Purple Hazard

I recently setup a BuddyPress install for a Rugby Social Network. Now a question I’ve received from a member and one I’m really interested in myself is which SEO plugin to use. SEO for BuddyPress is specifically designed for BuddyPress, but, being used to All in One SEO and all the options it provide, which one should be used?

Or should I be using a combination? Eg. All in one SEO for post, title and description tags and BP-SEO for group, member, profile etc tags? I still have to test it out and have no idea how much they will interfere with each other.

Any thoughts on this would be great.

Adsense users will be happy to know that the Google team is currently testing a new interface to make ad publishing that much easier, and that much prettier.

It’s a sad fact that the biggest contextual ad provider online still utilizes, one of the ugliest user interfaces in the world. Think ad formats, think reports, even though it works and we’re all used to it by now, it’s about time Google did some cleaning.

Below is a screenshot of the pruposed interface, which is currently being tested by by a small group of publishers

The new interface plans to improve certain features which include :

1. Helping you to manage your account more efficiently.

2. Putting you in charge of what appears on your site.

3. Give you a more detailed insight about your ad performance, which will help you make better decisions.

You will be notified via e-mail if you’re included in the new beta testing crowd.

If I was still using Adsense I might have been really happy. Now hopefully the decline in performance will stop… I think not.

I’ve decided to launch a new section called “Web Definitions for Beginners” or Webdef for short. Webdef is aimed at providing beginner bloggers and internet users an easy to understand definition of all things related to the web.

This section is not aimed at replacing or competing with services such as Wikipedia or your trusty old Oxford Dictionary, but only as a  place for new internet users to be able to look for and easily understand the definitions provided by ordinary internet users.

Of course I won’t be able to run this service by myself, and that’s why I’m asking you the internet user to provide easy-to-understand definitions where possible.

Every week I’ll list a number of words to be defined in less than 200 characters. To define the any of the words listed in the post you can do so in a comment. Please use your correct e-mail address and website, because you will be referred to in the post defining whichever word.

How you can contribute :

1. Suggest Definition : Visit the Webdev category and view the latest “Words to be Defined” post. Post your definition in the comment box.

2. Suggest Words : Visit the Webdev category and view the latest ” Suggest a Word” post. Post your word suggestion in the comment box.

I also plan on making a PDF document available for download every month, containing the old and new web definitions. Yes, those who contributed will be listed in the document.

Many of us spend hours online everyday, reading SEO and website performance related articles. You won’t always admit it, but yes, we all get a bit tired of the same things over and over again. Fortunately, for those who are not aware, there’s a very smart and lyrically gifted guy called Charles Lewis.

Charles Lewis, also known as Chuck, Poetic Prophet and The SEO Rapper, is a gospel hip hop artist who does Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Social Media Consulting. – TheSEORapper.com

Take some time off, relax, turn up the volume and enjoy some of the best SEO Rap to grace the web so far.

Video’s :

1. Conversion Closing Rap

2. Paid Search 101 Rap

3. Social Media Addiction Rap

4. Link Building 101 Rap

Website Grader is a very useful SEO tool.

Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

You can also check your SEO effectiveness against competing websites. This tool will give a grading out of 100. If you get anything above 70%, you’re on the right track.

This is something I frequently use to see how my website, blog or forum will appear in search engine results. It display your site Title, Description and Keywords. It will also supply keyword density and other goodies.

(Results will open in a new page.)

This a question bloggers, like myself, tend to ask every time we think about monetizing our blog. I constantly go through a phase where I move my Adsense ads OR try out new systems like Adbrite or Bidvertiser.

No matter which ad system you are currently using, this little Ad “Heat Map” from the guys over at Google should give you a good starting point for ad placements.

I would recommend only using the Heat Map as a starting point, but as they mention on the Google Page, try to understand your readers. Don’t bombard them with irrelevant hawker ads. Always think about your readers first.

Red – Good Place

White – Bad Place

Ad Placement Heat Map

Heat Map

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=17954

One of the great ways of increasing you blog traffic and ranking is with quality comments, either on your blog or from you on another persons blog. Wouldn’t it be even better if you’re assured of a comment on your blog when you comment on someone else’s blog?

Well now you will be. Blogengage Forum Community now has a comment exchange section where you can post a link to your preferred post and so setup a comment exchange. You can either comment on some-one’s blog and then post a link to your blog OR start your own post with your blog link.

For this thing to work, it is important that everyone is honest and do what they have to do.

We recently launched our first free link directory. You can submit your link for free and we will accept or reject it within 24hours. The link directory is a great way for you as a webmaster to increase your link-backs and get your name out there.

A reciprocal link is not required, but will increase your chance of being accepted. If you do give us a link-back we would prefer it being to this link :

http://purplehazard.com/about/directory/ 

Any feedback on the directory would be welcomed.

If you use WordPress then you know all about plugins. Plugins make the world go round. Down below is my 5 favorite plugins, which were probably the reason you found my post in the first place.

Note:  This post does not include the normal MUST HAVE plugins such as Akismet, Google Sitemaps and the rest.

1. Add Post Footer Plugin - The most important and useful plugin ever created for WordPress. This plugin almost forces your blog visitors to read all other posts associated with the one they are currently reading. You can also add all the juicy like ads, tracking code and more to the bottom of your posts.

2. Subscribe to comments – Something I tend to forget at times. When visitors comment, they can chose to receive a notification when more comments are made on that post. This will bring those comment hungry visitors right back.

3. HeadSpace2 – You need a healthy SEO if you want your posts to be found. HeadSpace2 takes care of all your meta-tag needs.

4. Sociable- Want your posts on Digg, SU, Mixx and the rest? The you need Sociable. It automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed.

5. Twitter Tools – If you don’t have Twitter yet, please register one as soon as possible. I use Twitter tools to automatically post a Twitter update with a link to my latest post. It works.

If you don’t use and of these plugins yet, I will recommend trying them out as soon as possible. If believe other plugins to be more important than these, please comment and let me know.