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BluDomain Mini Blog SEO and functionality review

Marc — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 21:10:59 +0000

A couple of years ago BluDomain introduced a unique HTML blog offering that BluDomain named “Mini Blog”. The BluDomain Mini Blog can stand alone or be part of one of BluDomain’s other templates. Like WordPress the BluDomain Mini Blog produces HTML blog and posts and is driven by a MySQL database. And that is pretty much the end of any substantive similarity between BluDomain’s blog offering and a typical self-hosted WordPress blog. They are entirely different in setup, administration and output.

Shortly after the release of BluDomain’s blog offering Mark Haynes did an excellent post describing its features and functionality. Mark’s inclusion of screen captures together with step-by-step administration and post creation discussion provides a good insight into the BluDomain Mini Blog. But his summation includes a potential caveat “If you’re running a word press blog and using all the features for solid SEO then this blog is a big step backwards.” So it is useful to add a comparison of BluDomain Mini blog and a standard WordPress blog features.

When Mark published his review WordPress was at version 2.8.4. In the intervening 2+ years BluDomain’s Mini Blog has not been updated, yet WordPress has had five (5) major update revisions and is now up to version 3.3. So let’s compare BluDomain Mini Blog to WordPress Blog with current versions.

BluDomain Mini Blog comparison to a WordPress Blog

Feature/Function	BluDomain Mini Blog	WordPress Blog
Maximum width	800 pixels	Unlimited
Upload background	Yes	Yes
Choose your own colors	Yes	Yes
RSS	Posts	Posts and Comments
External links	3	Unlimited
Social Media icons/links	Facebook, Twitter	All, Any, unlimited
Pages	Just 1 for Contact	Unlimited
Image tags	Alt	Alt, Title, Description, Caption
Video support	Yes	Yes
Custom navigation	No	Yes
SEO	Description, Page title	Description, Page title, Custom title, Optimized URL links, H1, H2, Canonical options
Comments discussion	No	Yes, nested comments
Hierarchy	None	Yes, Categories and Tags
Themes	None	1,400+ Free to download
Extensions	None	17,000+ Free to plugins
Cost	$50, installed	Free to download
End user license	Proprietary	Open source GPL2

Comparing the features and functionality it is difficult not to reach for the advantages of WordPress. Even if you decide to use our optimized WordPress for BluDomain setup service with an included custom premium theme utilizing all the advantage WordPress offeres in SEO and visitor engagement, the total cost is still very competitive. And, WordPress can work on the same hosting that you would use for almost any BluDomain site.

If you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment, call or email.

Best WordPress SEO permalink structure for blogs and sites is now made simple

Marc — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 11:32:54 +0000

For SEO and site visitor engagement the URLs of your pages and posts can make a big difference. Fortunately new code in WordPress 3.3 allows more freedom in setting the URL link for your content with no negative performance or response time impact for the choice you make. Now your WordPress based site can have both user and search engine friendly permalink URLs with no penalty.

Prior to WordPress 3.3 setting the optimal URL for SEO and site visitors could cause your site to respond more slowly. This was as a result of a performance penalty related to “verbose rewrite rules” within WordPress which dictated increased database calls for URLs which included only the title or “postname”. Yet for visitor engagement and SEO slower site performance was often the result of an choosing SEO preferred option.

WordPress has a Settings option for what are called “permalinks“, meaning that the URL composition for the page or post can be modified or selected site wide. This is how WordPress describes the feature; “By default WordPress uses web URLs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them, however WordPress offers you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your permalinks and archives. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links.”

Using a URL page/post descriptive keyword structure improves engagementfrom site visitors, who will be more inclined to visit descriptive URLs, and search engines which will be able to index and retrieve keywords from the URL when they match search terms. This can help a lot with SEO and your site visitor conversion. Google and other search engines have made it so your permalinks are a basic part of a search engine user’s decision making process. The URL permalink appears as part of your search snippet on search result pages. Using redundant terms from categories in your permalink URL option could make your site appear spammy. While using a date in the permalink could make your content seem dated. Both cause unneeded length and useless terms in your URL. Fortunately those compromises are no longer needed.

WordPress permalink performance considerations are now resolved.

Up until WordPress 3.3, there was a quite serious performance issue when you have a lot of pages when you use just the postname, that is solved in WordPress 3.3. We can now use a simple permalink URL having only the domain and postname. This means shorter undated URLs with less redundant terms and more relative keyword content are possible with no performance issues. There are no more excuses to not use just the postname.

The danger of changing WordPress permalink URLs on an established site

Now before you change the permalink URLs of an existing site consider the potential search and SEO impact. Despite how easy it is to change permalinks in Admin, it is complex and can have a dramatic negative impact on your site if you’re not careful. After all you do not want to present a site with many multiple “404 page not found” results to your visitors. There are two steps in changing your WordPress permalink structure.

The first is simple, go to Settings -> Permalinks and select “Post name”.
The second step is to redirect your old permalinks to your new ones. To do that, you have to add redirects to your .htaccess file. Fortunately Joost de Valk has created an excellent webpage-based tool to address the potential negative impact from changing the permalink URL for sites which already have external links to content on other sites and in search engines. It automatically generates the redirect for you based on your domain and your old permalink structure which you can then include in your site’s .htaccess file.

If you make the change to your .htaccess file please test it by looking up your content on your site in a search engine and clicking through to that post/page on your site.

For more information about URLs and SEO read this article from Search Engine Journal, “URLs and SEO: Various Strategies for URL File Names“.

And if you have any problem feel free to email or call.

Almost everything you need to know about SEO for search marketing

Marc — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 21:30:08 +0000

Once I get the structure and functions of your complete website correct (valid HTML, semantically correct, permissions, sitemaps, indexable domains, blog and galleries together, social media integration, optimal URLs, site speed and much more) then it is all about your content. That is the key to strong online search engine marketing. That is what is important! But how to do it day-to-day after the site is built?

In the below video one of the most respected WordPress SEO gurus, Joost de Valk, explains “Making sure your content is found”. It is 40 minutes long and very well worth every moment of your time.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

WordPress Fatal Error Allowed Memory Size Exhausted on Bludomain Hosting

Marc — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 12:32:55 +0000

If you have installed WordPress on your Bludomain hosting account and have a good sized, well featured blog you may sometimes be getting an error message like this “Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 122880 bytes) in /….”

This error is caused when WordPress “bumps up against” the hosting account’s PHP memory limit. This can happen when doing tasks like uploading a number of images or using the automatic update feature.

In almost every Bludomain hosting account I have worked with the limit is set at 32M. But as WordPress has grown and become more powerful over the last few years 32M is very often not enough. Particularly if you have a blog with a lot of posts and/or using plugins like NextGen Gallery. These days it is best to allow WordPress 48M or even better 64M of PHP memory.

In most hosting accounts the memory limit is set in a file in the root directory named php.ini. All you need to do is find a line that looks like “memory_limit = 32M” and change the number to what is needed. Unfortunately in Bludomain’s typical hosting it is not that easy, the php.ini file is not accessible. And I have not found an always successful alternative with Bludomain. Workarounds, like setting the memory limit in the .htaccess file does not often work. Neither does modifying the WordPress wp-config.php file. Bludomain seems to have set the memory limit firmly in place.

My recommendation is that if you are experiencing the memory exhausted fatal error send a support request to Bludomain requesting that the PHP memory limit for your hosting account be increased to 64M.

To see what your hosting memory limit is and how much of it your WordPress installation is using you can install and activate Alex Rabe’s handy plugin WP Memory Usage. WP Memory Usage will provide a graph with percentage usage as well as inform you of the PHP version in your WordPress dashboard. If you are showing over 85% memory usage you might as well send the support request into Bludomain soon. Once you get to 90% it is almost assured you will begin to experience the memory exhausted fatal error message from time to time. Let me know if you have any questions.

How to Import Your Website Blog into Your Facebook Business Page

Marc — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:12:33 +0000

UPDATE: Importing a blog into a Facebook business page is no longer supported by Facebook. Please see this post for more details – You can no longer feed your blog to your Facebook page. To import a blog or other pages from your website you will need to create a custom tab for your Facebook busines page. More on how to do that soon.

- – - – -

Here is the how-to for automatically importing your website’s blog posts onto your Facebook business page. It is not very complicated, but it is not very intuitive either so it made sense to share the instructions in a short video.

As I mention in the video it can take a while before Facebook recognizes your website blog, but be persistent it will work eventually and it is well worth it from both a social media marketing effort as well as enhanced search engine presence. If you have any questions send me an email.

Upgrading to WordPress 3.0 on Bludomain hosting

Marc — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:41:32 +0000

WordPress recently released a major upgrade, WordPress 3.0 and many Bludomain website owners also use their website to self-host WordPress. Unfortunately upgrading to WordPress 3.0 on Bludomain hosting can sometimes present a frustrating problem, it freezes or you get an “memory size exhausted” error. The upgrade is important due to better security, speed and some great new features, but most Bludomain hosting accounts have a 32MB PHP memory resource limit which can prevent the upgrade. WordPress 3.0 has grown large enough with the new features and the new Twenty-Ten theme that it requires a larger PHP memory resource limit to upgrade. But once you can get it upgraded, WordPress 3.0 will make the needed adjustments.

Fortunately there is a plugin that you can install in your current WordPress site that will bump the memory resource sufficiently to overcome the limitation and allow you to upgrade to WP 3.0 simply. The plugin is called WP memory bump and it was created by the WordPress development team to deal with the issue.

So here is how you can upgrade to WordPress 3.0 with Bludomain hosting:

1) Backup your current WordPress files (the wp-content folder is all you need to copy) and backup your database. If you don’t have the WP DB backup plugin installed now is a good time to do it. It makes the database backup a cinch.

2) Deactivate all your plugins.

3) Upload, install and activate the WP memory bump plugin. It should be the only plugin that is active.

4) Proceed with the WordPress 3.0 automatic update.

5) When the WordPress 3.0 update is complete, proceed to update your plugins in their current deactivated status.

6) You can now begin to reactivate your plugins. Most widely used plugins now support WordPress 3.0, but if you make use of any relatively obscure plugins it might be best to activate them one at a time. That way if there is a problem, you will know which plugin to suspect.

7) Deactivate and delete the WP memory bump plugin. You will not need it again.

You should now have a completed fully up to date operational WordPress 3.0 site installation. But, feel free to send me an email if you have any questions or problems.

My Favorite Twenty Plugins for Using WordPress as a Website Content Management System

Marc — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 04:02:14 +0000

Recently I was talking with Kerry at Camera Dojo and he asked what my choice plugins were when using WordPress as the content management system (CMS) for a total website. Below, in no particular order, is the “default” plug-in pack that I install when I begin setting up a WordPress based website and why. Some of these are common and will be used on almost any WordPress install, others are almost unique to the needs of using WordPress as a website CMS.

WP Memory Usage Marvelous simple plugin that shows the active hosting PHP version, memory limit and current memory usage on the Dashboard. A current WordPress web/blogsite needs 64MB and PHP5 to operate well, this plugin will tell you easily what are the settings for the hosting. This is info you need early so it is one of the first I activate.

Reveal IDs for WP Admin Adds the entry ID back into the administration panel of posts, pages, categories etc. Needed for things like excluding a category from a dynamic menu, etc.

All in One SEO Allows you to fine tune Titles and Descriptions for every page and post.

Image Friendly SEO Just to make sure that every image has a proper Title and Alt attribute, even if the site administrator forgets.

WP Super Cache With what seems to be Google’s increasing emphasis in 2010 on page load speed and to enhance your site visitor’s experience this plugin is more valuable than ever.

WordPress.com Stats A very nice companion to Akismet (they both use your WordPress.com API key). It shows useful site visitor stats on your Dashboard providing a quick source of timely metrics for your site.

WordPress DB Backup The database is where most of the content and access for a WordPress site resides. Backup early and often, even more so while building the site.

Twitter Friendly Links Have your Tweets show a backlink to your website’s URL not to bit.ly or some other third party service.

Twitter Tools Integrates your WordPress website with your Twitter account.

Page Links To Allows you to use pages or posts as navigational links to non-WordPress site sections or off-site resources.

Redirect Parent to First Child Use the parent page just for site organization. This plugin will automatically redirect the parent page to its first currently published child page

PHP Code Widget Similar to the standard text box widget, but it will also allow PHP code to function

Widget Logic With a full site I usually don’t want every widget appearing on every page. This plugin adds a conditional statement field to every widget that you can use to control on what pages the widget appears.

My Page Order Easy drag and drop reorder for your page navifation

My Category Order Easy drag and drop reorder for your category navigation

Google Analytics for WordPress If you want to be a successful internet marketer you will use Google Analytics, this plugin makes it easy to add Analytics to WordPress sites.

Google XML Sitemaps A must have! Automatically builds a compliant site map and notifies Google, Bing etc of the maps location on your server.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) Excellent for building interior links. It gives you a list of linked posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site

Sociable or Sexy Bookmarks Encourage your site visitors to share your site content across the web. I use either one depending upon the site’s target market.

cforms II My favorite contact form tool.

When I published this post these plugins were current and mostly behaved well with each other. As time passes that may change. If you have questions, please feel free to send me an email.

Another Bludomain Website SEO Upgrade Success

Marc — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:14:16 +0000

It is pretty well established that a Bludomain website alone will never get good search results and resulting website traffic. Having experienced many months of poor search placement and website traffic, and then trying to SEO his Bludomain site to no avail Jim Bendewald of James Studio Photography in Madison WI emailed for help.

I installed Kertesz2 on the same hosting account with his existing Bludomain site. This would allow for a better search engine friendly platform including management of an improved landing page, fully integrated Blog and better indexed About, Contact, Testimonials and Investment type page content. All on the same domain and integrated with his existing Bludomain site.

When he was ready after adding content and styling to his Kertesz2 template, I revisited his site, “wrapped” the existing Bludomain site with Kertesz2 and replaced the original splash page with the site’s new landing page and did some final SEO adjustments.

SEO Makeover Results

There is still a lot of content to add and details but almost instantly the site’s SEO score from websitegrader.com went from a low 29 all the way up to 67 in the same day (click the links to read the reports). Plus the site now sends automatic message updates notifying search engines like Google, Bing and Technorati almost every time content is added to the site.

Plus main page of the site has gone from a low engagement black to a more engaging and dynamic layout. Here is the new look -

If you want to reduce your website advertising cost and yet get more traffic to your Bludomain website send me an email. Be ready for the upcoming booking season. I can help you do it yourself or do a complete fully styled layout and site design/build to your design ideas and preference for you, depending upon your budget.

“WordPress Takes Care of 80-90% of Search Engine Optimization” says Matt Cutts of Google

Marc — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:49:46 +0000

He also said that “WordPress is a fantastic piece of software“. So why should we care what Matt Cutts has to say? Well here is what the Wikipedia has to say about who is Matt Cutts:

Matt Cutts works for the Search Quality group in Google, specializing in search engine optimization issues. He is well known in the SEO community for enforcing the Google Webmaster Guidelines and cracking down on link spam. Cutts also advises the public on how to get better website visibility in Google.

In other words … if you want to learn how Google indexes and ranks your website, Matt is the go-to guy. Fortunately for all of us he is a good teacher. His blog is a good resource, but the video below is outstanding for a short lesson on how you may improve your website’s or blog’s search rank, easily, particularly if it is WordPress based. The total video is about 45 minutes long, but take your time and just watch a few minutes at a time. Matt gives great tips on everything from site basics to writing content for maximum SEO results throughout the presentation below. You will learn why I now build websites using only WordPress and how I work to maximize the internet marketing results for my website clients.

“Straight From Google What You Need To Know”, WordCamp San Francisco 2009

Bludomain hosting for WordPress UPDATE

Marc — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:33:47 +0000

Once in a while I find a Bludomain hosting account that does not have Fantastico enabled, making it not possible to set-up WordPress on Bludomain following my illustrated how-to guide from last week.

What happens is when you click on the Fantastico icon you will get a screen that reads something like this -

“Fantastico is not installed at the default location /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/fantastico. Either move the Fantastico directory from it’s current location to /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/fantastico OR enable ioncube loaders in WHM -> Tweak settings.”

I am not sure why some Bludomain hosting accounts have this variation, but that does not mean that WordPress cannot be hosted in your Bludomain hosting, just that the install will need to be done manually.

Manually means creating the MySQL database and then transferring the WordPress files via FTP. Here is the detailed instructions on how to do it -

http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Detailed_Instructions

WordPress works just as well on Bludomain regardless of it being an automatic or manual install.

If you have this situation of Bludomain not having the Fantastico automatic install on your hosting account and want help to install WordPress manually, let me know. I can usually do it the same day and my charge is nominal.