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Review of WordPress Plugin – SEO Ultimate

Blog SEO Expert — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 21:12:04 +0000

SEO Ultimate WordPress Plugin Review

If you have been blogging and using WordPress for even a few weeks, you would have heard of the All In One SEO plugin used to optimize blog posts. It is a great plugin, and is very widely used. However, it is also quite old.

Shouldn’t you be looking for fresh alternatives if you have just been blindly using some of the older WordPress SEO plugins like All In Once SEO or HeadSpace?

(Image by Danard Vincente)

Well, now you have a reason to – there is a new SEO plugin available that can be used for search engine optimization of your blog posts, and a lot more!

SEO Ultimate – The ultimate plugin for SEO that does a lot more

Yes, that’s true. The SEO Ultimate plugin obviously does a lot when it comes to SEO (including everything that the All In One SEO plugin does). But it goes further and does a lot many other useful things as well.

SEO Ultimate – List of Modules

SEO Ultimate WordPress Plugin - List of Modules and Functionality

404 Monitor
Canonicalizer
Code inserter
Competition researcher
Deeplink jaggernaut
File editor
Internal relevance researcher
Link mask generator
Linkbox inserter
Meta description editor
Meta keywords editor
Meta robot tags editor
More link customizer
Nofollow manager
Permalink tweaker
Rich snippet creator
Sharing facilitator
Slug optimizer
Title tag rewriter
Webmaster verification assistant
Whitepapers

Now that’s a long list, eh? The best part is – you can enable or disable each functionality individually! So you have full control over what you are entrusting the plugin with!

Now let’s dive in and look at the functionality of each of these modules.

Core Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Modules

Title Tag Rewriter

You can customize and format the title of any post, page or homepage using this module. It also puts your title at the beginning of the title tag, which is good for SEO.

Meta Description Editor

You can edit the meta description tag of any post, page or the homepage. This is what’s usually shown in the search engine results below your link, so tweaking this gives you an opportunity to influence the searchers and increase the click through rate.

Meta Keywords Editor

You can edit the meta keywords tag of any post, page or the homepage. There is also a facility to generate meta keywords using the category, tags, frequently used words in the post, etc.

You can also specify global keywords that apply to all webpages of your blog. You can also edit or update keywords for multiple posts using the mass editor.

Meta Robot Tags Editor

You can easily add no-index attribute ( ) to archives, login page, search results page etc. This is very useful in order to avoid duplicate content penalties, especially if you have set your theme to show full blog posts in the archives pages.

You can also set the meta robot tags for individual posts, pages, categories, tags, etc.

Deeplink Jaggernaut

This is an excellent tool to interlink your blog posts based on keywords.

You specify the keywords you want to target and the destination URL of the blog post you want to rank higher in search engine listings, and SEO Ultimate searches your blog’s content to create links to that post with your keyword as the anchor text.

The best part is that within WordPress, these auto generated links point to the actual post or page and not the URL. Therefore, even if you change the URL or slug of a post or page, the link would remain valid.

You can also specify the maximum number of links generated for a keyword and the maximum number of links generated on a post / page.

You can also exclude specific posts and pages from this autolinking functionality – no autolinks would be generated on these posts or pages. You can also force the module to link only to other posts in the sae category!

One cool feature of this module is that you can create links to draft posts as well. These links would not be active when the post is in draft state – they would get auto-enabled as soon as the post is published!

Slug Optimizer

This module removes small, filler words (like of, the, or, and, with, etc.) from a post or page’s URL. This way, your keywords get more weightage in the URL.

You have full control over the words that are removed from the URL.

Permalink Tweaker

This module helps you remove the category base and tag base which is the default for WordPress. As a result, the permalinks for your categories and tags would look like http://www.abc.com/category or http://www.abc.com/tag instead of http://www.abc.com/category/caegory or http://www.abc.com/tag/tag.

Keyword Research and Analysis Modules

Competition Researcher

This module gives you access to search engine data and tools using which you can analyze multiple keywords or URLs. You can:

Check the number of webpages competing for a keyword
Analyze keyword relevance in their titles, anchor text, URLs or body content
Check the number of webpages present in Google’s index from a competitor’s blog / website
Analyze a blog’s incoming & outgoing link profile

Internal Relevance Researcher

Using this module, you can find out which of your posts and pages that rank well in Google for your keywords. You can use this data to optimize your link building efforts.

Other Modules

404 Monitor

Using this module, you can see which of your URLs are giving 404 errors. Then, you can wither update the URLs or use a redirection plugin to point visitors / search engines to the correct URL.

Linkbox Inserter

This module of SEO Ultimate inserts a textbox at the bottom of your posts and pages that contains auto-generated link HTML. Your readers can use this to link to your post / page.

File Editor

This module lets you edit the .htaccess and robots.txt files from within WordPress.

Code Inserter

This module of SEO Ultimate helps you insert customer HTML or JavaScript code into the head, body, header or footer sections of your blog. You can use it to add Google Analytics script or any other scripts.

The advantage of using this module is that you no more need to use your theme to add the code – so even if you change the theme, you don’t have to worry about these codes!

Rich Snippet Creator

You can add snippet code to your posts using this module and make them more appealing to your readers.

Sharing Facilitator

This module of SEO Ultimate provides social bookmarking functionality to your readers. You can choose either an “Add This” or a “Share This” button so that your visitors can share your content on social networking sites.

Webmaster Verification Assistant

This module helps you put the Googl Webmaster Tools verification code in your blog.

Link Mask Generator

This module of the SEO Ultimate plugin creates masks for the external links on your blog, so that the external URLs look like http://www.abc.com/recommmends/seo_ultimate instead of http://www.seoultimate.com/benefits/listing.html.

This is definitely great for affiliate marketers who want to hide their tracking links, but is also good for regular bloggers since it makes the links pretty.

You have full control over which links are masked, and you can also change the base directory to anything like go, suggests, etc. (Example: http://www.abc.com/go/seo_ultimate or http://www.abc.com/suggests/seo_ultimate)

Other Features

Here are the other noteworthy features of the SEO Ultimate plugin.

Import from All In One SEO plugin

If you are already using the All In One SEO plugin, you can import the post meta data (title, description and keywords) from it. This way, you can avoid a lot of manual work if you want to switch to the SEO Ultimate plugin. You can also retain the data in the All In One SEO plugin so that you can go back to it if you don’t like the SEO Ultimate plugin (which is quite unlikely!).

Extensive help

The plugin provides extensive help which is context sensitive – you can find help on the relevant pages within the admin of your blog through WordPress’ help menu itself.

Notices

The plugin provides notices if any of your settings are blocking search engine spiders. It also displays notices if there is a conflicting plugin (like the All In One SEO plugin) active.

Uninstalling the SEO Ultimate plugin

SEO Ultimate plugin includes an uninstaller which can gracefully remove the plugin from your blog without leaving any data behind.

How to get the SEO Ultimate plugin

Now that you know the features of the SEO Ultimate plugin, I am sure you want to take it to a test drive!

SEO Ultimate is a completely free plugin approved by WordPress.org. You can download it from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-ultimate/

What are you waiting for? Go get the SEO Ultimate WordPress plugin now!

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Review of Google Analytics – A great tool to measure effectiveness of your SEO

Blog SEO Expert — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 01:35:19 +0000

What is the aim of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

“Why SEO” – this is a very basic question that gets asked very often.

The answer is simple: We do search engine optimization to get more unpaid search traffic from various search engines like Google (also known as organic traffic).

In short, better SEO = More traffic from search engines.

Measuring what we want to improve

Since we set out to improve visitor traffic by doing SEO, the first thing that we need to do is to measure the traffic to your blog.

Unless you can measure the traffic, how can you know how effective is your SEO effort?

So, the very first step for you is to find a good traffic analysis tool if you don’t already have one. That way, you would know any change in traffic that happens due to your SEO.

You would also be able to analyze the changes in traffic patterns, and would be able to pinpoint what SEO steps are more effective for your blog or website.

(Wondering what you should look at in Google Analytics to measure the effectiveness of your SEO? Please read “What factors to check in your site’s traffic analysis package for better SEO”)

Google Analytics – The best

If you haven’t chosen a traffic analysis / visitor statistic analysis tool, here is what I always recommend: Google Analytics. In fact, you can opt for it even if you are already using some other website traffic analysis tool.

It is a great, absolutely free tool from the Google stable. Anyone, from any country, can register for Google Analytics.

If you have an existing Google account, you can easily register using that as well.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a JavaScript based traffic analysis tool.

When you register your blog or website for Google Analytics, you are given a small JavaScript code snippet that you need to put on all the web pages of your blog or website.

The ideal way to do this is to include the code in the template of the website, so that it automatically gets inserted into all the web pages!

What can be measured?

Google Analytics is a tool that would never stop to amaze you – it is capable of measuring LOTS of things about site traffic.

Here are just a few important matrices that Google Analytics would provide:

Number of page views
Number of visits
Number of unique visitors
Number of pages per visit
Bounce rate
Average time on site
Percentage of new visits
Referring sites
Analysis of sources of traffic to your site
Top landing pages
Top content of your blog or website
Keywords used by people to find your site on search engines

(Don’t worry if you don’t understand some of the terms – we would be discussing them here in the coming weeks)

You can view most of this data for any period you choose – from just one day to a few years! And you can specify exact date ranges for which you want to check the data.

Remember – this is just a fraction of the features available from Google Analytics. You have to try it to get the feel of the power of this tool!

How does Google Analytics look?

Here’s a screenshot of Google Analytics:

Sign up for Google Analytics now!

Signing up for Google Analytics is easy (and free) – don’t delay it!

Here’s the link: http://www.google.com/analytics/

How to get your blog or website indexed quickly by Google

Blog SEO Expert — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:45:06 +0000

Getting into the Google club

You put in a lot of hard work in

Choosing the domain name
Selecting the hosting provider & hosting plan
Choosing the blogging platform

Indexed Fast By Google Countdown

You also spend hours on

Selecting the theme
Setting up various plugins (including SEO plugins)
Writing blog posts and publishing them (with one keyword per post)

Now what? What is the next step? Do you just keep waiting for Google to come to your blog or website?

(Image source)

How can you get your blog or website indexed by Google real quick? Is there a fast-track process?

Here are the things that you can do to get you blog or website indexed faster by Google.

Get incoming links

Try to get some incoming links from other blogs and websites in your niche. If possible, try to get them from sites that already have some traffic, and have a good page rank (PR).

If the blog you have started is not your first blog, you can easily leverage your existing blog to get some links to the new blog!

For more on getting backlinks, please check out “Where to get backlinks from for good SEO“.

Produce fresh content

To make Google come to your blog, and to keep it coming back frequently, you need to produce fresh content constantly.

Write blog posts regularly, and Google should be at your doorstep sooner rather than later!

Utilize the power of Social Media

Submit some of your good articles to social media sites. These include (but are definitely not limited to):

Digg
Stumbleupon
Delicious
Mixx
Technorati

Google constantly indexes these social media websites, and any link back to your blog would be followed very quickly!

If you know some power users for these sites and can get your articles submitted through them, even better! This would mean that:

Your post gets a presence on the social media site, and Google would find you
Even more users get exposed to your blog post submission (due to the power user status of the submitter), and you get increased traffic at your blog. And possibly, some backlinks as well!

Use Twitter

It is still unclear if Google would follow & index your links posted in Twitter (due to the “no follow” attribute, but if nothing else, it would drive traffic to your blog and might earn you some back links!

Implement Google AdSense

When you have Google AdSense on your blog, Google needs to know the content of your blog before it can start presenting the context sensitive ads.

What does this mean? It means that Google indexes you blog to find out what it contains!

This may or may not mean immediate inclusion in the Google index, but it surely helps.

Implement Google Site Search

The logic is same as above – to give accurate search results for your blog, Google needs to know its contents. This means that Google quickly indexes you site when you use Site Search!

Keyword placement – where to put the keywords in a post

Blog SEO Expert — Tue, 26 May 2009 03:00:03 +0000

The right keyword density, but that’s not all…

It is important to have the right keyword density, and it is important to not stuff your post with keywords.

Is there anything more to keywords? Do you need to consider anything else?

Well, yes!

Keyword placement

Its not just the number of times a keyword is used in a post – where you put your keywords plays a role in SEO too.

Where you put the keywords in your blog post or webpage is called keyword placement.

Where should the keywords be?

Search engines like Google give a lot of importance to the beginning and the end of any post.

Therefore, you should definitely have the keywords appear in the first and the last paragraph of your blog post. It would be even better if you can have them appear in the first and the last sentence of the post.

This is the most important keyword placement tip for great SEO.

Apart from this, the blog post can have the keywords naturally scattered throughout the post – of course, making sure that the keyword density is right, and that you don’t stuff keywords in the post.

Backlinks – The fastest way to good SEO

Blog SEO Expert — Sat, 02 May 2009 00:43:12 +0000

What are Backlinks?

You must have heard the word “backlinks” a lot. What are they?

It is a fancy word, but the meaning is simple. The links that you get from other blogs or websites are called Backlinks.

Importance of Backlinks

And why are backlinks so important in your SEO efforts?

Getting indexed

If your blog is new, your first priority is getting indexed by search engines like Google – this needs to happen before any SEO!

When you have links form other blogs or websites, it is like a doorway to your blog for the Google spider (or crawler). When Google indexes these other blogs, its spider would find the link to your blog, would follow it, and then index your blog as well.

So, backlinks provide pathway to your blog for the search engine spiders. Backlinks would help get your blog indexed faster.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Modern search engines give a lot of importance to backlinks – at times, even more than the content of your blog!

This is because Google treats a backlink as a vote of confidence for your blog – another blog or website would link to you only if it finds your content good.

In any contest involving voting, who wins? The one getting the maximum votes!

It is the same with backlinks – more the backlinks, better is the treatment of your blog by Google! This means that your blog would get much higher rankings in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

Conclusion

Of all the offsite SEO factors, Google gives the maximum importance to backlinks. Therefore, try to get as many backlinks to your blog as possible – the more, the better.

Your blog would get indexed faster by Google and other search engines, and it would enjoy higher rankings in the SERPs.