This can be important, especially for WordPress bloggers. For example, I once wrote on another blog about a dog ebook. For days afterwards, no matter what I wrote about, the Google ads remained for dog-related items!

On other occasions, I’ve received emails from people asking why they get ads for blogging items, although they never write about blogging.

Google filtering can help with this.

Does it work? Yes – but for WordPress blogs, the key is to add them appropriately, to help focus the topic. For example, to place the tags around the articles themselves, you’d want to add code inside the WordPress ‘loop’ (such as found in <strong>index.php</strong>):

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
...the rest of the code...
</div>
<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
<?php endwhile; ?>

The “<!— google…” lines are the new ones to add. This will emphasize the articles, and deemphasize the rest of the page for Google’s search engines.

One exception arises here – what about the main page, where there can be several articles? In my case, the dog article stayed on the front page for a while, skewing the ads. Ideally, I’d like the topmost article only to stand out. For that, we can just replace those Google lines with a bit of PHP code:

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<?php static $ab_count=0; if (++$ab_count<=1)
echo "<!-- google_ad_section_start -->"; ?>
<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
...the rest of the code...
</div>
<?php if ($ab_count++<=1)
echo "<!-- google_ad_section_start -->"; ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>

If you use this code, and look at the source code of your main blog page (use your browser’s ‘View Source’ option), you’ll see these tags are only around the first article – helping Google focus on it.

Google also provide a demphasizing tag, to tell it to view sections as less important. Use

<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->

to start a section, and

<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

to end it.

Notice I say ‘less important’, not ‘ignore’ – in fact, Google is very careful to say they will still index the whole page, only that they will give greater or lesser weight to certain sections (check Google’s site and blog for more about this topic).

This code can be useful in certain areas – for example, in WordPress blogs:

• If your sidebar is affecting your listing (for example, by showing older article titles) then place the tags at the first and last lines of your sidebar.php file, enclosing them.
• If your footer has text in it, likewise use the tags just before and after any text in the footer.php file (but be careful to place all tags before the ending </body> HTML tag).

If you find yourself asking ‘why do my Google ads never reflect my topics’ consider adding Google Section targeting. It’s simple and free, and can focus your ads. And with more targeted ads, you can expect your click through rates to rise – and profits too.

[This is based on an article from the ActiveBlogging Report of March 2006 - for the article and much more, join ActiveBlogging Platinum today]

To the uninitiated, Twitter is a site where people can post up to 140-character comments on what they are doing. Although that is over simplified, think about a friend wandering around with a phone telling you what he’s up to while he’s doing it, and you get the general idea. People drop in and subscribe to see what’s going on with a particular person – “subscribing” to the tweets.

Now I’m not saying Twitter is a waste of time (the same could be said about blogs, or reality television, or even books by some people). However, as Brian Williams pointed out on Thursday’s Daily Show, he doesn’t twitter because he doesn’t feel his day to day life is interesting enough. Since a world-renowned journalist and television personality doesn’t see himself twitting, I feel I’m in good company.

However, some people can and should Twitter – for example:

• If you’re Bradgelina, imagine the benefits of twitting everyone in mind-numbing detail about the next baby you’ve adopted, or the work you’re doing in New Orleans. You WILL have an audience – and you could make (another) difference.
• If you run a company, employees twittering can help put a human touch on your products and company. Imagine a tweet stream from an auto executive while asking for money in a Congressional hearing – I’d read that.
• If you’re at a current event, you could tweet while it’s live – the ultimate real-time coverage – and spend 140 characters per comment tearing down the speakers, presenters, and pointing out how much smarter you are than everyone there (no joke – as the Twitter examples and comments on Dan Perry’s blog shows, people are heavily into Twitter-Trashing).

So do you Twitter? Personally, I’m always looking at the bottom line as to how it relates to business. Not being a celebrity/wanna-be celebrity (and therefore not needing to promote myself as part of my “business”), the question is: how can Twitter help my business? If you can find a solid business reason to add it, then do so.

However, Brian Williams and I will sit this one out – at least for now.

Enterprising programmer that I was, I tried a number of solutions to make changes easier – server site includes, a Windows template machine I wrote, even batch files in DOS to copy content.

Then in 2004 I tried a program called WordPress. I’d heard about blogs, dismissed it as ‘not for me’, but set it up anyways.

That site, BigBizBlog.com, is still running – and I was hooked.

From a writer’s point of view, a blogging tool like WordPress makes writing and publishing online easier – MUCH easier.

But WP is more than that – because it manages CONTENT, not writing – and content can be much more than verse or prose.

Content can be information about a company, or a sales page, or FAQ answers.

And a program like WordPress makes adding and changing the site ridiculously easy – much easier than a decade ago with custom solutions or editing by hand.

But WordPress adds a secret weapon or two that is very hard to do, even by hand.

For example, I could never get a simple search to work on my sites – code was complicated, expensive, and the search results had to be regenerated after each page addition. With WordPress, these same search results are a byproduct of the powerful mySQL engine under the hood – simple and easy to use, update, and manage.

Another feature is pinging – as pages are added, they announce themselves to remote services. These services in turn act like a announcement page for new blogs (and new articles on old blogs). And search engines pay special attention to them. So much so that sites can get traffic without a single link – as long as they remember to ping (and in the old days, remember, no links meant NO traffic)!

This just touches the surface – but I not only write about WordPress, I use it daily. And although there are other tools out there to manage sites, I find WP a powerful combination of usefulness, popularity, and power that makes it my favorite.

Make it yours, too.

In my experience, the biggest SEO issue I’ve ever encountered in transferring web hosts is changing the URL of posts – either by changing the blog’s permalink, or the blog’s root address.

I once moved a blog from a \blog\ directory to a root directory – and watched my links disappear from a search engine! Now, older and (somewhat) wiser, I would use redirection entries in my .htaccess file to fix that, but at the time I just watched it all go away.

Some people mention that there are certain locations that Google ranks less – but the problem is, if Google really does rate certain ‘neighborhoods’ bad, then they may be overlooking a site or two that is good – and NOT indexing vital information, their bread and butter. So I’m skeptical of that being a major factor.

However, one big bugaboo with URLs is in the domain – moving a www. prefixed domain to one without, or vice versa. www.ActiveBlogging.com and ActiveBlogging.com are not exactly the same in Google’s eyes, and so make sure your URL stays exactly the same to avoid problems.

So when moving, keep the same permalink, keep the same address (with or without the www. as specified in the General Settings tab (the Settings section of your WordPress Admin), and place the blog in the same location as in your old site (that is, make the subdirectory or root the same).

Keep this in mind, and the transfer should go fine as far as SEO goes.

Yes.

And there’s not a darn thing anyone can do about it.

I was prompted by this when I heard of a product that promised to ‘hide’ WordPress from the search engines. Of course, every product has its hype, and that IS a neat way to advertise it. In fact, I suspect he/she may get sales because of that angle.

However, there’s really no way to hide WordPress, as long as it uses WordPress to make the site. For instance:

• Every WP site needs a /wp-content/ directory as well as /wp-admin/ and /wp-includes/ – and these are all ‘visible’ from the site.
• There are files besides index.php at the blog root – and although you can move the CONTENTS of wp-config.php (for security reasons), the file still needs to be there. You’ll get an empty page if you try to look at it – but you will get something. And Google can do the same thing.

OK. So, the question is, since Google knows my blog is here, and I’m using WordPress, should I care?

No.

And the reasons are very simple:

• Google wants to index information – if you have information on your site, Google wants to index you. And a WordPress blog makes it easier to index, not harder, since it’s a known product, with a familiar structure and layout (not to mention syntactically correct HTML, which a ‘roll your own’ product may not have).
• Likewise, ANY site with crap on it is Google’s bane. Thinking a bad site will get away with it because Google doesn’t recognize the underlying framework is like saying you can confuse people into buying a straw house just because it’s in an nice neighborhood. And while it may work in the short term, search engines are smart, and bad content will be found out.

So watch out for the hype – CONTENT is what gets a site noticed by search engines. And while we may not be able to hide our WordPress ‘roots’, I see no reason to do so!

The initial impulse usually seems to be to name the directory /blog/

This is often not a good idea, for a couple of reasons:

• Keywords in the URL are valuable. This is prime real estate in your Search Engine Optimization efforts, and shouldn’t be ignored. For example, if you’re doing a blog on dog training, which do you think benefits you more:

  http://egwebsite.com/dog-training/index.php
http://egwebsite.com/blog/index.php

  Install your blog in a subdirectory called /dog-training/ and you add keywords at no extra charge.

• You cue in the search engines. Many time I hear from people who are wondering why their blogs are full of ‘blogging’ Adsense ads. Far too often, they’ve installed in a /blog/ subdirectory. While it’s not the only thing, this helps guide Google into thinking you’re a blogger first and foremost.

It’s a small detail, but really hard to change after the fact. If you know the focus of your blog, consider a different subdirectory than /blog/ – after all, those extra keywords can’t hurt!