 'there'. Optimize the images, always create alt tags and write description in the alt tag. Use search engine friendly permalinks. Make sure the URLs do not have '&', '?', '!' etc characters. Use hyphens (-) between words to improve readability. Do not use underscores (_), use hyphens (-) instead. Do not use session id in URLs. Use sticky posts. Use tag clouds. Have a category description paragraph. Let the visitors subscribe to category specific RSS feed. (Use category specific RSS plugin for WordPress) Use internal linking when possible and appropriate. Use sub-directories rather than sub-domains when possible. Sub-domains do not share ...
Jan 12, 200925

How to Clean/Remove Not Found Errors from Google web master tools generated from translated versions

Categories: Troubleshooting
How to Clean/Remove Not Found Errors from Google web master tools generated from translated versions
I installed a translator plugin on one of my WordPress blogs but the plugin wasn't working properly so I disabled it but two days later I found out that my Google web master tools account was reporting about 1100 'Not Found' errors under the 'Web crawl errors' section. All the errors were from translated versions of my blog. I used the 'robots.txt' file to fix this issue. If you don't know what a 'robots.txt' file is, then read the article titled how to control access of the web crawlers or web robots to your site. Basically, add rules to your 'robots.txt' file to Disallow any spider from indexing the translated version of the pages. My 'robots.txt' file looks like the following Depending on your situation you might need to block more languages. Just look in the Google webmaster tools and see which languages are causing the error then add them to the Disallow rule. [lang=css] User-Agent: * # Language pages Disallow: /ar/* Disallow: /bg/* Disallow: /zh-hant/* Disallow: /ca/* Disallow: /cs/* Disallow: /da/* Disallow: /de/* Disallow: /el/* Disallow: /es/* Disallow: /fi/* Disallow: /fr/* Disallow: /he/* Disallow: /hi/* Disallow: /hr/* Disallow: /id/* Disallow: /it/* Disallow: /iw/* Disallow: /ja/* Disallow: /ko/* Disallow: /lt/* Disallow: /lv/* Disallow: /mr/* Disallow: /nl/* Disallow: /no/* Disallow: /pl/* Disallow: /pt-br/* Disallow: /pt/* Disallow: /ro/* Disallow: /ru/* Disallow: /sk/* Disallow: /sl/* Disallow: /sr/* Disallow: /sv/* Disallow: /tl/* Disallow: /tr/* Disallow: /uk/* Disallow: /vi/* Disallow: /zh-CN/* Allow: / [/lang] As far as I know, Google penalizes ...
Dec 12, 20080

How to Make Gmail Load in Secure (SSL) Mode by Default

Categories: Tech Tips
How to Make Gmail Load in Secure (SSL) Mode by Default
By defalut Gmail doesn't load in Secure (SSL - Secure Sockets Layer) mode. In order to load Gmail in SSL mode (https) by default do the following: Login to your Gmail account. Go to the “Settings” page. The Settings menu is located on the top right hand corner. [caption id="attachment_297" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Gmail Settings option"][/caption] Select "Always use https" option from the "General" tab. [caption id="attachment_475" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Use https in Gmail by default"][/caption] Hit "Save Changes" and relog. This time when you log into your Gmail account, you will see the secure icon on your browser's status bar (Go to the view menu then click on 'Status Bar' to enable the brower's status bar if it's not enabled already). [caption id="attachment_476" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="SSL Icon in the Status Bar"][/caption]
Dec 11, 20081

Are you taking full advantage of Gmail?

Categories: Tech Tips
Are you taking full advantage of Gmail?
Do you use Gmail? Sure, you use Gmail but do you really use Gmail? Did you know that most of the Gmail users don't even take full advantage of this powerful webmail service? Gmail Archive Gmail Archive is your friend. How many times did you delete an email and there was a useful phone number or address in the email? Many of use like to keep a clean inbox, Gmail Archive allows you to do that without having to delete the email. Read the 9 Reasons to Archive to learn more. Gmail Labels Labels are like folders. Label is a really good way to organize and sort your emails. If you are not sure how to use labels then you can learn it from Google's help centre. Gmail Lab Gmail engineers come up with new ideas all the time. Gmail Labs is the place to try them out. The Gmail Lab can be accessed from the 'Settings' menu (Click on 'Settings' then 'Labs'). There are a ton of useful gadgets in Gmail Lab. Below are a few examples: Tasks: The 'Tasks' gadget help you keep track of what you need to do and what you have already done. Default 'Reply to all': Make 'Reply to all' your default option ...
Nov 11, 2008150

WordPress Plugin for Simple Google Adsense Insertion/Integration

Categories: Wordpress Plugin
WordPress Plugin for Simple Google Adsense Insertion/Integration
Easy to use Wordpress plugin to insert Google Adsense to your posts, pages and sidebar by using a trigger text or calling the php function. There are many plugins and services which can add Google Adsense to your WordPress site. However I found that even though something like Adsense Manager or Adsense Deluxe provides a lot of customizable options, it can be overwhelming and isn't really simple enough for people who are new to WordPress or for people who simply want to insert Google Adsense to their site in a few clicks. I found that most of the time I only use two or three types of Google Adsense units in various places and posts throughout my sites. Google's Adsense policy mentions to not have more than three adsense block in one page anyway. That's why I wrote my own Simple Adsense Insertion Plugin for WordPress, to focus on having 1-3 Google Adsense codes saved and use them where ever I want on my site by inserting a simple trigger text to my posts,pages and sidebar. Installation 1. Unzip and Upload the folder 'WP-Simple-Adsense-Insertion' to the '/wp-content/plugins/' directory. 2. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress. 3. Go to Settings and configure the options ...
Nov 3, 20081

Improve your daily productivity, 7 must use Google products!

Categories: Tech Tips
Improve your daily productivity, 7 must use Google products!
Google has already won the search engine war. Everyone already knows that online search means Google. But many of us don’t know or haven’t explored some of the many cool products Google has beside its search engine. If used correctly, some of these products can significantly improve our day to day productivity and efficiency. In this post I have given a very brief overview of seven Google products that I use on a daily basis.

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