I just took over a site and found that it was consistently loading around 8+ seconds according to Google Analytics. I tested some static pages on the server and found that they loaded very quickly, so it had to be the dynamic pages of WordPress causing the problems.
W3 Total cache was installed and did not seem to be helping. The settings were fine so I turned to the plugins.
Plugins for WordPress are amazing. The problem comes when many of the plugins work everytime a page is loaded. So I went through and deactivated many of the unnecessary plugins within WordPress which helped considerably. I also enabled GZIP compression. The combination of the two changes lowered load time by about 10 seconds.
First verify that your host has GZIP compression turned on within your server’s configuration. You can see if you site is currently using GZIP compression by running a test on Google’s page speed site. If you don’t have gzip compression it will make it a high priority item.
I was recently working on a site for a client. He is on shared hosting and for some reason the typical .htaccess would not redirect the entire site to the www version of the site. This is problematic for SEO purposes, as you probably already know, because essentially you have two pages on the same Website splitting authority and competing for the same rankings.
Since I did not have access to the server configuration, my only option was to add Google’s “rel=canonical” meta information to the head section of the site. All in One SEO already accomplishes this task, however there was a conflict with another plugin that was preventing All in One SEO from working.
So, to get the desired effect, this is the snippet of code I placed in the header.php file right before the closing </head> element.
The permalink function will use the preferred website subdomain (www) or no subdomain (non www) based on what the WordPress owner has specified during setup and can be changed through the Settings -> General admin panel by editing the Site Address URL field to your preferred version.
Gone are the days when designers were only restricted to doing the graphic designing of the website, while developers dealt with the technical segments. But no more as this trend is getting passé. In today’s modern age, the professional difference of a website designer and a developer is gradually getting blurred with online users demanding for more than just good visuals.
If you had been trying to lure more visitors to your website with just good visual effects and flashy designs, it’s time to think anew. With the origin of various advanced devices such as smart phones, iPads, notebooks and tablets, a website design of today is considered as effective and successful only when it is compatible with these devices. Being more tech-savvy, users of today are more convinced with advanced functionalities such as options to stay connected, realistic designs that evolve response etc rather than just an eye catchy design. Hence it is very important for any professional designer to stay updated and knowledgeable about the changing trends of the age. Here we bring for you some of the upscaling trends of modern age that has gained immense popularity among users: Continue reading →
Those of you who frequent this site, may have noticed several different designs on the site. I have been testing heavily modified WordPress themes to see which performed the best. This design far out did the others in my tests.
I tested the themes on several different fronts:
Bounce rate
Lead generation
Engagement
Inbound links
In each of the categories, I noticed a nice improvement with this theme. In the near future, I will be micro testing different areas using Google Website Optimizer. If you encounter any bugs or have suggestions, please let me know.
Over the years, I have cycled many WordPress plugins through my blog. Heck, I have even written a few. However, this is a plugin I just recently started using, but one that I already can’t live without.
Plugin overview
This Google Analytics plugin built by Yoast doesn’t just automatically add the Google analytics code to your posts and pages, it create custom variables and event tracking from within your account.
The configuration panel can be confusing for beginners, but that is simply because it is so packed with features – I mean benefits
I won’t go into the details on how to set up your plugin since Yoast made an excellent video demonstrating the features.
Social bookmarking event tracking
Yoast briefly mentioned that his plugin will track downloads and outbound links, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that it also tracked every click on the AddtoAny/Share button plugin at the bottom of every post.
Analytics breaks down this information into how many times the post was shared on each network. After you install the plugin, go to Google Analytics -> Content -> Event Tracking
Here is the screenshot of some recent link bait I dropped (click to enlarge):
This shows how many blog readers chose to click the share button at the bottom of the post. It does not reflect users who voted or bookmarked from within their browser toolbar etc. For example, if this link bait picked up 300 diggs, I would know that 130 of them came from readers who found my site outside of digg, subsequently 170 of them were referrals from digg who dugg the post through the digg system..
Custom variables
The custom variables tab provides some interesting insight into visitor behavior, especially considering that you can track things like RSS subscriptions and outbound links as goals and see which authors and post categories have the highest conversion rates.
Click to enlarge:
Future updates
Yoast has also promised to add Rank Tracking to his plugin, making it an integral part of analytics. Being able to see the rank of the keywords that sent you traffic right inside of analytics would be incredibly useful.
At one point, I was using Wp ecommerce to turn WordPress into a shopping cart. Unfortunately, I found that it lacked in three major areas.
SEO – the themes for the most part are not search engine friendly (you could not manually edit title tags etc)
It continually conflicted with other major plugins
It only worked inside of one page therefore limiting the use of WordPress post and page options
It has been a while since I used Wp ecommerce (which I do think is a good plugin for certain applications), but I decided to build a theme that would work inside of WordPress posts and not require developers to learn a whole new template system.
Twentyten ecommerce features overview
I used the twentyten ecommerce theme that comes prepackaged with WordPress 3.0+. It already has some cool features built in such as the ability to change the header from inside of the admin menu. I also used features that are already built inside of WordPress such as post meta and featured images in order to keep from slowing WordPress down.
The product page displays a larger image, the price and Google checkout button. All of these values are pulled from the post meta data.
You can also add products with multiple options and prices. The Google Checkout button is built on the fly with up to five options.
Future development ideas
Automatic excerpts for home page
Admin panel to control site options
This version forces the entire site to become an ecommerce store. In future releases, I plan to give site owners the ability to make the store a specific category
On line 97, change mid=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to your Google checkout id number. The id number can be found at the top right of your Google checkout account. You will notice that the account number is a part of the URL in the src attribute below.
[php]<script id="googlecart-script" src="https://checkout.google.com/seller/gsc/v2_2/cart.js?mid=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" type="text/javascript"></script>[/php]
Upload and activate the theme
How to add a product
Add a new post
Write your product description and title
On the right hand side, click “set featured image”
Add your product attributes in the post meta. The first time you will have to add the actual attributes. However, WordPress will save them for the next time you want to use them.
Publish and you are done.
Product attributes in post meta
price
option1
option2
option3
option4
option5
option1price
option2price
option3price
option4price
option5price
The only attribute you have to include is the price. Without it, the theme will break. Check out this screenshot to see where to add the attributes:
It is surprising how many webmasters still do not see the value in a professionally designed website. Many people feel content to use a free or even premium template, with very little additional customization. While using a template may seem alright in the beginning, if you want people to take your website seriously, you need to take your website seriously. Here are some of the most prominent benefits of having a professional website design for your website.
As a blogger, it is important that you choose the correct hosting options that match your overall goals. Especially if you plan to build traffic, you need a scalable hosting solution that can grow with you and your blog.
Linux vs. Windows Hosting
There has been debate for years over which web server operating system is better. It still depends on who you ask, but there are several factors to take into account.
Windows does not support the popular programming language, PHP, out of the box. PHP is used for popular applications such as WordPress and Joomla. In order to use PHP, you must install a special module. All though linux also requires a PHP installation, most hosting companies will make sure all of their linux servers support PHP before they release it to their clients.
One important SEO factor to take into account is that linux servers easily support nice URLs. Configuring a windows server to show search engine friendly URLs can be incredibly difficult, especially for a novice programmer. Continue reading →
Easily add Google Checkout shopping cart buttons to any post. Google Checkout provides a shopping cart tool that allows webmasters to use a javascript shopping cart. Drop a tag into any post and this plugin will place the “add to cart” button and the price into the post.
Add this (with your specific information of course) to any post:
As an SEO Consultant, I end up doing SEO on many different WordPress themes. I have decided to start sharing those themes with you. So, every time I do the SEO on a wordpress theme, I am going to post it on this blog. Enjoy.
I removed the h1 headline from the blog title and replaced it with a div
The page and post titles are now contained in the h1
The index page (the page with the blog posts) has a h1 headline added to the top under the navigation
Each link from index are h2
Links to RSS are nofollow
Installation
Unzip the file and open index.php in your text editor.
On line 4, you will see this line:
<h1 id=”seoTitle”>Your Page’s Title Keywords</h1>
Add the main headline with the keywords your blog is focusing on. Its best if it matches the title tag. However, if you do not want to leave the line intact, simply delete the entire line.
Today I released the first version of SEO WP e-Commerce. This plugin addresses the major SEO issues in WP e-Commerce and provides an easy way to search engine optimize your site.
Access to a step by step training video is included. With this plugin your WP e-Commerce shop will have proper title tags, h1 tags, meta description tags and will no longer have the “Products Page” prominently displayed on the shop page.
Title tag fix for “Products Page”, “Category Page” and “Item Pages”
Description meta for “Products Page”, “Category Page” and “Item Pages”
Packaged with SEO Title Tag so that you can control the title tags of your entire site with no conflicts with WP e-Commerce
Automatically adds description meta to entire site
SEO Header plugin allows you to change
the heading of the page without
changing the page title.
This is especially useful if you want to use a short term for the page navigation and a long headline. For example, when using WordPress as a standard CMS, you may set your home page to “Home” in your wordpress settings. This works out well because in the wordpress page navigation, you have a link to your home page titled “Home”.
*********************Plugin Issue*************************
The newest version of this plugin changes the header of the navigation title on the actual page. For example, if you change your “Home” page to “Blue Widgets”, while your site navigation will show “Home”. However, if you are on the “Home” page, the navigation will show “Blue Widgets”. This is not a big issue, unless you use a really long page title and it breaks your navigation. I will create a fix for this and release version 1.3 ASAP. Continue reading →
Caution: Your content is being stolen!
Black hatters are scraping your site.
Its time to fight back!
I know that sounds a little over the top, but I was struck by a black hatter last week and it cost me some traffic.
I spent several weeks working on a site using WP e-Commerce. While I was working on the site I kept a log of all the changes required and I wrote a SEO tutorial for wp ecommerce.
After I wrote the post, it was number three overall for “SEO wp ecommerce” in Google the next day. It was already bringing in some great traffic. Continue reading →
For those of you just getting your feet wet when it comes to SEO, there are a few basic on-site optimization fundamentals that should never be overlooked, especially if you plan on driving traffic from the search engines in a competitive market. There are three main factors, the title tag, the h1 tag and the inbound anchor text to your page for successful ecommerce seo.
It is important that each page have a unique title tag and h1 tag that closely match (contain the targeted keyword phrase). The h1 tag is often and mistakenly used in the logo and is not unique to each page. In Google’s algorithm, any content Continue reading →
