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WordPress End-User Security by Dre Armeda – Theme.fm

WordPress End-User Security by Dre Armeda was originally published on Atlanta WordPress Coach :: WordPress Training :: WordPress Support and Management. All rights reserved.

WordPress Themes

Design, navigation and great content are the three big factors to online success, so when you choose a theme, 66.66% of your attention should be focused on the look and usability.

And just because it looks pretty doesn’t mean it’s going to work correctly when you bring it home. Ah, I see. Many of you have already learned that lesson the hard way.

No matter what kind of business or brand you’re building, for starters you need:

• Out-of-the-box control and flexibility
• Highly adaptable and secure platform with built-in SEO
• Easy customization, multimedia and social media integration
• Easy, logical navigation that makes a visual impact
• Unlimited support and updates

Anyone who has ever heard me talk about WordPress themes knows I’m a huge fan of StudioPress. They were the first theme developer I used when I got started in 2007, and I’m still a loyal supporter.

Did you read the last bullet point above? Unlimited support and updates.

The cost of the Genesis framework bundled with a child theme gives you access to the best support forum around. And, I’m not talking about posting a question and waiting several days for a response. Right out of the box you have step-by-step tutorials written in plain English to setup your newly purchased theme.

‘Fess up. How many of you purchased a theme, brought it home and then got angry because it didn’t look like the demo?

How to Find a Quality WordPress Theme that Works was originally published on Atlanta WordPress Coach :: WordPress Training :: WordPress Support and Management. All rights reserved.

To me it seems as if there is some ambiguity in the use of the word “title” in SEO within WordPress.

In a WordPress site when you place a title into the Initial Post/Page Title Area it shows up in HTML asxxxxxxx, lets refer to this as the “Internal Title Tag.”

As part of the SEO settings plugin there is an area to specify “Custom Document Title” that shows up as the Title in the search engine results page (SERP) and as HTML which I will refer to as the “Meta Title Tag.”

Please address the following issues:

1. As far as SEO goes, I would assume that Meta Title Tag is of much higher importance? Is the Internal Title Tag of some/any importance in SEO?
2. WordPress inserts the Internal Title Tag at the top of the post/page. If the Internal Title Tag has little SEO value; why not leave it blank and use a H1 as the first line of post/page which then allows article to have relevant title with SEO value as H1.  Note that if you use Internal Tile Tag and H1 as first post/page title then the viewer will see a duplicate line.

Your assumption about post titles is incorrect.

The SEO plugin setting for “Custom Document Title” defines what appears in the search engine results page (SERP) and the browser address bar. The post title determines what is wrapped in an H1 tag.

Let’s look at the Genesis SEO settings for the home page first.

The settings are self-explanatory. What you may have overlooked is this statement:
The


tag is, arguably, the second most important SEO tag in the document source.

Page title is the most important SEO element.

Title settings appear in the header. Here is a screen shot from the source code of a home page.

Note how the title is optimized with keywords. We believe do-it-yourself professionals are looking for a WordPress coach, consultant, or trainer in the Atlanta area.

What about the H1 tag?

Genesis theme settings stipulate the title is wrapped in an H1 tag as shown in the following screen shot.

Explore the custom SEO plugin settings for pages and posts.

SEO plugins give you flexibility to publish two titles—perhaps a catchy headline to capture the reader’s attention—and something optimized (keyword rich) as the custom document title.

The following two screen shots are an example.

From the post editor:
From Google:

Take look at the source code of the post.

You can see the custom SEO plugin settings determine what appears in the SERP.

And, the H1 tag wraps the post title.

If your strategy is to optimize for SEO, put a keyword rich title in your post and stop placing H1 text within the post.

Recommended SEO plugin for WordPress: WordPress SEO by Yoast

• Do you have unanswered questions?
• Pulling your hair in anguish trying to figure out a theme feature?
• Are you looking to learn more about WordPress?

Make an appointment today for WordPress Training or support.

 

WordPress Title Tags was originally published on Atlanta WordPress Coach :: WordPress Training :: WordPress Support and Management. All rights reserved.

WordPress Basics Video 1 will show you how to buy an internet domain name using GoDaddy.

WordPress Basics Video 2 — Host Your Domain

WordPress Basics Video 2 will show you how to setup your new domain name on your hosting account.

WordPress Basics Video 3 — Tell the Internet Your New Address

WordPress Basics Video 3 will show you how to point the domain name to your hosting account so the internet can see your site.

WordPress Basics was originally published on Atlanta WordPress Coach :: WordPress Training :: WordPress Support and Management. All rights reserved.

Don’t worry. The WordPress Development team knows many of you still rely upon the link manager. They’ve created the Link Manager WordPress Plugin, the official replacement for the original Links Manager in WordPress. This will restore the Links Manager once WordPress 3.5 removes it. Consider adding it first before updating to preserve you links, just in case.

How to Save WordPress Blogroll/Links was originally published on Atlanta WordPress Coach :: WordPress Training :: WordPress Support and Management. All rights reserved.

“We are considering moving an HTML site to WordPress so that it is easy for us to add pages, content, etc., and to tap into the thousands of design templates available. Does moving an HTML site to a WordPress site have any big SEO issues?”

Take the time to read Jill’s response, and bookmark it for future reference. If you’re thinking of moving an HTML site to a WordPress site, give me a call. Our Sweet Tea Group will take care of you every step of the way.

Dear Jill,

Our price comparison website has been around since 2001 and although we have made updates to the site, most of them have been behind-the-scenes coding changes. We’ve managed to grow the website traffic with minimal time over the last 5 to 7 years, but were deeply affected by the Panda and maybe Penguin updates (I think mostly because we don’t have much for content).

Anyway, in an effort to counteract the loss of traffic to these updates, we are making a lot of changes…one being our web design (which is bad). We are considering moving from a pure HTML site to a WordPress site so that it is easy for us to add pages, content, etc., and to tap into the thousands of design templates available.

Does moving from an HTML site to a WordPress site (with a theme from WooThemes) have any big SEO issues? Do HTML sites typically have better or worse rankings? Any other helpful feedback?

Best,

Nathan

~~~Jill’s Response~~~

Hi Nathan,

Any time you redesign a website and/or move it to a new platform or content management system (CMS), there are many things to consider. So it’s great that you’re asking these questions before making any changes. It’s interesting that many of the sites I’ve reviewed that were hit by Google’s Panda or Penguin updates were similar to yours: old static HTML sites that hadn’t been updated in a long time.

I don’t think that Google specifically targeted old sites or static HTML sites, but more sites that simply haven’t kept up with the competition. Plus, Google does use a lot of human review these days, so if a site simply looks old and tired, it may also look less trustworthy to a human reviewer. This is important to keep in mind when deciding whether to move to WordPress. If nothing else, most WordPress themes will provide you with a fresh and modern look, which can help conversions.

A WordPress Site Is an HTML Site

Before I get into the specifics, you need to understand that a WordPress site IS an HTML site. In fact, all sites (for the most part) are HTML sites. HTML is what gets rendered and shown to the web browser after the server puts all the pieces together. Most sites that use a CMS to create pages (as WordPress does) are considered to be “dynamically generated.” This just means that the WordPress CMS creates all the code by pulling in all the various pieces that you want to show on each page, rather than you having to code it all by hand.

In fact, even if you currently have a static HTML site, you may still have some dynamic elements such as server-side includes (SSI) that add your header and footer to every page. So although WordPress dynamically generates your HTML code, as far as browsers and search engines are concerned, there’s no difference.

URL Redirects and Your Global Navigation

Still, you might have issues to worry about when you switch over to WordPress (or any CMS). The most obvious one is that the URLs that you’re currently using may very well need to change. In which case, you’ll need to be sure that your developer sets up 301-redirects from all the old URLs to the new ones. This will help preserve any old links that may be out there pointing to specific pages of your site while also carrying over their link popularity and Google PageRank.

But redirecting the URLs from the old to the new is only half of the story. If you’re changing the information architecture of the site — that is, which pages will be featured in your global navigation, and which pages those ones in turn link to — then issues can crop up. The way every page of your site links to every other page is a critical part of how much internal link popularity and PageRank they each have. And that in turn is an important factor in how much weighting Google and other search engines will give them.

If you’re not changing your global navigation at all and are going to be linking to the same exact pages you were linking to on your old site, then your pages should have a similar amount of internal link popularity as they previously did. However, you mentioned that your site has been losing traffic. Therefore, you should look at revising your navigation because it’s possible that you’ve been inadvertently passing PageRank improperly.

For instance, if your current site is linking to almost every other page of the site due to the use of drop-down mouseover menus, you may be splitting your internal link popularity too thinly between the pages of the site. This will make it harder for any of them to rank for their targeted keyword phrases. So you should re-architect your global navigation as you move your site to WordPress. This will let you fine-tune which pages you’re linking to. For most sites, you will want to link only to top-level category pages. That way you’ll push a good amount of internal PageRank to them and give them a better chance at ranking for the semi-competitive keyword phrases that can bring a lot of targeted traffic.

Adding and Revising Content

You also mentioned that you didn’t have much content on your pages, and you felt this may have been a reason for losing a lot of Google traffic. Again, changing over to WordPress may be just what you need to inspire you to add appropriate content to your pages. I would highly recommend making sure that every page of your site clearly states at the very top exactly what it’s about with at least a few introductory sentences. That may in fact be all you need for many pages, especially top-level category pages.

With Panda and Penguin around, it’s important not to put your content at the bottom of your pages because that is almost always an obvious sign that it’s just there for search engines and not people. It’s also critical not to stuff it full of keywords. Just write naturally, using the search words that people looking for what you offer might be typing into Google.

Revisit Your Internal Anchor Text

Moving your site to WordPress also provides you with an opportunity to review your internal anchor text (that is, the words in the clickable portion of a link). Panda and Penguin have made it abundantly clear that keyword-stuffed anchor text within your own internal links is just as bad as it is with external links. So if you went a bit overboard with this in the past, you’ll want to clean it up with your new WordPress site.

Blogging for The Win!

And last, but certainly not least, using WordPress will let you add blog posts to your site (presuming you don’t already have them). While having a blog on a site doesn’t automatically provide it with any special Google juice, if you start to provide your thoughts on what’s going on in your industry on a regular basis, you’ll have lots of great fodder to market via social media. This in turn can help you develop a social media following which can increase the social media signals your site receives. The more followers, tweets, retweets, likes, shares and +1′s that your content gets, the more important it will be considered by Google.

When you combine all of the above, my vote would be to definitely switch over to WordPress. From the little you’ve told me, it seems that you really don’t have anything to lose, but everything to gain.

Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, an SEO Consulting company in the Boston, MA area since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen

If you learned from this article, be sure to invite your colleagues to sign up for the High Rankings Advisor SEO Newsletter so they can receive similar articles in the future!

Moving an HTML Site to WordPress – SEO Impact was originally published on Atlanta WordPress Coach :: WordPress Training :: WordPress Support and Management. All rights reserved.

Follow the 8 Point WordPress SEO Checklist and you’ll be 90% there, as far as search engines go. With a SEO plugin (I use one by Yoast), or SEO-aware theme, you can get to 95%. To get to 100% (or at least 99%), you need to also adapt how your write your content.

This video from Google Webmaster Help shows you how to avoid 5 common mistakes in SEO and improve your content (which improves your results!).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Download this free 27-page SEO report for even more helpful tips!

5 Common WordPress SEO Mistakes was originally published on Atlanta WordPress Coach :: WordPress Training :: WordPress Support and Management. All rights reserved.

We have a fascination with WordPress plugins—handy programs installed on our site in the blink of an eye to add features and never (gasp, heart palpitations, sweaty palms) have to touch code .

Grab your mouse, or pen and paper…

I’m sharing some of my favorite plugins

TinyMCE Advanced (pronounced “tiny mice”) adds additional features to the default tool bar you see when writing a post or page in WordPress.

Two features I especially like are the ability to:

    
• quickly add a table to keep pesky images exactly where you want them to display, construct columns, data spreadsheets and more
• stop WordPress from stripping the <p> and <br /> tags from the HTML

EXTRA CREDIT if you know what the last icon on the right is named and the action taken when you click there. Go now. Login to your site, click the icon and come back leave your answer in the comments. I’ll wait…

WordPress SEO by Yoast is a robust SEO plugin which improves your site’s SEO on all needed aspects and helps you write better content.

The settings to take care of all the technical optimization appear overwhelming at first glance. Simply follow the tutorials here or here.

Be sure to download a free 27-page SEO report on how to create compelling content that ranks well in the search engines.

The Easiest Way to Connect Around the ‘Net

The Social Media Widget adds links to all your social media networks in a sidebar widget. Yes, the images are included. You simply provide the URL for each of your social networking profiles, choose the size of the images you want and save. Easy-peasy!

If you are just getting started with your WordPress site and don’t yet understand plugins and widgets, you are not alone. Don’t be embarrassed.

Plugins Help You Never (Gasp, Shudder) Touch Code was originally published on Atlanta WordPress Coach :: WordPress Training :: WordPress Support and Management. All rights reserved.

Here is a clever WordPress Help Sheet to save on your desktop wallpaper.

WordPress Cheat Sheet Wallpaper was originally published on Atlanta WordPress Coach :: WordPress Training :: WordPress Support and Management. All rights reserved.

The primary focus of Atlanta WordPress Coach is educating my students (as individual business owners or part of a corporate enterprise) about how they can use WordPress to get the most out of their website or blog.

Because all students are different—with different aims, dreams and goals—I spend time listening to their heart. Only then can we transform their vision into an online representation of who they are, and the passion they desire to share.

I believe desire is divine.

If you have desire in your heart for your website, let’s talk.

Teaching WordPress Touches Souls was originally published on Atlanta WordPress Coach :: WordPress Training :: WordPress Support and Management. All rights reserved.