I manage a few WordPress blogs as do most people involved in SEO, and I have run into a similar problem with all of them – the ability to specify a unique H1 on just the homepage whilst the blog & category titles are the H1’s throughout the rest of the blog.   The majority of WordPress blogs do not allow you to do this and replicate the Blog Title throughout the website.

There are several ways of changing your WordPress template to allow you to setup a unique H1 for your homepage.  By default, the majority of WordPress templates have the H1 setup as following:

<h1><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>

In the case of my blog, I decided that I would change the WordPress template to show a snippet of text on only the homepage of my blog. To do this I replaced the H1 in the header.php file with a <p> tag, amended the CSS so the style was the same and then added the follow line of PHP text to the index.php file:

<?php if(is_home() && $post==$posts[0] && !is_paged()) { ?>

<h1>Custom H1</h1>

<P>Custom intro text</p>

<?php } ?>

Whilst this is acceptable for most blogs, I have encountered instances where I needed to leave the default H1 in its current position on the homepage (such as a replacement logo or strapline) and show it as a <p> tag on all other pages.

To achieve this, you can use the following lines of code in the header.php file:

//If the page is only the homepage with post snippets print out the Blog Name as an <h1>

<?php if(is_home() && $post==$posts[0] && !is_paged()) { ?>

<h1><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></h1>

<?php } ?>

//If the page is NOT the homepage, then print out the Blog Name as <p> tag.

<?php if(!is_home()) { ?>

<p><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></p>

<?php } ?>

In the instance above, I have set custom classes to replicate the styles so that to the end user the blog looks the same, but for the purposes of SEO I have created a unique H1 to increase relevancy on the homepage of the blog.

On the 4^th September this year I will be heading down to Leeds with Mediaworks to attend Think Visibility. I have to say I am looking forward to it greatly! Having lost my conference virginity earlier in the year SASCon, I am eager to attend further conferences, particularly Think Visibility.

Think Visibility has gathered a reputation for being packed full of informative speakers from all corners of the SEO Industry, but it is also becoming a fantastic advertisement for the UK SEO scene. Located centrally in terms of the UK, it gathers interest from most SEO’s in the industry in the UK and this allows for all sorts of fun and games (or so I am told).

As an avid user of Twitter, I have connected with many great SEO’s in the UK and this will be one of the first opportunities I have got to actually meeting them in person. Also, meeting new people and connecting is something that is a side benefit to the amazing list of speakers at Think Visibility.  Unfortunately one of the things that most people, including myself, are not particularly good at is networking. Thankfully Dr Peter Meyers (Dr Pete) recently collated a bunch of great tips for conference attendees of all levels of experience which I am sure will help out.

Despite the high quality of SEO Newcastle has to offer being very high, we are certainly at the wrong end of the country when it comes to conferences and panel-led events for the SEO industry. One of the main reasons I have had for not attending conferences in the past has been the majority have been held in London. This is why ThinkVis has appealed to me and is attracting many people who would not be willing to travel to London for a one day conference.

Hell, if you need any more reasons to go, check out Rishi Lakhani’s post on why you should attend Think Visibility.

We work with Google Analytics daily; it provides us with lots of amusement, but also frustrations. During a query that arose in the Mediaworks office surrounding uninviting an invited account from Google Analytics, Dan Hoggan brought to light a slightly annoying, yet deceptively brilliant problem with Google Analytics. Looking into it in a little more detail, we discovered a great little trick that you can carry out with Google Analytics to cause chaos and mayhem to a fellow user you don’t like, be it a competitor, an ex-employer or whoever you hold a grudge against.

The process is simple and all you require is the email address of their GA account. You don’t need to know the password or anything else, just the email.

Disclaimer: This post is for information only. Do not try this. I do not condone anybody trying this to cause problems be it with malicious intent or otherwise. I’m not responsible for the consequences.

How does it work?

As part of Google Analytics you have the ability to grant other GA users’ access to your accounts via a method called Report Access Only.  This enables the person you invited to see the specific profile but not carry out any administrative tasks such as setting up goals.

Since the user cannot choose to accept the invite, let alone remove the invite once the need has passed, they are essentially at your mercy.

Limitations and Hindrances

Whilst being unable to remove the account is an annoyance in itself, GA has further limitations that make Google Analytics Bombing even more devastating if a malicious user was to hit your GA account. These currently include:

• a 50 account limit
• a default view of 10 accounts
• no way to see the email of the user who provided you access
• an ordering system of 1, A

These provide a perfect working environment to create mayhem for any Google Analytics users in a variety of ways and the worst part is: there is really no way to combat them…

GA Bombing Scenarios

Competitor Hijacking

Imagine you found out what email address your competitor was using to access their Google Analytics account.

You could create 10 new accounts following a numbered list to create a defamatory message when they login…

You guys are so bad at SEO that you rank yourselves at night whilst crying about how bad you SUCK!

Conference/Webinar Humiliation

Imagine if during a conference, you’re bored of the speaker and they start browsing their analytics account live and show their analytics email address.  Don’t like their speech?  Not a problem, send them this for when they refresh…

Does anyone else think that Speaker X looks a bit like a bored Elephant Man sucking salt through a straw?????

Ex-Client who just didn’t “get it”

Not a problem, send them a report access only screenshot like the one below…

The reason you did not rank on the 1st page of Google is 'cause you're a tight arse! Spend more than £100 next time!!! P.S. Pay My Invoice!

The possibilities are endless, and the annoyance you could carry out is too high to be annoyed. Imagine flooding an agency analytics account with 50 of your own accounts rendering their own account useless; imagine if that agency shared their entire account with someone else and they saw the knock on message? Exactly!

Google Analytics should fix this

The team at Google Analytics are a very receptive bunch and love hearing new ideas, but they should definitely look at addressing this problem. Even if they simply fix the ability to remove yourself once you have been invited that would solve the problem.



Whilst looking into a potentially new Google SERP highlight, dictionary results, I stumbled across a fantastic Google Suggest…

Retarded Google?

It was recently announced that World of Warcraft maker, Blizzard Entertainment, are going to take their recent RealID service and implement it across their forums. Users will no longer be posting under their online aliases (character names) but will instead be posting under their real names.

I have to say I am shocked at how incredulous a move this is by Blizzard. Players of World of Warcraft invest A LOT of time into the game, and more often than not they are very competitive. Imagine what damage you could do with someones real name. *cough* Facebook *cough*

Online gaming has always been synonomous with abusive behaviour, trolling and a lower standard of consequence – thats the beauty of online gaming – you can be somebody else for a few hours and get away from the stresses of “real life”. This change by Blizzard strips all of this away and in an internet savvy age it is easy to gather information on someone starting with just their name.

What are the alternatives?

Blizzard has commented that the reason for this move is to combat the state of the forums: “a place where flame wars, trolling and other unpleasantness run wild”.  The main reason for this is the ability for users to create new characters within their accounts (level 1s) and post on the forums under this account hence the trolling and abuse. It’s undetectable by anyone other than Blizzard and is the ultimate veil of anonymity.

To combat this, Blizzard could implement two very simplistic changes:

1. Don’t level level 1’s comment. Make them grind the character to level 10 or something (takes an hour).
2. Allow users to see ALL characters connected to that account. This will show the “main” character of the troll and allow him to be outed and dealt with by his Guild directly – all online of course!

Incorrect & Expired Details

This move has also got me thinking of scenarios where this could go wrong.  When you register an account you are asked to supply your real name and relevant details.  If you are underage, you are asked for your parent or guardians details. Also, accounts are sold to other persons on a very regular basis (despite breaching World of Warcrafts ToS).

Imagine if:

• Your son was making racist comments or sexual reference on Blizzards forums using YOUR name and your boss or family made a search for your name and found it?
• The person you sold your account to 3 years ago has been abusive to a person online and that person takes it upon themselves to find that person. Yes, they’d be coming after you!
• When you apply for a job you are subconsciously discriminated against because you play World of Warcraft. Breaking the mould of geeky gamers, many senior managers and business executives play the game.

When you think about it, the repurcussions of this are very high!

Privacy Concerns

Whilst the BBC article touched on “a few rare cases of online gaming disputes spilling out into the real world” it failed to mention that people have been killed over such disputes.

Imagine if you were to remove the veil of anonymity that people have been using to be less than savoury to other people and expose enough details to track somebody down? At what point does Blizzard get roped into legal proceedings for privacy breaches and called into accountability proceedings.

Surely the recent listing of a Blizzard Employee whose details including his home address, telephone number and family photos all through using only his REAL NAME should be enough to sway Blizzard’s ridiculous minds that this can only end up smelling of flowers.

It won’t, and it will cause Blizzard a world of hurt if they destroy their community this way!

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to predict some of the largest yielding search results and have an SEO campaign ready for when it happens? Imagine ranking ready for the BP oil spill, Justin Bieber or the iPad? Sometimes, all it takes is a little forward thinking and you can prepare be ready to soak up the traffic.

There are several ways to earmark an emerging market. These can include:

• Google Trends, Seasonal Insights etc.
• Real Time Events (e.g. the BP Oil Spill)
• Industry/Insider News
• A bit of luck!

Unfortunately, you have to either be in the right place at the right time, or simply put hard graft into planning and analyzing markets & industries.

Keep your ear to the ground

Whether you are an SEO, a technology enthusiast, a gamer, a passionate fashion follower or simply a fan of anything that has an already thriving presence online you are already in an important position to jump first.

You will already be listening to the right grapevines in the form of blogs, twitter accounts, industry papers etc; All you have to do is keep your eyes & ears open for a new opportunity, simply something no-one has mentioned before.

Take the ever popular gaming industry for example. I’m not talking gambling (e.g. online bingo); I’m talking games consoles, online MMORPG’s etc. There are quite literally hundreds of thousands of new titles for a variety of platforms released yearly. These are perfect opportunities to grab a little bit of brand traffic and rank in advance for something that has not been released yet.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

A great example of this is the forthcoming expansion pack for World of Warcraft entitled Cataclysm. If you follow this blog, you may know that I am a keen World of Warcraft player.  The developers of World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment, announced the new expansion pack in 2009, with an expected release in 2010. With over 11 million players playing the game as early as 2008, the unsurprising online rumour mill quickly caught steam as to what the expansion was going to be called and it was at this point where the SEO marketer in me should have listened to my own advice. Sadly I didn’t – I was too busy playing World of Warcraft!

React quickly

There is nothing worse than not reacting. Once you have missed the boat, it’s gone and you will rarely get a chance to get on it again.

There are many things you should do when you hear about a potential gold mine of upcoming searches and the first is to get to a domain registrar.

Snap up the domain names

Whilst the days of net sitting are long gone, there is no harm in creating great domain names around the planned launch of a new game, piece of hardware, fashion range etc.

Let’s stick with WOW: Cataclysm and look at how you could have jumped on potential traffic generators in an already competitive market.

Researching potential domain names

It’s important you understand the market you are entering, particularly if you are new to it. The first step is to research the industry to see what particular searches are often carried out in relation to the market. This can be done through Google’s keyword suggest tool if there is a similar market already existing.

In the case of a forthcoming game such as World of Warcraft: Cataclysm there are currently searches around:

• Release date
• Information
• Levelling Guides

Also, as with most games, the name is often abbreviated. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, for example, went by the moniker COD6, MW2, COD:MW etc. Sticking true to form, World Of Warcraft: Catalcysm is known in industry circles as WOW:Cata, Cata, Cataclysm etc. This gives a great pool of domain names to possibly target *. A selection of these includes:

• worldofwarcraftcataclysm.tld
• worldofwarcraftcataclysmcheats.tld
• worldofwarcraftcataclysmguides.tld
• wowcataclysmcheats.tld
• wowcataclysmguides.tld
• wowcataclys-levelling-guides.tld
• wowcataclysminformation.tld
• cataclysmguide.tld
• cataclysmcheats.tld
• etc

*I haven’t checked to see if these are available, so knock yourself out

Obviously, if you can acquire these domain names with top-level TLD’s you will stand a chance of achieving 1^st page rankings much easier than without.

Become the market leader

Regurgitate. It’s as simple as that. Unless you are severely connected you won’t get the exclusive that will drive you a tonne of traffic. However, what you can do is be the first to re-release the information thus building up your website as an authority in the market. I’m not advising you to rip off other peoples work. You can easily create fresh & unique content by rewording and reworking their articles and cite them as a source. This will enable your new website to become the first stop for information thus making it a highly linkable source of credible information.

Create Google Alerts, subscribe to RSS readers of popular related websites who WILL get the scoop, monitor the creator of the market’s website (if applicable) to see if anything new gets announced. Finally, get immersed in the sector and get yourself known as an authority on the subject – people might just come to you with the exclusive

Create reasons for people to link to you

Another option could be to create linkbait for your emerging market. An idea that has been carried out in the past (particularly by game creators themselves) is a live countdown to the launch date. It’s simple, yet effective.

Once you’re there, don’t sit back!

Once your website is setup with a host of content, a little bit of authority and a following, the worst thing you can do is to let your website degrade and lose the reason for people to link to you. Without links your website will not compete with the other websites that will also be popping up around you.

What to do when the buzz dies down

I like to make these decisions on a case-by-case. If you have created a website that is the overriding authority on your targeted market I would simply keep it and milk the link juice for all its worth. Monetize it a little with affiliates and sponsored ads and let it generate cash for you.

However, if it was a flash in the pan and was more of a linkbait idea, you could add a few links to your other websites or even simpler: 301 it to your core website and let the authority of the links seep into your own and give it a little boost.

I’m security conscious, as are the majority of Windows OS users, so the need for a good antivirus comes top of my agenda. I also wanted my machine to actually perform. That’s why I chose Panda’s Cloud Antivirus – it’s light on system resources & non-intrusive. However, it also scared the hell out of me yesterday!

You can get the new version!

The pop up box in the screenshot above set every type of alarm off in my mind as a PC user. Over the years I’ve dealt with work colleagues having malware riddled laptops right through to family members having 0870 porn diallers racking up £400 phone bills, so everything about the screenshot above made me panic as it looks like a malware intrusion trying to get you to run a script or visit a malicious website.

Panic!

After running my preinstalled Antivirus programmes (including Panda Cloud Antivirus) I was checking everything on my system from browser connection settings to check for a proxy hijack through to my router settings & rules just in case it was a manual exploit. I even asked on twitter (thanks to @SharkSEO for the help) and installed a further three malware/spyware checkers which then had to be run individually.

After two hours or so I then finally found my answer on the good ole search engines.

You Can Get The New Version!

After searching for the exact text matches “You can now get the new version!” + “Why wait? Download it now and check out the improvements. FREE!” + “Download now. FREE!” it transpires that this little popup is part of Panda Cloud Antivirus’ update procedure – not that you could tell this from the popup. I can only imagine how many people didn’t update their version of Panda Cloud Antivirus because they didn’t trust it.

Users of the internet and PC’s in general are becoming savvier to exploits & viruses and whilst there continues to be a number of victims falling for these types of scams, the worst thing you can do is to advise users that your software is available to be updated via a popup that looks exaclty like the ones you are trying to protect against!

So once again, thanks Panda Security for wasting 2 hours of my time that could have easily been avoided by simply adding the name of your software or branding to the popup!

Over the past couple of weeks you may have noticed Twitter starting to come undone at the seams with a higher level of poor site performance and overall downtime. Whilst regular users of twitter have experienced the Fail Whale, there was a large portion of users who experienced total outage from Twitter last week (Saturday 12^th June 2010).

The question is, can Twitter recover from their very own need for reputation management

What Was To Blame?

Just as the surge for information brought many business networks down as a result of office workers craving news about 9/11 as it happened, the ability for people to comment live on the World Cup may have brought with it an increase in usage. Twitter says this was not to blame in its own right, but the “complexities that have been inherent in fixing and optimizing our systems before and during the event.”

The Twitter Revolt

Twitter is many things: a status, a promotional tool, a chat tool etc. One thing that Twitter has been responsible for in the past is public relations disasters. Unfortunately for Twitter, they themselves started trending for terms such as #failwhale and #twitterfail. Not only were Twitters own users turning on the service through their own platform, but they were also becoming disillusioned with the service – particularly with further downtime throughout much of the following week.

The downtime allowed people to become creative in their slander. Several examples include:

The Block Fail Whale

Pure CSS Fail Whale

(I highly recommend you view the Pure CSS Fail Whale by Steve Dennis (requires a webkit browser such as Safari or Chrome))

A BP Fail Whale

Another BP Fail Whale

Several other BP Fail Whales popped up, including a site of its own at bpkillsfailwhale.com

What Are The Alternatives

Users continue to be disgruntled at the intermittent outages which have resulted in direct messages being sent several times, updates not sending through third party programs including Echofon, Tweetdeck, Twidroid, loss of tweets, loss of tweet numbers etc.  This has left many users wondering if there are any alternatives to the popular services.

Perhaps Facebook will see a surge in usage whilst people are trying to connect with their friends?

Black Hat SEO is a term that gets bandied around with everything that the “White Hats” deem to be underhanded or to appear to be giving a webmaster an unfair advantage. When a legitimate web design technique gets caught in the crossfire, it annoys me – especially when the search engines are unable to differentiate from a useful, (Google) law abiding technique and blatant abuse by spammers.

With the introduction of CSS came the ability to create beautifully elegant websites that not only worked for the majority of cross-browser users, but also worked with screen readers making it an accessibility evangelist’s wet dream!

Like every new innovation on the internet it was gamed by scrupulous webmasters who were trying to get a cheap fix for their rankings; the same people who abused keyword stuffing, META keyword abuse, hidden JavaScript content etc. Unfortunately this has seen instances of legitimate CSS image replacement get lumped into the same group.

What is CSS Replacement?

The purpose of CSS replacement is, primarily, to show an image in place of text when CSS is loaded in a supporting browser. When CSS is not loaded, the text will show in its place. This is often used with:

• Logos
• Static Navigations
• Promotion Boxes

There are several examples of this in force on authoritative sites and it is widely regarded to be one of many valid methods.

It involves using CSS to load an image in the background and off-setting or disabling the text from being shown to enable the logo to be shown in its place. There are several methods such as setting an ID, a class, span wrapping etc. An example piece of code might look like this:

#logo {

text-indent: -9000px

background: url(‘/images/logo.png’) top left no-repeat

height: 150px

width: 50px

}

However, a friend of mine who works at a very large entertainment outlet was told by his Head of Search “Remove the CSS Image Replacement from the logo as that’s Black Hat!”

Even Maile Ohye, Googles Senior Developer Programs Engineer recently announced that common CSS replacement methods were advised against. I have to ask at this point: When did CSS Replacement become Black Hat?

As noted in the examples above, the CSS replacement tactic has been used in exactly the way it was meant to be used: as a replacement for the text.

The simple rule I have always stuck to with CSS image replacement is to replicate the text that is shown in the image. This not only helps accessibility guidelines, but it also benefits SEO as it is actual text on the page as opposed to text in the ALT attribute.

It must be Black Hat, people are still using it!

Obviously there are instances common across the web that show abuses of CSS image replacement, but there are also instances of hidden javascript content, META keyword stuffing etc.  The internet is full of stupid people who are willing to try everything to get ahead but thankfully they are often easy to spot – the real “black hats” are the ones doing things you don’t know about.

However, bear in mind that sometimes web developers unknowingly create false positives by being overzealous by using this method and adding keywords or phrases in there and not sticking to the text replication rule.  Search Engine Land was called out for this back in 2007; in 2008 this was later found to be acceptable:

I hadn’t caught this during the design process; our designer had no idea it was a bad thing. We fixed it. And not two months later in a discussion forum, I saw a Google rep saying this exact tactic wasn’t bad if the text matched identically.

Source: http://searchengineland.com/no-advanced-seo-does-not-mean-spamming-14165

Should I still use CSS replacement?

In a world of mixed signals it’s often hard to make the choice, especially when people are advising you to not take the risk.

ALT is a perfectly acceptable alternative, but with newer browsers (such as Internet Explorer 8 ) removing the hover over functionality to show the ALT text of images, CSS image replacement is a much more useful alternative for soft text readers/temporary screen readers.

Other than ALT there are no real alternatives at this moment of time that will work as well and many well known SEO’s have mentioned this in response to Maile’s article.

It won’t get you penalised, but you might get caught up in the signals – in my eyes, it’s worth the risk for something that works so well.

What do you think – is CSS image replacement black hat?

For anybody working in an agency or a larger company it is sometimes very hard to let your voice be heard, your thoughts shared or your opinions vented. Sometimes there is a lack of platform at your current employment to blog and post your views. More often than not it is simply not company policy for staff to make their own posts, particularly with larger corporations where staff simply abuse the power.

I for one am a big fan of people setting up their own blogs, especially if their interests are in the same field as their employment. It’s a tough act to balance, but the benefits are there for all to see – for both their employers and themselves.

Sharing Ideas & Education

Sometimes you can have a great idea that you would love to share with people, but perhaps the company platform is not the place for it. I like to share ideas, ask questions and gather opinions that not only help myself as an SEO, but will also increase my experience and knowledge on several subjects.

It’s one of those clichés that companies love their staff to be “immersed” with the company – living, breathing, and feeling – but I have to agree that the dividends pay off for everyone when you use your own blog to learn new tactics, solve problems and generally encourage interaction.

Self Promotion & Sector Involvement

This, in my eyes, is invaluable.  One of the biggest avenues for learning about your industry is simply getting involved.  Until I re-launched my blog and proactively started promoting my articles and mingling on Twitter I simply didn’t know the peers in my industry – and I’ve been in it a while!

By getting to know your peers, other people doing your job (in my case SEO) and generally getting to know you competitors, you can learn a vast amount of information very quickly AND you can get yourself recognised for the work you deliver outside of hours – for fun!

The added benefit is that you are not only promoting yourself, but you are also promoting your company/employers at the same time. When you go to industry seminars, functions or workshops, people may very well recognise your name and look closer at your employer based on something they read on your blog.

Obviously this can backfire and common-sense has to come into play at some point – which leads me to my next point.

Venting

I have been accused on several occasions of being an aggressive blogger, that my posts are laced with underlying venom and a couldn’t-care-less attitude.  I agree. And that’s one of the many reasons I run my personal blog, Goosh.

I can simply say things that my employers’ platform is simply not the place for.  I can vent my spleen about things that have got my back up in my own way, let off some steam about something that pisses me off and ultimately get a load off my chest.

Whilst my blog is generally around SEO, I also talk about other elements of my life that piss me off – technology, world of warcraft etc. I also use my blog to highlight problems with other people’s sites and I also like to draw attention to underhand tactics that come across my radar. Some call this outing and don’t agree with it, some appreciate it – I make a call on a case by case basis

You should, however, take care as to what you post as there are limits and boundaries, especially if you work for Vodafone or are generally an idiot on Twitter.  As mentioned earlier, if your blog is in the same sector as the people who pay your mortgage then you have to have a degree of common sense about you as you could land yourself in hot water.

Ultimately, your blog is your blog – use it to the best of its ability and the rewards, however small, are there for all to see.