You should also check out other articles relevant to the SEO for blogs: How to Make a WordPress Blog Duplicate Content Safe and SEO for WordPress Part 1

Google Sitemaps

To keep the quality of the web search high Google spiders constantly crawl the Internet searching for new or updated content. The main way Google discovers a new page is following links that point to it. Some pages don’t have enough incoming links to be quickly discovered by Google, and it may take weeks for them to appear in the index.

To speed up the indexing process Google allows webmasters to upload a specially formatted XML file called ‘sitemap’ containing links to all the pages in a given website and the frequency of their updates. This not just increases the chances of a new or updated page to be picked up quickly, but also optimizes the indexing job, as instead of random crawl spiders now can be sent directly to the new content.Although I can say that from my experience WordPress blogs are usually indexed without much problem, it is still can be useful to create a Google account and upload a sitemap file for your blog. There is a handy plugin for WordPress that allows you to create sitemaps with little or now knowledge of PHP and XML. Check it out:

• Wordpress Sitemaps plugin from Arne Brachhold. It builds a new XML sitemap every time a post is written or updated. It can set priority of a page based on the number of comments to it. It also has a friendly user interface to customize all the parameters. Plus there is an informative video tutorial explaining how to install the plugin and work with sitemaps by Andre Chaperon.
• To display your XML sitemap in your blog just as a regular sitemap (which would help visitor to browse your blog) use SiteView plugin . The page is in German, so here is the link to the automated English translation .

Ping Servers

Each time you publish or update a post your WordPress engine attempts to notify ping servers about the new content on your site. Ping servers provide lists of recently updated blogs to blog search engines and aggregators helping them to show the most recent content to their users. You can manage the list of servers to ping in Options -> Writing section. The more servers you ping the better, but be aware that as your blog notifies a long list of ping servers this an extra load on your webserver making you wait every time you publish updates. The best solution is to choose a few popular ping servers that can guarantee that all the major blog search engines and aggregators will be notified about your new post. Here is the list of recommended ping servers:

• http://api.feedster.com/ping.php
• http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
• http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
• http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
• http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
• http://ping.feedburner.com
• http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080
• http://rpc.newsgator.com
• http://rpc.pingomatic.com
• http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
• http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

A comprehensive list of active ping servers you can find on Wikipedia

Valid (X)HTML

Only a small percentage of pages in the Web fully confirm the standards of W3C, and even some big websites allow having their web documents not validating against the W3C rules. The modern major browsers are capable to display such pages regardless the errors in HTML and search engine crawlers are mostly able to index them. But sometimes structure (X)HTML errors may prevent your pages to be indexed correctly. To make sure that your pages are valid use the W3C validation service or one of the plugins for your browser, such as for example, this one based on Tidy.

Post Content above Navigation

Your blog navigation and the content of your sidebar are repeated across the blog while the content of your posts is mostly unique. It would be a wise decision to put your posts above the navigation so that to get advantage of the content prominence (one of the factors used to judge the relevance of a page).

To see how the content and sidebar navigation are arranged in your pages use a text-only browser like Lynx, or temporarily disable CSS in your browser options. Or better yet, install Web Developer plugin for Firefox that allows you to enable and disable CSS in one click. Once you disabled CSS you can see you blog just as search engines crawlers see it.

The designers of WordPress themes place post content above navigation and sidebar by editing CSS file associated with the theme. The most popular blog layout – posts to the left, sidebar to the right – doesn’t require any special adjustments as sidebar appears after the post content. But when you want to use a three column layout or a layout with a left sidebar – you have to make sure that the theme you are going to use puts posts above the navigation and sidebars in the CSS disabled view.

Showing Teaser Text or Text Excerpts on the Home Page

If you prefer to write long posts you should think about showing only a part of them on your page. The reasons for that are:

• decreased loading time for your home page,
• improved visibility of you previous posts,
• precaution against duplicate content penalties.

Simply put tag after the first or second paragraph of your post and make sure that the first lines displayed on the home page are capable to capture the attention of your readers motivating them to read the entire post. Copyblogger gives excellent tips on writing captivating teaser text.

Some more resources on SEO for Blogs:

The importance of Title Tags in Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization for Blogs – SEO

SEO for Blogs and RSS

This article is largely based on SEO für WordPress – die besten Tipps – Teil 2 by Michael Wöhrer with some new input by me.
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I don’t envision a “next big thing” so much as an evolution of current trends towards standards compliance, responsible use of technologies and semantics, which will hopefully aid in creating a more tightly woven web of relationships between resources. I think we’ll continue to see simplistic elegance and functionality reign supreme.

I think a lot of what is “hot” right now will pass as a fad, and only what is truly functional, accessible, marketable and useful will remain.

Not entirely sure – the sky seems to be the limit – but the wider range of screen sizes from which to view the Internet (from large 20-25” monitors to small cell phone, watch and PDA screens), as well as the ever increasing awareness for the need to include people with various disabilities in the demographics for the websites we create, leads me to believe that the next big thing on the Web will include being able to design sites to be accessible from any number of devices in a large variety of sizes.

I would love to see some real progression on the notion of portable information: my content as I want it where I want it and adjusted for various (hopefully better) interfaces.

Pure interaction with the user: giving the user the chance to style a site to his needs, save those preferences and have them ready every time he visits a site. Users will be able to interact with the content without the webmaster or designer having to constantly monitor everything in the background. They just have to set up the site, then it will be up to the users.

Paradigm shift: you will not search the Web for information. You will define what you want, and the Web will collect it for you. Example: I, the customer, will define that I want to buy a screen. This info will be distributed/collected by potential vendors. They will then present me, the customer, with the information that will enable me to purchase their products.

I think much of the hype of Web 2.0 will lead to more focused websites that not only do something (one thing) well, they do something that everyone actually wants and/or needs. Many of the sites we see now focus on some cool technology or concept, like social interaction, which has little practical usefulness. People rarely gather online and do things for the good of the community. They only do things that make their lives easier or because there is some intrinsic reward.

In my opinion, the future (Web 3.0?) will be the focus on content, and not functionality (which is Web 2.0). The sites that are able to provide the easiest access to the most in-depth and useful content will be the ones I would bank on. Everything else, including all the copy-cat sites that don’t improve on another idea, will go the way of the dodo.

Voice interactivity/navigation – users say what they want to do or where they want to go within a site OR a digital “site assistant” that speaks what the visitor would normally read – less text and a more replicatedhuman interface.

Stuff that “just works.” Users don’t care about the technology, as long as they can find what they want.

Fragrant websites, using XHTML 2.5 markup to drive pheromone emitters on USB sticks or embedded into SD cards for mobile phones and PDAs (making your site designs truly sexy). Odor-capture-enabled cards on digital cameras add a new dimension to images on the Internet. Does that food smell good? Book a place in our restaurant now! Ordering flowers? Have a sniff of these!

I believe that now that people are getting faster Internet connections, things like video that are beginning to take off now will be a big part of e-commerce sites and service sites. It is a great way to try and earn trust with the customer as you can show your face – chat to them and let them know who you are.

Customer service – I expect the customer service levels of commercial websites will increase to the point where customers will get a much richer experience from shopping online than traveling to brick-andmortar stores. This will allow a wider range of products to become available on the Web.

The search engines will overtake the Web and its content! More and more, search engines and directories will store the content of websites, and there will be no more need to go to the actual sites. Why visit a page when its content is available in at least 6 other places?

The next big thing on the Web will be family (or heritage) portals where genetic- or heritage-related families combine to create genealogy sites. These sites will maintain information about the ancestry – family names, occupations, photos, etc. – in digital format. Global weather won’t destroy or wipe out entire memories of families – it will be safe, stored on redundant servers and preserved in the “heritage family vault” on the Web. You’ll get this huge pool of data about people and how they’re related to each other. Whether it’s just family all within one town or one state or one region or one country or one planet, just link the people with a photograph and blurb. How cool would that be? An option for a fee-based service could be sending mouth swabs to get family members DNA-sequenced. Store that information for any need to match DNA for any reason – health or emergency, we have it on hand and ready for immediate use and retrieval.

I believe that the next step for the Web is total immersion. Cell phones, PDAs, laptops, PCs, TVs – so many different ways exist to access the Web and more are added every day. The Web is going to become –if it hasn’t already – the hub on which the world spins. Think about it :

• You’re away from home on a business trip, your hotel room is smart. It knows your name. It knows what kind of beer you like, how you like your coffee and how you like your toast done in the morning. It knows this because you bought the latest, greatest refrigerator, toaster and coffee maker for your home. Each has the capability to learn how it is most used. The refrigerator scans bar-codes as you put items in. These appliances use Bluetooth or some other RFID to access a secure database through the Internet. This database is then accessed by your hotel room appliances when you check-in. In the morning, when you wake up, your coffee is made just how you like it, and your toast is cooked.

• Your dog ran away. For a moment, you panicked, but then you remembered you had that new chip implanted (or a new collar put on) with an RFID signal. Before you know it, you’re pulling up findyourbestfriend.com, logging in and locating your dog. How? Sensors findyourbestfriend.com implanted onto the local power lines picked up the signal and reported it back to the company’s servers. The servers triangulate the position from sensor data and GPS feeds, then place it into your browsing window. You go get your dog.

• You can’t wait for the next big action movie, “Vampire Fraternity Followers of Dogbert” to come out. You just got off the movie’s blog, where the producers informed everyone that post-production is done. A few years ago, it still had a few months to go. The movie had to be copied to film or DVD and distributed. Because of the proliferation of Gigabit Ethernet, and the bill that was to abolish Net Neutrality was defeated, your local movie theater will be showing a streaming, HD projection of the movie, complete with previews and a few ads, in about a half an hour. Better get moving, if you want a great seat for seeing Dogbert lead his army of vampire frat boys against a world full of “blasted simpletons.”

The web is becoming a reflection of, and enhancement to, our world. It connects us, binds us, enables us and empowers us. The next step is for it to embrace us. Integration of Internet technologies into everyday life that does not involve a desktop or even a mobile/cell/PDA – how about stock control of your fridge via RFID and live links to online grocery stores? Or recipe ideas straight to your cooker based on what you cook? Essentially, bridging the gap between all the devices we currently use independent of the Web where there’s real value to be delivered to the enduser. This is the future.

Source:

The State of Web Development 2006/2007, SitePoint Pty Ltd. and Ektron, Inc., August 2006. Available at http://www.sitepoint.com/launch/survey06/

Do you use Web 2.0 tagging websites? Well, I do. They are so much handier than the traditional browser bookmarks! I can easily access my favorites’ list at home, at the university campus, at cyber cafes, at airports or train stations. I can always find something interesting by looking at what other people tag. By now millions of Internet users have discovered the advantages of the social web sites like Digg, Fark, Del.icio.us and others. These websites bring huge benefits to webmasters as well. When your visitors tag your content they affirm that it is actually interesting and useful. And since most of the social websites allow favorites lists sharing, or use tags as a scoring parameter to rank news entries, thousands of other members can easily discover and visit your site. So social and tagging websites are indeed a great way to promote a site. By adding links to Web 2.0 tagging resources to your posts you remind the visitors to bookmark your content. Besides, including the post url and title as parameters into the link code simplifies the task of tagging.

How can you do it in your Wordpress blog? Quite easily. You don’t need to have PHP or CSS skills; although you have to understand what your Stylesheet and Main Index Template are for. We are going to create a panel of links that looks something like this:

I can’t guarantee that this tutorial will work with any WordPress theme – there are just too many of them. I used one of the simplest available (Simpla) hoping that this will ensure the maximum compatibility.

Web 2.0. Tagging Links Panel

First of all, we need these Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us etc. icons. Download, unrar and copy them to your images/bookmarks/ directory.

Then we have to update your Stylesheet file. Login to your WordPress blog, and open the Dashboard. Click the ‘Presentation’ menu item and you will see your current theme as well as other available WordPress themes. Click the ‘Theme Editor’ link. On the Theme Editor page click ‘Stylesheet’ in the right menu, scroll the CSS code down and place your cursor at the end of the code, then press ‘Enter’ to start a new line. We are about to add a few lines of code to the stylesheet. Be careful not to alter or delete the existing code – this can ruin the outlook of your blog! To avoid an accidental damage of your theme, FIRST copy and paste the current stylesheet code to the Notepad and save it to your hard drive! Then copy and paste at the end of the stylesheet the following code:

Download file

Now click the ‘Update file button’.

To explain shortly why are we doing this: our links will be formatted with the UL tag. Normally the UL tag produces a list like this:

• item 1
• item 2
• item 3

But we need to have our links in one line. It can be done by inserting whitespaces between them, but this is not the best way to do it. By using the CSS modified UL tag we display our links in one line and ensure the equal intervals between them at any screen resolution.

Next step: adding links code to your WordPress template. I used some WordPress defined PHP functions to get the post url and post slug (the title of your post with whitespaces replaced by ‘+’ characters to be used as a parameter in tagging links). Also we are going to display the tagging links only when the post itself is displayed, but not on your front page. Otherwise the tagging panel would appear multiple times on your index page – after each post, and this can seriously damage the usability of your design. So I am going to use a simple is_home() check the ensure that this is indeed a post page.

In your Theme Editor click ‘Main Index Template’ item in the right menu. To avoid an accidental damage of your theme , FIRST copy and paste the current template code to the Notepad and save it to your hard drive! Our tagging panel will be shown right above the comments block. So look through the code and find the following line:

< div class="entrymeta">

Place your cursor right before this line and paste the following code:

Download file

Click the ‘Update File’ button.

The links contain the post url that is automatically retrieved by the_permalink() function, and the post slug is retrieved by the sanitize_title($post->post_title) function. When a user clicks on one of the links both parameters will be automatically entered into the submission form on the tagging website.

Now refresh your website. Does it look as it is supposed to? If yes – congratulations! If not – you’d better revert to the previous condition by copying and pasting the old versions of your theme that you saved before adding the above code blocks.

Once again: I cannot guarantee that this tutorial will work with any theme – there are just too many of them. I used one of the simplest available, hoping that this will ensure the maximum compatibility. If you have any questions about your particular case, comment this post, and we will try to find a solution.

Have fun!