Web Design Company, Hampshire UK

I have been thinking recently about how to improve the home page of this website. I decided that including my latest tweets would be a nice way of getting into custom wordpress designing. Simple I know but also effective.

The next task was to consider how this could be accomplished and I think that this is where experience really counts. I knew that wordpress allows you easy access to plugins and widgets but these (as far as I know) cannot be added to pages without using php. Something that I have to improve upon before trying this. So I started to look for means of adding tweets to the body of pages without using the widget system.

I stumbled upon this:

http://www.instantshift.com/2009/05/25/10-twitter-hacks-for-your-wordpress-blog/

and this:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/04/15-useful-twitter-plugins-and-hacks-for-wordpress/

I then installed this:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exec-php/

After installing this extension, the user is able to type php more or less anywhere within wordpress but try as I might, I was unable to get any of the hacks to work. Maybe this is because of the theme that I am using or for some other reason… No Idea.

So I kept looking and through this post:

http://leebaillie.com/display-tweets-on-your-wordpress-blog-without-plugins-or-widgets/

I found these:

https://twitter.com/badges

And here is the finished product:

http://www.meonvalleywebdesign.co.uk/

So basicallly I had come full circle. Why reinvent the wheel? I am now able to style the code using css myself so that it blends in with the rest of the site. Installing the Twitter html code took about 5 minutes and has really improved the look and feel of the homepage.

SEO is a sore point for many people. From those who own websites and view the top spot on google with envy, to those whose job it is to compete for that sought after position.

SEO can take a lot of work AND a lot of money to effectively manage, I will give you tips on how to avoid these issues.

The first and most important thing is to incorperate SEO into your site as you build and maintain it, not all at one go at the end. Google seems to take in to account how links are built and in what time frame. You may be penalised if your website goes live and within a week has 1000 backlinks, as this is obviously not organic growth. So it is best to build links in a structured manner.

ONSITE SEO hints and tips:

• Meta Tags

  Not as important as they used to be but still worth using. Work out 5 or 6 words or phrases which you would like to be displayed on google regarding.

• Good Content

As they say, ‘content is king’. Well written, regularly updated content which is written with keywords in mind, WILL improve your search     engine rankings.

• Keywords

A very important part of your SEO campaign. It is best to focus your SEO on 5 or 6 phrases otherwise your online presence may be diluted and you will not compete on any of your keywords.

• Htaccess and Robots.txt

Each search engine has robots who scan the web to find new and updated content. The easier it is for them to find your content, the quicker you will climb up the Google rankings. This is why links are so useful.

• Be Creative

Use your keywords effectively, for example, name your pictures as keywords and try to make use of the H1-H6 tags.

OFFSITE SEO hints and tips:

• Social Bookmarks

Make sure it is easy to bookmark your pages. Create accounts on Facebook, Twitter and any others you may use.

• Directory Submissions

High PR (Page Rank) blogs can really help you to build your online presence, however, it is better to have five PR 5+ links than one hundred  PR 0-1. Knowing this can save you a lot of time and effort.

• Blog Comments

Leaving blog posts on large, relevant blog sites can also help. Make sure they have a high PR.

• Adwords

Adwords provide you with a totally separate avenue of marketing for your site. Here you pay to have your site at the top of Google listings for certain keywords and this