Free WordPress Plugin: “100 SEO tips”
Written on February 19, 2008 – 9:54 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
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We Love WordPress
Last week I was browsing through our WordPress Admin here and noticed the “Hello Dolly” plugin. This is a plugin that comes pre-installed with every WordPress install. When activated you will randomly see a lyric from Hello, Dolly in the upper right of your admin screen on every page. As you can imagine this isn’t a very useful plugin. Then I decided to take the “Hello Dolly” plugin and make it do something useful: display tips.
I wrote a blog post on my personal blog and sent an update to Twitter asking for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tips. Then I opened up a Google Spreadsheet where people could insert and edit the tips. Within 30 minutes I had received hundreds of tips from several friendly SEO experts (complete list below). Together we wrote, collected and fine-tuned more than 250 tips. We ended up with a nice collection of exactly “100 SEO Tips” which is also the title of the Plugin we launch today.
Even if you know a lot about SEO this plugin is still fun to install. It reminds you, casually, of what you already know but sometimes forget. So, install it, share it, link back here and if you have a few tips of your own please do share them with us so we can include them in the next version of the plugin.
Download: http://thenextweb.org/100-seo-tips.zip
Install: Download the plugin, unzip, upload to server in directory /wp-content/plugins/ and then activate in Wordpress Management. Tips will appear in top right corner of WordPress admin.
Please let us know if you installed it by leaving a comment here with your blog url! Or even better, blog about it and and send us a trackback.
Special thanks to the following people who helped collect the tips: David Petherick, Joop Dorresteijn, Nikki Pilkington , Joery Bruijntjes, Gerben Bouwhuis and Eduard Blacquière .
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24 Responses to “Free WordPress Plugin: “100 SEO tips””
By Joop on Feb 19, 2008 | Reply
Nice work Boris,
These web collaborations could be useful for more broad knowledge issues. It goes way further than a old fashioned website poll!
By Frank Meeuwsen on Feb 19, 2008 | Reply
Download, upload and install. And then started refreshing my wp-admin area for the tips :-) Thanks, nice addition!
By gerben on Feb 19, 2008 | Reply
Nice! Have to plug it in, but posted it first.
By gerben on Feb 19, 2008 | Reply
Hi Boris,
If you update it. Please, make sure to target=”_blank” hyperlinks. Now i’m leaving my wordpress editor along hitting the most interesting hyperlinks.
By Joost de Valk on Feb 19, 2008 | Reply
Great idea Boris! A slight bit of feedback though:
About the URL’s, consider using dashes between the words. not ‘%20′ or ‘_’
%20 is not the best option indeed, but as far as Google is concerned,underscores are just as good as dashes. Also, since this is displaying in WordPress, it might be a bit weird as WordPress does the dash by default.
Always use “alt” and “title” tags for images, flash objects and links.
I simply do not agree that this is always necessary. If your anchor text on a link is descriptive, there’s no need of adding a title tag IMHO.
Break larger pages into two or more smaller ones.
Why? People will do this and maintain the same title, this would NOT be wise from an SEO perspective.
Browsers allow for bad html code, SE spiders are a different beast.
It seems like you’re saying SE spiders can handle bad code… Well surprise: they’re not. The same goes as did for the dashes as well: WordPress doesn’t even allow you to write bad code, so this is probably not really in it’s place.
If you have a blog, start investing some time in community marketing, use blog friends for Facebook, and submit to Twitter.
and
Start a blog, search engines like fresh content. Actually, they LOVE it.
Well ehm, I’ve installed this plugin, so I guess I have a blog, right? :)
I’d go over all advice in the plugin a second time, either yourself or with a real SEO, and make sure you’re not telling people stuff that isn’t true, or irrelevant…
By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Feb 19, 2008 | Reply
@joost I will invite you to the speadsheet so you can edit all you want!
By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Feb 19, 2008 | Reply
@gerben updated it right away. All links are opening in new windows now…
By gerben on Feb 19, 2008 | Reply
@Boris,
Thanx.
@joost,
http://www.seoking.nl/undersco.....teken-seo/ they discovered once that using a - gives more semilar results in search engines than using a _. In that way it could be better to use - instead of _. Don’t you agree?
By Joost de Valk on Feb 19, 2008 | Reply
Nope: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-07-24-n83.html
By gerben on Feb 19, 2008 | Reply
Than i still think it’s weird that at http://www.google.nl/search?hl.....sluitingen the page http://www.verzekeringen-onlin.....tingen.php doesn’t show up at all?
(i know it used to be worse at all!)
By oeroek on Feb 20, 2008 | Reply
It is a funny plugin indeed. I love the concept that you extracted form hello dolly. Great use of the mother of all plugins.
But keep the ads out.
“Buy 299 Steps to Website Heaven. An invaluable guide to SEO for the SME”
By oeroek on Feb 20, 2008 | Reply
Before somebody thinks that I post ads, my post above actually quotes a tip from the top 100. I posted the tip (that included html code). My apologies.
By Joost de Valk on Feb 20, 2008 | Reply
Gerben: It is indexed though!
By gerben on Feb 20, 2008 | Reply
Hi Joost,
I told you it was worse before, but it’s still strange that google doesn’t rank that page. The page normally ranks perfect.
So, i would also prefer - over _.
By Ayman van Bregt on Feb 20, 2008 | Reply
Great plugin, smart thought, excellent execution!
Thanks!
By adam on Feb 20, 2008 | Reply
Boris, that’s a real ‘mini SEO constitution’ for me as a newbie in this world. Thanks!
By adriaan verstijnen on Feb 26, 2008 | Reply
Cool! Heb net 500 keer mijn wordpress-dashboard gerefreshed en volgens mij heb ik alle tips, inderdaad, verwerkt in het keyword strategy document voor een van onze klanten. Een goeie cross-check ;)
Daag!!!
By Besplatne Stvari Samo najbolje on Mar 1, 2008 | Reply
Great plugin, smart thought, excellent execution!
Thanks!
By John on Mar 7, 2008 | Reply
Great plugin, its more usefull that dolly plugin :) You done a great jobs.
Thanks u so much !
By manele noi on Mar 8, 2008 | Reply
Great plugin, excellent execution!
By SEO Australia on Mar 10, 2008 | Reply
Excellent idea!! Will install it….. Thanks!
By Squeaky on Mar 13, 2008 | Reply
Nice idea for a plugin. I am curious to see how many of them I know or have forgotten.
By Aurelius Tjin on Apr 30, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for the heads up. It really pays to be updated with the latest news on technology and keep abreast with the innovations.