I am going to teach you how to optimize your WordPress permalinks for better On-Page SEO, which is the first thing you need to do as soon as you have installed WordPress on your server. Learn how to create a custom permalink structure for your WordPress powered site, optimize them for Search Engines and why it is important.
1. Default WordPress Permalinks
By default, the WordPress permalinks for your posts and pages are very SEO-Unfriendly and look a bit like this:
http://www.domain.com/?p=1
If you know the basics of on-page SEO then you know how this is a problem. Basically the ending of your URL should contain keywords that reflect the content of that page or post. Not only is this more user-friendly (and looks less sketchy when people share links to your site) but it also helps tell search engines, like Google, what that page should be about (On-Page SEO is all about “Relevance”).
Luckily WordPress does provide a very easy way to optimize your permalink structure. All you have to do is log into your WordPress admin panel and go to the following location:
Settings –> Permalinks
On this page, click on “Custom Structure” and then to the right you’ll want to enter the following:
%postname%
Now your permalinks will be created using keywords from your post or page title.
*If you notice I put a “.html” at the end of mine. I really like it because I have subfolders on my domain and it helps distinguish between the two, but it probably doesn’t do much or anything in terms of Search Engine Optimization.
3. Manually Editing Your Permalinks Per Page Or Post
After you set up your custom permalink structure you can also manually edit your permalinks while creating or editing your posts/pages. This way you can choose the exact words you want for your URL structure. To do so just click on the small “edit” button right under the field where you put in your post/page title (see image below). Makes sure to click “save draft” or “update” after you change it.
4. Advantages Of A Better Permalink Structure
The advantages of optimizing your permalink structure to a keyword-rich one are the following:
Makes your URL’s easier to read by search engine robots
Makes your URL easier to read in search engine results (may increase clicks)
Gives more weight to the words in your URL
5. Quick Tips For Better Permalinks
Changing the permalink structure works pretty well, however, you may want to edit them manually (as explained above) to make them even better then the default. Keep the following tips in mind when optimizing your permalinks.
Keep them short -hopefully between 1-4
Keep them relevant – make sure to choose the keywords you want your page or post to rank for(obviously they will be relevant to your content)
Avoid “fluff’ words – don’t use words like: it, and, of, the…etc.
Here’s an interesting Linux tidbit that not many ESX admins realize.
reboot is not the same as init 6
In Linux, the init 6 command gracefully reboots the system running all the K* shutdown scripts first, before rebooting. The reboot command does a very quick reboot. It doesn’t execute any kill scripts, but just unmounts filesystems and restarts the system. The reboot command is more forceful.
So, should I use reboot or init 6? – neither! My advice is to use the shutdown command. shutdown will do a similar job to init 6, but it has more options and a better default action. Along with kicking off an init 6, the shutdown command will also notify all logged in users (logged in at a tty), notify all processes the system is going down and by default will pause for a set time before rebooting (giving you the chance to cancel the reboot if you realize that you made a mistake). Jolly civil.
-
How does this advice apply to VMware ESX servers you ask? Well I’m not a VMware kernel developer so to be honest I’m not the best person to ask (if you do know murky details, then please let us know in the comments). However I will say this; I will always use shutdown -r first and foremost. It’s just a better habit to get into.
Is there a difference on an ESX server? Yes, but as I said I’m entirely sure how it affects the VMkernel processes. The reason I definitely know – a couple of times I’ve had to use the reboot command to force an unresponsive ESX shutdown -r.
P.S. This also applies to init 0 / halt (i.e. use shutdown -h instead).
Using Ajax, you can build Web applications with the sophistication and usability of traditional desktop applications and you can do it using standards and open source software. Now, for the first time, there's an easy, example-driven guide to Ajax for every Web and open source developer, regardless of experience. You'll not only learn how to write "functional" code, but also master design patterns for writing rock solid, high-performance Ajax applications. You'll also learn how to use frameworks such as Ruby on Rails to get the job done fast. • Learn how Ajax works, how it evolved, and what it's good for • Understand the flow of processing in Ajax applications. • Build Ajax applications with XML and the XMLHttpRequest object. • Integrate back-end code, from PHP to C#. Use XSLT and XPath, including XPath Axis • Develop client-side Ajax libraries to support code reuse. • Streamline development with Ruby on Rails and the Ruby programming language
Recently I joined the Customer success team in my company and found this article from Jeff Bullas , interesting and worth a share. All these methods will surely improve the social footprint.
Launching a product using social media provides multi-media rich global platforms that makes it easy for each social network community to share the message and let other people know about your brand.
Promoting, marketing and launching any product globally was usually left to multi-nationals with big budgets and access to prime time TV and other expensive mass media and to be effective required multi-million dollar budgets.
Here is a case study of Guy Kawasaki’s launch and promotion of his book ‘Enchantment The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions‘ and how he used a multi channel social media marketing strategy and tactics that can be applied to any product.
This approach or a subset of his campaign can be applied by anyone with the right discipline and appropriate resources and ‘yes’ you will need a marketing budget but it will not need to be 6 or 7 figures.
Guy Kawasaki is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist (Garage Technology Ventures), a well known blogger and also famous for his RSS aggregator “Alltop”
He was involved in launching and marketing the Apple McIntosh in 1984 and has written ten books with ‘Enchantment’ being his latest.
So how did he launch and promote his book using social media?
1. Facebook
The Facebook fan page was built specifically for the book and its main aim was to provide a community site on the largest social networking community on the planet that would engage and then share. To build up the fan base that provided critical mass to share an incentive to “like” the page was achieved by giving away a free book. In this case it was his first book “The McIntosh Way”
Primary Goal:
Create an incentive for people to “like” the page by providing a free product and so grow his fan base
Cost: Approximately $2,700
2. Website and Blog
He realized after 2 months that Facebook was great but limited and needed a site he owned that was not restricted to the whims and restrictions of the Facebook environment and its terms and conditions. He built the site which was part of his own website.
Primary Goal
To make it easy for his book reviewers to obtain information and images necessary to review the book.
Cost: Approximately $4,000
3. Book Reviews by Other Bloggers and A-Listers
Building a tribe before launch becomes very apparent here and with Guy’s access to his Alltop data base of 20,000 bloggers he was able to offer a free review copy to all 20,000 and from that he attained the following traction. He used eCairn to indentify the social media movers and shakers to find other bloggers outside of his own database listing.
1,300 requested a copy
150 interviews
200 reviews
All reviews appeared on his website which gave visibility to all the reviewers as a way of saying thank you.
Main Goal:
To provide 3rd party credibility authority and social proof that was widespread and ubiquitous
Cost: $16,000 (but this was borne by the publisher)
4. Email
The shiny new toy ‘social media’ is not the only marketing tactic that he used and they knew that a 160,000 emails (130,000 acquired over 30 years of making contacts including his blog and website) would be highly effective.
Again it is the building of a marketing base via email prior to launch that is vital to have in your tool kit and assets to ensure launch success
Cost: Approximately $4,500 set up and $1,000 per month (allow 3 months) for the email campaign (Total $7,500)
5. Banner Ads
This was a 6 week campaign on Google AdWords, Facebook Ads and Twitter (Promoted Tweets). They used Clix Marketing for managing the campaign. Both Google Adwords and Facebook ads are easy enough to do your self
Primary Goal
To get access to potential buyers outside of his sphere of influence and use the power of Google and Facebook to target the rightaudience.
Cost: Allow $2,000-$3,000
6. Photo Contest
Every one loves a contest and they work well on Social media. He offered 5 cameras and an Apple iPad. He had a Facebook contest app designed by Strutta.
Results
1,150 entries
35,000 visits
70,000 entry views
Primary Goal
To create ‘Buzz’ .
Cost: Approximately $6,000 (App $2,000 and prizes $4,000)
Major Takeaway: Start a tribe before even writing that book or product so that when you launch you have a a fan base that will be ready to buy and spread your message for you whether that is on Facebook, Twitter or Blog. Guy used his blog, website and his social media community on Alltop as his primary platform for marketing his product.
7. Quizzes
He took a quiz he had in his book and took it online and provided it in two channels (Facebook and his website). The surprise here was that the website version results far exceeded the Facebook results.
700 took the Quiz on Facebook
2,900 took the quiz on the website
He used Wildfire which costs $400 per month to create the self-serve quiz and used Electric Pulp to create the website version ($3,000)
Primary Goal: To engage and also create more buzz.
Cost: Approximately $5,000
8. Infographic
The popularity of the infographics was taken into account and resulted in reviewers and bloggers embedding it in their sites. He hired Column Five to create the graphic which provides an overview of the book in one image.
Primary Goal: To provide a media that could go ‘viral’.
Cost: Approximately$2,000
9. PowerPoint
He had created a PowerPoint presentation that would not only be used at key note presentations but would also be published on Slideshare and spread the brand and buzz.
Primary Goal: Placement on the Slideshare social networking platform to make it easy for people to share and embed
Cost: Approximately $3,600
10. Slideshow on YouTube
Thank you is a small phrase that produces big results and as a way of saying thank you to all the companies and people involved in the book project launch and promotion he created a slideshow on YouTube. They used Animoto to create the slideshow.
Primary Goal: Provide another online digital property that spreads worldwide and as a minimum will be shared by the all the parties mentioned
Cost: Approximately$1,000 for design and $50 a month for the software (professional edition)
Total Cost: Approximately $50,000
(Including $16,000 for books from the publisher and $34,000 by Guy)
This could be reduced significantly by doing some of this yourself and also focusing on the channels that provide the greatest leverage.
The major takeaway is that you need to build a tribe before you launch any product or book. Guy Kawasaki has worked over the years to build his tribe and here is a snapshot of its size.
Twitter: 351,000 followers
Email subscribers: 130,000
Bloggers: 20,000
Facebook: 52,000
Have you started growing your tribe?
This case study was sourced from Guy’s own article about his book launch on Mashable.
I love feedback. Please craft your comment under a post or drop me a line at santosh_madhavan@yahoo.co.in to inquire about Open Source Projects, Sun Technologies, Mozilla Technologies, Certifications and other Technical stuffs.
Posts
