7 WordPress SEO Plugins to speed up your site

I have been working for some time now on some projects requiring WordPress SEO.

These projects are self-hosted blogs, so I came up with a list of SEO plugins every blog should have.

This particular post is about optimizing the loading time of your WordPress site or blog.

7 WordPress SEO Plugins that will optimize your page loading speed:

1. External Files Optimization:

• WP Minify  /
  
• External Files Optimizer

2.  Image Size Optimization:

• WP Smush.it

3. Database Optimization:

• WP Optimize/
• Optimize DB

4. Cache:

• W 3 Total Cache/
• WP Super Cache

This article is for everyone who has a self-hosted WordPress blog or site and s/he is interested in speeding up the reader’s access to the site.

P.S. I know that this blog is hosted on WordPress but I have some additional self-hosted WordPress sites that I work on like anamatei.ro & handmade-knitwear.com.

New WordPress feature : the “Like” button

As I visit my blog 10-15 times a day, I can say that there aren’t any changes that pass me by….

The last 2-3 days , I noticed a new feature in WordPress ( I bet you all did) … the “Like” button a.k.a. “Thumbs Up” in other social environments … first thought:

My vision on Web 3.0 – Artificial Intelligence

Lately I have been reading lots of articles on web 3.0 concepts and visions of various online marketers.

The words “Semantic Web” and “Sentiment” are on everyone’s lips when it comes to envisioning web 3.0 new technology. One of the most fascinating articles on the web 3.0 features is on howstuffworks.com;  this article got me thinking to one particular thing: Expert Systems.

Expert systems are artificial intelligence applications which operate with knowledge base in order to provide solutions to a particular problem by clarifying uncertainties for users and giving multiple answers to the best course of action in a given field.

Expert systems operate with user queries, much like search engines – the difference is in the type of base : data vs. knowledge. The expert systems, as I defined them above, are a little part of the future web 3.0 as I envision it; this “semantic web” will probably operate with a knowledge base in order to provide answers to user queries.

The “sentiment” component is also a big part of the future web 3.0 because the knowledge base has to be filtered somehow. The way I see things, the sentiment is in fact the number of positive reviews of a product or service versus the number of negative reviews of that product or service.

Change is in the air| Google Keyword Tool in Beta version| paid Google service

Today, I have tried for 2 hours the new beta version of  Google Keyword Tool

I noticed that, every 2 minutes,  it was refreshing my page & redirecting it to my google account sign page, in order to use adwords service … that can mean one or two things:

SMO – how to create a SMO buzz & where?

SMO environments – networks that will help your Buzz

• Social BookMarking – Digg,  StumbleUpon,  Reddit, Delicious, SlideShare
• Blogosphere– WordPress, Blogger, Technorati, BlogCatalog
• Video Channels: YouTube
• Photo Sharing– Flickr, FaceBook
• Google Buzz – 10 ways to use Google Buzz
• Twitter

SMO – Steps in building a viable Social Media Strategy

Needs Assessment

Set  Goals for your SMO Campaign: traffic, partnerships, conversions

Establish the most suitable social media networks for your particular needs – Find your Target Audience

Build your SMO Action Plan

Blog Optimization Chart | SEO your Blog

After a little case study I have done recently,  I came upon few ideas on blog optimizing. I haven’t tried all of these blog seo tips but I am in the process of applying some of these tips to my own blogs.

I hope you’ll find it useful!

Google launched maps.google.ro.

Friday was a big day for Romania – Google launched maps.google.ro

This Google service just made my day; it’s really nice to have this service personalized for Romania because is stores one of the best optimization methods. The downside to this service is that almost anyone can modify your content, even if you have an account.

There are few security tips but they are rather difficult to implement for a certain type of client – let’s say a Real-Estate agency, due to the volume of submissions needed for a fully integrated Geo-localization campaign.

Hub pages or the fine line between off-site SEO and SMO

I did a little research on Hub pages a while back and I just couldn’t decide the right category to place this post: SEO or SMO

… while I do my off-site SEO recommendations I refer to Hubs as one of the best place to SEO because you can create optimized hub pages on different topics approached by your site and just press submit.

Hubs are a very fruitful place to SEO – here are some relevant arguments:

• You can implement the back linking strategy and optimized content for your site
• It allows you to increase the number of your product or service off–site views through hub pages
• It gives you the opportunity to “Harvest” relevant users for your product or service – the targeted users are found in the very heart of the hub concept .On hubs, people choose from a list of topics they would like to receive info on, so it becomes easier to promote your product or service to them because they are already opened to your particular business. For instance, you want to promote your new product: “mobile graphics application” and you submit your hub page containing product’s features (optimized, of course) to the Hub; the users who are interested in graphics will receive your hub page once they have particularly expressed their preferences to “graphics” topic.
• Hub Pages are  important Inbound Marketing Tools because you don’t have to search for your visitors or consumers; they will come to you by their own choice.

On SMO’s side, Hubs are also recommended, but from the network point of view…people who visit Hubs will most certainly share with other targeted users the info you deliver to them, because they have their own “social network” – colleagues, classmates, friends who share the same interests.

Here are some of the articles on this topic:

• How-to-use-hubpages-hubs-for-seo-link-building
• HubPages
• Wikipedia, about HubPages
• Link Building on hub pages