The one thing which concerns me regarding paid links or sponsored posts is how is Google and other search engines going to react if I start writing sponsored posts or sell paid links on my site? Will my search ranks go down or will selling paid links will have no effect on the search ranks of other pages of my website?

In the following video, Google Engineer Matt cutts explains the idea behind selling paid links and using the Nofollow attribute.

Matt suggests that selling text links is fine as long as you use the “Rel=Nofollow” attribute. Google does not care about the links that does not flow pagerank, so selling paid links using the Nofollow attribute is perfectly safe. It won’t affect the search ranks of other pages of your website or blog.

If a link within your site does not affect the pagerank of the destination website, Google and other search engines won’t flag your website as spam.

If you study the Adwords links in Google search result pages, you will see that all those links are Nofollowed and they do not affect pagerank in any way. In fact, this is true for other search engines as well – Yahoo, Ask, Bing and so on.

The bottom line is: If you are the owner of a website, you can do whatever in your blog or website, but make sure that paid links does not affect search engines.

Tip: Know Where Your Website Ranks in the Search Engine Result Pages

Is it OK to Sell Links Using the NoFollow Attribute? originally published on Ampercent

[TIP: Learn Best SEO Practices For A WordPress Blog]

Download Site Seeker and open it. There is no need of any installation as the tool is portable. All you need to do is

1. Enter the keyword

2. Enter the site name

3. Enter the number of search pages (upto which it will check)

4. Choose the search engine

5. Hit the button “Search”.

[Related: Learn how to locate and highlight domain names in search result pages of Google, Yahoo and Bing.]

After a certain time depending on the position of your URL in the SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) the application will show the result and trust me it is 100% accurate. You can also choose to search your URL in the sponsored links section. The search engines supported are Ask.com, Ask Italy, Bing.com, Bing Italy, Google.com, Google Italy, Google Spain, Google Germany, Google France, Google UK, Yahoo.com, Yahoo Italy Yahoo Spain, Yahoo Germany, Yahoo France and Yahoo UK. The interface (as you can see in the screenshot) is very simple and can be used by a novice. You can search upto 100th SERP i.e upto the 1000th rank. The tool is developed on Microsoft .NET Framework so you need to install it first.

Know Where Your Website Ranks in the Search Engine Result Pages originally published on Ampercent

What’s So Great About The Book

Arun has also tried to keep the instructions simple and has succeeded in a good margin. The book comprises of certain ideas/procedures many SEO biggies will make you pay for. Well you should be happy now that you are getting some of them (if not all) for free. Here are some reasons why I recommend this book :

1. The book is easy to follow with every SEO practice described as a step-by-step guide.
2. Search Engine Optimization for WordPress is categorically split into 18 crucial steps.
3. The book is more of a Do It Yourself SEO Guide.
4. The codes used in this book can be applied straight away.
5. Huge list of quality SEO resources, tools and free WordPress SEO plugins are also included at the end of the book to provide additional help.
6. No Promotions, No Affiliate Links And Completely Free.
7. Complete rights to people to distribute it and republish it as long as the credits are reserved.

Author Quotes

I have observed that many blogs publish posts on WordPress optimization in bits and pieces and there aren’t any comprehensive guide to completely optimize a WordPress blog right from the time of installing wordpress on to one’s server. Also many technical guides in blogs were a bit difficult to understand which some times could put newbie wordpress users in to a dilemma. This book is targeted at those less technically sound wordpress users who want to take charge over their blogs SEO.

Okay I think I have provided you with enough reasons to grab a copy of the book. Enjoy the goodies of the book by downloading WordPress SEO Book from Choosy Info.

Download SEO For WordPress 3.0 [Ebook] originally published on Ampercent

Thank you Kothapally Arun

Quotes By Famous SEO Experts originally published on Ampercent

1. Poor SEO (Search Engine Optimization). As search traffic is the major source when we start, it occurs to be the deciding factor. You can learn best SEO practices (for wordpress blog) to maximise your search traffic. Though submission of the blogs to the search sites is also very critical to gain visibility in search pages.

2. Inability for major blog directories to find you.

So here is something that you can use to overcome the above problems. We will learn of a tool that will help us notify the search sites as well as major blog directories whenever your blog updates.

Blogbuzzer is an ultimate tool for you to submit your blog to major search sites and blog directories. Since those places are potentially very rich source of traffic, a prompt and successful submission will help you attract the credit that your blog posts deserve. [Also read : Ping Twitter From Windows Live Writer]

Blogbuzzer allows free membership using which you can submit 5 blogs/day. They also have premium membership plans for only $9/year, which I think is quite cheap. You can buy premium memberships to have the unlimited quota of pinging. Premium members also get bonus directories which are Delicious, StumbleUpon , Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask.com. Blogbuzzer automatically pings the above submission sites the moment your blog gets updated.

Blogbuzzer in a nutshell

1. You do not need to have skills in coding to set up a pinging service.

2. Submits your blog to almost 50 top search sites and blog directories.

3. The search sites and blog directories are over 5 different languages.

4. Offers free membership (limited options) and an affordable and reasonable premium membership.

5. You are provided with options to monitor the ping.

I must comment that though there are lots of plugins that can do the same job for you, you are mostly unable to get so wide variation in the ping servers. Again the monitoring option gives Blogbuzzer an upper hand over those plugins. Though my message to the developers back there will just be to try and increase the number of ping sites the service presently support. Anyways at the end of the day, its definitely in my “worth-a-try” list.

Blogbuzzer : Ping Services When Your Blog Updates originally published on Ampercent

I work for a local SEO company and manage hundreds of websites for our clients.  Google had stated that they had come up with a new algorithm last year during the summer and said they would release it sometime after Christmas.  True to their word they did just so.  After the second week of January I started noticing my client’s websites, as well as my personal websites, started to slide or move up in rankings.

Some went up and some went down.  This new algorithm was not supposed to be a “huge” change as much as it was minor tweaking.  Speed of websites were going to be more of a factor (hence the name).

After three months of observation here are my finding on what is different. Personally, I think there are pros and cons to this new algorithm.  Keep in mind that it is not earth shattering like others have been, but when you are an internet marketer and work in SEO going up or down several spots can have a huge impact on traffic and subsequently the earnings.

[Related - Learn Best SEO Practices for New Blogs]

1. Age Matters More

Google is placing more weight on aged sites.  Two of my strongest sites that I have anchored extremely well in their niche, lost ground to more “aged” sites though they were not optimized well. I saw other small but aged sites my company manages move up for no reason.

Though good coding is great, I have seen some older sites with terrible coding rank well for their desired keyword.

2. Relevance

I think all forms of link building still work.  Reciprocal links, directory links, one-way links and forum links work great.  People can say whatever they want but I have personally seen all those strategies still work.  But now more than everything they much be RELEVANT.  You must get links from similar websites. The more narrow the better.  If you have a website about “making money online with adsense” do not get try to get a link from a “ab workout” website.  It will do you no good and might even hurt you.

3.  Free Content is King More Than Ever

Google loves website with tons of content.  They love words.  Every website should try to have 150 words on every page.  Sites that incorporate blogs with have fresh content and the crawlers will come back often.  Static HTML sites are harder to rank even with a lot of content because they do not update on a regular basis.

4. Too Much SEO is Not Good

This may be a hard pill to swallow but sometimes your SEO can be too good.  Google wants natural sites and do not want people trying to manipulate the system.  I am seeing more websites with no meta titles, keywords, or descriptions rank well.

I made a WordPress site and did not put the “All In One SEO” Pack or “Headspace” on it and still it did really well.

[Also Read : Optimize the All in SEO Pack Plugin]

5.  Speed of Indexing

Sites get indexed a lot quicker.  Especially WordPress sites.  There is something about the WordPress CMS that Google just loves!  I use that on all my websites!  I do not care if it makes your website look like a blog.  I would rather have a blog looking website on page one than a static HTML site on page ten.

6. Ranks Rises and Drops Fast

I see rankings bounce up and down quick.  It goes both ways.  My sites have gone up quickly and I was smiling and others have went down 2 pages in one day for no reason.  Sites bounce really fast now.

7. URL names Matter A Lot!

Google has become like Yahoo in that unlike before they are putting heavy emphasis on domain names.  If you can get a great domain name then you work will be half of what it will be if you do not.

[Also Read : Optimize the Title Tags of Your WordPress Theme]

These are the items I noticed.  The algorithm has not changed too much.  It is basically the same.  Google is just putting emphasis on things they did not in the past that it now feels is a little more important.  It’s a response to search engine optimizers getting really good.  As we learn the system, big “G” has to change the rules to keep us off-balance.

Wesley Barras is works in the SEO field and is an internet marketer.  He has a personal blog called Google Adsense Revenue which show other internet marketers how they can make money or maximize their earning potential off this form of affiliate income.

New Google Algorithm- What Has Changed? originally published on Ampercent

The link to author’s posts is shown using the php code <?php the_author_posts_link();?>. This shows the author name and links to the author page with a do-follow link. The following tutorial explains how you can modify the link and add the no-follow attribute to the same php code.

1. Open the FTP directory of your blog and download the wp-includes/author-template.php file.

2. Open the author-template.php file for editing with any HTML editor and search for “href”. Add rel=”nofollow” at appropriate places as shown below:

3. There is a total of 4 links in the file and you can add the no-follow attribute in all of them. After you have added the no-follow attribute, upload the file back in the wp-includes directory.

That’s it. All the author posts link will now be no-followed through out your blog.(see example)

How to NoFollow The Post Author Link in WordPress originally published on Ampercent

A week ago, Soumen posted a comment on an article at Makeuseof.com. The website name field is nofollowed but while I performed a search with the link operator on Google blog search, the link was eminent.

And here is a screenshot of the comment along with the page source

Honestly, I don’t know the exact reason of how the bots found our blog through that “Nofollow” link. I think they (bots) are intelligent enough to figure out which links to crawl and which links to ignore. A point to note here is that I had commented on the same website earlier but those links were not crawled. Here is what Google have to say on Nofollow links.

Have you faced similar situation before? Have you seen that bots are discovering your website through a Nofollow link? Share your ideas through a comment so that we all can learn from you.

NoFollow Links – Not really, Google Blog Search Bots can Still Find You originally published on Ampercent

1. What is a permalink anyway ?

Permalinks are permanent links (or URLS) to your individual blog posts , Categories , Tags etc. A permalink is the Permanent link to your Article that will never be changed and hence the name is coined “Permalink” (Permanent Link )

2.What are The permalink Structures available in WordPress ?

There are basically three types of permalinks available for wordpress. These are :

Default ugly permalinks : This structure comes by default with your wordpress installation.The permalink is represented by www.blog.com/?p=ID where ID is the post ID number. This permalink structure contains dynamic content and is not useful or meaningful.

Path Info Permalinks :  Pathinfo Permalinks are the same as Pretty permalinks but they have /index.php added before them.

Pretty Permalinks : Pretty permalinks are created by using and combining multiple structure tags.This structure gives much Flexible and meaningful URL’s to your articles. It is also recommended for Better SEO.

3.Why is the default Permalink Structure Not recommended ?

The default Permalink structure has certain disadvantages as described below

- They do not appear meaningful to the user as well as to the search engines. Consider an article about “Dental care tips “ . A blog having the default permalink structure will show : www.blog.com/?p=13 while a Blog with an optimized permalink structure will show : www.blog.com/dental-care-tips. The second  Url appear more meaningful to the visitor and  the click through rates are expected to be higher if the visitor reads your URL from SERPs or other Webpages.

-The default permalinks in wordpress tell nothing about what the page is all about as it do not contain any keywords. Search engines may place a Score on your URL(s) to decide your ranks and if your URL do not contain any keywords then you lose that score and  hence the ranks.

4.Which Permalink Structure should  I choose ?

You should choose to use pretty permalinks if you want to rank better in search engines. Please note that using the default structure you can also get indexed and ranked but  if you have the pretty permalinks then you are supposed to get better results.

5.What are the Best permalink Structure for WordPress ?

Pretty Permalinks are created using and combining multiple structure tags as described in the following table.

To create your permalink structure you have to use a combination of the above mentioned structured tags.

As for example : If you have a category as internet and you want your article structure to be www.site.com/internet/your-post-name then you have to choose %category%/%postname% as your permalink structure.

Here are the most popular permalink structures for WordPress Blogs.

%postname% :  This permalink is good but may lead to problems if two or more of your posts are exactly similar.

%postname%/%post_id% : Most widely used permalink structure around. Takes care of the above problem by adding a unique number.

%category%/%postname%/%post_id%/ : Provides a directory structure in the URL’s. but has a disadvantage.

Lets take an example to understand : Say one of your article slug is www.site.com/software/windows-vista-tips/123 and the user hopes to see all the posts files under the category software by removing the post slug part and entering www.site.com/software . What will happen ? The user will get a 404 page as the category URL is www.site.com/category/software.

%year%/%postname% : This permalink structure solves that directory misunderstanding above. These permalinks are sometimes termed as “Hackable permalinks” as the user can remove the post slug part and enter www.site.com/2009 to view all articles published in the year 2009.

Other examples of Hackable permalinks are %year/%monthnum%/%postname%/ and
%monthnum%/%postname%. It all depends how you combine the structured tags.

[You can copy the above combination of structure tags and paste it in your permalink options.]

6.How do i change the permalink Structure from my WordPress dashboard

Following are the steps to change the permalink structure from  your wordpress administration area :

1. Log in to your WordPress administration area and click “Permalinks” under Settings panel.

2.Click  the radio Button “ Custom Structure” and paste the combination of structured tags as your permalink structure. Click save changes and you are done.

Now  see your blog URL’s have been changed to your custom permalink structure. If the New permalinks don’t work and prove to be broken then you can always revert back to your Old permalinks.

7.Can Permalinks contribute towards Duplicate content ?

I guess Yes. Here is a Wonderful case study on permalinks contributing for Duplicate content

8.I am using %category%  in my permalinks. If I assign multiple parent categories in a post will all the category slugs be included in the URL ?

No it will not because only one parent category slug can be shown in a post. The category with the lowest ID will be shown and the rest of the categories will not be included in the URL. However the post  will appear in all the category pages and will be accessible.

This rule also applies if your permalinks contain the %tag%  structured tag.

9.I am using %category% in my permalinks. How will my permalink look if i include one parent category and subcategories ?

The subcategory slugs will be nested as subdirectories in your URL. So if you have a post  with “Software” as the parent category and “Firefox” as a subcategory, the URL would be /software/Firefox/your-post-slug.

10.What permalink Should i adopt if i later wish my Site to be included in google News ?

To include your blog in Google news one of the requirements is that there must be a three digit number (identifier) at the end of every URL.This can be achieved if you use the permalink as %postname%/%post_id%. (example : www.site.com/vista-tips/125)( also see : create a Sitemap for google news )

11.I cannot Change the permalink Structure. WordPress Reports an  Error. How do I fix it ?

While changing the permalink structure you may see a notification like  “You should update your htaccess now” and wordpress gives you a piece of code.

In that case  you have to change the content of your htaccess file and add the code that wordpress gives you. The htaccess file is located in the  root directory of your wordpress installation. So Open your FTP account and add the code in your htaccess file. After that  change the file permissions to 644 (important)

12.I have a large number of posts in the Old Permalink structure. However I want to choose a Different permalink structure without losing Traffic, Links and the Organic rankings. Is it possible  ?

Of course its Possible. Following are the steps involved

1.Download  and activate the Dean’s Permalink migration plugin in your blog

2.After you have activated the plugin just change your permalink structure and put the older permalink structure in Dean ‘s Permalink Migration Options. You are done

All Your older posts with the older permalink structure will be redirected to the new permalink structure automatically. You will neither lose any traffic nor any backlinks.

Some Words Of caution  Before You Edit your permalinks

You should be very careful with your permalinks. Here are some of the points to ponder before you actually update your permalink structure :

Its Better If you add the Post ID in your permalinks : If for any reason two or more of your post slugs became identical then they can still be accessible if you have added the post ID in your permalinks.A post ID when used in permalinks makes every URL unique.

Don’t use Dates , Months in your permalinks : The dates,months or the year number do not improve your URL structure and neither they add any keywords in your URL. Words in URL matter while numbers are ignored by the engines. And most readers are not interested in when the article is published. Rather they are interested in “What Topic “ it was  published under so it makes sense to use Category or tags  in permalinks and avoid the dates numbers etc.

Avoid using excessively long Permalinks : Long permalinks are discouraged for two reasons.First,when used in emails, chats or comments fields some long permalinks may be chopped of  and only a section of the link may be shown. Users clicking the link  will get a 404 page.Second,Long URL’s are harder to remember and may lower down your total URL score. Bad for SEO.

Help and Support forums

If these steps do not work, search for your problem in the Codex, Troubleshooting, or in the Support Forum. As a last resort, file a bug report.

WordPress permalinks FAQ : Your Guide to choosing the right Permalink Structure originally published on Ampercent

Optimizing the Title tags :

Well this is very important point to get started with. Most of the wordpress free themes don’t have it configured within it. Mostly all the pages have the same title tag, that is set for the home page of your blog.

So, you have to tweak them to put the relevant title tags for the pages shown. That means if you are going to show a page that shows a post with title, SEO Best Practices, then the search engine optimized title tag should be,

So how to do it ???

1. Login to your WP 2.8 account.

2. Go to Themes > Theme Editor.

3. Now select the file “header.php” for editing.

4. Find out the tag <title> within the <head>…</head> tags.

5. Now replace whatever is there within the <title>…</title> with the code below.

6. Update the file now. You can also check detailed discussion on title tags in our post Optimizing the Title tags of your WordPress Blog template.

Implement the Proper Header Tags :

Well when a search bot sees your page it treats it like a text only version. So if you don’t assign the header tags properly the bot will simply get them all without knowing what is header & what is body. So you should optimize this too. Read this for a detailed discussion on header tags.

Setting Up the Permalinks Structure :

Most of the new WP blogs don’t really take care of this slow poison. If you don’t do it now, you’ll have to go through much pain later on & if ignored you’ll never get the search engine rank that you deserve. The default permalink structure for WP for a page with post title SEO Best Practices is

whereas a search engine friendly post URL for the same should be,

How to do this ??

1. Go to Settings > Permalinks

2. Now in the Common Settings part do the same as shown in the image below. For a more detailed discussion on how to change permalinks structure you may follow this tutorial by Satish. In case you have already posted some posts with the old permalink structure you need to change that using a server side Mod_rewrite feature which uses a file named .htaccess, which is placed in Blog root folder. I won’t discuss this assuming you are a newbie. Consult other specialists to do this or else you may try this plugin named Permalink Migration Plugin.

Meta Tags :

This is something that WP don’t do by default but you should do this if you wanna show off your blog posts to the search engine bots. All you need to do is install a plugin named All In One SEO Pack. You will get all the necessary information on our post – Take Maximum advantage of the All in One Seo Pack Plugin.

Provide Google Sitemap :

A sitemap is like the map direction to your house. It includes all the necessary information of the URL structure of all the pages for your blog. Though its true that it does not directly help you get higher search engine positions but it does make sure that your pages are quickly & efficiently indexed by search bots. You’ll need to download a plugin named Google Sitemaps Generator for WordPress that will generate a sitemap for you.

Setting up the Ping Service :

Well this is also something that doesn’t help you gain higher search ranks directly but increases the visibility of your posts to front end users(readers). WP has a inbuilt pinging service. But this is a bit slow as it does the pinging every time you post an entry to your blog thereby delaying the next editing or any other action especially if you do have a long list of sites to ping. But use this helpful plugin that sets the pinging in a waiting queue & does the pings after you are finished with your work. The plugin is named MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer. Now after setting it up for your blog add the following ping services in the place provided.

For more info about ping services you can read our post – 69 Useful Ping Services to Ping after you post

Image Optimization

Get The HTML Attributes Fixed

1. PROPER “alt” TAGS :

This tag describes the image to a search bot. The tag alt=”seo best practices for wordpress blogs graphic” in the code is shown if the image fails to load for any particular reason. Keywords can be inserted here to get the best results out of it.

2. FIXING “title” TAGS :

Now the tag title=”seo best practices graphic” is the text that is displayed if mouse is hovered over the image . As the title tag & alt tag are different & the text inside the quotes can also be different. You can use the title tag for the primary keyword & the alt tag for the secondary keyword or just the opposite. I have two different texts for them.

3. “longdesc” ATTRIBUTE :

This is somewhat rarely used tag in an image HTML. As is not that necessary for text-based sites(or blogs) showing images for demo only. But image-based sites(or blogs) this is a key tag. I’ve linked a file named seo.txt which holds description for the image. If you are not into coding, use the plugin SEO Friendly Images for WordPress which will do the job for you.

Utilizing File Attributes

1. USE PROPER FILE NAME :

File name can also be optimized with keywords. So if you are targeting “SEO for WordPress” then the filename seo-best-practices.jpg seems perfect for the image. But filenames like seo.jpg or seo_best_practices.jpg won’t do, as the first one lacks keywords & second one uses underscores(_) which is not good, use dashes(-) as separator.

2. COMPRESS IMAGES FOR FASTER LOADING :

Compressing images doesn’t help in search engine optimization. But it enables images for faster loading. Here are some free tools that I have used lately.
1. Smush.it – It has got one WP plugin too.

2. Image Optimizer
3. AnvSoft Photo Manager 1.20
4. Love2Photo

Well that’s all that I think is the seo best practices that needs to be mentioned in this post. But if you feel there might be some others that need to be included feel free to contribute with your ideas in the comments. And if any of my suggestions needs any more explanations feel free to ask. Happy blogging !!!.

Basic On-page SEO Best Practices for new WordPress Blogs originally published on Ampercent