Community, Self-Respect, and Free WordPress Themes

October 24, 2008 • 17 Comments

If you would like to know more about Elevate Themes, or would like to stay up to date with the launch schedule and FREE theme releases, please follow @elevatethemes on twitter

I’m convinced the worst feeling in the world is when you know you could have done something, yet you chose to do nothing. Over the last several months, it has become increasingly clear that my self-respect was waning, and an intense desire to do something special was overwhelming me.

You see, I’m grateful for the community that supports free software like WordPress.  It’s that community that has given me the ability to work full-time from home, enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, and make some of the best friends I’ve ever had. WordPress has dominated my life for the better part of two years, which is shocking conisdering WordPress is just blogging software.  The fact that it supports hundreds, if not thousands, of people is shocking as well.

And to that end, I’ve been feeling dissatisfied with ONLY releasing themes that cost money.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m no zealot.  I’m as capitalist as they come. But something has been bothering me lately — it just didn’t seem right that a free program, supported by a team of volunteers, was severely lacking in quality themes that were also available for free.  It seems wrong — you can get a great piece of blogging softare for free, but almost all the good themes cost money. (more…)

WordPress 2.7 Admin Sneek-Peek

October 17, 2008 • 6 Comments

WordPress 2.7 is set to be released sometime in November. I’ve been following the development of the new 2.7 dashboard interface design through the SVN repository for 2.7 (bleeding), and this is what it’s showing as of 12:00 noon E.S.T. (more…)

Ultimate Guide to WordPress SEO – Deep Linking

October 16, 2008 • 15 Comments

You might have noticed that throughout this series on WordPress SEO, I’ve been doing something rather peculiar.  I’ve been linking to my own content far more than I’ve been linking out.  Now, this isn’t because I’m a stingy linker.  I just happen to have a goal in the methodology I’m using in this series with links.  That strategy is called deep linking, and it is one of the best ways to not only increase SEO, but also drive visitors deeper into your blog or website.

Deep linking is the art of linking relevant keywords to related content within your own site. Essentially, you are leveraging your own site’s equity for gain.  What gain? In order to understand what is to be gained, one must first understand how links affect SEO. (more…)

Ultimate Guide to WordPress SEO – Keyword Density

October 15, 2008 • 20 Comments

I’ll admit that I’m no SEO expert.  When I started this series on WordPress SEO, my goal was to outline steps that I have taken in my web experience that have helped me rank for target keywords time and time again.

In reality, SEO is a lot bigger than just making a few theme modifications and optimization.  Keyword density is one of those things that I understand very little about, but am very aware of its importance. (more…)

Ultimate Guide to WordPress SEO – META Keywords

October 14, 2008 • 34 Comments

Up until this point in the WordPress SEO series, I’ve been very confident in the power of the methods I’ve outlined.  I really don’t believe a plugin should control your TITLE, I do believe you can increase search engine click-throughs by using the META description tag, and I do believe that Heading structure and hierarchy are important for keyword ranking.

But what I’m about to share today doesn’t have any solid metrics, and I’m not convinced it will help you at all.  I do personally use this method on this blog, and I haven’t noticed any negative effects on my rankings, but there are some people who do believe that META Keywords should never be used, given their dark history.

So, implement this at your own risk.  (By the way, Proximity News Theme users can turn this feature off in the theme options panel under the Search Engine Optimization section) (more…)

Ultimate Guide to WordPress SEO – META Descriptions

October 13, 2008 • 46 Comments

One of the tricks to WordPress SEO is understanding that it’s not all about rankings.  Sure, high rankings for your target keywords are awesome, and they definitely produce great returns, but lower rankings aren’t bad all the time either. If we think about a search engine results page (SERP) as a billboard for our content, then sure, position matters, but so does the content of our billboard.

And that’s exactly what we can do using the META description tag.  We can actually control what gets displayed in our little spot of SERP real estate, therefore utilizing a tremendous opportunity to convert that space into traffic. (more…)

An Easy Way To Get the Contents of a Custom Field

October 9, 2008 • 51 Comments

If you do any hardcore WordPress coding, then you’re probably aware of Custom Fields and the unlimited possibilities they offer you as a WordPress designer or developer.  For instance, I use custom fields as a means of attaching a feature image and thumbnail to posts in my Proximity News Theme.

But, they can be a bit cumbersome to use throughout your theme because of the ridiculous amount of code that it takes just to pull the data out and display it. (more…)

Ultimate Guide to WordPress SEO – Optimized Heading Tags

October 8, 2008 • 28 Comments

Last year I read an article at Chris Pearson’s website that absolutely changed the way I looked at markup standards and WordPress SEO. Seriously, up until that point, I was convinced that SEO was a bunch of garbage for blackhat guys who were looking to game the system and cheat the rest of us. But after reading that article, I came away with a new perspective — Your markup is not simply a method for adding structure to style, but was the primary method search engines used to parse your content.

That day, I stopped using H2 in the sidebars of blog. I stopped using H1 for my blog’s title (and the blogs I would have the privilege of developing). And that’s what we’re going to cover in this post — how you can do the exact same thing! (more…)