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There are only a couple of plugins out there for automatic sitemap generation on Wordpress, that really serves the purpose. While generating a sitemap is not that all a big deal, setting it right with the right options does make a nig difference to your SEO scores. Not everyone is aware of the right settings for a sitemap, many still thinks that adding a sitemap is enough to take care of things.

Let me try and explain to you what could be possibly the right settings for generating a sitemap for your WordPress blog, and why its essential.

Today among all the sitemap generator plugins for WordPress we have, the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator Plugin is the best one available (For HTML sitemaps), because it has more control over sitemap generation and it helps us to trim down the sitemap to an effective one devoid of the frills. And Google Sitemap Generator by Arne Brachchold for XML sitemaps.

Some things to keep in mind before generating a sitemap

- A sitemap is like a route-map to the search bots. It doesn’t mean that you have to put in everything that you have on your website on a sitemap.
- Search bots will find links to your pages and will anyway crawl them, even without a sitemap (sometimes), so when you have a sitemap, make sure you add some value to it by adding in some additional info.
- Sitemap doesn’t mean a huge set of links on an HTML page, its an XML file often found at the root folder.
- Once you have a sitemap, make sure you let the crawlers know about it, either through the Webmaster console or the Robots.txt.
- Not listing a post/article on the sitemap will not make the crawlers stay away from it.

Making the right settings for the Google WordPress sitemap plugin

Here is an example of optimum setting for the Google sitemap generator.

1. Uncheck the – Add sitemap URL to robots.txt

If this is checked, the plugin will rewrite your existing robots.txt or create problems with it if its already existing. Uncheck this and add the following syntax to your Robots.txt

Sitemap: http://www.yourblogurlhere.com/sitemap.xml

2. Always check the template URL.

The sitemap generator follows a template which is by default in the plugin directory. If you have made changes to the plugin directory name/moved it, this will not function properly. So while checking the “default” option, make sure the path is right, or else you will get a broken sitemap.

3. Uncheck the MySQL standard mode unless absolutely necessary

This if checked will take a lot of memory on your server, so uncheck it unless you have MySQL errors showing up on the sitemap.

4. Limit the number of posts in sitemap

The maximum number of files that can be listed on a sitemap is 50,000 beyond which you have to split up the sitemap and use a “mother sitemap” to link to the “satellite sitemaps”. So unless you have a very large website with lots of pages (above 50k), leave it as such.

5. In Building mode, check rebuild sitemap, if you make changes to the contents of your blog

This will ensure that every time you post/edit a new article, a new sitemap will be generated.

Location of the Sitemap file and Post Priorities

As seen in the above image, check the “Do not use automatic priority calculation”. We will give the priorities for the sitemap contents in the next step.

Also, the location for the sitemap should be the root folder ex:- yourblog.com/sitemap.xml

Click on automatic detection and give the file name as “sitemap.xml”. Using a custom location will complicate things.

Setting Content Priorities for the Sitemap

In the priorities box, set the maximum priority for homepage > followed by posts and pages > then equal priority for all other contents like category and tags.

1 means high priority and lesser values lesser priorities.

Having a higher priority will suggest the crawlers to index those files more often with more importance. However this might get over ridden by incoming link value.

Setting crawling Frequencies for the sitemap contents

In the change frequencies box, make sure that all the values are according to your normal change rates. If you have a weekly posting cycle, change the posts to “Weekly” and if you have a daily cycle, change it to “Daily”. The idea is to give a hint to the search crawlers as to when the content on the site will be changed and what will be changed frequently. But this too will be overridden by the crawlers own judgement, so this setting is only a hint.

That should wrap up some basic sitemap settings, make sure you check your sitemap is fully working and not broken. If it is, the first thing to do is change the settings back to default and rebuild the sitemap.

Recently I came across a relatively young WordPress plugin that allow WordPress users and designers to use basically any TrueType font you have on your computer on your WordPress blog, replacing post titles, widget titles, links and so on with automatically generated SEO-smart images using your desired font. The plugin is called AnyFont and it has been developed by Ryan Peel

The generated images have a very good level of clarity, way better than the classic SWF replacement and the plugin is really easy to administrate and customize.

AnyFont plugin management

See for yourself how easy it is to set up the output style:

And the output is really good:

As I said, the output is SEO friendly, each image being given an ALT and TITLE attribute that either automatically take content from the original text, or you can set your own values.

The plugin also uses an image-caching system to ease the server load.

Click here to go to the AnyFont plugin download page.

Well, I was finally pushed to do it…send in feedback about Windows Live Writer. One of the earliest features, and one feature that’s available in pretty much every other desktop blogging application, was removed and has caused a mild inconvenience when using WLW to manage a number of blogs.

Here’s the exact message that I sent in:

In the earliest edition of WLW that I tested, it was possible to have a new post immediately started after publication without needing to hit the “New” button. This feature seems to have completely disappeared in the most recent releases.

There are options to view the entry after publication, close the writing window after publication, or open a new window after publication, but none simply to start a new post in the same window immediately after publishing an entry. Why has one of the most logical features, available in every other offline blogging software, been abandoned?

I’m suggesting that you resurrect it. Having to hit the “New” post button after publication is an unnecessary extra step, especially considering that rarely does one need to continue editing a post *after* it’s been published and continually needing to click the “New” button can become tedious, especially if someone is managing multiple blogs and has a number of entries to write.

Now it’s time to wait and see whether I receive a response (it may very well be that I’m overlooking something in the Preferences) or whether they decide to re-incorporate this feature into the software or whether I can find a third party plugin that will do it for me.

I’m also curious to see whether anyone else is perturbed by this inconvenience as well.

People ask me all the time what WordPress plugins they should use to help market their blog. These are the sixteen essential WordPress plugins for marketing your blog online and the reasons why I think they are important:

1. Google XML Sitemap - Automatically generates an XML sitemap and updates it whith each new post so Google can find all the pages of your blog you want the search engine to index.
2. KB Robots.txt - Gives you the ability to edit your robots.txt file from within WordPress so you can control what the search engines see and what they can’t look at.
3. Landing Sites - When a visitor arrives from a search engine, this plugin shows them related blog posts based on their search query.
4. Platinum SEO - The standard plugin for search engine optimization used to be the All In One SEO Pack but I’ve replaced it with the Platinum SEO, which has more options. Both plugins help you optimize your posts for search engine visibility.
5. Redirection - The Redirection plugin allows you to control your 301 redirects and monitor your 404 error pages all within WordPress.
6. SEO Friendly Images - automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes, making your posts W3C/xHTML vali.
7. SEO Smart Links - Automatically links keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog. It gets in the way sometimes but by overriding parts of some hyperlinks, but it’s still worth the install.
8. ShareThis - Makes it easy for users to add your post to many social bookmarking sites, or to send a link to your post via email, AIM, Facebook, Twitter and more using the ShareThis service.
9. ShiftThis WordPress Newsletter Plugin - I have installed but not yet used this but I include it because it is the only plugin of it’s kind that I can find. It gives you the ability to publish an email newsletter within WordPress and to easily include posts and pages from your blog in your newsletters.
10. Similar Posts - It does what it says: displays a list of posts which are related or similar to the current post.
11. SMS Text Message - Allows you to update your readers via text message.
12. Widget Logic - Allows you to control where your WordPress widgets appear on your blog. Only want your blog roll to appear on the front page? Done!
13. WordPress Mobile - Makes your blog work well on mobile phones and lets you post to your blog from your mobile device.
14. WP Email - Allows visitors to recommand/send your blog’s posts/pages to a friend.
15. WP Greet Box - Shows a different message to your visitor depending on which site they are coming from. For example, you can ask Digg visitors to Digg your post, Google visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed. Customizable. I love this plugin!
16. FD Feedburner Plugin - Redirects all your blog feeds to your FeedBurner feed so you can get more accurate RSS subscriber data.

There are quite a few reasons for choosing Wordpress as my personal favorite Content Managment System (CMS) – simple back end interface, Search Engine friendly (SEO Friendly), open source (so it’s free!) and my personal favorite, the massive amount of plugins that are available that add extra functionality to your website or blog.

Below I explore and discuss the benefits of 13 Wordpress plugins that I have personally used on The Design Cubicle that will give your site an extra boost and provide a better experience for your visitors (plus some other great additions you can add).

Akismet

Saves you time and frustration with spam comments. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service and filters them so you can easily scan them or delete them later.

BENEFIT: Stops all that nasty spam from getting to your reader comments.

All in One SEO Pack

An “out-of-the-box” SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

BENEFIT: Makes your blog “friendlier” and better seen by search engines (ie. Google, Yahoo, etc). Allows you to add a home title, home description, keywords (meta tags) and more.

Tip: try limiting your site to 10  keywords or less; this allows search engines to place importance on a few, dominate words providing better results when someone searches for your site.

cformsII

CformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog.

Features include: comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more.

BENEFIT: Easily customize contact forms for your website for your readers and contacts to get in touch with you. Fields can be added and customized to fit you and your visitors particular needs.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo.

BENEFIT: Improves your sites visibility providing search engines with information about your site, in particular a list of the pages on your site, making it more discoverable and SEO friendly.

Highlight Author Comments

Automatically applies a distinctive style to comments by the post’s author.

BENEFIT: Helps your readers visually distinguish your comments from your readers.

Social Bookmarks

Adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts that allow your visitors to easily submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites.

BENEFIT: Get your articles easily submitted to various social bookmarking websites such as Digg, Delicious, Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and a whole lot more. Assists in increasing your sites traffic!

Subscribe To Comments

Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.

BENEFIT: Provides a way for your readers to stay engaged and connected to a conversation. Sets the ground work for a community and discussion on your blog.

Woopra

This plugin adds Woopra’s real-time analytics to any WordPress installation.

Live track over 40 different statistical events and analytics through Woopra’s rich and efficient desktop application or from the Wordpress Dashboard. Check out more information about the features and download the desktop application on Woopra’s site.

BENEFIT: Provides you with the information you need to strenthen your site, thus improving your results and visitor interactions.

Wordpress Gravatars

Makes use of Gravatars and MyBlogLog Avatars, places Gravatars, OpenAvatar, Wavatar, Identicon, monsterID or MyBlogLog Avatars in the comments section.

BENEFIT: Puts a face to your commentors. A nice touch to add more of a community feel to your site.

wp-cache

Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system.

BENEFIT: Speed up the load time of your site. Works like a charm for those high traffic days and social media spikes.

Also try WP Super Cache for even more responsive load times.

WP-PageNavi

Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog.

BENEFIT: Adds a more advanced page navagation, instead of the standard ‘previous’ and ‘next’ links – helps your readers get around more effectively.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display.

BENEFIT: Help readers discover similar content and related posts – adds to a more enjoyable and resourceful visit.

If you’re obsessive about SEO you likely already have a domain name that contains one relevant keyword, an entire keyword phrase or even a targeted search term. This is a great practice if you have a website that is highly targeted to one topic or set of keywords, but there is a lot more you can do that will help to boost your search engine ranking position (SERP) and possibly outrank the sites that DO have your keyword in their domain name.

The keyword appearing in the URL is important, but more important than that is the keyword appearing in the title tag. Somewhere in between or just underneath is something called the H1 (which is not surprisingly followed in importance by H2). Naturally your keywords should also appear in the content here and there (not everywhere). If you write about your keywords on a daily basis you are probably already on top of your SEO situation, but if your blog is more relaxed topically and you like to drift and touch on anything you like, then you may benefit from doing a few SEO best practices for Wordpress.

1) Title Tags

The title tags are the most important thing. It may not be most important to the Search Engines, but it certainly is to the reader. Even if something is the #1 result in Google, a reader wont likely click on a title that has nothing to do with what they are searching for. That is why it is good to serve your post headline in the title tag instead of just the blog name.

You can do this by editing your header.php to include the appropriate Wordpress template tags within the HTML Title tag. This may also mean using an IF statement to determine what type of page is displaying and what tags to use.

2) The H1 Tag

There is a high degree of confusion circulating the web on the proper use of h1 tags with Wordpress. The basic purpose of h1 is to let the search engine know what a page is about. The last thing you want is more than one h1 on a page. This confuses the heck out of search bots and, as a result, drops your SEO score.

The typical belief is that serving your blog title in the H1 tag is proper. This makes sense because you have your keywords in your blog title, but what about the individual posts? Aren’t the post titles more relevant than the name of your blog?

If you have a post on your blog about “99 Ways to skin a cat” isn’t that particular page about skinning cats rather than your blog’s title, which may be “catskinners.org”?   The solution here is that you want to have your post titles on the single post page inside the H1 tags. Since there shouldn’t be more than one H1 per page, this means you need your title or logo inside a div.

If you have more than one post on your homepage (which most people do) then you should place your post titles’ inside of H2 tags and your logo in an H1. This tells the SE’s that your homepage is about whatever your title is, and the post headlines are the next most important thing. Once a user clicks through to a single post the most important thing becomes the title of that post.

3)Inbound/Outbound links

A huge part of blogging is sharing the link love and creating conversations between one blog to the next. It is typical in the blogosphere to see someone quote a post from another blog, add their own 2 cents and then link the blog where the topic started. This is a fine thing to do and it will even help you gain a few links yourself as your own sharing attitude encourages others to share. You just have to be careful not to have too many links out and balance it with your links from your blog pointing to your own blog.

People often forget that a link to your blog from your blog still counts as a link to your blog (how was THAT for a sentence?). Since one of the best things you can have linking to your blog is some good relevant anchor text that contains your keywords, why not go ahead and link any of those words within your posts back to your homepage?

Here are some more things you can do to make the best use of your internal links:

• Linking from your posts to older posts (when relevant)
• Linking from your posts to your homepage (whenever possible)
• Keep your navigation consistent across the whole site
• Link every page to your homepage at least once (more is ok too)
• Use a sitemap template that includes all your single posts and pages as well as the date and category archives

4) Anchor Text and Keywords

You probably already know at this point that one of your main goals in offsite SEO is to get links with your keywords in the anchor text (the text that makes up the active link). This is one of the single most important factors to both your SE for your determined keywords and your PR. The more links you have, the better your PR. The more links you have containing your keywords, the better your SERPs for those keywords are. It is healthy to mix them up and use different combinations of your keywords to help monopolize your grip on a given topic.

We’re almost finished. There is one more important spot we need to place our keywords. If I were a keyword where would I be? In this blog post! You can have all the SEO you want on your Wordpress template but it isn’t going to matter much if you don’t talk about your keywords in your blog posts. You obviously don’t want to come off as a spammer so be wary not to simply randomly throw in long and short-tail keywords in every single sentence. However, there is nothing wrong with using your full keyword search term whenever the opportunity arises. For instance, if you have the option to use a pronoun or the actual keywords you should choose the keyword.

If you have one Pr3 or higher blog and you want blogroll exchange contact me ordis@inbox.com

Blogwerx

Blogwerx 3 column free Wordpress theme.

Features:

+ Advertisement/Banner Ready
+ Gravatar on Comments
+ SEO Optimized
+ Works with the Latest Version of Wordpress 2.7 (and below)
+ Threaded Comments

The recent patent application filed by Google details numerous items the search engine uses to rank web pages. The specific application is summarized as:

“A method for scoring a document, comprising: identifying a document; obtaining one or more types of history data associated with the document; and generating a score for the document based on the one or more types of history data.”

The patent application sheds significant light for those pursuing search engine optimization with Google. Patent applications can be difficult to understand, so following are highlights that you should consider for your SEO efforts.

Update Your Site

Updating your site is important when it comes to maximizing your rankings on Google. In addition to the manipulation of keyword density and meta tags, the patent application reveals that Google places significant value on how often your content is updated. The more often you update, the timely and relevant your site will appear to Google. In turn, this leads to higher rankings.

To appease mighty Google, consider the following plan of action:

1. Update pages frequently,

2. Add new pages to your site,

3. Interlink the new pages with others on your site, and

4. Add new pages on a weekly basis instead of all at once.

When Google returns to the site, you want to make sure that there is new content. The high rankings of blog sites are evidence of this approach.

Google’s Looking at Your Domain

In a new twist, Google claims that it analyzes the number of years of domain registration as part of the ranking process.The application suggests that domains that are registered for longer periods of time are given more value because such a commitment shows the site is not a fly-by-night jump page. It is recommended that you extend all domain registrations for as long as possible as part of your search engine
optimization efforts. It is difficult to tell how much the registration process impacts the ranking process, but every little bit helps.

Google claims that it also digs deeper into domain names to evaluate the legitimacy of the site. Factors in the evaluation include the web host and the “who is” information. According to the patent application, Google maintains a database of hosts that facilitate spamming of the Google search engine. While such hosts are not detailedin the application, pray to God that you are not using one. You should evaluate your host if your optimization efforts are not producing results.