SEO Update

Moving Your wp-content directory

As of WordPress version 2.6, you may change the default location of the wp-content directory. There are several good reasons for doing this, including enhancement of site security and facilitation of FTP updates. Here are some examples:

// full local path of current directory (no trailing slash)
 
define('WP_CONTENT_DIR', $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/path/wp-content');
 
// full URI of current directory (no trailing slash)
 
define('WP_CONTENT_URL', 'http://domain.tld/path/wp-content');

You may also further specify a custom path for your wp-content directory. This may help with compatibility issues with certain plugins:

// full local path of current directory (no trailing slash)
 
define('WP_PLUGIN_DIR', $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/path/wp-content/plugins');
 
// full URI of current directory (no trailing slash)
 
define('WP_PLUGIN_URL', 'http://domain.tld/path/wp-content/plugins');

via WordPress Configuration Tricks.

Title Tag Format

Best Practice:

Primary Keyword – Secondary Keywords | Brand

Or

Brand Name | Primary Keyword and Secondary Keywords

Reasoning:

We recently finished our first round of intensive search engine ranking factors correlation testing. The results were relatively clear. If you are trying to rank for a very competitive term, it is best to include the keyword at the beginning of the title tag. If you are competing for a less competitive term and branding can help make a difference in click through rates, it is best to put the brand name first. With regards to special characters, we prefer pipes for aesthetic value but hyphens, n-dashes, m-dashes and subtraction signs are all fine.

Title Tag Coorelation

via SEOmoz | SEO Best Practices: SEOmoz’s New Policies Based on Updated Correlation Data.

From now on, if you wish to sculpt PageRank, you’ll want to use one of the following classic PR sculpting methodologies:

* Option A: An embedded iFrame on the page containing the links you don’t want the engines to follow (remember not to link to the iFrame URL, and potentially block it using robots.txt)

* Option B: Links that call a Javascript redirect script with access blocked for search engine bots (as Google is also now crawling basic javascript and counting links through it)

* Option C: An embed in Flash, Java or some other non-parseable plug-in that contains the desired links

* Option D: Settings that turn off links for non-cookied or non-logged-in visitors

via SEOmoz | Google Says: Yes, You Can Still Sculpt PageRank. No You Can’t Do It With Nofollow.

• Phrase search (”")
  By putting double quotes around a set of words, you are telling Google to consider the exact words in that exact order without any change. Google already uses the order and the fact that the words are together as a very strong signal and will stray from it only for a good reason, so quotes are usually unnecessary. By insisting on phrase search you might be missing good results accidentally. For example, a search for [ "Alexander Bell" ] (with quotes) will miss the pages that refer to Alexander G. Bell.
• Search within a specific website (site:)
  Google allows you to specify that your search results must come from a given website. For example, the query [ iraq site:nytimes.com ] will return pages about Iraq but only from nytimes.com. The simpler queries [ iraq nytimes.com ] or [ iraq New York Times ] will usually be just as good, though they might return results from other sites that mention the New York Times. You can also specify a whole class of sites, for example [ iraq site:.gov ] will return results only from a .gov domain and [ iraq site:.iq ] will return results only from Iraqi sites.
• Terms you want to exclude (-)
  Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results. The minus sign should appear immediately before the word and should be preceded with a space. For example, in the query [ anti-virus software ], the minus sign is used as a hyphen and will not be interpreted as an exclusion symbol; whereas the query [ anti-virus -software ] will search for the words ‘anti-virus’ but exclude references to software. You can exclude as many words as you want by using the - sign in front of all of them, for example [ jaguar -cars -football -os ]. The - sign can be used to exclude more than just words. For example, place a hyphen before the ’site:’ operator (without a space) to exclude a specific site from your search results.

Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet
A one-page reference sheet. It is a guide to patterns in regular expressions, and is not specific to any single language. Available in PDF and PNG.

# Dig your internal traffic analytics for traffic drops or bad trends;

# Perform [site:yoursite.com] search in Google to see if Google reports same number of indexed URLs;

# Check if Google Webmaster Tools report any problems;

# Take a look if Google toolbar PR has changed (graybar PR might be a signal of penalty);

# Check your site ranking for a “domain-name” search (without the TLD).

via 10 Ways to Diagnose a Google Penalty.

Secure Your Wordpress Blog in 7 Easy Steps

I recently had the misfortune of suffering a series of Malware/Trojan virus attacks on this and some other Wordpress blogs we operate. I had been planning on taking measures to protect our Wordpress applications from potential attacks such as this but like many other things, procrastination took first priority.

via Secure Your Wordpress Blog in 7 Easy Steps | SearchRank Blog.

In-Depth Analysis Tools

When you need more detailed information, for example when you’re investigating your own website, or your competitor’s, you need tools that go more into depth. These tools might show link building efforts, structures, or maybe even data from the past.

Although Google’s Webmaster Tools also can provide quite some link related info, I’m not going to mention this one, because it can only be used for your own sites, and not -for instance- competitors.

via Indispensable Link Building Tools | Wiep.net.