Author: markku

WordPress 2.2 released

Post author By markku
Post date May 17, 2007

I’m sure you’ve heard about the release of WordPress 2.2, codenamed “Getz.” This latest version brings some new features for the userbase, mostly under the hood. As stated in the development weblog’s announcement:

WordPress Widgets allow you to easily rearrange and customize areas of your weblog (usually sidebars) with drag-and-drop simplicity. This functionality was originally available as a plugin Widgets are now included by default in the core code, significantly cleaned up, and enabled for the default themes.

Full Atom support, including updating our Atom feeds to use the 1.0 standard spec and including an implementation of the Atom Publishing API to complement our XML-RPC interface.

A new Blogger importer that is able to handle the latest version of Google’s Blogger product and seamlessly import posts and comments without any user interaction beyond entering your login.

Infinite comment stream, meaning that on your Edit Comments page when you delete or spam a comment using the AJAX links under each comment it will bring in another comment in the background so you always have 20 items on the page. (I know it sounds geeky, but try it!)

We now protect you from activating a plugin or editing a file that will break your blog.

Core plugin and filter speed optimizations should make everything feel a bit more snappy and lighter on your server.

We’ve added a hook for WYSIWYG support in a future version of Safari.

Now aside from that official list, Technosailor lists 10 Things You Should Know About WordPress 2.2 which should provide you an idea on what to expect from the latest WordPress.

Software Statistics

Better WordPress Stats

Post author By markku
Post date May 7, 2007

There are many competitors in the traffic analysis field with services popping left and right, though not one service has dominated the market in a major way. This is mostly because not everyone looks at their data in the same way as others, and we all have our own personal preferences in their presentation. Since most probloggers use WordPress as their weapon of choice for publishing their various niche weblogs, Automattic Stats might work for some of us. This plugin used to be available for wordpress.com users only, but now released for use by anyone self–hosting their WordPress blogs.

Have a look at it and evaluate if this is the stat tracking package you’ve always waited for.

News

Pinoy wins SEO World Championship!

Post author By markku
Post date May 3, 2007
5 Comments on Pinoy wins SEO World Championship!

Yes, fellow Filipino Benj Arriola wins the first ever SEO World Championship and takes home a brand new Citroen C2! The list of official winners is now up at the contest site, confirming the results. His entry named “GlobalWarming Awareness2007” bagged the topmost prize, besting the most popular SEO professionals from all over the world.

Benj proudly credits the SEOPhilippines forums for his win, saying it wouldn’t have been possible without the help of countless individuals in the local SEO industry.

He shares with us the lessons learned from this contest:

Content is still king! Good content keep people stay, come back and spread the news in a natural manner.

Design is still important. Not that it has to be really superb, but at least it does not look bad that people will not trust you nor trust the content of your website. Make it clean and presentable to help drive more traffic, world-of-mouth promotion and more effective website link baiting.

And SEO is a pay-it-forward type of industry. The more help you give out to other people, the more help you receive when you need it.

Mabuhay! Yes, that’s a car for all his efforts!

Site News

Refocusing

Post author By markku
Post date April 30, 2007

After several weeks (actually months!) of stagnation, I’ve decided to re–align this weblog’s goals and scope. From this point on, problogger philippines should be geared more towards localized content with specific focus on monetization and the business aspect of blogging.

As we now have more access to resources and individuals in the local blogosphere, we intend to feature some of our local blogger personalities but more importantly their lessons learned in the field of professional blogging. We will still feature technically–inclined information on blogging, but its share of the pie should be lower as we tackle the other sides of this practice.

Any other ideas you want discussed?

Site News

Happy New Year!

Post author By markku
Post date January 20, 2007

I know I’ve taken this weblog for granted for a few months now, despite the interest of some of my readers. We’re currently working things out to put everything in the right track and return to normal programming. For now, hang in there. Happy blogging. 🙂

Optimization SEO

Complete SEO Checklist

In my previous entry, I wrote about the myths of search engine optimization. As I’ve said and as discussed by the related reference, SEO is not the complete solution to successful websites — content is. This time though, we take this useful SitePoint article for our discussion. We’ve said that SEO is not everything, but it can be very helpful in getting good content to those who seek them. If you have the content that you think is of value to other web users, you can get it where it should be through SEO.

This article discusses the many details involved in optimizing your pages for search engines. The ones I find really important are:

Plan your web site’s SEO before you create the site. Though this is debatable, it pays to have a focused outline for your site, especially for determining what you want to do with it. You can’t have a site with no clear goals, especially if you’re putting a significant amount of effort into it.

Target keyphrases rather than single keywords. You have to do this because users do not always search for keywords, but specific keyphrases as well.

Include keywords and keyphrases in your site’s information architecture. If your site is about bananas, it has every right to have banana written all over it.

Use focused keyphrases within each web page’s <title> element. The title element defines the content of the whole page and should contain the relevant details.

Use your focused keyphrases within the page’s <heading> elements, beginning with the <h1> element. Break up your content into subheadings to enhance readability, and label your subsections with the appropriate title using the right heading tags.

Avoid the use of splash pages. You should’ve known this many years ago, and if you just learned it now you should do something about it. Now.

Create search-engine friendly HTML text navigation and cross-links. Cross–linking your site’s content is your way of pointing search engines and users to relevant pages within your site. Strive to keep your users reading your content.

Use structural markup, and separate content from presentation as much as possible. This is the only right way to go. Good markup looks good to search engines, and your users benefit.

Read on for more, and consider these tips for your site. Good SEO can only help you.

Link Building Optimization SEO Traffic Building Writing

SEO Myths

Post author By markku
Post date July 20, 2006
5 Comments on SEO Myths

Everyone praises search engine optimization (SEO) like it’s the holy grail to a successful website — it isn’t. First of all, always remember that content is king. If you do not have good original content and just link to other sites without even providing valuable insights, your sites have less chances at good traffic growth. Even having good content can be less effective if not published at the appropriate time.

A recently popular article over at digg entitled “5 Myths in SEO” lists the following pitfalls: “Overnight Results,” “Placement Can Be Guaranteed,” “Meta Tags,” “Submitting to Search Engines,” and “More Links > Good Links.” Any SEO company or practitioner who promises you these things is most likely lying, or too confident with his illegal methods.

My personal SEO recommendation: Write to your heart’s desire. Write with passion, and always try to provide something unique.

Links Problogging Tools Traffic Building

Optimize WordPress for Search Engines

Post author By markku
Post date July 10, 2006
2 Comments on Optimize WordPress for Search Engines

Remember my entry on WordPress being the choice of professional bloggers? That wouldn’t be entirely complete with just a blog with nothing on it, right? First of all, remember that content is king. Always is. You need some high quality content on your site, concerning your specific niche. Not just good resource, but good original content paired with writing optimized for the web.

Nowadays, good content takes you to the doorstep, helping you keep readers coming back. But you can’t get readers out of nowhere, and most of the time search engines will provide this for you. The downside to this is that you have to compete with everyone writing about the same topics. This is where search engine optimization comes in.

Using the excellent WordPress, you can apply these wonderful tips to make your weblog nicer to the eyes of search engine bots. Technically, applying these guidelines makes your pages and content more accessible for your readers, as determined by seasoned web professionals. A positive side effect is that these optimizations makes them more attractive to search engines as well, increasing your chances of being highly relevant for the said topic. A blog with good content with optimized structure for its readers will always have a greater chance at success.