About two weeks ago, we covered a story about the All-in-One SEO Pack and the fact that it was no longer being supported.  To the relief of thousands of WordPress users, about a week later, we found out that someone else had resurrected the plugin.   The lesson learned was obviously that too many people had come to rely heavily on a single WordPress plugin.

Thanks to a heads up from my friend Leland at Themelab, it looks like someone has attempted to put a fork into the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin, with the release of a new plugin called Platinum SEO Pack.  Here are a few of the features that you will get on top of what AiO SEO Pack included:

1. Ability to add follow or nofollow and noindex meta tags to any post or page.
2. Automatic 301 redirect for permalink changes.
3. Nofollow links to your archives, categories, and tags pages.

To read more, or to download the Platinum SEO Pack, check out the authors page.

Search engine algorithms are always changing, so even for the top experts in Search Engine Optimization, there is a constant need for studying the newest SEO techniques in order to compete in todays online world.

WordPress has always been very search engine friendly by default, and when you add things like the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin or the SEO Sniper plugin to the mix, you have the potential for a very well optimized website without any real work.

With that said, there are a variety of SEO techniques that you can apply to your sites setup that aren’t covered with a simple plugin, and Joost de Valk has taken the time to cover WordPress SEO in great detail.

I have made it a habit to stay very current on the latest SEO techniques and I found this post extremely useful, well organized, and Joost did a great job of explaining things in a way that pretty much anyone can understand.    And hey, if you don’t like to read about SEO, you can at least click over to check out his new website design (and improved domain name).  Great work Joost!

I have added this post to our WordPress resources page.

Almost a week ago we wrote a post about how we noticed that the All-in-One SEO Pack was no longer supported by the original author, Uberdose.  This was obviously very concerning for many WordPress users as it is the most popular plugin and so many people have come to rely on it to optimize their blogs for search engines.

My original concern was that the author had not disclosed licensing information with the release of the plugin, but I noticed today that an update to this plugin was available and it appears that someone else is now supporting this plugin.  If you are wondering who is now supporting it, you can find information about the new owner over at ImBloggingThat.

Though this is exciting news for users of this plugin, I’m not familiar with the author so hopefully he is up on the latest SEO techniques and provides a similar commitment to what Uberdose did for the plugin. Ideally, this plugin really needs to be built into the standard WordPress install because it is so important and widely used, and everyone either is or should be using it if they aren’t already using a more advanced version like SEO Sniper.  Can we get this built into WordPress 2.7?  Only time will tell…

Late last week I talked about an advanced alternative premium WordPress plugin to the free All-in-One SEO Pack called SEO Sniper. In what can only be described as a complete coincidence (or weird timing), I’ve read a couple reports today that the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin will no longer be supported by the author, Uberdose. No mention is made for the reason behind this.

This is a fairly new plugin (about a year old I believe), yet it is by far the most used WordPress plugin out there and I’m sure most of you use it. So, what will come of this free plugin? As of right now it works fine, but what about after WordPress 2.6? I was unable to find licensing information associated with the plugin, so it is unclear of it is available for someone else to take over and continue to develop and improve.

When I first ran across the WP SEO Sniper premium WordPress plugin, I wasn’t really sure what exactly to expect.   After all, there is a popular free SEO WordPress plugin called All-in-One SEO Pack that has really become popular within the WordPress community.

I immediately picked up a copy of the WordPress plugin and began to test it out to try to get an idea of how it compared to All-in-One SEO Pack.  After getting the plugin uploaded and activated, I jumped over to the plugin settings panel and began to dig through the available features.   I have to admit, I was instantly impressed!

From what I can tell, All-in-One SEO Pack is designed specifically for anyone to upload and activate for instant improved SEO, meaning it is designed for someone that doesn’t have any SEO knowledge.  SEO Sniper was created for those serious about SEO so that they can easily practice advanced SEO techniques on their WordPress blogs directly from the dashboard.  They even offer 3 user profiles, so you can set the plugin to Mild, Moderate, or Aggressive.

Although things are displayed a little differently, it appears that SEO Sniper includes everything that use get with All-in-One SEO Pack, but it takes your control over your blogs SEO to a whole new level.

The plugin was based upon Dan Thies’ SEO Fast Start manual, allowing you to easily implement Dan’s strategies on your WordPress blog. Based upon Dan’s suggestions, you should be:

• Prevent paged indexes and archives from being indexed by the search engines.
• Selectively nofollow links to the main index page from anywhere on your blog.
• Craft a custom page title, meta keywords, and meta description for the blog home page.
• Nofollow category links on the category pages.
• Nofollow category links on the individual posts.
• Nofollow category links on the individual pages.
• Noindex all tag archives.
• Nofollow all internal tag links.
• Automatically build a footer page menu.
• Insert Google Analytics code and Google site verification code.
• Specify if and where you want to nofollow links to the page.
• Specify if you want to prevent the page from being indexed by the spiders.
• Craft a custom page title, meta keywords, and meta description.
• Prevent the page from being included in the WordPress list of pages.
• Specify a custom CSS file to be applied.
• Perform a 301 redirection on the page.  (This is great for those wanting to cloak affiliate links)
• Link the page or post to other pages and posts with custom anchor text.

With SEO Sniper, you can do the following:

• Give your important content more PageRank by cutting out redundant pages.
• Preserves more PageRank to be shared amongst your lower level content pages.
• Make your entry in the search engines stand out and entice more clicks.
• Push more PageRank down to your individual posts.
• Preserve more PageRank to be shared amongst your posts.
• Preserve more PageRank to be shared amongst your pages.
• Since tags are mostly for human benefit, the value of having tag archives in the search engine index is debatable.
• Preserve more PageRank to go to your valuable content.
• Give your blog a fully SEO’d footer menu with selective nofollows on the links.
• Include your Google code without having to edit your theme files.
• Precisely control how PageRank flows to a page.
• Keep unimportant content out of the search engine index completely.
• Make your entry in the search engines stand out and entice more clicks.
• Keep unimportant pages out of the list of pages. Many themes use the page list to build a main top menu. Control which pages appear in that important menu.
• Individually style a particular post or page if you wish to do so.
• Send request for, and the original PageRank, from a redundant post or page to a new post or page.
• Implement SEO Fast Start Tiered Pairing or Circular Navigation techniques on your posts and pages to give each post or page as much PageRank as possible.

Like All-in-One SEO Pack, you get an actual menu in your Write panel that gives you full control over that particular post, even going as far as to give you things like the ability to do a 301 redirect for that particular post (pictures above).

Overall I am very impressed with this plugin, though you should already be comfortable with basic SEO techniques before upgrading to this WordPress plugin.

If you decide to give SEO Sniper a try, remember that you have a 56-day money back guarantee, so it is essentially risk free.  The author also promises regular plugin updates as WordPress changes, so you know it will be supported over time, unlike many free plugins.

You may also want to try it in conjunction with WP Affiliate Pro, as I have personally found that the two premium plugins work really well together.

This guest post was written by Herbert of Digital Media Break, where he writes about the latest digital technology. If you have WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for Hack WordPress, please contact us.

I’ve always loved Hack Wordpress for the practical advice they offer, a recent example of which would be changing Wordpress Permalinks to be more SEO-friendly. Thus, I guess you can say I was inspired to talk about my own experiences with SEO. I’ll explicitly say this right now - I’m no qualified SEO expert, and the stuff I’m about to offer you isn’t going to work 100% of the time. I pulled off many of my traffic spikes by choosing the right images for my posts. With almost every post, I try to include relevant images. Some are screenshots that I’ve created myself, but most are images I take from other places on the web. I have personally discovered that the images that bring in the most traffic are usually already found on the first page of Google Images and are perfectly timed.

What’s so great about using images as opposed to worded listings?

Let’s think - why the heck would you want to use images to draw people to your site in contrast to worded listings? Firstly, every blog author out there would be thinking to target words that the chances of one particular blogger (us, in this case) making it to the front page is slim to none. Also, in many cases, there are much bigger sites and blogs that target the same niche that we happen to be in which have higher PageRanks and incoming backlinks, making the chances for us to appear on the first page even slimmer. Secondly, Wordpress makes it soooo easy to optimize your images for search engines that it’d be impossible for you to not try out.

Alright - what do I have to do?

Firstly, resolve to add maybe around 2-3 images for every post you make from now on. I’m not going to lie - this isn’t a one-image thing that you can nail, but rather like all SEO, it is a process and good habit that you can commit to. Those 2-3 images could be from a variety of search engines I suppose, but I’ve only given Google a try. Search for a picture of whatever you happen to be writing a post about, then try to select images from the first page on Google Image results, and copy the URL of the image and paste it right into Wordpress’ Insert Image tool. Yep - it’s fine to do that, but you have to remember to give credit (I do this in italicized text right below my image).Whoops, a special thanks to David Robertson for pointing it out, it’s actually not fine to use just any picture on Google Images - you have to ask for the author’s permission or use an image that’s not copyrighted (when in doubt, use Yotophoto or SXC.hu). Speaking of credit, this is where most people make the mistake when it comes to using images effectively. When inputting image options, be sure to actually input an image description in the “Image Description” field. As an amateur, I used to input the source URL into the description. As you can figure, I didn’t get any hits at all from those images. The image description is actually the text that will appear on the search listing (surprise - well it was for me!). For example, if you are using a Final Fantasy XIII image, I suggest using “Final Fantasy XIII” or “Final Fantasy XIII Character” as the description instead of a credit “Source:http://blahblahblah.com/image.jpeg”, which I suggest relocating underneath the picture. A little blurb about timing - when Microsoft was bidding for Yahoo!, I had written a series of posts tackling the subject. Sensing that this would make for great SEO, I used my cunning to input Yahoo!’s logo into my posts (to be honest, it was dumb luck that time). The next morning, I was shocked to see hits flooding into my blog via that link - wow, I had learned the power of image SEO. I recently ended up writing about how Sony turned their fortunes with the PS3 around, and fitted in various games I thought would end up fixing their fortunes. Thus, I found a picture of Final Fantasy XIII, and wow - tons of hits from that one. I believe that was my most successful one ever, actually.

Of course, the hits continued for a few days, but after the Yahoo! buzz and Final Fantasy XIII hype cooled, I didn’t receive many more hits.

A grain of salt..

Is there any particular reason why the images aren’t always targeted? Yep - and here’s why: from firsthand experience, when was the last time you Googled an image - and actually ended up looking at the site material? You can’t remember, right? Neither could I. Thus lies the weakness in image SEO - the traffic-to-reader conversion is very low. I’m sure that of the thousand visitors I had received, a couple would have stopped and read some of my other material, and I’m grateful that they would do that. As a relatively new blogger in the blogosphere (a mere year!), I really don’t have as much traffic as other blogs such as Engadget, Gizmodo, and Hack Wordpress, so I found image SEO to be a Godsend to me. If you’re looking for ways to get more traffic, image SEO is a great way to add to statistics. But, the last thing you expected up my sleeve was…

A little trick to counter that grain of salt

Of course, I had to figure out a little solution to this grain of salt thing. After all, I couldn’t leave you hanging there, could I? I remembered the last time I stopped to look at a site for a random image, it had a huge header at the top with the text “If you came from Google Images, read this!” I then ended up spending a few minutes to glance at that bottom frame - I never actually returned, but they had me for a few moments there. This is a minor landing page strategy, and might not be embraced by all in the blogosphere, as it does take away from the quality of your original post. I don’t know about you, but usually I don’t have the time to change it because I am either already working on another post or because the spike is over by the time I notice (a couple of days later, usually).

Conclusion

Image SEO is a great way to draw spikes of traffic to your blog, and if you’re good at it, the same people might end up coming twice on different image results and as a result, stop to read your blog. Look at it this way - even though the traffic-to-reader conversion rate might be a bit smaller than usual, at least you’re getting an extra couple of readers. And all it took was finding someone else’s image and some luck (now that I put it that way, it sounds easy, right?). Either way, if you want to give it a try, do it over a period of time - say, a month or so. That gives you around thirty (on average) posts with 2-3 images, some bound to be quality ones. That gives you around 60-90 images out there in Google Images - I believe that at least one of them will end up drawing huge amounts of traffic. How about you? Have you ever experienced a spike in traffic due to your simple image SEO? Or are you feeling a bit skeptical? I welcome everyone to comment - I’m looking for constructive criticism, but also for discussions (please, no flaming).