SEO. The abbreviation is thrown around a lot (usually while a lot of money is being thrown around). It stands for Search Engine Optimization. But what does it mean? SEO is all about increasing page rank. This means using our knowledge about search engines and humans to get web pages to the top of organic search results.

Do I need an expert?

When the market is saturated (department store, computer) or your topics are wide reaching (news, politics) an SEO expert can be a worthwhile investment. But most companies only need high page rankings in specific markets (health food stores near me,  carwash in Springfield) or specialized topics (custom-made guinea pig collars, window treatments for Victorian-era houses). Once you understand how page ranking works it becomes fairly simple to optimize your own website.

How Page Ranking Works

There is some “voodoo” involved with all page rankings, but the 3 most important keys are making sure the page is readable, relevant, and referenced. Focusing on these three will do a lot to increase your page ranking.

Readable

You need to make sure your web pages are readable for both search engines and humans. Fortunately, that tends to overlap quite a bit. If anything in this section is confusing to you, contact your web designer or developer (or ask a question in the comments).

Loading Time

The most important part about a readable web page is that the page is actually viewable. Humans want information quick. They’re not going to sit and wait for a page to load when there were 4 other pages to try in the search results.

Page Title

This may have a different name, such as post title or article title. This is the first place search engines look to determine the content of the page. They use the page title as the linking header in search results. So humans know what to expect, the title should be descriptive, accurate, and under 60 characters.

Meta-Descriptions

The meta-description is also used to analyze content and appears as the “snippet” in search results. You get about 160 characters to briefly summarize the content of the page. Although control of this area depends on the management system for your website, you can always make your content more effective by ensuring that the first 160 characters of your page text is relevant.

Content As Actual Text

As crazy as it sounds, some people actually use pictures of text on their website instead of actual text. Please don’t do this. If your words are pictures, the search engines can’t read them and will think there is no content on your page. Although humans can read pictures of text, the text is often a bit blurry, and they will get annoyed when they can’t copy and paste it.

Mark-Up and Proper Formatting

Mark-up is what we use to style the text. Use things like headings, bullets, and italics to break up the text. It is especially important when formatting a heading to use the headings tags. For instance, when you’re creating a paragraph header, don’t just make the text bold and increase the size. Choose the h3 (Heading 3) from the format style list. When creating numbered lists or bullet points, don’t just type your numbers or use asterisks for each bullet. Select the numbered or bulleted list from the format options. When pages are properly formatted, it doesn’t just help the search engines understand your content, it’s more readable, and more accessible for blind humans. As sighted humans, we see larger, more bold text on it’s own line and know it’s supposed to be a header. We see a list of paragraphs that start with incrementally increasing numbers and we know it’s a list. But computers don’t know that. When we use the proper formatting tools we are telling a computer what the different parts of the text are so it can be interpreted for a search engine or for reading aloud to a blind human.

Relevant

When ranking your web pages, search engines want to know that the content is relevant for the humans that are initiating the searches. When writing content for your pages you should be clear and concise. You should also be aware of relevant keywords when writing your content. Use tools like Google Insights for Search to find out what keywords people are using. Once you know when and how humans are searching, you can incorporate those keywords into your text naturally.

Knowledge of the human choosing cycle can also be used to make your page more relevant. Whether they are choosing a site to trust, a company to call, or a product to purchase, most humans follow the same path: Interest → Gather → Research → Exclude → Choose. Once you know where in the choosing cycle you want your visitors to be, you can tailor the content for maximum relevance.

The other way to show that your webpage is relevant is to update and create new content on a regular basis. You may have the most relevant information on the entire internet, but if nothing on the web site has changed in 3 years, the search engines will assume it is outdated and lower your rankings.

Referenced

The final key to increasing your page ranking is demonstrating that others find the information on your site useful. Links to and from your page are the digital proof.

There are 11 important aspects of links that search engines look at when using them to determine usefulness.

1. Anchor text. What does the actual link say? It’s more useful when the link says, “Here is more information about astronomy,” instead of, “You can never learn too much about astronomy. For more information click here.”
2. Link location. Page text and navigation are places that show the linked-to information is useful. However, a link in an ad space is marked as such and not utilized.
3. Link format. Is the link text or a picture? Humans like pictures but search engines prefer text. If you’re using a picture, make sure to include descriptive alternate text.
4. Link age. How old is the link? If the link is several years old, then you must be continuing to provide quality content.
5. Link type. Internal linking within your website is helpful for humans but won’t prove you are being referenced. Incoming links show that others are writing about your site. Reciprocal links are good if you are linking to each other due to mutual interest. Purchased links, such as those on a link farm, are ignored.
6. Link source. The more respected the linking website the better.
7. Source relevancy. If you have a site about horses being linked to by a site about horses, that’s good. If it’s a site about drum sets, it probably doesn’t mean much.
8. Source type. Search engines like links from reputable directories, content sites, and blogs. Links from link farms, ads and other similar locations are typically ignored.
9. Source location. If there is a lot of cross-linking between several sites, the search engines will evaluate more closely. If it suspects you own all of the sites and are just trying to increase your page rank it will ignore those links.
10. Surrounding content. Is the information around the link relevant to the search keywords? If the link text says, “Learn more about Clydesdales,” and the surrounding text is all about horses it will find the link relevant. If the link about Clydesdales is surrounded by text about motorcycles the link won’t count for much.
11. Country of origin. You may have a website that targets visitors to the U.S. that may have become a popular site of referral for bloggers in the UK, but is unknown to people in Australia. Because of this, it would end up with a much higher page ranking for UK searchers than Australian searchers.

Practicing Good SEO

Once you understand the basics of SEO creating optimized pages is fairly simple. Just remember to keep your page readable by using proper formatting, relevant by having real content and keeping your site up-to-date, and referenced by cultivating good links.

When trying to increase visitors, it’s helpful to be aware of the human choosing cycle. Whether looking for entertainment, information, or products, nearly every visitor will follow the same path: Interest → Gather → Research → Exclude → Choose. Depending on the exact search, this path could take seconds or days, but the details of each stage are the same:

• Interest. Inputs interest directly into a search engine.
• Gather. Uses the results to get a general idea of what is out there.
• Research. More specific searches are performed based on first results
• Exclude. Crosses certain results off of the list.
• Choose. Makes a choice based off of the remaining options.

The first step is to determine where in the choosing cycle your visitors will be when they reach your website. Let’s say you own a pizza parlor. You want visitors to your site to visit your restaurant for dinner. During the gather and research stages, potential customers will probably use other sites such as Yelp and Urbanspoon. By the time visitors get to your website, they will be to the exclude stage.

You might have a site with comprehensive information about digital cameras. Some visitors will come to your site near the end of the choosing cycle, during the exclude stage. They’ve identified several digital camera sites, and are now skimming each, crossing those off their list that they see as less trustworthy. To retain these visitors, you need to provide them with content that makes your site stand out as more trustworthy than the others. Once visitors have made that choice, they will return to your site for the quality information you provide. They will want to know what you have to say about different cameras, lenses, techniques, and other gear. They will use your site for the gather, research, and exclude stages of subsequent searches.

Once you determine which stages your visitors are at, you can begin to tailor your content for maximum relevancy. You can use tools like Google Insights for Search and Google Analytics to find out what keywords people are using and incorporate them into your content in a natural way. If done right, you can also create new pages to help capture specific keywords. For instance, you may have lots of visitors arriving at your website after searching for the term “calzone”. But you may only have one little section about calzones on a hard to access menu. You could improve your chances of making it through the exclude stage by highlighting calzones on the main page.

Finally, although understanding the choosing cycle can help create relevant content, you also need to have quality design that demonstrates professionalism and confidence and an understanding of SEO to help keep your site in the top search results.

Good Ways to Get Links

Create Your Own Links

When writing copy on your site, link to other relevant pages inside and outside of your site. Make sure your links are very specific. Instead of writing, “Find out about fishing supplies by clicking here,” write, “Find out about fishing supplies.”

Get Listed in Reputable Directories

Request that your website be added to the dmoz Open Directory. It is used by search engines, including Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Read the submission instructions closely so your listing is accepted. If your website is for a business, you should also get it listed in local web directories such as Google Maps/Places, Yahoo! Local, and Bing Local.

Share Your Existence

Search for relevant websites that aren’t competition, often blogs. Let them know you exist. But use decorum, don’t spam (see Awful Ways to Get Links).

Analyze Referring Sites

Use web analytics (such as Google Analytics) to find out which websites are sending you quality links. Form a relationship with them to help encourage more links. You can do that by thanking them, linking back to them, and keeping in touch.

Earn Them

You can earn links by providing relevant information and articles that others will want to read and link to. Provide education, insight, and market research. Have conversations. Invest and contribute in online communities to help them grow. When you make yourself visible it allows you to prove your credibility, which will lead to more people referencing you in the future.

Simple Link Sharing

For less tech-savvy humans, easy links for sharing by email, on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and others can be very helpful. You can even get an all-in-one button from ShareThis.

Bad Ways to Get Links

Begging

Don’t email other website owners begging them to add your link. Don’t guilt trip them by adding their link to your website and expecting them to add your link in return. Not only is it rude and uncouth, but it is often irrelevant reciprocal linking that is picked up by the search engines and ignored.

Writing Link-Bait Posts

These are posts with attention grabbing headlines made to get people to click, such as top ten lists, attack articles, “fake” stories, attention-getters, and fear mongering. They may increase your page ranking in the short term, but will build lots of bad will.

Buying Them

If you are buying links to improve your page ranking don’t do it. It’s ignored and a waste of money. Please note that this is different than purchasing a link in order to advertise to a specific market.

Awful Ways to Get Links

Unsavory, Irrelevant Reciprocity

Getting others with small websites to link back and forth with you just for the sake of link creation is bad. Reciprocating links with spam sites and other disreputable sites is even worse.

Spamming Message Boards and Comments

Contributing to message boards and community websites is an important way to increase your visibility and credibility. But you must have decorum. Don’t post pointless or spammy messages just to create links to your site. Other humans will write you off as a worthless spammer.

More Tips

The Official Google Webmaster Blog has lots of good information about linking and other web tips. To find out more about page ranking and SEO, read my article “Honest SEO: How to Legitimately Increase your Page Rankings.”

Well, here we are. Welcome to the new home of Flightless. Our website is a living, growing concept, so you’ll likely see more changes and improvements over the coming months. But better to release the site now than wait forever to hit the moving target called “perfect”.

Welcome, enjoy your stay, and let us know what you think.

$my_plugin = new My_Plugin();

in your main plugin file, and declare all your actions/filters in your class’s __construct() function, using something like:

add_filter('init', array($this, 'my_init_function'));

And then you go on to add your plugin’s JavaScript and CSS, register post types and taxonomies, look for query variables, etc.

I’m declaring that to be “wrong”, and I’m not going to do it anymore. Why? Because it’s not good objects-oriented design, and it seems to me that if you’re going to use objects, you should follow good object-oriented design patterns.

What problems come from the current practice?

1. Lack of coherency. The class is basically being used as a plugin namespace. It’s laudable to try to avoid polluting the global namespace with all your function names, but using a consistent, unique prefix for your functions accomplishes the same thing. Instead you end up with data and methods that look like they’re related to each other, but really have the most tenuous connection of being part of the same plugin.
2. Poorly implemented singletons. Every plugin class really needs to be a singleton. Having two instance of the class would cause a range or problems, from inefficiency (e.g., running the same query multiple times) to possible conflicts as the first instance of the plugin filters some data that is then re-filtered by the second instance. I’m not saying that singletons are inherently bad, but they are definitely overused (Wikipedia says so!, and, to quote the “Bible”, “Be suspicious of classes of which there is only one instance”), and when they are used, they should be used deliberately and with proper care taken to avoid multiple instances.
3. Barriers to code reuse and abstraction. Classes created this way can’t really be sub-classed (although I’ve yet to see a final keyword in front of a class), partially because of the singleton problem mentioned above, partially because there’s no clear definition of what the class is, so it doesn’t make sense to make a more specific version of it. This gets in the way of creating abstractions to share common code among similar classes, and greatly increases the complexity of any plugin of reasonable size.

What do we do about it?

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know all the answers. I’m playing with some solutions right now that seem to be working well, and I welcome any suggestions for improving on these ideas.

1. Distinguish between class members and instance members. PHP includes the static keyword, to let you declare a property or method to be a member of the class itself, rather then an instance of the class. This is the proper place for your configuration settings, registering post types, etc. Instead of instantiating the class to tell WordPress about this information, create a static init() function to call in your base plugin file. E.g., My_Class::init().
2. Use different classes for different things. Does your plugin create two separate post types? Create a class to declare each of them. Throw in some instance methods for interacting with your custom post meta.

Example

class My_Custom_Post_Type {
  const POST_TYPE_NAME = 'my_post_type';
  const IMPORTANT_META = 'my_important_meta';
  private $post_id;

  public static function init() {
    add_action('init', array(get_class(), 'register_post_type'));
  }
  public static function register_post_type() {
    $my_post_type_args = array(
      // some args go here
    );
    register_post_type(self::POST_TYPE_NAME, $my_post_type_args);
  }
  public function __construct( $post_id ) {
    $this->post_id = $post_id;
  }
  public function get_important_meta_field() {
    return get_post_meta($this->post_id, self::IMPORTANT_META, TRUE);
  }
}

This lets you abstract away the implementation (e.g., is it a custom post type or a custom table?) and just work with your new object’s well-defined interface. You can start doing things like creating sub-classes, using polymorphism, setting up factory objects to give you different types of objects depending on taxonomy terms, and all sorts of other concepts based on object-oriented design patterns. Basically, it lets us grow up and use the amazing advances in computer science and the discipline of coding that we’ve seen over the last several decades.

I would love to get some feedback on this. It’s a nascent idea that could use some better minds to help form it.

Originally posted at x + 3

Writing Posts

If you have a blog section, you will write a lot of posts. You might also write posts if you have very specific content that changes regularly (Ex: real estate listings, announcements, events, etc.). Even if you mostly do page editing, this section can be helpful to learn about the actual content creation.

Create a Post

1. To create a new post click on Posts and then Add New. Sometimes you might have multiple types of posts with other names (Ex: Events, Announcements, Listings, Services, etc.). If this is the case, just click on the relevant heading, and then on Add New.

Set Up the Post

1. Give your post a title.

2. Before writing your content, make sure the Visual tab is selected. Unless you know HTML, you will be very confused if it is set the HTML tab.

Styling the Post

Many times, when writing content, you will want to change the styling of the text. It’s fairly easy and straightforward but I will describe every icon below.

Bold & Italic: Just like when using a word processor, Bold makes your text bold and Italic makes your text italic.

Strikethrough: If you want to strike-out your text, use this option. Strike this out, please.

Blockquote: When you’re quoting someone, if you want the styling to be special (instead of just in “quotation marks”) use this option. Depending on your website styling, it may look fancy, in a different color, etc. Or it might just be indented.

WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time. — WordPress.org

Align Left, Center, & Right: These options may or may not work, depending on your website’s styling settings.

Insert Link & Unlink: When referring to external sources, it is often good to provide links to those sources. Use the Insert Link (unbroken chain) button to create those links. Highlight the text you want to link and then click on the Insert Link icon.

Enter the address you’re linking to into the Link URL field (Ex: http://wordpress.org) and click the Insert button. (You can also copy and paste the address from another window.) If you need to remove a link, highlight the link and then click the Unlink icon.

Insert More: If you have a blog with a main page, you may decided that some posts/articles are too long. In that case, you can write in introduction and then use the Insert More icon to create a page break. Only the content above the “More” line will show on the main page. A “Read More” link will appear and people can click on that link to read the rest of the article.

Toggle Spellchecker: Use this icon to turn spellchecker on and off.

Toggle Fullscreen mode: If you are writing a long post, it may be easier if you have a larger typing area. Click this icon to expand your writing window to the entire browser screen. You will have to click it again to leave fullscreen mode and save or publish the draft.

Kitchen Sink: If you can’t see the second row of icons, click this button.

Style: There are other ways to style your text besides using Bold and Italic. Most of the time, this drop-down menu will say Paragraph. This is the default setting when writing text. The most common reason for using the Style drop-down is when you are creating a section header. When creating a section header do not use the Bold option. Instead, choose a Heading from the drop-down list. Most page and article titles are either Heading 1 or Heading 2. So when creating sections in your post, the main sections should use Heading 3 while subheadings should be Heading 4, 5 and 6. Note that your website styling may not be specified for Heading 5 and Heading 6.

Underline: Like Bold and Italic, underline works the same as in a word processor. Try to avoid using this, though, as your readers may confuse it with a link.

Align Full: Also know as justified. Like Align left, center and right, this option may or may not work, depending on your website’s styling settings.

Select Text Color: Every once in a while you might want your text to be a different color. For instance, you might want to write, “DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!” It will stand out much better if you can make it red, or some other bright color.

Paste as Plain Text & Paste From Word: It’s very possible you will want to copy and paste some text from another location. It is important that you do not paste the text directly into the WordPress window. There could be hidden coding that you can’t see that will cause some very strange problems with the post styling. Most of the time you will want to use the Paste as Plain Text option.

Copy the text from the original location. In the WordPress window, place your cursor where you want the text to be placed. Click on the Paste as Plain Text icon. In the pop-up window, press CTRL+V to paste the text into the pop-up window. Click the Insert button to place the text.

If the original text is in a Microsoft Word document and you want to keep the original formatting, use the Paste From Word option.

Insert / Edit Embedded Media: This button is used to place videos. Unless you have been given special instructions for placing video, it probably won’t work properly.

Insert Custom Character: Sometimes you may want to add a character or symbol that is not on your keyboard. Place your cursor where the custom character should be and click the Custom Character icon. Find the character in the pop-up window that you want to place in your post and click on it. The character will appear in your post.

Here are some of the characters placed into the post: ¿ © ® ½ ¢ ♥ € Ω ↑ æ ñ

Undo & Redo: Undo something you didn’t mean to do. And Redo something you accidentally undid.

Help: This icon will provide you with very minimal help.

Adding Images

You may also want to insert media into your post. The most common option is inserting images. Although there are also icons for inserting Video and Audio, those options may only work if your website is specifically set up for them.

1. First prepare an image for placement. Here is a good explanation on creating images. To insert an image, click on the Add an Image icon.

Click the Select Files button and navigate on your computer to the image you want to upload.

If you choose, you can rename your file. This is name people will see when their mouse hovers over the image. If the image name is not straight-forward, give it descriptive Alternate Text. This way, if the image does not load, or you have a blind visitor (yes they do exist) those visitors will at least know what you’re expecting them to see. Do not put in a caption or a description unless you have been instructed to. The Link URL is where a visitor goes if they click on the image. By default, this links directly to the image location. You can remove the URL entirely, or you can give it a different URL. For instance, you might have a picture of a pumpkin and link the image to the Wikipedia page about pumpkins.

Choose the alignment of your image and your image size. Sometimes this might be restricted by your website styling. Finally, click Insert into Post to paste the image directly into your post; or click Save all changes if you’re not quite ready to place it.

2. If you click Save all changes, you will be moved to the Gallery tab.

The Gallery shows all the files that have been uploaded in association with your post. You can change the details of the image, insert it into the post, or delete it by clicking on the Show link to get the same options on the upload section. If you make changes but are not ready to insert an image yet, click the Save all changes button.

The Gallery Settings section is for when you want to place lots of images in a group. It will create a group of thumbnail images that can be clicked on to see larger versions. If you want to order the images by Menu order, you can rearrange the order of the images by clicking and dragging each image row to the desired position. Once the Gallery Settings are determined, click Insert gallery to place the gallery in your post.

3. Sometimes, you might want to show an image from another location on the internet without saving it and uploading it to your website. To do that, click on the Add an Image icon and choose the From URL tab in the window.

To obtain the image URL, right-click on the original image and choose “Copy Shortcut” (IE), “Copy Image Location” (Firefox), “Copy Link Address” (Chrome), or “Copy Link” (Safari). Paste the URL/Link into the Image URL field. Give your image a title and alternate text and set other options. You might want your image to come from one location but your image to link to another location. Paste the destination URL into the Link Image To field. Finally, click the Insert into Post button.

4. Sometimes you might want to make some changes to an image after it has been placed into a post. First you must click on the image you want to make changes to.

You will see a box around the image and two icons in the upper-left-hand corner. You can resize the image directly in the post by clicking on any of the 8 points (each corner & middle of each side) and dragging. Click on the “No” icon to delete the image. Click on the photo icon to edit the image. A pop-up window will appear where you can make some basic changes to the image. Then click the Update button.

Adding Documents/Files

Sometimes you may also want to attach a document (Ex: PDF, MS Word, MS Excel, etc.)

Click on the Add Media icon

Click the Select Files button and navigate on your computer to the file you want to upload.

In the Title field, enter the text for your link (Ex: Sample PDF) and click the Insert into Post button. Your file will be attached to the post in the form of a link: Sample PDF

Categories

When writing posts, it is helpful for both you and your readers if you categorize. In your Categories window is a list of all your categories. Check the box next to any applicable category. If you want to add a new category, click the + Add New category link and create one. Try to keep your categories to ten or less. Tags (see below) can be used for additional description.

Tags

Categories place your posts into general idea sections. Tags give specific descriptions for more refined searching. Make use of the auto-fill feature so that you don’t end up with three different spellings of the same tag (Ex: Mushroom, mushroom, mushrooms). You can delete a tag by clicking on the little grey Χ to the left of the tag.

Publishing

To publish a post, follow the same instructions as for publishing a page.

Go to Part I: Adding Users | Go to Part II: Adding Pages

Adding Pages

For whatever reason, sometimes you need to create a new page for your website. Sometimes it’s permanently, sometimes only temporarily.

1. To create a new page click on Pages and then Add New.

2. Give your page a Title. Depending on the design of your website, the page title may or may not appear on the published page.

3. Write the content for your page. See Part III: Writing Posts for more details.

4. Links to all pages will appear in the navigation bar. Use the “Page Attributes” window to set the navigation properties. Your website will have top-level links (ex: Home, About, Contact Us). It may also have sublinks (Ex: About->What we do, About->Who we are). If yours is a top-level link, leave Parent set to “(no parent)”. If your page is a sublink, click on the Parent drop-down and choose which main link it will appear under (Ex: for Who we are, choose About).

5. You will also need to set the link order. The Order number under “Page Attributes” determines the position of the link. Every page has a number assigned to it. By default, the assigned number is zero. Zero makes a link first. As the number gets higher, the link gets lower (Ex: Home=0=first, About=3=second, Contact Us=7=last). Say you want to create a temporary conference page that comes after About, but before Contact Us. If About has an Order number of 3 and Contact us has an order number of 7, Conference can have an order number of 4, 5, or 6 to go in between.

6. There are several options in the “Publishing” window.

7. When working on a page that you’re not ready to publish yet, click the Save Draft button.

8. If you want to see what the page will look like, but you’re not ready to publish it yet, click the Preview button. This will open a new window and show you what the final page will look like.

9. Status: Draft vs. Pending Review — If you click Edit next to Status you will see a drop-down menu with the options of Draft or Pending Review. Typically, you’ll just leave the status as draft (the default). You would probably only change the status to Pending Review if someone else is supposed to review the page before it is published. Users with the role of “Contributor” cannot publish posts, so they set the post status to Pending Review to let an editor know it’s ready to publish.

10. Visibility — By default, the visibility is Public. This is what you will usually want to use. However, if you click Edit, you have the option to set it as Password Protected or Private. With Password Protected, you set the password and then you will have to share the password with anyone you want to have access to that page. You probably won’t use this option very often. Private is useful if you have a members only section. Logged in members can see private pages, but not the general public.

11. Publish immediately is the default publishing setting. With this setting, if you hit the Publish button your page will be seen immediately. Lets go back to that conference page, though. You might not want anyone to have access to that page for another two weeks. You can click Edit and then change the publishing date to two weeks in the future. Then, when you click the Publish button will automatically publish on the date you set, but not a minute earlier.

12. You can click on the Pages link to see a list of all your pages, their authors, etc.

13. If you want to remove a page from the public view, just set it as a draft again.

Go to Part I: Adding Users | Go to Part III: Writing Posts