Wordpress SEO

What to Expect From Google’s SEO Department in 2013

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May 21  |  Link Cleanup, News, Video SEO, Wordpress SEO  |   Alex Chan

If you’re wondering what’s in store from Google for 2013, the video above shows Matt Cutts giving an elaborate explanation of what to expect.

Coming soon is the newest version of the Penguin algorithm, called Penguin 2.0. This update will have serious improvements from the last Penguin 1.0, and we should expect it any day now. The new Penguin will detect black hat SEO, go deeper into the websites, and have a larger impact than the previous updates. Sites should get ready by using Google’s Disavow Tool to defer any spammy links.

Along with Penguin, a new Panda update is coming. This update is expected to have an enormous impact on many websites and Google will try to “lower” the affects to keep from harming websites. The last major Panda update had serious impact on all websites. We should expect something similar for this one. The fact that Google states they need to “tone it down” means it’s going to be HUGE.

After punishing Interflora and a few UK Newspapers, Google will start looking into advertorials and other types of advertising that directly violate Google’s guidelines. Paying money for advertising in order to pass the PageRank is one of the issues that Google has been regularly monitoring this year. A number of link networks have already been shut down or heavily penalized.

Many users in England complained about pay day loans and other pornographic queries that appeared on Google.co.uk. Google will introduce two new changes in the area of spammy queries. One method is to detect links “upstream” in an effort to reduce the value of the spam links. Along with monitoring links in a new way, Google plans develop advanced link analysis software that will make Google’s search engine understand the linking flow better.

When certain websites present an authority in a certain field like travel, medicine, real estate, and so on, Google will try and boost the authority of those pages allowing them to top on the search result pages. This is great for existing authoritative websites but it will make it harder for new websites to join the race. In addition to handing out higher authority, Google will make another attempt at cleaning the “cluster issue”. The cluster issue was presented back in 2012 for websites that dominate the first page for a single keyword. That includes websites like yelp, and possibly even Google Maps, YouTube, or other Google entities. This is an attempt to diversify the results and offer the end-user a wider range of information.

Last but not least, Google hopes to improve the communication with the webmasters. This is great for white hat developers and we’ve already seen some improvements after Matt Cutts announced the best method for handling a manual Google penalty. When dealing with webmasters, Google announced that they will be providing more detailed and explicit information to the webmasters in their Webmaster Tools. That was something that Google was always criticized about and anyone who’s dealt with this can relate.

By the sounds of things, Google has a few good ideas that are going to help webmasters on the way. The improved communication sounds great but everyone should be prepped for both Penguin 2.0 and the upcoming version of Panda.

Real Estate Plugins For WordPress Roundup

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February 19  |  Wordpress SEO  |   Ryan Clark

Since it’s real estate marketing month here I’m continuing on with our theme by providing what is hopefully a useful resource. I know a lot of agents utilize WordPress on their site in whether that be for full IDX integration, or just hosting their blog. It’s obviously a CMS that powers Linkbuildr, and just about most of the blogs around the web. Because of that, there is an abundance of ingenious plugins and code hacks to set yourself apart from the pack.

I will mention that there were of course too many plugins to cover in one post, but I do encourage my readers to post up in the comments. I would love for companies or agents to let us all know what they’re using, and and if you can tell us its hottest functions. I’ll also invite any company to come to an interview for this month about your plugin, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.

For this article I found almost everything on WordPress Plugin database, and of course Google helped a bit. Not all the IDX system I saw in use were listed there, so how’s that for a link building hint hint hint?

WordPress IDX Plugins:

Every real estate agent needs an IDX system to pump their site full of listings from their area. While there are a lot of non WP based IDX platforms, notably REW’s IDX, WordPress has a few really amazing plugins to handle the job. If I were an agent, I’d tend to stick with the one that integrates other cool features such as Google Maps, Tweets and other features to provide a more unique listing. This will go a very very long way in how well Google will index your listings. Remember, there are hundreds, or maybe thousands of agent sites with the same listings.

DS IDXPress: http://www.dsidxpress.com

This IDX plugin for WordPress is the real deal, and is my first choice for a reason. This affordable package has pretty much everything you’ll need to get your listings in your site…and easily! Some of the features include an installation that takes no more than 2 minutes, widgets to do all sorts of handy things, Google maps integration and a nifty slide show system. They have a demo site here which isn’t bad, but you could easily have a much better theme designed than that one.

WP Realty: http://wprealty.org/

A lot of you have most likely come across WP Realty’s impressive IDX solution for WordPress. The great thing about this platform is that there is a team of experts there to help with customization, or building your site from the ground up. They also have a set of themes that are perfect for selling homes which is great. One key feature in mind is that this plugin is compatible with the All-In-One-SEO Pack which makes your on-page game all that much better.

WP Real Estate Helper Plugins:

There are a plethora of plugins that add extra features to your WP site that’s specifically for real estate. I’m all for these even though they may take more of your precious time away from you in setting up and maintaining. These plugins will make your website much more pleasing to Google, as well potential clients as it adds more functionality to the overall process. These features will make you also stand out from the rest of the agent sites which I know can all kind of blend together.

Real Estate Q/A: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/realanswers/

This is a really cool plugin that I think every WP based agent site should have running. While it might take a bit to get the questions flowing in, I have personally seen it work wonders for agents. It’s a great way to handle easy questions, establish search rankings for the hot terms, and showcase you’re an agent who knows your market well. After a few years and a few hundred questions, that will only do great things for your long tail search marketing game. Oh and this plugin is 100% FREE!

Simple Real Estate Pack: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-real-estate-pack-4/

This plugin has so many features I couldn’t believe it was out there for free. Props go to Max Chirkov for creating this gem and providing it to the community. This is something I’d almost not give away if you know what I mean. I’ll take some wording direct from his description and let you know this plugin includes mortgage and home affordability calculators, closing cost estimator, live mortgage rates, Trulia and ALTOS statistical charts, local schools, local rental rates meter, business listings from Yelp and Google Maps. You can see the in-depth options here, which should give you a grand idea the many things you can do with this plugin pack.

WP Great Real Estate: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/great-real-estate/

I’ve used this plugin personally on a pet project real estate site I’ve been involved with. I can say how much of a gem this is and I couldn’t give it enough praise. If you’re wanting to add in homes manually supported by a whole whack of features then this is the plugin for you. I’ve seen some very stunning looking agent sites as well completed with Great Real Estate, so don’t miss this one. This plugin utilizes the likes of NextGen Gallery to upload, manage, and display property listing photos. It uses WordTube to upload, manage, and display videos. There’s FPP Pano which displays panorama photos in a Flash 360 degree interface. Makes use of Feed Wrangler to enable you to send a listings feed to various websites such as Google Base, Trulia, and Zillow!  It uses WP-DownloadManager to display and track links to downloadable brochures…and that even isn’t all of the features believe it or not.

WP Property:http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-property/

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

 

This is a full featured WordPress plugin that basically turns your website into a powerful real estate CMS. This property and real estate management Plugin allows you to create a directory of real estate properties and integrate them into you site beautifully. I’ll spare you a few extra lines of me blabbing and let their handy video showcase to you the ease of use with this software.

WP Mortgage Loan Calculator: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mortgage-loan-calculator/

It doesn’t hurt to add a bit of extra functionality to your real estate site, so why not a handy mortgage calculator? This acts as a sidebar widget, as well it can provide nifty looking AJAX graphs that are quite appealing. If you don’t have the time to have one programmed or integrated into WordPress, this plugin makes for a quick fix.

Local Market Explorer:http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/local-market-explorer

This will be the last plugin I put into this post and it’s a doozy! The Local Market Explorer plugin does so many amazing things that everyone should drop what they’re doing and get this configured on your site! This plugin allows WordPress to load data from a whole host of neighborhood related APIs(Yelp, Zillow, Education.com, Nile Guide & more) to be displayed on a page or within your own posts. I highly recommend reading the features of this plugin, but just take a look at this screenshot to get an idea of the powerhouse this plugin is. This is my top pick for all the plugins I’ve seen and if you have a coder on staff, you can make it even more custom to suite your needs.

You can see more screenshots of the features in action here http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/local-market-explorer/screenshots/.

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If you’re needing help with any Real Estate Marketing or WordPress help our team is available and here to help. We provide a wide range of real estate marketing options that will help you get the most out of your website, as well give you the time to focus on what you actually need to do…sell homes! If you’d like a proposal or just chat with out real estate marketing team don’t hesitate to get in touch.

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WP Original Source Plugin

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January 24  |  Wordpress SEO  |   Ryan Clark

We’ve been having problems with a site scraping out content (onewaylinkbuilder.com), and we’re not having any luck contacting them. Their web host won’t do anything, we’ve already resorted to replacing images to naughty ones, but alas no luck.What’s even worse, is sometimes the content is outranking our site, and even their blog is showing up in Google Blog Search instead of ours…frustrating to say the least.

Google recently launched two new meta tags for content publishers, and now there is a WordPress plugin for it! Thanks to the handy coding work of Thibaut Dancette from Wecho.com who published this handy plugin for us WP users. You can grab WP Original Source HERE, and it installs easily without any modification.

I’ll update this post later to report back on how it’s effectively working, so keep your fingers crossed for us. Content scraping is more rampant than ever so it’s nice to know there are efforts on Google’s end to help clean up the junk. If their webspam team is listening, I’d love to see a anti-scraping feature built into Feed Burner to help combat these problems.

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BuddyPress (WordPress) Advanced SEO Plugin

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April 23  |  Wordpress SEO  |   Ryan Clark

BuddyPress SEO

I happily use and recommend BuddyPress for any social media venture you might be thinking about. BuddyPress is basically a condom if you will, on top of WordPress acting much more social that she usually is. The features are endless, the plugins are plenty, and my latest tryout is the BP Advanced SEO plugin by Boris Glumpler. This plugin will handle the day to day on page of your index, archive pages, member pages etc. BP Advanced SEO also allows you to do a couple helpful things with your blog posts. You can of course write your own descriptions, SEO titles..the usual good stuff. If you forget to add the on page SEO in yourself, this plugin will generate its own keywords by combining post tags and other user data.

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301 Redirection Management Plugin For WordPress

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January 4  |  Internal Link Building, Wordpress SEO  |   Ryan Clark

I’ve just implemented this awesome plugin across my WordPress blog network, including Linkbuildr, and I’m in love and no longer worry about the problems I would otherwise face without it. Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections and keep track of 404 errors which if you have a large site can become a mess. If you ever are migrating a domain, or changing the structure if your website you’ll not want to do it without this plugin. I’ve gone back and deleted a lot of old posts that I felt were unethical with my practices, so this is also helping in redirecting the web traffic I’m still getting. I’ve taken the features list from the authors blog, Urban Giraffe;

Features include:

  • Supports both WordPress-based and Apache-based redirections
  • 404 error monitoring – captures a log of 404 errors and allows you to easily map these to 301 redirects
  • RSS feed for 404 errors
  • Custom ‘pass-through’ redirections allowing you to pass a URL through to another page, file, or website.
  • Full logs for all redirected URLs
  • Create redirections based upon a URL, browser, referring site, or login status
  • Automatically add a 301 redirection when a post’s URL changes
  • Full regular expression support
  • Fully localized
  • Export all redirections to CSV, XML, or Apache .htaccess files
  • Import Apache .htacces files

This plug is in the end all for 301’s and 404’s and if you check out the homepage for the Redirection WordPress Plugin, you’ll get a thorough walk through of all the features. For the most part you’ll be able to just install it and configure it as you see fit, and if you’ve never played around with 301’s, 404’s and .htaccess then you’ll need to sit down and do a little reading. So if you’re ready to get rocking you can go download the plugin.

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Link Building With Psolenoid.com

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December 17  |  Internal Link Building, Link Building Tools, Wordpress SEO  |   Ryan Clark

I’ve been researching the new and interesting blog tool called Psolenoid. So what is it? Well it is a tool to link related blog posts at the bottom of your written post. You can define a set of trusted blogs, and works kind of like the related posts plugin I have here at the bottom of my articles. I’m going to be using this on here for a bit and seeing how well it does in terms of traffic. I hope Google takes kindly to this system, but I’m sure it will be fine because it’s about getting traffic from related sites and not influencing the SERPs. Here’s a short and to the point video which graphically shows you how this tool works;

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SEO Smart Links WordPress Plugin

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November 18  |  Internal Link Building, Wordpress SEO  |   Ryan Clark

I needed a new plugin to handle all my internal link building efforts, and Smart SEO Links does the job just fine. Directing the flow of link juice around your site is important to pass on authority as well direct readers to posts they wouldn’t otherwise discover. Another great benefit of using this plugin is never having to copy and paste your affiliate codes all the time which is starting to become a pain in the ass for me. Keep in mind that you don’t want too many anchor text’s popping up all over the place or you’ll start to give Google a worry. Just think about your main keywords and you’ll have an easier time keeping the number of anchored links down. Thankfully this plugin makes all of the above a breeze to setup and get going;

Features:

  • Find keywords in your posts, pages and comments and link them to your other posts, pages, categories and tags
  • Full control with customizable options
  • Ignore list for keywords you do not want to link
  • Improves your site’s interlinking
  • Control external links with custom keywords
  • Add nofollw attribute or open links in new window
  • Caching for speed – make sure you have define(’ENABLE_CACHE’, true); set in your wp-config.php

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KeywordLuv WordPress Plugin Review

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August 22  |  Wordpress SEO  |   Ryan Clark

Now here’s another cool WordPress plugin to help attract quality comments and share some link love. After you read this post you can see this plugin in action right after the CommentLuv section, and you’ll see what a nifty and quick hack it is. So basically this plugin separates your name from the anchor text you want to get some link love on. This plugin is compatible with WordPress 2.2 and up, but if you are not running a version that new you should most likely upgrade ASAP!

*Update* It isn’t working with my theme, even with the option for non compatible themes turned on*

Download The KeywordLuv Plugin.

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