Comments (14)

By Les Scammell, July 28, 2008 10:29 am

I have installed a new plugin to see if it can improve the number of comments I receive. I may even start writing posts worthy of comments now .

The plugin is keyword luv. If you haven’t heard of it before it is quite clever. Instead of leaving your name and url etc, to benefit from the keyword luv you will need to enter your name with an appropriate keyword.

Before I go any further, I think you should think very clearly about your comment link. Most people just enter in their homepage url. This is a waste of a comment link. Find a page you want to promote and that you would like to see rank well in the search engines – remember, search engines rank pages, not sites.

Use the url for that page when leaving a comment rather than your home url. If the url is long, simply copy and paste it. Now that you have the page you want the link juice to flow to, select the most appropriate keyword for that page.

Now, when leaving a comment here or on any other keyword luv site, enter your name with the at symbol then the keyword. EG – les@keyword – then enter the page url, then leave your comment. Now you have keyword rich link to one of your pages. These links are worth far more than a none keyword link to your front page (almost worthless for SEO purposes).

Having said all this, I still moderate comments and will throw out worthless or spammy comments. Leave a good comment and it will stay. I will generally try to visit your site and return the favor. If you have any trouble with the keyword luv plugin let me know.

Comments (4)

By Les Scammell, July 26, 2008 10:45 am

Google PageRanks are about to be updated. For change, rather than people seeing strange movements in their toolbars rankings and wondering, ‘what the heck’, Google, or at least Matt Cutts, have decided to make the announcement ahead of time.

The announcement was short and sweet:

Hey folks, I wanted to let you know that new toolbar PageRank values should become visible over the next few days. I’m expecting that also in the next few days that we’ll be expiring some older penalties on websites.

What is interesting is the last couple of words – expiring older penalties. If you have had previous penalties applied  – and there is no clarification here – but I would think those that got hit late last year – will have those penalities removed.

If you did get a Google slap-down late last year and everything bounces back with this update – let us know. It would be interesting to see which penalties get expired.

Over the next few days you may notice your page rank bounce around a little as the different data centers release the new rankings – btw – this is really just a little PageRank update – nothing serious and no major change to the algorithms.

With the Google buying Digg debate that has been raging, I have to wonder if Matt Cutts has released this info to take the focus of that issue – particularly since he added in the comments section:

I figured the SEO industry could use something to discuss, so I thought I’d give people a heads-up about the toolbar PageRanks.

I am not cyncial – much!

Comments (6)

By Les Scammell, July 22, 2008 1:03 am

Most of us probably need to improve our SEO skills just a little. We can read blog articles and pick up little gems here and there, however it is like finding pieces of a huge jigsaw puzzle and trying to fit them in little bit by little bit.

A business called SeoServiceProvider now runs twice weekly (Tuesday and Thursday) one hour SEO workshops that are inexpensive yet very informative – I say inexpensive – they cost all of $20 for the one hour. We spend more than that on music lessons for the kids, or tutors for their school work.

The rewards from a well optimized site will more than pay for the cost in the long run. What I really like about these workshops is that you are not committed to buying a certain number and sticking to a timetable. You can attend as few or as many as you want. You just buy each workshop when you are free to attend. I suggest you check out their one hour SEO workshops – you have nothing to lose by looking.

Disclaimer: this is not a pay for post or affiliate program. The recommendation is made based on prior experience with the owners of the website.

Comments (4)

By Les Scammell, July 21, 2008 12:47 pm

WordPress 2.6 is not too bad although it still has some design issues that I don’t particularly like. I come to those a little later.

If you are using the Joost de Valk plugins Google Analytics, robots meta or RSS footer, then you may find there are issues. Your first step is to ensure you have the latest copies of these plugins. Your plugin option from the dashboard will help to auto update these plugins.

Once updated and activated, you will need to go to each of these plugins and reset the values. For me, the RSS footer plugin has lost all its information so I will need to re-enter it all. If you receive this via RSS or email you may notice the footer a little empty at present.

If, like me, you use your footer to carry messages, or for me to carry links to promotions for subscribers, losing that information can be embarrassing and lose you subscribers. The robots meta and Google Analytics will also create problems that you wont know about.

If you use those plugins then update and check the settings. Thanks to Joost de Valk from Yoast.com for letting everyone know through his blog. Sometimes it pays to subscribe to those who write your plugins or themes.

What I don’t like about WordPress 2.6

WordPress 2.6 is not too bad, a tad better than 2.5. However the one thing that is really annoying me at present is in the widget control options. If you have created text boxes and want to switch them from say left to right side bars, there is no option to simple drag and drop from one to the other. In fact you have to remove it from one sidebar and as soon as you do, you lose all the script within the text box.

The only way to move a text box from one side bar to another is by copying the contents, removing the box from sidebar, saving, selecting the second sidebar, then adding a text box and pasting the code in. Don’t forget to save again. That is a lot of steps compared to WordPress 2.3 where you could drag – drop and save – job done.

Poor design WordPress – so far I am happy with the rest – if anything annoys me I will let you know.

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