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Archive for the ‘Yoast’ Category

Joost and Frederick interview the founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, talking about loads of things. The entire interview was split in 2 because it was a bit lengthy, so you’ll hear part 2 next week.

In this part we discussed the ’3.org’ project: fixing everything about WordPress that is not WordPress itself, so we discussed WordPress profiles (check Joost’s here) and how they want to integrate those with WordCamps and some of the new APIs that the team is developing and improving. We also touched on what happens / is going to happen to orphaned plugins.

Then going on we discussed the Automattic product line, and where the focus of the 50+ people at Automattic is at the moment, WordCamps and even what’ll be (or might be) in WordPress 3.1, so go on, and have a listen now!

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So, just before I hop off on a 2 week holiday to France, I wanted to share something personal with you. In a long standing tradition of SEO’s and Affiliate marketers who show off their new ride, going from John Chow and Shoe on the affiliate side to Marcus and Dave on the SEO side, I’d like to tell you about my new pair, well actually trio, of wheels. I got myself a bakfiets. Or as you’d probably call it in English: a “Freight bicycle“. Yes, it’s a bike.

Why? Well because I either work from home, or fly, and for those small moments in between, I don’t need no car, I’d rather take a train. Ever heard of traffic jams? We seem to have invented those here in the Netherlands, or at least have a serious problem with them. Consider this: we’ve got longer traffic jams each office day, than that our country is long.

So why a “bakfiets”? Well I need to carry around my two kids sometime, and some beer, and this baby can carry it all at the same time. Ow and, just look how awesome it looks on me:

Now that we’re talking about rides by the way, I got my son a new ride too, a skelter:

Is that cool, or what?

Showing off my new ride! is a post from Joost de Valk‘s Yoast – Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don’t want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

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Matt Cutts is a Software Engineer who heads the web spam team at Google. Matt has been using WordPress for years and feels WordPress makes search engine optimization easier and easier with each update. On today’s show he highlights the fundamental principles of success for blogging with WordPress. And addresses questions like:

• How do I get started?
• What tools do I need?
• Why choose WordPress?
• Which WordPress plugins do I need?
• Do meta tags matter?
• How do I know what content readers want?
• How do I generate unique content – the way Google wants it?
• What about duplicate content?
• Have I been banned or penalized? Why haven’t I been indexed?
• Do 301 (permanent) redirects “lose” any page rank?

Want more? Matt promised to return in the future to tackle more of your questions sometime after his trip to Mt. Kilimanjaro. Meanwhile check out lots of helpful videos on YouTube.

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Let me give you some advice first: listen to this podcast with your Google Analyics account open and in front of you. Justin Cutroni, this weeks guest, is an asbolute expert on Google Analytics, and he shows by explaining in a very easy way the most fascinating new functions that Google Analytics has to offer and which reports you as a blogger can use to improve your blogging.

The show discusses loads of features, from Advanced Segments and Custom Variables (and how nicely they’re integrated into yours trulies new version 4 of his Google Analytics WordPress plugin) to the new Intelligence and Alerts tab. Not only does he explain the concepts, there are some very practical tips, like:

• How to create an advanced segment to find the content on your site that is generating most AdSense revenue.
• How to create an alert for sudden traffic spikes from referring sites.

If you’re serious about blogging and are using Google Analytics, or want to start using it, the hour listening to this podcast is well spent!

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I’ll openly admit to not liking PPC. I’ll even go as far as saying that, while I do understand its uses, I loathe, yes, hate it. The fact of the matter is that the part of SEO I like and excel at is the technical side of things, and the structure side. The keywords? I know how to research them, and I know how to use them, but writing ads and maintaining large campaigns isn’t my thing. That, and nothing else, is why you’ll rarely see me do a post on PPC, or hear me talk about it.

So quite a while back, I found myself bitching about AdWords again when chatting with Aaron Wall, of SEOBook.com fame. And he “casually” dropped that he was working on ppcblog.com, and they were starting an AdWords training program. I ignored it, as I do most every mention of PPC. Recently however, I’ve had to dive into PPC a bit to support one of my “original” clients: my mother’s Relatietherapie (relation therapy) practice. She was suffering badly from a few Google organic updates (which has since been fixed), and I wanted to make sure I knew what I needed to know to keep her practice going on AdWords should I need to.

I then remembered this AdWords training course Aaron mentioned, and got myself access. It’s the smartest thing I’ve done in a while, I think. I’ve not learned this much about PPC, ever, and I learned it in an enjoyable and, I must say, pretty easy way. Going from the fundamentals, to keyword research, campaign structure to the Quality Score and just basically everything you need to know about it…

Anyway, I’m not getting paid for this “ad”, nor if any of you sign up. I just wanted to share it with all of you, and make sure you start subscribing to the PPC Blog. Just see it as my way to make up for the lack of posts about that topic here

Just because I suck at PPC doesn’t mean you have to! is a post from Joost de Valk‘s Yoast – Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don’t want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

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Google Analytics has gotten so many new features in the last year, that the only way I could incorporate those into my Google Analytics plugin, which has been downloaded 932,691 times, was by doing an almost complete rewrite. That’s why today, I’m proud to announce version 4.0 of this plugin.

What’s new with this Google Analytics plugin?

Asynchronous tracking

First of all, this new version 4.0 switches to the new asynchronous tracking method. This new tracking was also the reason it took a while to get this version out the door: there were quite a few bugs to work out; tracking by the beta was not reliable for a while.

What’s the advantage of the new tracking you ask? Why bother switching? Well, there are three reasons, as listed by the Google Analytics blog:

• Faster load times for your web pages due to improved browser execution of the tracking code.
• Enhanced data collection & accuracy.
• Elimination of tracking errors from dependencies when the JavaScript hasn’t fully loaded.

If you want to know more about asynchronous scripts, check out this blog post by Steve Souders, in which he explains the concept and what it means for page load times. The short version: a normal script blocks other objects on your page, like images, from being loaded until it has been fully loaded. An asynchronous script allows for those other objects to be downloaded at the same time.

Custom Variables

Google launched the custom variable support in October 2009, and I’ve been playing with ways to use these in tracking ever since. Custom variables are a way to add data about the current page, the current session or the current user in your tracking, which you can use for some very cool things.

I’ve been thinking and working with guys like my buddies Frederick Townes and Justin Cutroni about what you should and could be tracking. It wasn’t easy, which is why I’m very proud to show you this settings panel:

Google Analytics Custom Variables

As you can see in the screenshot, you can segment by:

• Logged in users: speaks for itself, very useful on BuddyPress sites etc: where do people that are logged in go, where do others go. It stores the users primary user level in the variable, so you can even segment for just “subscribers”. (There’s an advanced option to ignore users of certain levels should you want to btw)
• Author name: track page views per author.
• Single category: if your posts are in only one category each, this allows you to track views per category.
• All categories: track multiple categories per post, a bit harder to view in Analytics, but could still be useful.
• Tags: track all tags for each post, has its limits but might be useful.
• Publication year: see what’s doing good and bad, more specifically whether your old posts are still getting traffic.
• Post type: especially with the new custom post type features in WordPress 3.0 this is very useful: if you’ve got movies, actors etc. set up as custom post types, this allows you to track how many page views each post type got.

So you could run reports showing which authors do better, which categories and / or post types get more pageviews and so on. This will provide you with the kind of analysis you need to improve your blog. I hope you’re starting to get why I’m so excited about this release. But wait, there’s more.

Google Analytics API integration

Where in the past I’d ask you to enter your “UA ID” from the backend, you can now simply click a button, authenticate with Google Analytics, select the right account and then the right profile and start tracking! Check out how easy that is:

Google Analytics Configuration

Of course you can still enter the UA ID by hand if you want to, just check the box in the lower left of the screenshot and you’ll get an input box to enter the UA ID.

E-Commerce integration

This plugin now fully integrates with both WP E-Commerce and Shopp: for both of these plugins it tracks sales using e-commerce tracking, allowing you to track where people that bought something came from, how they went about your site and which pages triggered them to buy.

All you have to do is install the plugin, and it’ll automatically detect whether you’re running one of these two plugins. You’ll then get a box like this:

WP e-commerce analytics integration

Event tracking

In the past this plugin used page views to track downloads and outbound clicks, thereby inflating page views. I started doing this before event tracking even existed, but of course this needed to be changed. The plugin now uses event tracking for this by default, but, if you want to, you can just check a box and it’ll switch to using page views again. You can also switch to page views just for downloads, to keep your goals working the same way.

An API for this plugin

This plugin adds a couple of filters so you can add your own tracking from your own plugins without having to hassle with the rest of the tracking. The 3 filters are:

$push = apply_filters('yoast-ga-custom-vars',$push, $customvarslot);
$push = apply_filters('yoast-ga-push-before-pageview',$push);
$push = apply_filters('yoast-ga-push-after-pageview',$push);

Custom variables are hard to deal with, as they need to be in the same “slot” all the time, that’s why the $customvarslot is passed along.

Go get the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin

I have to believe that I’ve convinced you by now, so please go get the plugin. Please do let me know in the comments when you’ve upgraded, and what you think I should be adding!

Google Analytics for WordPress reaches version 4 is a post from Joost de Valk‘s Yoast – Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don’t want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

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Adii Pienaar is a co-founder of WooThemes, a leading WordPress theme provider. WooThemes endeavors to maintain a tight connection with their users, an integral element of their success. Adii discusses what WooThemes is up to, what they’ve contributed to the WordPress community and how WooThemes innovates in addressing user problems.

In the News:

• Upcoming WordCamps
• VaultPress Launches
• Another BuddyPress Update
• WordPress MU Domain Mapping Update
• Conversion Rate Optimization with ShrimpTest A/B Testing

Plugin Picks of the Week:

• Redirection
• VaultPress
• PassExpire

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Today Joost is joined by Chris Coyier, one of the authors of Digging into WordPress and the founder of CSS Tricks. Chris and Joost talk about a lot of different subjects, ranging from their individual history with CSS sites to what Chris dubbed “the big three” updates in WordPress 3.0 (custom post types, menus, multi site) and to how Chris designs a site.

Plugin picks of the week

• Joost picked one of his own, Minimum Comment Length
• Which inspired Chris to pick another comments related plugin: Feature comments

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Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of one of the world’s most popular blogs – Mashable.com, which happens to be powered by WordPress! Since 2005 Mashable has been a leader in social media and technology news coverage in addition to hosting events like the recent media summit and social media day. In tip-packed show, Pete shares with us:

• Why he selected and continues to use WordPress,
• The secret formula of success for blogs,
• How to work with and develop teams,
• How to develop communities,
• How to measure growth and monetize,
• How to build a brand

In news:

• The MU forums are moving
• BuddyPress 1.2.5 is out
• Four WordCamps this month

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Josh Holmes is a UX Architect Evangelist at Microsoft.com, where he works hard to bridge the gaps that exist in technology adoption and Microsoft and open source projects. In the past, Josh used DasBlogML and he migrated it to WordPress quite easily. On the show, Josh shared with us many of the projects and contributions Microsoft is making to the WordPress community. Among those plugins created by the Microsoft team is Windows Azure Storage for WordPress with is similar to Amazon Web Services or Rackspace Cloudfiles. Among the more interesting was learning how WordPress can be run using Microsoft SQL Server for the database store as shown on sites like oddlyspecific.com for example with performance enhancements. Josh also highlighted some of the steps Microsoft is taking to make deployment of their technologies easier using the Microsoft Web Platform, which is quite a solid offering.

For those of you that are diligent developers or up for a challenge you may want to try the Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever.

In news:

• WordPress 3.0 release candidate is now available and looking good.
• Encourage constructive feedback for the developers that make the WordPress community so rich and free.

Plugin picks of the week:

• Changelogger Plugin
• DasBlogML

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