Choose the right blogging solution for your needs

Thesis Users Can Say Goodbye To All In One SEO Pack

by russell on February 23, 2009

This post caters only for previous versions of All In One SEO Pack. For All In One SEO Pack version 1.6 and beyond see how WordPress Thesis Users can remove All In One Seo Pack while preserving title, meta description and keywords on existing posts

Many WordPress bloggers will be familiar with using the All in One SEO plugin to specify title, description and keywords meta tags in the header of posts.

Since Thesis version 1.4 we’ve had SEO friendly capabilities built in directly to Thesis. When you create the post you can enter the all important SEO title, description and keywords tags. (although ‘keywords’ are somewhat less important right now)

If you have been blogging and using All In One SEO Pack for some time you may have hundreds of blog posts with titles, descriptions and keywords. And you certainly don’t want to lose them or have to type them in again.

No problem. You can move your titles, descriptions and keywords from All In One SEO Pack to Thesis in a single step. Click here for the solution below without the preamble.

All in One SEO Pack

The following diagram shows a sample post set up with a title, description and keywords using All in One SEO Pack.

[I have put 'All In One' in the values purely to identify the source as this is a test. Of course normally this text would not be included.]

The next image is representation of this in the database. This comprises a number of records in the wp_postmeta table where the meta_key is either title, description or keywords.

Using Thesis for SEO

I entered a second post. The following diagram shows a sample post set up with a title, description and keywords using Thesis.

[I have put 'Thesis' in the values purely to identify the source as this is a test. Of course normally this text would not be included.]

The next image is the representation of this in the database. This comprises a number of records in the wp_postmeta table where the meta_key is either thesis_title, thesis_description or thesis_keywords.

Say Goodbye (with fond thanks) to All In One SEO Pack

If All in One SEO Pack remains activated then the tags entered in Thesis are ignored and All In One SEO Tags are used.

To use these Thesis facilities you need to Deactivate the All in One SEO Pack however doing this switches off the title tag for earlier posts.

Copy title, description and keywords

I ran the following SQL against the WordPress database to copy All In One SEO Pack title, description and keywords values to make them usable by Thesis.

insert wp_postmeta (post_id,meta_key,meta_value)
select post_id, concat(‘thesis_’,meta_key),meta_value
from wp_postmeta where meta_key in (‘title’,'description’,'keywords’);

Now when accessing historic posts the title, description and keywords are preserved. We have title, descriptions and keywords originally entered using All In One SEO Pack now being used by Thesis.

This is what the details look like if you edit the post

This is an extract of the page html.

Note that with Thesis you can append the site name to the title and also include a tagline too.

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Evaluation of blogging at Squarespace

by russell on January 27, 2009

Squarespace.com was my first evaluation of a low cost, point and click solution for new bloggers.

I allowed myself two hours with the goal of creating a blog with images, video, affiliate links and then perform some search engine optimization

Evaluation of Squarespace

I started with the Squarespace video presentation on th home page and this provided a brief but cogent introduction to the benefits and features of the product. So far so good.

Next was the fifteen minute demonstration video. This was less engaging so I abandoned this half way through feeling that I had enough to get going.

Now I had to choose a topic for my blog. The snoring of my dogs under the table was the inspiration I needed so I bought the domain cavalier-king-charles-spaniels.com at joker.com and then signed up to Squarespace with a login name of cavalier-king-charles as there was a length restriction on the name.

This is what the blog contains:

first blog post with text, pictures and embedded video
about me page with pictures
picture gallery
an RSS feed
site search facility
product recommendations with affiliate links to a Amazon and Dog online

I then did the DNS set up of http://www.cavalier-king-charles-spaniels.com to point at http://cavalier-king-charles.squarespace.com

The end product looked like this….

Positives about Squarespace

Very good documentation
Intuitive user interface
Main facilities are right out of the box

Negatives about Squarespace

Site was slow – in fact all squarespace sites were quite slow – even the ones they recommend on their home page
Editing of large images was unreliable, – small images were okay
It was not obvious how to change meta data for search engine optimization, i.e. title tags, description and keywords.
Creating of book recommendation link to Amazon did not work – this might be because I was using an evaluation version – free 14 day trial.

Squarespace Tips

Edit your images locally on your PC first to make them approximately the right size before uploading them to Squarespace for inclusion on a page

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How To Create A Blog – Getting Started

by russell on January 26, 2009

OK. So you want to create a blog. Where do you start?

Questions for new Bloggers

Let’s start with a few questions:

what do you want to achieve with your blog?
do you know whom you are writing for?
do you have the discipline to write several times a week?
how do you want to measure the effectiveness of your blog?
do you know how to choose the right tools for your blog?

Well, hopefully this site can help you with the last of these questions.

Blogging Objectives

You need to know why you are blogging.

Is it for fun, to launch a book, to make affiliate income, to sell a product, to drive traffic to your main site?

Once you have a goal then you can set about measuring your success.

Blogging Audience

Who is your target audience? Do you have different audiences? What incoming links do you want for your blog? What keywords or keyword phrases hit your blog? For what phrase to you want to be on the first page in Google?

Blogging Discipline

Blogs are successful in the search engines because they change frequently. If you cannot write several times a week then blogging is not for you.

Okay, if you write one magnificent 500 word, keyword optimized, post each week then you will be fine.

My advice would be to write one fantastic post a week (that people will link to a.k.a. linkbait), and maybe three other good posts. Then you will be better than fine.

Blogging Effectiveness

Any process needs a feedback loop otherwise you cannot tell whether it is working or not. A blog is no different.

You need to decide how you want to measure your blogging success:

traffic, hits, unique visitors?
number of comments?
number of subscribers?
incoming links?
outbound links to your target site?
number of new customers ?
number of new friends?

Blogging Tools

Based on the above objectives, your individual skills and your ability and desire to learn, the time you have available, you then need to choose a set of blogging tools that will accelerate you towards our blogging objectives.

Once you know what you want from your blog, this site will help you get it.

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