Central Perk: 5 mai 2011

joi, 5 mai 2011

G o o g l eUK A n n i v e r s a r y P r o m o t i o n

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Amount Won: £ 500,000 UK Pounds.

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WPTouch Pro Mobile Theme Review Graywolf's SEO Blog

WPTouch Pro Mobile Theme Review

Posted: 04 May 2011 10:55 AM PDT

The following is a review of the WPTouch Pro Mobile Theme. This is a premium theme that I paid for. This is NOT a sponsored review. I’ve been an big advocate of keeping a website on one URL and not using m.example.com, example.com/mobile/, or example.mobi as your solution (see Dangers of Multiple Website Versions). I’ve also shown example of how Google can get mobile website detection wrong. That said, I’m a big proponent of having a mobile website and delivering mobile optimized content to smart phones and the growing number of tablet devices. I have been using the free version of WPTouch for years, and it’s been on my list of recommended WordPress SEO plugins. However, three things frustrate me: the lack of branding, the lack of iPad support, and the lack of customization. Thankfully all three of these problems were solved by the premium version.

As of this writing, there are three pricing options: $39.95 for a single website, $69.95 for up to 5 websites, and $199.95 for an unlimited number of websites. I chose the middle option because, at the time of the purchase, I was unsure if I was going to like theme, but I figured that, even if it only gave me iPad support, I would use it on my 5 best sites and be done with it.

Installation is pretty easy. You download the zip file from the website then upload it through the plugin interface. Once uploaded, you put in your login/license and the theme is activated. If you are using a caching solution, you will need to enter the names of the mobile browser on the browser exception list. While you are setting it up, it’s probably a good idea to turn off caching just to make sure it’s not causing any problems.

Configuration is pretty straight forward, but there are a lot of options. You need to play around with a few of them to get them correct.

I’ll go over some of the important ones:

Make sure you enable iPad support under (Active Theme > iPad Settings).
You will need to upload a mobile logo (270 x 44) and (540 x 88) for the iPhone and and iPhone retina view. Personally I skipped the retina logo version. I do wish there was a logo for the portrait version of the iPad view though.
I turned off the dates under (Active Theme > Menu, posts pages).
Instead of the dates, I used the featured image under (Active Theme > Style Appearance >Thumbnail Icons ). You will need to make sure your theme supports featured image or you’ll need to enable it manually. If you don’t have featured images, your theme will show a blank camera icon.
Turn off the image as attachments setting to prevent double images from appearing.
I changed the colors slightly from the defaults and went with a sans-serif font (never try to argue that using serif font on a website is a good idea with me … it won’t end well … trust me)

One of the nice options is that it gives you the ability to back up your mobile settings should your blog “go boom”. Wait till you have everything set up how you want, then take advantage of that feature. It’s a nice bit of insurance to have and could save you time down the road.

One of the odd things that I didn’t like was the Google adsense support. The plugin supports mobile adsense for smartphones but not for the iPad version. This is a feature that has been requested a few times in the support forums. I am using a plugin to display ads randomly on all of my posts older than 7 days, so the iPad version does get ads but not mobile optimized ones. This does mean that smartphone users viewing posts older than 7 days get ads too. Unfortunately they bleed off the screen because they are too large.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the plugin. It solved most of my problems, such as branding, lack of customization, and iPad support. Two things I really would like to see added are logo support for portrait reading on the iPad and mobile adsense on the iPad version. It does take a little while to configure but, once you get it right, it’s pretty maintenance-free.

WPTouch Pro is a premium plugin that I recommend using. I believe that serving mobile optimized content is becoming increasingly more important (see How Mobile Friendly is Your Website). To be clear, if you purchase this plugin using my link, I do make an affiliate commission. That said, I purchased this plugin with my own money for the review and was not given a free or comped version. This review is NOT a sponsored review. So I am comfortable recommending this product. I think it’s a worthwhile investment: I paid $69 for it but will be upgrading to the unlimited version in the very near future. WPTouch Pro is plugin I recommend .
photo credit: Johan Larsson

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

WPTouch Pro Mobile Theme Review

Video: First Lady's Let's Move! Flash Workout

Your Daily Snapshot for
Thursday, May 5, 2011

Video: First Lady's Let's Move! Flash Workout

This week over 600 schools nationwide performed a dance popularized by Beyonce in her video for “Move Your Body,” which encourages kids to get up and get moving. All the performances took place at 1:42 pm on Monday. First Lady Michelle Obama stopped by Alice Deal Middle School in Washington, D.C., to check out their event, and had some fun herself.

Watch the video.

SEOptimise

What’s Your SEO Confession? SMX Advanced London Ticket Giveaway!

Posted: 05 May 2011 01:12 AM PDT

At SEOptimise, we’ve got 3 spare tickets to SMX Advanced London to give away to 3 lucky readers of our blog who are happy to share an embarrassing SEO-related confession in the comments below this post.

Kevin Gibbons speaking at SMX Advanced London 2010

Ever decided to turn down a family dinner event because you secretly wanted to stay in and optimise your title tags? Or perhaps you’ve gone on a relaxing holiday for a week but couldn’t resist checking in to an Internet Cafe to build some links? Or maybe you’re like me and you like to bring a Keyword Density Checker into drinking games at social occasions – we want to know your most embarrassing SEO stories!

The winners will be picked on Monday 9th May, so get your submissions in quick and you never know, you might get a free pass to attend SMX Advanced London, which both Kevin and Marcus will be speaking at. You can also use our SMX London 15% discount code: SEOPTIMISE011.

But why not get a free one instead by letting us know your embarrassing SEO stories in the comments below…

30 Very Useful Twitter Tools You Must Be Aware Of

Posted: 04 May 2011 06:46 AM PDT

Bird tweeting *

There are numerous ways of using Twitter for everything from business to fun. The key to using Twitter effectively is the use of tools. Without tools, Twitter can be overwhelming and difficult to fathom. There are numerous tools that allow you to sift through this massive resource of latest news, links and gossip.

So what are the Twitter tools that really make a difference for advanced Twitter users?

I selected just the best of them: 30+ Twitter tools that are most useful right now. Most of these tools have been around for years so they have a sound business model. They simplify manifold tasks but have one thing in common: you must be aware of these tools if you’re serious about Twitter participation.

Standalone and Web-Based Twitter Clients

CoTweet
CoTweet is a solid and free web-based Twitter client with some useful CRM features aimed at business users. I use it quite often.

TweetDeck
Sleek Adobe Air desktop client for Twitter offering a good overview with several panes.

Seesmic
Seesmic is like both CoTweet and Tweetdeck; they have a web-based client and an Adobe Air based app with similar features. They even support Facebook and other services as well.

twhirl
One of the more popular Twitter clients from the early days of Twitter. I can still recommend it.

Spaz
Cross platform open source Twitter client for Mac, Windows and Linux.

Hahlo
Web-based iPhone (and iPod Touch) optimised Twitter app that works inside modern browsers as well.

Misc. Twitter Tools
ManageFlitter
An advanced Twitter contact management tool I can highly recommend.

Twellow
Twellow is the “Yellow Pages” of Twitter.

iTweet
This is an alternative web-based interface for Twitter, and indeed it’s a little more usable than the default one on Twitter.com.

TwitterCounter
This is a Twitter followers counter similar to the Feedburner count for blog subscribers.

Paper.li
Ever wanted to publish a newspaper? Paper.li does it on your behalf. Just pick the sources, be it people or hashtags.

Magpie
Magpie is an ad-network for Twitter. It boasts that users can make something like $50-200 a month just by tweeting.

Twitter WordPress Plugins

Twitter Tools by Alex King
I use this set of tools over on my own SEO blog and it works fine, you can even tweet from the WordPress backend and your blog address will be used as the client (software) link.

WP to Twitter
Twitter updater plugin using the SEO friendly Cli.gs short URL service for tweeting your posts.

Reliable Twitter
This WordPress plugin uses the Google Ajax API to get a reliable stream of tweets to your blog sidebar.

Firefox Extensions for Twitter

Echofon
Simple but effective and popular Twitter Firefox add-on. I have used Echofox as my main Twitter client for several years now.

TwitBin
Even simpler Twitter add on for Firefox.

HootBar
Lets you post to Twitter right from the address bar of your browser.

Twitter Social News

Topsy
Search the most popular current stories shared on Twitter. Also available this week, month or all time search.

Trunk.ly
This is a Delicious-like social bookmarking site for Twitter but it’s automated. It collects the links you share on Twitter, Facebook, Delicious and everywhere, saving them as bookmarks with tags. You can share them with others as well.

TweetMeme
Find out the most popular stories as shared via the Tweetmeme button.

Twitturly
Social news-like interface for the current hot tweets.

MicroBlogBuzz
Shows you what’s most popular today, this week etc. on Twitter and across the other common microblogging platforms.

Twitturls
Shows the latest and most popular links on Twitter.

Twitter Analytics

Klout
Klout is probably the most widely used tool to determine a person’s (or account’s) authority on Twitter. The sheer number of followers is a worthless metric.

bit.ly
Use bit.ly as URL shortener and you can look up how many people clicked the actual links along with some other stats. For shortening links you can also use j.mp – it’s even shorter and does not have a domain from Libya (.ly).

TweetReach
Tweetreach is an analytics tool that estimates the number of impressions you have received, even listing the users who provided them. It’s quite biased though, as impressions by large numbers of bot followers do not mean much. So make sure you weed out the automated accounts when considering the numbers.

TweetStats
This statistic tool measures everything from when you tweet (weekdays, time of day) to who your real friends are by counting how often you address people.

Twist
Twist allows you to quickly view and compare popularity trends on Twitter. It’s similar to Google Trends.

FriendOrFollow.com
This tool compares your list of friends with your followers and shows you who does not follow you back.

These 30+ Twitter tools will allow you a seamless integration of Twitter in your daily routine, but make sure you know what you’re doing on Twitter and have some business objectives.

This post was originally published on November 14th, 2008. It was last updated: May 3rd, 2011. Numerous links have been removed and added. Many descriptions have been altered.

* Image by Noël Zia Lee