10 Essential WordPress Plugins to Improve SEO & Usability

After you've installed WordPress and covered the basics of improving WordPress for SEO and the user experience, it's time to go a bit deeper. Many great plugins are available to help your WordPress site when it comes to SEO, usability, and conversion. Here are 10 great plugins – most of which are available for free.

1. WordPress SEO by Yoast

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/

Download this plugin now and use it on every WordPress site you own. This plugin, in my opinion, is as important as the WordPress installation itself. It's also extremely easy to use.

Also, if you haven't already, make sure to use Yoast's Google Analytics plugin.

2. Simple URLs

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-urls/

This plugin is great. You can track outbound links and control them completely right within the WordPress backend. If you add Disallow: /go/ into your robots.txt file it will also stop any authority from passing through the link itself.

You can use this plugin to keep track of these outbound links. For example, if you have affiliate links on your site, you can calculate a conversion rate from knowing the number of clicks to the number of people who purchase something via the affiliate link.

3. RB Internal Links

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/rb-internal-links/

Although this plugin hasn't been updated in more than two years, it still should be included in every WordPress installation. This plugin helps with internal linking.

RB Internal Links is great because it uses the post ID to link internally rather than the URL itself. This means that if you want to change the URL of a page or post, then the URL will be updated dynamically.

This cuts the risk of internal 404 pages that can harm SEO for internal pages, as well as ensuring that no visitor reaches a page that does not exist.

4. NextGen Gallery and Lightbox Plus:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lightbox-plus/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/

These two plugins have been combined into one entry because they work hand-in-hand. Lightbox Plus uses Colorbox – a lightweight jQuery image gallery script that is the friendliest for performance and doesn't hinder on-page SEO. Although Lightbox is included as an option within NextGen itself, Lightbox Plus offers a lot more options for the appearance and behavior of Lightbox's execution.

NextGen as a plugin is all you need when it comes to image gallery management. You can define lots of things such as the image's title and alt tags, which solves any SEO image problems.

Its flexibility into WordPress themes is great too, as you can add templates to use with the shortcode NextGen offers (more information on using NextGen templates can be found here). So, for example, I may use my own image gallery viewer and want it to output a certain way so I create my own NextGen gallery template called gallery-alexmoss.php and upload it into a subfolder of my theme called nggallery.

Below is a template I have developed to work with Twitter's Bootstrap image carousel:

<?php if (!defined ('ABSPATH')) die ('No direct access allowed'); ?><?php if (!empty ($gallery)) : ?>

        <div id="<?php echo $gallery->anchor ?>" class="carousel slide">

<ol class="carousel-indicators">

<?php $activenum="0"; foreach ( $images as $image ) : ?>

<li data-target="#<?php echo $gallery->anchor ?>" data-slide-to="<?php echo $activenum; ?>"<?php if ($activenum=="0") {echo ' class="active"'; } $activenum++; ?></li>

  <?php endforeach; ?>

</ol>

            <div class="carousel-inner">

<?php $activenum="1"; foreach ( $images as $image ) : ?>

            <div id="ngg-image-<?php echo $image->pid ?>" class="item<?php if ($activenum=="1") {echo " active"; } $activenum++; ?>" <?php echo $image->style ?>>

<img title="<?php echo $image->alttext; ?>" alt="<?php echo $image->alttext; ?>" src="<?php echo $image->imageURL; ?>"  />

<div class="carousel-caption"><h4><?php echo $image->alttext; ?></h4><p><?php echo $image->description; ?></p></div>

              </div>

  <?php endforeach; ?>

            </div>

            <a class="left carousel-control" href="#<?php echo $gallery->anchor ?>" data-slide="prev">&lsaquo;</a>

            <a class="right carousel-control" href="#<?php echo $gallery->anchor ?>" data-slide="next">&rsaquo;</a>

          </div>

<?php endif; ?>

5. Widget Logic

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widget-logic/

This plugin works specifically with your widgets. When installed, an extra option is added into each widget where you can define exactly where that widget should/shouldn't appear. This is great when you want to control what content appears in which sections of the site.

Here are a few examples of widget logic you can use:

• is_category(X) || (is_single() && in_category(X)) - if viewing Category X or a post within Category X.
• is_archive() - if viewing any archive page.
• is_page() - if viewing a page.
• !is_page() - if viewing anything other than a page. Note that the use of ! turns the condition into if is not.

When you use this plugin ensure that you are confident with using some PHP code as incorrect use can lead to potential problems.

6. Members

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/members/

You may find that the default user roles provided by WordPress aren't enough for you to control the access that you want. This plugin adds flexibility to edit existing user roles as well as adding additional user roles. The plugin also comes with easy to use widgets and shortcodes so you can limit content based on the user's role.

7. Use Google Libraries

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/use-google-libraries/

This very simple plugin that substitutes JavaScript libraries called locally on your own server with Google's own CDN. This saves on bandwidth, keeps using compressed versions of the scripts, and increases the chance that a user already has these files cached and therefore increases the general performance of your site.

8. W3 Total Cache

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/

While we're on the subject of performance, W3 Total Cache is the most powerful and comprehensive caching plugin available. This plugin handles everything from combine and minification for both CSS and JS to HTML linebreak and comment removal, disk caching, browser caching and more.

It's useful to test any settings out to ensure that there are no issues once enabled and deployed but most of the time W3 plays ball with your WordPress installation.

9. Gravity Forms

http://3doo.rs/gravity

This is the best plugin available. Although paid (from $39), this plugin is a must have on any WordPress installation and pays for itself.

This plugin handles all kind of form generation and management from basic contact forms to complete content management. There is so much you can do within Gravity Forms that I can't cover it in this post alone. Some examples of how you can use Gravity Forms:

• Basic contact forms: Also includes seamless integration with CAPTCHA
• Contact forms with email routing: This is great for larger companies. Based on options filled out in the form, email is routed to a different address saving time sifting through a generic email address
• MailChimp integration: You can use any form's email input and send that information to MailChimp directly through an add-on available (only for people who purchased the developer license) using MailChimp's API.
• Creating content: Forms can actually generate posts or pages within your site. You can create a form that populates all the data needed to publish a new post or page, including the title, excerpt, body, featured image and more.

Another great thing about Gravity forms is that all entries are stored and viewable within the backend of the site meaning that some forms don't even need to have email notifications upon submission. Not enough for you? You can also export all entries as a CSV file, as well as being able to import and export all forms for you to backup or transfer to other sites.

10. Twitter Feed Pro:

http://3doordigital.com/wordpress/plugins/wp-twitter-feed-pro/

This is my own plugin. This paid plugin ($19.99) outputs a Twitter feed based on a number of settings using the shortcode. You can output your latest tweets or someone else's (or a combination), view replies and public mentions, view favorites of any username or search for any term or hashtag. There are also many options for customizing the look and feel of how the tweets are output.

There are two reasons I mention this plugin.

First is that tweets use HTML to output tweets rather than using jQuery (as this is the only other way to do so via Twitter's official embedded timeline widget).

Additionally, this plugin is fully compatible with Twitter API v1.1. Some other plugins or Twitter Feed options within WordPress themes use v1.0 of the API which will retire on June 11. If you want to know more about this issue, I have written about Twitter API v1.1 and its implication.

Summary

It has taken me a long time to find the best plugins to perform all kinds of different tasks and tweaks with WordPress. Finding trustworthy authors and plugins that are not abusive is extremely important so I like it when I find confidence in a plugin to use on my own sites, and more importantly, sites for my clients.

View Resource: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2268750/10-Essential-WordPress-Plugins-to-Improve-SEO-Usability

Old Vs New SEO Straterge

You can see here different between old seo work method and latest seo techinque after panda and penguin update. I hope this image better understand different between old vs seo straterge

10 most useful htaccess tips to improve your website

Everyone will be familiar with tip number four, which is the classic 301 redirect that SEOs have come to know and love. However, the other tips in this list are less common, but are quite useful to know when you need them. After you've read this post, bookmark it, and hopefully it will save you some time in the future.

1) Make URLs SEO-friendly and future-proof

Back when I was more of a developer than an SEO, I built an e-commerce site selling vacations, with a product URL structure:

/vacations.php?country=italy

A nicer URL would probably be:

/vacations/italy/

The second version will allow me to move away from PHP later, it is probably better for SEO, and allows me to even put further sub-folders later if I want. However, it isn't realistic to create a new folder for every product or category. Besides, it all lives in a database normally.

Apache identifies files and how to handle them by their extensions, which we can override on a file by file basis:

<Files magic>

ForceType application/x-httpd-php5

</Files>

This will allow the 'magic' file, which is a PHP file without an extension, to then look like a folder and handle the 'inner' folders as parameters. You can test it out here (try changing the folder names inside the magic 'folder'):

http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/httest/magic/foo/bar/donk

2) Apply rel="canonical" to PDFs and images

The SEO community has adopted rel="canonical" quickly, and it is usually kicked around in discussions about IA and canonicalization issues, where before we only had redirects and blocking to solve a problem. It is a handy little tag that goes in the head section of an HTML page.

However, many people still don't know that you can apply rel="canonical" in an alternative way, using HTTP, for cases where there is no HTML to insert a tag into. An often cited example that can be used for applying rel="canonical" to PDFs is to point to an HTML version or to the download page for a PDF document.

An alternative use would be for applying rel="canonical" to image files. This suggestion came from a client of mine recently, and is something a couple of us had kicked about once before in the Distilled office. My first reaction to the client was that this practice sounded a little bit 'dodgy,' but the more I think about it, the more it seems reasonable.

They had a product range that attracts people to link to their images, but that isn't very helpful to them in terms of SEO (any traffic coming from image search is unlikely to convert), but rel="canonical" those links to images to the product page, and suddenly they are helpful links, and the rel="canonical" seems pretty reasonable.

Here is an example of applying HTTP rel="canonical" to a PDF and a JPG file:

<Files download.pdf>

Header add Link '<http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/httest/pdf-download.html>; rel="canonical"'

</Files>

 

<Files product.jpg>

Header add Link '<http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/httest/product-page.html>; rel="canonical"'

</Files>

We could also use some variables magic (you didn't know .htaccess could do variables!?) to apply this to all PDFs in a folder, linking back the HTML page with the same name (be careful with this if you are unsure):

RewriteRule ([^/]+)\.pdf$ - [E=FILENAME:$1]

<FilesMatch "\.pdf$">

Header add Link '<http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/httest/%{FILENAME}e.html>; rel="canonical"'

</FilesMatch>

You can read more about it here:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

3) Robots directives

You can't instruct all search engines not to index a page, unless you allow them to access the page. If you block a page with robots.txt, then Google might still index it if it has a lot of links pointing to it. You need to put the noindex Meta Robots tag on every page you want to issue that instruction on. If you aren't using a CMS or are using one that is limited in its ease, this could be a lot of work. .htaccess to the rescue!

You can apply directives to all files in a directory by creating an .htaccess file in that directory and adding this command:

Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex, noarchive, nosnippet"

If you want to read a bit more about this, I suggest this excellent post from Yoast: 

http://yoast.com/x-robots-tag-play/

4) Various types of redirect

The common SEO redirect is ensuring that a canonical domain is used, normally www vs. non-www. There are also a couple of other redirects you might find useful. I have kept them simple here, but often times you will want to combine these to ensure you avoid chaining redirects:

# Ensure www on all URLs.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

 

# Ensure we are using HTTPS version of the site.

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on

RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

 

# Ensure all URLs have a trailing slash.

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1/ [L,R=301]

5) Custom 404 error page

None of your visitors should be seeing a white error page with black techno-babble when they end up on at a broken URL. You should always be serving a nice 404 page which also gives the visitor links to get back on track.

You can also end up getting lots of links and traffic if you but your time and effort into a cool 404 page, like Distilled's:

This is very easy to setup with .htaccess:

ErrorDocument 404 /cool404.html

 

# Can also do the same for other errors...

ErrorDocument 500 /cool500.html

6) Send the Vary header to help crawl mobile content

If you are serving a mobile site on the same URLs as your main site, but rather than using responsive design you are altering the HTML, then you should be using the 'Vary' header to let Google know that the HTML changes for mobile users. This helps them to crawl and index your pages more appropriately:

https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details

Again, this is pretty simple to achieve with your .htaccess file, independent of your CMS or however your are implementing the HTML variations:

Header append Vary User-Agent

7) Improve caching for better site speed

There is an increasing focus on site speed, both from SEOs (because Google cares) and also from developers who know that more and more visitors are coming to sites over mobile connections.

You should be careful with this tip to ensure there aren't already caching systems in place, and that you choose appropriate caching length. However, if you want a quick and easy solution to set the number of seconds, you can use the below. Here I set static files to cache for 24 hours:

<FilesMatch ".(flv|gif|jpg|jpeg|png|ico|swf|js|css|pdf)$">

Header set Cache-Control "max-age=28800"

</FilesMatch>

8) An Apple-style 'Back Soon' maintenance page

Apple famously shows a 'Back Soon' note when they take their store down temporarily during product announcements, before it comes back with shiny new products to love or hate. When you are making significant changes to redirect users to such a page, a message such as this can be quite useful. However, it can also make it tough to check the changes you've made.

With this bit of .htaccess goodness, you can redirect people based on their IP address, so you can redirect everyone but your IP address and 127.0.0.1 (this is a special 'home' IP address):

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR}  !your_ip_address

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR}  !127.0.0.1

RewriteRule !offline.php$ http://www.example.com/back_soon.html [L,R=307]

9) Smarten up your URLs even when your CMS says "No!"

One of the biggest complaints I hear amongst SEOs is about how much this or that CMS "sucks." It can be intensely frustrating for an SEO when they are hampered by the restraints of a certain CMS, and one of those constraints is often that you are stuck with appaling URLs.

You can overcome this, turning product.php?id=3123 into /ray-guns/ in no time at all:

# Rewrite a specific product...

RewriteRule ray-guns/ product.php?id=3123

 

# ... or groups of them

RewriteRule product/([0-9]+)/ product.php?id=$1

This won't prevent people from visiting the crappy versions of the URLs, but combined with other redirects (based on IP) or with judicious use of rel="canonical," you improve the situation tremendously. Don't forget to update your internal links to the new ones. :)

10)  Recruit via your HTTP headers

Ever looked closely at SEOmoz's HTTP headers? You might have missed the opportunity to get a job...

If you would like to add a custom header to your site, you can make up whatever headers and values you'd like:

Header set Hiring-Now "Looking for a job? Email us!"

It can be fun to leave messages for people poking around - I'll leave it to your imaginations! :)

Download the rules

You can grab all of these rules in quick-form from a compilation I made. 

Viewing headers

If you are unsure about how to look at HTTP response headers, here's a great tool to get you started.

If you would rather do it in your browser, follow these steps:

• Chrome on Windows: Ctrl-Shift-I and click 'Network' (then reload the page)
• Chrome on Mac: Command-Option-I and click 'Network' (then reload the page)
• Firefox: Install Live HTTP Headers

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to test anything you change! :)

View Source http://www.seomoz.org/blog/htaccess-file-snippets-for-seos

SEO Reppers Song Video with lyrics

SEO Reppers Song

SEO Reppers lyrics

Your site design, the first thing people see.
It should be reflective of you and the industry.
Easy to look at, with a nice navigation
When they can't find what they wan it causes frustration
A click costs an action. To increase the temptation
Use appealing graphics that create motivation
You have animation please use in moderation
‘Cos search engines can't index the information

Display the logo of all associations
Highlight your content; therefore that’s an obligation.
Create clean design; you can use some decoration
But try to prevent any client hesitation
Every page that they click should provide an explanation
Should be easy to understand like having a conversation
Create a site style you can use your imagination
But make sure you use correct colour combinations
Do some investigation, looks at other organisations
But don’t duplicate or you might face a litigation
You done? Congratulations start construction

Move into production, please follow these instructions:
Your photoshop functions, slice that design
Do you layout with divs make sure there is a line
Please don’t use tables even though they work fine
When it come to indexing they give searchers a hard time
Make it easy for spiders to crawl what you provide
Removed font type, font colour and font size
No background colours, keep your coding real neat
And tag your look n feel on a separate style sheet
Better results with XMl and CSS,
Now you making progress, a ‘lil closer to success
Describe you doc type so the browser can relate
Make sure you do it great or it won’t validate

Check in all browsers, I do it directly
Gotta make sure that it renders correctly
Some use IE some others use flock
Some use AOL, I use Firefox
Title everything including links and images
Don’t use italics, use emphasis
Don’t use bold please use strong
Cos if u use bold that’s old and wrong

You use CSS your page should load quicker
Your client's satisfied like they easting on a Snicker
They stuck on ur page like u made it with a stickers
And then they convert now that the real kicker

Make u a lil richer, your site a lil slicker
Design and code right man I hope u get the picture
What I'm telling you is true man it should be a scripture
If it's built right you’ll be the pick of the litter
Everyone will wanna follow you like twitter

Competition will get bitter
You will shine like glitter
If u tryna grow; your company will get bigger
Design and code right man can you get with it?

Top Australian Free Classifieds Sites List in 2014

Australian Free Classifieds Ads Sites List

http://www.olx.com.au/

http://www.locanto.com.au

http://post.noflies.com.au/

http://www.gumtree.com.au

http://adverspace.com.au/

http://www.muamat.com/

http://www.global-free-classified-ads.com

http://www.paiir.com.au/

https://www.allclassifieds.com.au/

http://www.adpost.com

http://www.ozads.com.au/

http://www.goodlist.com.au/index.php

http://www.dinkos.com.au/

http://australia-free-classifieds.com/

http://www.expatads.com

http://adoodau.com/

http://all2go.com.au/

http://aufreeads.com/

http://aussielocal.com.au

http://chaosads-australia.com/

http://dewalist.com

http://freeaustraliaclassifieds.com/

http://freelists.com.au/

http://inetgiant.com.au/

http://listonline.com.au/

http://ockalist.com.au/

http://overheremate.com.au/

http://postadeal.com.au/

http://postclassifiedlisting.com/

http://streetmarkets.com.au/

http://zappclassifieds.com/au/

http://localtrader.com.au

http://www.134sale.com.au/

http://www.dinkos.com.au/

http://tradingspace.com.au/

http://www.tradexchange.com.au/

http://ikoalaads.com.au/

http://www.accessoriesfreeads.com/

http://www.truebuy.com.au/

http://australia.anunico.com

http://www.globeslist.com.au/

HTTP Status Code Guide Line

HTTP Status Code

Tips for On Page Site Auditing

A SEO site audit is a critical first step that SEOs must undertake to understand the state of SEO.

There are two basic options:

• A quick hit site audit where you go through the top level diagnosis with the site in a few hours.
• An exhaustive site audit that can take days.

If you choose perform the exhaustive site audit, there are three critical areas to keep in mind. They are:

1. On-page SEO audit
2. Technical site audit
3. Link audit

An on-page SEO audit will begin with obvious points, such as the title and meta description tags. Depending on your website this can get a pretty exhaustive document, so you're better served by creating an Excel sheet with your pages or site categories in rows and then each element of on-page SEO as your header.
Let's start by looking at few important elements of on-page SEO, why they're important, and tips on what you should look out for during your audit.

Title Tags

The purpose of a title tag is to make each page unique in terms of the page’s content. Since each page on your site should be unique, you need to have unique title tags for each page.
Title tags also carry huge weight in terms of how you rank, so try to spend as much time as possible on writing great title tags. A title tag should include keywords relevant to the page content.
For example, a website that sells shoes online has a page about men’s athletic shoes. The title tag might be written in the following format:
Mens Athletic Shoes: Brand name Athletic Shoes for Men at [company name]
The above example uses variations of the same keyword to account for keyword searches.
Also, the company name appears at the end of the title. This is critical because many sites use their prime title tag real estate (the beginning) with their company name.
However well-known your company and its brand may be, always use a popular keyword instead of your company name at the beginning of your title tag. Ideally, you may want to limit your title tag to be 40-69 characters at most.

Meta Tags

The meta description tag should be written like how you would for PPC ad copy. Just as good ad copy on PPC campaigns will increase your CTRs, a good meta description will increase your click-through rate (CTR) on organic search.
Make sure to describe what your page content is about, benefit or value to readers, and then a good call to action. Ensure that you spend some time writing your meta description. As a rule of thumb keep your meta description tags under 200 characters.

Missing Title Tags

In addition to writing unique title tags, keep a list in your Excel sheet on pages that are missing title tags or title tags with just your company name on it.
There are a lot of SEO software options available, but a good free option is Google’s Webmaster Tools. Go to the Optimization menu and then click on HTML improvements. There you will see many suggestions and among those are suggestions related with title tags.

Duplicate Title Tags

In Google Webmaster Tools under the same HTML improvements menu, there is a quick way to look at all your duplicate title tags on your site. Again, auditing duplicate title tags and writing unique title for each page can be a good win. These are on-page SEO factors that are low hanging fruits in nature but provide you with maximum bang for your effort.

Missing Alt tags

Besides having benefits like making your site disabilities compliant, alt tags are an important on-page SEO audit element. They play a big part in optimizing your images as these tags are picked up by engines when including your images as part of image search.
Audit your site well and see if alt tags are missing from your images or they have been incorrectly described.

Missing Image Names

Naming your images correctly plays a big part in image optimization. Make sure that images are named correctly when doing your auditing.
One common mistake companies make is when naming their company logo. Designers tend to name the logo as logo.jpg. Instead add your company name as part of the image name like [company name]-logo.jpg.
If you have products on your site then ensure that you are using accurate keyword to describe that product.
Image optimization can be one of those low-hanging fruits when conducting your on-page SEO audit but can drive good amount of traffic through image searches.

H Tags

Header tags tell the search engines that this is the headline of your page. While auditing your site look out for H tags – if you’re missing any, or you have too many. Ideally, your main headline should be in H1 and then maybe sub-headings in H2.

Keyword Mapping and Cannibalization

One thing that an on-page SEO audit should uncover are multiple uses of same keyword on different pages on the site. This is not optimal because you're:

• Confusing the search engines as to which page should rank for the keyword in question and as such letting the engines decide. 
• Missing an opportunity to increase the number of keywords you're optimizing your site against.

A good keyword to page mapping strategy can help resolve this and it should be a critical part of your on-page SEO audit.

On-Page Copy

There is no rule that says you must have a minimum number of words on your page. But always keep in mind that you should be describing your content well and your visitors should easily understand what your page is about and what message you are trying to convey.
Think of it as writing good marketing copy. If you can convey your message in 50 or 100 or 200 words then that should be your on-page copy. Perform some guerilla usability and test your copy based on the results.