O:9:"MagpieRSS":19:{s:6:"parser";i:0;s:12:"current_item";a:0:{}s:5:"items";a:10:{i:0;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:40:"WordPress template part: a powerful tool";s:4:"link";s:58:"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/joostdevalk/~3/DEfRyCWmT1M/";s:4:"guid";s:24:"http://yoast.com/?p=4318";s:8:"comments";s:117:"http://yoast.com/wordpress-template-part/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordpress-template-part#comments";s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:113:"http://yoast.com/wordpress-template-part/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordpress-template-partfeed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 26 May 2011 14:00:10 +0100";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:13:"Joost de Valk";}s:8:"category";s:25:"WordPressWordPress Themes";s:11:"description";s:760:"<p>Now that I'm working with custom post types a bit more on this site, for my plugin reviews and speaking agenda, for instance, I'm also starting to appreciate the power of the WordPress template part functionality a whole lot more, which was introduced in WordPress 3.0. Let me explain how I use it and how [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-template-part/">WordPress template part: a powerful tool</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:3410:"<p>Now that I'm working with custom post types a bit more on this site, for my <a title="WordPress plugin reviews" href="http://yoast.com/wp-plugin-review/">plugin reviews</a> and <a href="http://yoast.com/speaks-at/">speaking agenda</a>, for instance, I'm also starting to appreciate the power of the WordPress template part functionality a whole lot more, which was introduced in WordPress 3.0. Let me explain how I use it and how I think you should use it.</p>
<p>My whole loop for taxonomy archives, other archive pages <em>and</em> search results now just looks like this:</p>

<div><div><pre><span>while</span> <span>&#40;</span> have_posts<span>&#40;</span><span>&#41;</span> <span>&#41;</span> <span>:</span> the_post<span>&#40;</span><span>&#41;</span><span>;</span>
  get_template_part<span>&#40;</span> <span>'/partials/excerpt'</span> <span>,</span> <span>$post</span><span>-&gt;</span><span>post_type</span> <span>&#41;</span><span>;</span>
<span>endwhile</span><span>;</span></pre></div></div>

<p>As you can see, I get the post type for the current post and then use that to load the template part that will display that post type. For each different post type I have created a snippet that displays that post type in it's own specific way, a plugin review would have a rating attached to it, a speaking event would be marked up as an hCalendar event and so forth.</p>
<p>Let's say the post type is <code>speaking_event</code>. The above code would try to load, from my theme's directory, the file <em>/partials/excerpt-speaking_event.php</em>. If that file doesn't exist, it would load <em>/partials/excert.php</em>. So if I create a new custom post type, it will fall back to the "default" display of a post, which is in <em>excerpt.php</em>, and if I decide to give it another look, it will get it's own "short" WordPress template part.</p>
<p>Of course, as this loop itself is referenced about 15 times on all the different forms of archive templates I have, it in itself is a template simply called 'loop'. The best thing about this is that now, when you search for something that results in showing several post types, or you have a taxonomy attached to several post types, they're all displayed in their own specific way. See an example of that below:</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/wordpress-post-formats.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-4321 aligncenter" title="WordPress template part in action" src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/wordpress-post-formats-300x273.png" alt="WordPress template part in action" width="300" height="273" /></a></p>
<h2>More WordPress template part ideas?</h2>
<p>Now I'd love to know whether you are using a WordPress template part in your theme and if so, how and where, please share in the comments so we can build a "gallery" of WordPress template part ideas!</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-template-part/">WordPress template part: a powerful tool</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/DEfRyCWmT1M" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:108:"http://yoast.com/wordpress-template-part/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordpress-template-part";}s:7:"summary";s:760:"<p>Now that I'm working with custom post types a bit more on this site, for my plugin reviews and speaking agenda, for instance, I'm also starting to appreciate the power of the WordPress template part functionality a whole lot more, which was introduced in WordPress 3.0. Let me explain how I use it and how [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-template-part/">WordPress template part: a powerful tool</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:12:"atom_content";s:3410:"<p>Now that I'm working with custom post types a bit more on this site, for my <a title="WordPress plugin reviews" href="http://yoast.com/wp-plugin-review/">plugin reviews</a> and <a href="http://yoast.com/speaks-at/">speaking agenda</a>, for instance, I'm also starting to appreciate the power of the WordPress template part functionality a whole lot more, which was introduced in WordPress 3.0. Let me explain how I use it and how I think you should use it.</p>
<p>My whole loop for taxonomy archives, other archive pages <em>and</em> search results now just looks like this:</p>

<div><div><pre><span>while</span> <span>&#40;</span> have_posts<span>&#40;</span><span>&#41;</span> <span>&#41;</span> <span>:</span> the_post<span>&#40;</span><span>&#41;</span><span>;</span>
  get_template_part<span>&#40;</span> <span>'/partials/excerpt'</span> <span>,</span> <span>$post</span><span>-&gt;</span><span>post_type</span> <span>&#41;</span><span>;</span>
<span>endwhile</span><span>;</span></pre></div></div>

<p>As you can see, I get the post type for the current post and then use that to load the template part that will display that post type. For each different post type I have created a snippet that displays that post type in it's own specific way, a plugin review would have a rating attached to it, a speaking event would be marked up as an hCalendar event and so forth.</p>
<p>Let's say the post type is <code>speaking_event</code>. The above code would try to load, from my theme's directory, the file <em>/partials/excerpt-speaking_event.php</em>. If that file doesn't exist, it would load <em>/partials/excert.php</em>. So if I create a new custom post type, it will fall back to the "default" display of a post, which is in <em>excerpt.php</em>, and if I decide to give it another look, it will get it's own "short" WordPress template part.</p>
<p>Of course, as this loop itself is referenced about 15 times on all the different forms of archive templates I have, it in itself is a template simply called 'loop'. The best thing about this is that now, when you search for something that results in showing several post types, or you have a taxonomy attached to several post types, they're all displayed in their own specific way. See an example of that below:</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/wordpress-post-formats.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-4321 aligncenter" title="WordPress template part in action" src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/wordpress-post-formats-300x273.png" alt="WordPress template part in action" width="300" height="273" /></a></p>
<h2>More WordPress template part ideas?</h2>
<p>Now I'd love to know whether you are using a WordPress template part in your theme and if so, how and where, please share in the comments so we can build a "gallery" of WordPress template part ideas!</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-template-part/">WordPress template part: a powerful tool</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/DEfRyCWmT1M" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:1;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:22:"WordPress editor style";s:4:"link";s:58:"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/joostdevalk/~3/w4VlxfagqGM/";s:4:"guid";s:24:"http://yoast.com/?p=4277";s:8:"comments";s:115:"http://yoast.com/wordpress-editor-style/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordpress-editor-style#comments";s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:111:"http://yoast.com/wordpress-editor-style/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordpress-editor-stylefeed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:2:"18";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 25 May 2011 13:57:56 +0100";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:13:"Joost de Valk";}s:8:"category";s:25:"WordPressWordPress Themes";s:11:"description";s:747:"<p>I'm writing this with a WordPress editor style CSS active, for the first time. This feature has been available in WordPress since WordPress 3.0 but I had not used it until now, which is nothing but stupid. A WordPress editor style makes the TinyMCE editor used in visual editing mode look like your theme, using [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-editor-style/">WordPress editor style</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:2965:"<p>I'm writing this with a WordPress editor style CSS active, for the first time. This feature has been available in WordPress since WordPress 3.0 but I had not used it until now, which is nothing but stupid. A WordPress editor style makes the TinyMCE editor used in visual editing mode look like your theme, using the font, color, width etc. This allows for even better formatting of your text while you're writing it.</p>
<p>Check out what my <a href="http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a> article looks like in my visual editor now that I have an editor stylesheet active, for instance:</p>
<div><a href="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/wordpress-hosting-with-editor-style.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-4280" title="WordPress hosting article with WordPress editor style" src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/wordpress-hosting-with-editor-style-300x143.png" alt="WordPress hosting article with WordPress editor style" width="300" height="143" /></a><p>WordPress hosting article with WordPress editor style</p></div>
<p>This makes it easier for editors to write content in such a way that it fits neatly on the page.</p>
<h2>Creating a WordPress editor style CSS file</h2>
<p>Creating a WordPress editor style CSS file is a pretty easy process, just follow these steps:</p>
<ol>
<li>Start by creating a file called <em>editor-style.css </em>in your WordPress theme's root directory.</li>
<li>Open up your theme's <em>functions.php </em>file and add the following line of code in the setup code, or just at the top: <code>add_editor_style();</code>.</li>
<li>Now start editing your newly created editor CSS file. Port over the CSS from your theme's <em>style.css</em> that affects the styling of everything in your post's body. Be sure to assign the width, text color, background color etc. of the content part of your theme to the <code>body</code> in your <em>editor-style.css</em> file.</li>
<li>If it's not working as you expected, check the editor-style.css file from TwentyTen or TwentyEleven and see how they apply the several styles.</li>
<li>Don't forget to add the image styles like <code>.alignleft</code>, <code>.alignright</code> and <code>.aligncenter</code> as well as <code>blockquote</code> etc.</li>
</ol>
<div>Once you've create your WordPress editor style CSS, start writing a new post and you'll love how you can now enjoy the visual editor even more.</div>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-editor-style/">WordPress editor style</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/w4VlxfagqGM" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:106:"http://yoast.com/wordpress-editor-style/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordpress-editor-style";}s:7:"summary";s:747:"<p>I'm writing this with a WordPress editor style CSS active, for the first time. This feature has been available in WordPress since WordPress 3.0 but I had not used it until now, which is nothing but stupid. A WordPress editor style makes the TinyMCE editor used in visual editing mode look like your theme, using [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-editor-style/">WordPress editor style</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:12:"atom_content";s:2965:"<p>I'm writing this with a WordPress editor style CSS active, for the first time. This feature has been available in WordPress since WordPress 3.0 but I had not used it until now, which is nothing but stupid. A WordPress editor style makes the TinyMCE editor used in visual editing mode look like your theme, using the font, color, width etc. This allows for even better formatting of your text while you're writing it.</p>
<p>Check out what my <a href="http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a> article looks like in my visual editor now that I have an editor stylesheet active, for instance:</p>
<div><a href="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/wordpress-hosting-with-editor-style.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-4280" title="WordPress hosting article with WordPress editor style" src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/wordpress-hosting-with-editor-style-300x143.png" alt="WordPress hosting article with WordPress editor style" width="300" height="143" /></a><p>WordPress hosting article with WordPress editor style</p></div>
<p>This makes it easier for editors to write content in such a way that it fits neatly on the page.</p>
<h2>Creating a WordPress editor style CSS file</h2>
<p>Creating a WordPress editor style CSS file is a pretty easy process, just follow these steps:</p>
<ol>
<li>Start by creating a file called <em>editor-style.css </em>in your WordPress theme's root directory.</li>
<li>Open up your theme's <em>functions.php </em>file and add the following line of code in the setup code, or just at the top: <code>add_editor_style();</code>.</li>
<li>Now start editing your newly created editor CSS file. Port over the CSS from your theme's <em>style.css</em> that affects the styling of everything in your post's body. Be sure to assign the width, text color, background color etc. of the content part of your theme to the <code>body</code> in your <em>editor-style.css</em> file.</li>
<li>If it's not working as you expected, check the editor-style.css file from TwentyTen or TwentyEleven and see how they apply the several styles.</li>
<li>Don't forget to add the image styles like <code>.alignleft</code>, <code>.alignright</code> and <code>.aligncenter</code> as well as <code>blockquote</code> etc.</li>
</ol>
<div>Once you've create your WordPress editor style CSS, start writing a new post and you'll love how you can now enjoy the visual editor even more.</div>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-editor-style/">WordPress editor style</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/w4VlxfagqGM" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:2;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:29:"GeoSurf Review – I love it.";s:4:"link";s:58:"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/joostdevalk/~3/mvbWEkGGF5I/";s:4:"guid";s:24:"http://yoast.com/?p=4237";s:8:"comments";s:85:"http://yoast.com/geosurf/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=geosurf#comments";s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:81:"http://yoast.com/geosurf/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=geosurffeed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"1";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 24 May 2011 15:00:18 +0100";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:13:"Joost de Valk";}s:8:"category";s:32:"SEOLocal SearchSponsored Reviews";s:11:"description";s:709:"<p>This is a sponsored review. GeoSurf is one of those products that promises to do something and then does it so well that it surprises you. Fast, reliably and easy - and I wish I'd never worked without it. As I live and work in the Netherlands but have a fair bit of US clients, [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/geosurf/">GeoSurf Review &#8211; I love it.</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:3214:"<p>This is a <em><a href="http://yoast.com/advertise-here/#sponsoredreviews">sponsored review</a></em>. <a href="http://www.geosurf.com/home/?utm_source%3DYoastBlog%26utm_medium%3DBlog%26utm_campaign%3DYoastReview" rel="nofollow">GeoSurf</a> is one of those products that promises to do something and then does it so well that it surprises you. Fast, reliably and easy - and I wish I'd never worked without it. As I live and work in the Netherlands but have a fair bit of US clients, I need to check SERPs in the US quite often. In fact, having a couple of clients in the local legal space in the US, I often need to know specific rankings for specific area's in the US. Up until now I was using a combination of proxies from friends and some weird hacks to try and get the best results. Well, not anymore.</p>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-4239" title="GeoSurf logo" src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/geosurf-logo.png" alt="GeoSurf logo" width="236" height="61" />GeoSurf is basically a provider of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy servers</a>. What's cool about that? Well if you have say a proxy server in San Francisco, CA, USA, I could use that proxy to check the local rankings for a term there, or see how a certain site geo-targets to that area. The issue with most of the proxy servers out there is that it's darn hard to get a reliable proxy server in one place, let alone a reliable proxy server in 80 countries and in 20 of the US' most important designated market area's (DMA's).</p>
<p>GeoSurf has various features, but in its most simple form, it acts as a toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer. I'm too lazy to demo it myself, mostly because there's a pretty good video from them already that I'll embed below, but let me just say that I was absolutely astonished by both the ease of use <em>and </em>the speed of the proxies.</p>
<p></p>
<p>If you're on an <a href="http://www.geosurf.com/pricing?utm_source%3DYoastBlog%26utm_medium%3DBlog%26utm_campaign%3DYoastReview" rel="nofollow">enterprise plan</a>, you can also use GeoSurf to connect through a VPN, a very useful service if you need to evaluate other stuff like ads inside messenger, application behavior etc. Though I wish they had an extension for Chrome as well, they currently don't, that wouldn't prevent me from using it.</p>
<h2>The verdict about GeoSurf</h2>
<p>If you ask me "buy or don't buy?", knowing that you have a need for a service like this, I'd say buy, immediately. I can honestly say that I'll probably keep using GeoSurf, if you're managing international search, ad or affiliate campaigns, you would probably love this service / tool too.</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/geosurf/">GeoSurf Review &#8211; I love it.</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/mvbWEkGGF5I" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:76:"http://yoast.com/geosurf/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=geosurf";}s:7:"summary";s:709:"<p>This is a sponsored review. GeoSurf is one of those products that promises to do something and then does it so well that it surprises you. Fast, reliably and easy - and I wish I'd never worked without it. As I live and work in the Netherlands but have a fair bit of US clients, [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/geosurf/">GeoSurf Review &#8211; I love it.</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:12:"atom_content";s:3214:"<p>This is a <em><a href="http://yoast.com/advertise-here/#sponsoredreviews">sponsored review</a></em>. <a href="http://www.geosurf.com/home/?utm_source%3DYoastBlog%26utm_medium%3DBlog%26utm_campaign%3DYoastReview" rel="nofollow">GeoSurf</a> is one of those products that promises to do something and then does it so well that it surprises you. Fast, reliably and easy - and I wish I'd never worked without it. As I live and work in the Netherlands but have a fair bit of US clients, I need to check SERPs in the US quite often. In fact, having a couple of clients in the local legal space in the US, I often need to know specific rankings for specific area's in the US. Up until now I was using a combination of proxies from friends and some weird hacks to try and get the best results. Well, not anymore.</p>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-4239" title="GeoSurf logo" src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/geosurf-logo.png" alt="GeoSurf logo" width="236" height="61" />GeoSurf is basically a provider of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy servers</a>. What's cool about that? Well if you have say a proxy server in San Francisco, CA, USA, I could use that proxy to check the local rankings for a term there, or see how a certain site geo-targets to that area. The issue with most of the proxy servers out there is that it's darn hard to get a reliable proxy server in one place, let alone a reliable proxy server in 80 countries and in 20 of the US' most important designated market area's (DMA's).</p>
<p>GeoSurf has various features, but in its most simple form, it acts as a toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer. I'm too lazy to demo it myself, mostly because there's a pretty good video from them already that I'll embed below, but let me just say that I was absolutely astonished by both the ease of use <em>and </em>the speed of the proxies.</p>
<p></p>
<p>If you're on an <a href="http://www.geosurf.com/pricing?utm_source%3DYoastBlog%26utm_medium%3DBlog%26utm_campaign%3DYoastReview" rel="nofollow">enterprise plan</a>, you can also use GeoSurf to connect through a VPN, a very useful service if you need to evaluate other stuff like ads inside messenger, application behavior etc. Though I wish they had an extension for Chrome as well, they currently don't, that wouldn't prevent me from using it.</p>
<h2>The verdict about GeoSurf</h2>
<p>If you ask me "buy or don't buy?", knowing that you have a need for a service like this, I'd say buy, immediately. I can honestly say that I'll probably keep using GeoSurf, if you're managing international search, ad or affiliate campaigns, you would probably love this service / tool too.</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/geosurf/">GeoSurf Review &#8211; I love it.</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/mvbWEkGGF5I" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:3;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:45:"WordPress SEO URL / Permalinks considerations";s:4:"link";s:58:"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/joostdevalk/~3/uT8qGRrqvns/";s:4:"guid";s:24:"http://yoast.com/?p=4251";s:8:"comments";s:125:"http://yoast.com/wordpress-seo-url-permalink/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordpress-seo-url-permalink#comments";s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:121:"http://yoast.com/wordpress-seo-url-permalink/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordpress-seo-url-permalinkfeed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:2:"22";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 23 May 2011 11:40:43 +0100";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:13:"Joost de Valk";}s:8:"category";s:22:"WordPressWordPress SEO";s:11:"description";s:761:"<p>Let's answer some of the questions that continually pop up: what does the optimal WordPress SEO URL / Permalink structure look like? How should you use your URL's, what should and shouldn't you do with them. A lot of questions below, a lot of answers, most with a reference to a video or post from [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-seo-url-permalink/">WordPress SEO URL / Permalinks considerations</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:7359:"<p>Let's answer some of the questions that continually pop up: what does the optimal WordPress SEO URL / Permalink structure look like? How should you use your URL's, what should and shouldn't you do with them. A lot of questions below, a lot of answers, most with a reference to a video or post from <a href="http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/">Matt Cutts</a>, the head of Google's web spam team.</p>
<h2>The perfect WordPress SEO URL structure</h2>
<p>I'll be honest. I think it's dead simple and that you basically have two options. The URL should end with the post name and could possibly be prefixed with the category. No other options really make sense.</p>
<p>This means you'd end up with a permalink structure as follows:</p>
<pre>/%postname%/</pre>
<p>or, with the category:</p>
<pre>/%category%/%postname%/</pre>
<p>Putting the date in the URL has very few benefits, if any. I'm not a fan because it "dates" your older results, possibly getting a lower click through over time. The reason the postname has to be in there is probably obvious, but still: it would mean you get another mention of the main keyword in your URL. This is also why my WordPress SEO plugin's Page Analysis feature checks for this (example below).</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4256" title="WordPress SEO URL check" src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/wordpress-seo-url.png" alt="WordPress SEO URL check" width="519" height="76" /></p>
<h2>Should I use the category in my permalink structure?</h2>
<p>If your domain name is short and your category names are short and descriptive, there can be a pretty big benefit in having the category in the URL. You should take care though; if your slug (the part of the URL that identifies the post) is long and you have the category in the URL as well, that might potentially lead to a very long URL which is harder to share and won't benefit you as much in Google.</p>
<p>If you decide to use the category in the permalink, make sure to pick short and descriptive slugs for your categories, and to preferably pick only one category for each post. You might take some info from this video from Matt Cutts as well:</p>
<p></p>
<h2>Should I add .html to my permalink structure?</h2>
<p>I don't believe for one moment that this would help you, even though this seems to be a long standing myth, neither would .php or other extensions. But... some people feel otherwise. Watch the video below, where Matt says that it has no effect on core ranking in the end but it "might" on other things, which leads some people to think it's beneficial:</p>
<p></p>
<p>I've emailed Matt to see if I can get some more info out of him. Some other extensions though, might in fact hurt you, Matt has warned in the past about <a href="http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dont-end-your-urls-with-exe/">not using .exe in your URL's</a>, for instance.</p>
<p><strong>Update: </strong>I emailed Matt and asked whether it makes sense to add .html for systems like WordPress. His response:</p>
<blockquote><p>In general I wouldn't. My WP has urls like <a href="http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/remove-result/">http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/remove-result/</a> and that's pretty ideal.</p></blockquote>
<p>So. Case closed.</p>
<h2>My blog is in Google News, don't I need numbers in the URL?</h2>
<p>In the past, Google News required you to have a unique number in the URL to be indexed. This is still true <em>unless</em> you have a Google News XML Sitemap, as you can see in the <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?hl%3Den%26answer%3D68323">Google docs</a>. The Google News module for my <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/">WordPress SEO plugin</a> provides you with such an XML sitemap and there are a couple of other plugins that can do that for you, so you no longer need those numbers in there.</p>
<h2>Should my focus keyword always be the first keyword in the URL?</h2>
<p>It might help a tiny bit, but getting it in there is way more important than having it in the first few. Matt did a video on this too:</p>
<p></p>
<h2>How many words should I use in my slug?</h2>
<p>For a perfect WordPress SEO URL, your slug should be no longer than 3 to 5 words. From <a href="http://www.stephanspencer.com/matt-cutts-interview/">this interview</a> with Matt Cutts:</p>
<blockquote><p>If you can make your title four- or five-words long – and it is pretty natural. If you have got a three, four or five words in your URL, that can be perfectly normal. As it gets a little longer, then it starts to look a little worse. Now, our algorithms typically will just weight those words less and just not give you as much credit.</p></blockquote>
<h2>Should you change your URL structure for better SEO?</h2>
<p>After saying that this is the best approach for your SEO, you might expect me to say that you should even change your URL structure for this benefit. While I might change it if it's an "old style" URL structure like <code>?p=</code> (and thus are not having the SEO benefits of the keyword in your URLs), if you're currently using the date in the URL, changing it is not always a good idea. It really depends on how long you've been blogging under that URL structure and how competitive the market you're in is. In quite a few cases, I'd do a lot of other things first before changing the Permalink structure, even when you're not sporting the perfect WordPress SEO URL settings.</p>
<p>If you're on Apache and you decide to do the redirect, having been on a <code>/yyyy/mm/dd/%postname%/</code> structure before, you might benefit from this simple redirect which you could throw into your <em>.htaccess</em> file:</p>
<pre>RedirectMatch 301 /\d{4}/\d{2}/\d{2}/(.*) http://example.com/$1</pre>
<h2>Performance issues with this WordPress SEO URL structure</h2>
<p>As the <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks">codex</a> states, there are some performance issues with this permalink structure. Performance would be better when the URL structure contained the post ID, or started with a static thing such as <code>/posts/%postname%/</code>. To be honest, I couldn't care less. If you're not willing to invest in <a title="Best WordPress Hosting" href="http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a> a bit, you might as well not optimize for search. Next to that, the detrimental performance effect of a perfect WordPress SEO url setting is mostly gone when you install a proper caching plugin.</p>
<h2>Conclusion: the perfect WordPress SEO URL</h2>
<p>It really depends on your site what the perfect WordPress SEO URL looks like, but they don't differ often. It helps if you make these considerations up front, but you can always make them later too, just be sure to do proper redirects from your old to your new structure.</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-seo-url-permalink/">WordPress SEO URL / Permalinks considerations</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/uT8qGRrqvns" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:116:"http://yoast.com/wordpress-seo-url-permalink/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordpress-seo-url-permalink";}s:7:"summary";s:761:"<p>Let's answer some of the questions that continually pop up: what does the optimal WordPress SEO URL / Permalink structure look like? How should you use your URL's, what should and shouldn't you do with them. A lot of questions below, a lot of answers, most with a reference to a video or post from [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-seo-url-permalink/">WordPress SEO URL / Permalinks considerations</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:12:"atom_content";s:7359:"<p>Let's answer some of the questions that continually pop up: what does the optimal WordPress SEO URL / Permalink structure look like? How should you use your URL's, what should and shouldn't you do with them. A lot of questions below, a lot of answers, most with a reference to a video or post from <a href="http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/">Matt Cutts</a>, the head of Google's web spam team.</p>
<h2>The perfect WordPress SEO URL structure</h2>
<p>I'll be honest. I think it's dead simple and that you basically have two options. The URL should end with the post name and could possibly be prefixed with the category. No other options really make sense.</p>
<p>This means you'd end up with a permalink structure as follows:</p>
<pre>/%postname%/</pre>
<p>or, with the category:</p>
<pre>/%category%/%postname%/</pre>
<p>Putting the date in the URL has very few benefits, if any. I'm not a fan because it "dates" your older results, possibly getting a lower click through over time. The reason the postname has to be in there is probably obvious, but still: it would mean you get another mention of the main keyword in your URL. This is also why my WordPress SEO plugin's Page Analysis feature checks for this (example below).</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4256" title="WordPress SEO URL check" src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/wordpress-seo-url.png" alt="WordPress SEO URL check" width="519" height="76" /></p>
<h2>Should I use the category in my permalink structure?</h2>
<p>If your domain name is short and your category names are short and descriptive, there can be a pretty big benefit in having the category in the URL. You should take care though; if your slug (the part of the URL that identifies the post) is long and you have the category in the URL as well, that might potentially lead to a very long URL which is harder to share and won't benefit you as much in Google.</p>
<p>If you decide to use the category in the permalink, make sure to pick short and descriptive slugs for your categories, and to preferably pick only one category for each post. You might take some info from this video from Matt Cutts as well:</p>
<p></p>
<h2>Should I add .html to my permalink structure?</h2>
<p>I don't believe for one moment that this would help you, even though this seems to be a long standing myth, neither would .php or other extensions. But... some people feel otherwise. Watch the video below, where Matt says that it has no effect on core ranking in the end but it "might" on other things, which leads some people to think it's beneficial:</p>
<p></p>
<p>I've emailed Matt to see if I can get some more info out of him. Some other extensions though, might in fact hurt you, Matt has warned in the past about <a href="http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dont-end-your-urls-with-exe/">not using .exe in your URL's</a>, for instance.</p>
<p><strong>Update: </strong>I emailed Matt and asked whether it makes sense to add .html for systems like WordPress. His response:</p>
<blockquote><p>In general I wouldn't. My WP has urls like <a href="http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/remove-result/">http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/remove-result/</a> and that's pretty ideal.</p></blockquote>
<p>So. Case closed.</p>
<h2>My blog is in Google News, don't I need numbers in the URL?</h2>
<p>In the past, Google News required you to have a unique number in the URL to be indexed. This is still true <em>unless</em> you have a Google News XML Sitemap, as you can see in the <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?hl%3Den%26answer%3D68323">Google docs</a>. The Google News module for my <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/">WordPress SEO plugin</a> provides you with such an XML sitemap and there are a couple of other plugins that can do that for you, so you no longer need those numbers in there.</p>
<h2>Should my focus keyword always be the first keyword in the URL?</h2>
<p>It might help a tiny bit, but getting it in there is way more important than having it in the first few. Matt did a video on this too:</p>
<p></p>
<h2>How many words should I use in my slug?</h2>
<p>For a perfect WordPress SEO URL, your slug should be no longer than 3 to 5 words. From <a href="http://www.stephanspencer.com/matt-cutts-interview/">this interview</a> with Matt Cutts:</p>
<blockquote><p>If you can make your title four- or five-words long – and it is pretty natural. If you have got a three, four or five words in your URL, that can be perfectly normal. As it gets a little longer, then it starts to look a little worse. Now, our algorithms typically will just weight those words less and just not give you as much credit.</p></blockquote>
<h2>Should you change your URL structure for better SEO?</h2>
<p>After saying that this is the best approach for your SEO, you might expect me to say that you should even change your URL structure for this benefit. While I might change it if it's an "old style" URL structure like <code>?p=</code> (and thus are not having the SEO benefits of the keyword in your URLs), if you're currently using the date in the URL, changing it is not always a good idea. It really depends on how long you've been blogging under that URL structure and how competitive the market you're in is. In quite a few cases, I'd do a lot of other things first before changing the Permalink structure, even when you're not sporting the perfect WordPress SEO URL settings.</p>
<p>If you're on Apache and you decide to do the redirect, having been on a <code>/yyyy/mm/dd/%postname%/</code> structure before, you might benefit from this simple redirect which you could throw into your <em>.htaccess</em> file:</p>
<pre>RedirectMatch 301 /\d{4}/\d{2}/\d{2}/(.*) http://example.com/$1</pre>
<h2>Performance issues with this WordPress SEO URL structure</h2>
<p>As the <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks">codex</a> states, there are some performance issues with this permalink structure. Performance would be better when the URL structure contained the post ID, or started with a static thing such as <code>/posts/%postname%/</code>. To be honest, I couldn't care less. If you're not willing to invest in <a title="Best WordPress Hosting" href="http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a> a bit, you might as well not optimize for search. Next to that, the detrimental performance effect of a perfect WordPress SEO url setting is mostly gone when you install a proper caching plugin.</p>
<h2>Conclusion: the perfect WordPress SEO URL</h2>
<p>It really depends on your site what the perfect WordPress SEO URL looks like, but they don't differ often. It helps if you make these considerations up front, but you can always make them later too, just be sure to do proper redirects from your old to your new structure.</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-seo-url-permalink/">WordPress SEO URL / Permalinks considerations</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/uT8qGRrqvns" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:4;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:34:"SlideShare plugin, now with oEmbed";s:4:"link";s:58:"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/joostdevalk/~3/fuHtqORcF9Y/";s:4:"guid";s:24:"http://yoast.com/?p=4227";s:8:"comments";s:105:"http://yoast.com/slideshare-oembed/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=slideshare-oembed#comments";s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:101:"http://yoast.com/slideshare-oembed/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=slideshare-oembedfeed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sun, 22 May 2011 07:50:53 +0100";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:13:"Joost de Valk";}s:8:"category";s:36:"WordPressSlideShareWordPress Plugins";s:11:"description";s:748:"<p>Last week at SAScon, Bas pointed out to me that SlideShare has a new embed method using an iframe instead of the old fashioned object stuff. So I started updating my SlideShare plugin, and when I was browsing the documentation I noticed they'd also added support for oEmbed since I looked at it. The funny [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/slideshare-oembed/">SlideShare plugin, now with oEmbed</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:1860:"<p>Last week at <a title="Presentations from SAScon" href="http://yoast.com/presentations-from-sascon/">SAScon</a>, <a href="http://www.stateofsearch.com/">Bas</a> pointed out to me that SlideShare has a new embed method using an iframe instead of the old fashioned object stuff. So I started updating my <a title="SlideShare WordPress plugin" href="http://yoast.com/wordpress/slideshare/">SlideShare plugin</a>, and when I was browsing the documentation I noticed they'd also added support for oEmbed since I looked at it.</p>
<p>The funny thing is that their oEmbed API still returns the old code, and that's there's no good way to tell up front which width you want for the presentation to be embedded. So I had to hack around a bit, but it works now: the plugin now uses oEmbed to retrieve the correct ID for the presentation and then transforms it into a player of the new style, with the width your theme supports. This means that all you have to do now is enable the URL and enter a SlideShare URL on a line of it's own and it'll be embedded.</p>
<p>To be honest though, I've found that this is a bit slowish and using the WordPress.com embed code (available under embed -&gt; customize) is still a more reliable and faster embed method. If you use the plugin, be sure to grab the updated SlideShare plugin, now at version 1.8.</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/slideshare-oembed/">SlideShare plugin, now with oEmbed</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/fuHtqORcF9Y" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:96:"http://yoast.com/slideshare-oembed/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=slideshare-oembed";}s:7:"summary";s:748:"<p>Last week at SAScon, Bas pointed out to me that SlideShare has a new embed method using an iframe instead of the old fashioned object stuff. So I started updating my SlideShare plugin, and when I was browsing the documentation I noticed they'd also added support for oEmbed since I looked at it. The funny [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/slideshare-oembed/">SlideShare plugin, now with oEmbed</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:12:"atom_content";s:1860:"<p>Last week at <a title="Presentations from SAScon" href="http://yoast.com/presentations-from-sascon/">SAScon</a>, <a href="http://www.stateofsearch.com/">Bas</a> pointed out to me that SlideShare has a new embed method using an iframe instead of the old fashioned object stuff. So I started updating my <a title="SlideShare WordPress plugin" href="http://yoast.com/wordpress/slideshare/">SlideShare plugin</a>, and when I was browsing the documentation I noticed they'd also added support for oEmbed since I looked at it.</p>
<p>The funny thing is that their oEmbed API still returns the old code, and that's there's no good way to tell up front which width you want for the presentation to be embedded. So I had to hack around a bit, but it works now: the plugin now uses oEmbed to retrieve the correct ID for the presentation and then transforms it into a player of the new style, with the width your theme supports. This means that all you have to do now is enable the URL and enter a SlideShare URL on a line of it's own and it'll be embedded.</p>
<p>To be honest though, I've found that this is a bit slowish and using the WordPress.com embed code (available under embed -&gt; customize) is still a more reliable and faster embed method. If you use the plugin, be sure to grab the updated SlideShare plugin, now at version 1.8.</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/slideshare-oembed/">SlideShare plugin, now with oEmbed</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/fuHtqORcF9Y" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:5;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:25:"Presentations from SAScon";s:4:"link";s:58:"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/joostdevalk/~3/795Wj3fYuus/";s:4:"guid";s:24:"http://yoast.com/?p=4225";s:8:"comments";s:121:"http://yoast.com/presentations-from-sascon/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=presentations-from-sascon#comments";s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:117:"http://yoast.com/presentations-from-sascon/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=presentations-from-sasconfeed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"5";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sun, 22 May 2011 07:32:57 +0100";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:13:"Joost de Valk";}s:8:"category";s:84:"Online MarketingConferencehreviewMicroformatsSEO toolsWordPress PluginsWordPress SEO";s:11:"description";s:783:"<p>This thursday and friday was the time for SAScon in Manchester, where I gave 3 formal presentations, I've embedded them here (using an updated SlideShare plugin, more on that in the next post): Feeds &#38; Microformats This panel, together with Richard Baxter of SEOgadget and James Lowery of Latitude, contained some great discussion on how [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/presentations-from-sascon/">Presentations from SAScon</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:2167:"<p>This thursday and friday was the time for <a href="http://www.sascon.co.uk/">SAScon</a> in Manchester, where I gave 3 formal presentations, I've embedded them here (using an updated <a title="SlideShare WordPress plugin" href="http://yoast.com/wordpress/slideshare/">SlideShare plugin</a>, more on that in the next post):</p>
<h2>Feeds &amp; Microformats</h2>
<p>This panel, together with Richard Baxter of <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/">SEOgadget</a> and James Lowery of <a href="http://www.latitudegroup.com/">Latitude</a>, contained some great discussion on how to use microformats for <a title="Google &amp; Microformats: Drive More Traffic" href="http://yoast.com/google-microformats-conversion-rate-optimization-serps/">rich snippets</a> in the Google SERPs. I mostly discussed <a href="http://yoast.com/implement-hreview-wordpress-theme/">hReview</a> &amp; hReviewAggregate:</p>
<br/><br/>
<h2>Tools, tools &amp; tools</h2>
<p>Next was a session with my buddy Dixon Jones from Receptional and <a href="http://www.majesticseo.com/">Majestic SEO</a> (who by the way just launched the <a href="http://blog.majesticseo.com/development/majestic-million/">Majestic Million</a>) and Ross from <a href="http://www.adinsight.eu/">Ad Insight</a>, a pretty cool call tracking platform. I discussed 22 free tools that I use regularly:</p>
<br/><br/>
<h2>WordPress SEO</h2>
<p>The last session of the last day (yeah that's a painful spot) but still a decent turn out of people listening to me and how I think they should optimize their site's structure using categories, tags and custom taxonomies more, and some other geeky stuff:</p>
<br/><br/>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/presentations-from-sascon/">Presentations from SAScon</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/795Wj3fYuus" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:112:"http://yoast.com/presentations-from-sascon/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=presentations-from-sascon";}s:7:"summary";s:783:"<p>This thursday and friday was the time for SAScon in Manchester, where I gave 3 formal presentations, I've embedded them here (using an updated SlideShare plugin, more on that in the next post): Feeds &#38; Microformats This panel, together with Richard Baxter of SEOgadget and James Lowery of Latitude, contained some great discussion on how [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/presentations-from-sascon/">Presentations from SAScon</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:12:"atom_content";s:2167:"<p>This thursday and friday was the time for <a href="http://www.sascon.co.uk/">SAScon</a> in Manchester, where I gave 3 formal presentations, I've embedded them here (using an updated <a title="SlideShare WordPress plugin" href="http://yoast.com/wordpress/slideshare/">SlideShare plugin</a>, more on that in the next post):</p>
<h2>Feeds &amp; Microformats</h2>
<p>This panel, together with Richard Baxter of <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/">SEOgadget</a> and James Lowery of <a href="http://www.latitudegroup.com/">Latitude</a>, contained some great discussion on how to use microformats for <a title="Google &amp; Microformats: Drive More Traffic" href="http://yoast.com/google-microformats-conversion-rate-optimization-serps/">rich snippets</a> in the Google SERPs. I mostly discussed <a href="http://yoast.com/implement-hreview-wordpress-theme/">hReview</a> &amp; hReviewAggregate:</p>
<br/><br/>
<h2>Tools, tools &amp; tools</h2>
<p>Next was a session with my buddy Dixon Jones from Receptional and <a href="http://www.majesticseo.com/">Majestic SEO</a> (who by the way just launched the <a href="http://blog.majesticseo.com/development/majestic-million/">Majestic Million</a>) and Ross from <a href="http://www.adinsight.eu/">Ad Insight</a>, a pretty cool call tracking platform. I discussed 22 free tools that I use regularly:</p>
<br/><br/>
<h2>WordPress SEO</h2>
<p>The last session of the last day (yeah that's a painful spot) but still a decent turn out of people listening to me and how I think they should optimize their site's structure using categories, tags and custom taxonomies more, and some other geeky stuff:</p>
<br/><br/>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/presentations-from-sascon/">Presentations from SAScon</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/795Wj3fYuus" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:6;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:55:"Content SEO made easier by WordPress, Yoast and Linkdex";s:4:"link";s:58:"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/joostdevalk/~3/0Kf4dGcQgNA/";s:4:"guid";s:24:"http://yoast.com/?p=4116";s:8:"comments";s:129:"http://yoast.com/content-seo-wordpress-linkdex/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=content-seo-wordpress-linkdex#comments";s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:125:"http://yoast.com/content-seo-wordpress-linkdex/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=content-seo-wordpress-linkdexfeed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:2:"87";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 09 May 2011 15:37:55 +0100";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:13:"Joost de Valk";}s:8:"category";s:39:"WordPressWordPress PluginsWordPress SEO";s:11:"description";s:777:"<p>It has always been my goal to make content SEO as easy as can be, and to make people writing content perform the necessary actions instead of someone else fixing up after them. Good SEO for a site consists of set of technical requirements, a good site structure and then the most important thing: well [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/content-seo-wordpress-linkdex/">Content SEO made easier by WordPress, Yoast and Linkdex</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:6410:"<p><img src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/linkdex-logo.png" alt="Linkdex Logo" title="Linkdex Logo" width="200" height="73" class="alignright size-full wp-image-4135" />It has always been my goal to make content SEO as easy as can be, and to make people writing content perform the necessary actions instead of someone else fixing up after them. Good SEO for a site consists of set of technical requirements, a good site structure and then the most important thing: well optimized content. Preferably lots of it. Today, by releasing the <a rel="nofollow" href="http://yoa.st/linkdex">Linkdex</a> Page Analysis integration into my <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-seo/">WordPress SEO plugin</a>, we've come one step closer to that goal of making Content SEO easy.</p>
<p>So what is it: full content SEO analysis functionality. The WordPress SEO box, with the snippet preview you've come to know, has a new tab, titled Page Analysis. This tab features a report of the content for the current post, check what it looks like (click for larger versions):</p>
<div><a rel="linkdex" href="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/page-analysis-content-seo.jpg"><img src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/page-analysis-content-seo-300x212.jpg" alt="Page Analysis Tab that helps you with Content SEO" title="Page Analysis Tab that helps you with Content SEO" width="300" height="212" class="size-medium wp-image-4118" /></a><p>Page Analysis Tab that helps you with Content SEO</p></div>
<p>And one that's a bit more positive:</p>
<div><a rel="linkdex" href="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/page-analysis-content-seo-2.jpg"><img src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/page-analysis-content-seo-2-300x226.jpg" alt="Page Analysis - Content SEO well done!" title="Page Analysis - Content SEO well done!" width="300" height="226" class="size-medium wp-image-4130" /></a><p>Page Analysis - Content SEO well done!</p></div>
<h2>What's in that page analysis tab that helps me with Content SEO?</h2>
<p>As you can see, there are three different types of messages: warnings, notices and messages. The messages are in the bottom, as they tell you stuff you probably don't have to do anything about. The notices are above them, they can range from saying "No images appear in this page, consider adding some as appropriate" or, if you do have images but didn't use your focus keyword in the alt tag it'll say: "The images on this page do not have alt tags containing your keyword / phrase".</p>
<p>Warnings are messages like "The keyword / phrase does not appear in the page title." Another useful message: "You're linking to another page with the keyword you want this page to rank for, consider changing that if you truly want this page to rank." </p>
<p>Other messages can concern the meta description, the page title, your use of headings, the number of links, the length of your post or page's copy, the keyword density and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid_readability_test#Flesch_Reading_Ease">Flesch Reading Ease</a> score for the page. The latter score determines whether your page is easy to read, by checking for long sentences and words with a lot of syllables. This feature currently only works properly for the English language.</p>
<p>You'll probably understand why I think that such feedback will help you write better (optimized) content and thus makes content SEO easier.</p>
<h2>This seems to good to be true, what's the catch?</h2>
<p>Let me be clear, even though this is a collaboration between Linkdex and myself, the new content SEO functionality featured in the plugin is 100% free and will remain free and open source. There is no catch. As said, this feature is free for all users of the WordPress SEO plugin, doesn't require registration or anything else and doesn't send your data to other servers. All the analysis is done right there within your blog. As you can see in the screenshot above there's some minor promo for Linkdex underneath the box, which is an awesome service, and if you sign up for <a rel="nofollow" href="http://yoa.st/linkdex">Linkdex</a> using one of those links, or the ones in this post for that matter, I get a little bit of money.</p>
<p>This release also features a set of updates to the General tab of the WordPress SEO box. The snippet preview has some enhancements, mostly relating to properly using ellipsis when the content is too long, as well as several JavaScript improvements. The focus keyword box, moved up in the previous release because it is so important for all these content SEO analyses, has gotten a new Google Suggest implementation using jQuery and jQuery UI that is far more robust than the previous one. Check it out:</p>
<div><a rel="linkdex" href="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/snippet-preview.jpg"><img src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/snippet-preview-300x223.jpg" alt="Snippet Preview with updated Focus Keyword Suggest" title="Snippet Preview with updated Focus Keyword Suggest" width="300" height="223" class="size-medium wp-image-4122" /></a><p>Snippet Preview with updated Focus Keyword Suggest</p></div>
<p>Lastly, there are some new features in the indexing area, for instance allowing you to noindex, follow all paginated pages in taxonomies, so you can have /cat/seo/ indexed, but /cat/seo/page/2/ noindex, followed. In all, I think this is a killer update. There's one thing left to tackle, the way XML sitemaps are built. It works but I'm not happy with it, once I've finished that the plugin will come out of beta. For now, enjoy version 0.3, and let me know in the comments what you think! Bonus points for the person who guesses the focus keyword of this article :)</p>
<p>So, <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/">go grab the plugin</a>!</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/content-seo-wordpress-linkdex/">Content SEO made easier by WordPress, Yoast and Linkdex</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/0Kf4dGcQgNA" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:120:"http://yoast.com/content-seo-wordpress-linkdex/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=content-seo-wordpress-linkdex";}s:7:"summary";s:777:"<p>It has always been my goal to make content SEO as easy as can be, and to make people writing content perform the necessary actions instead of someone else fixing up after them. Good SEO for a site consists of set of technical requirements, a good site structure and then the most important thing: well [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/content-seo-wordpress-linkdex/">Content SEO made easier by WordPress, Yoast and Linkdex</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:12:"atom_content";s:6410:"<p><img src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/linkdex-logo.png" alt="Linkdex Logo" title="Linkdex Logo" width="200" height="73" class="alignright size-full wp-image-4135" />It has always been my goal to make content SEO as easy as can be, and to make people writing content perform the necessary actions instead of someone else fixing up after them. Good SEO for a site consists of set of technical requirements, a good site structure and then the most important thing: well optimized content. Preferably lots of it. Today, by releasing the <a rel="nofollow" href="http://yoa.st/linkdex">Linkdex</a> Page Analysis integration into my <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-seo/">WordPress SEO plugin</a>, we've come one step closer to that goal of making Content SEO easy.</p>
<p>So what is it: full content SEO analysis functionality. The WordPress SEO box, with the snippet preview you've come to know, has a new tab, titled Page Analysis. This tab features a report of the content for the current post, check what it looks like (click for larger versions):</p>
<div><a rel="linkdex" href="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/page-analysis-content-seo.jpg"><img src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/page-analysis-content-seo-300x212.jpg" alt="Page Analysis Tab that helps you with Content SEO" title="Page Analysis Tab that helps you with Content SEO" width="300" height="212" class="size-medium wp-image-4118" /></a><p>Page Analysis Tab that helps you with Content SEO</p></div>
<p>And one that's a bit more positive:</p>
<div><a rel="linkdex" href="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/page-analysis-content-seo-2.jpg"><img src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/page-analysis-content-seo-2-300x226.jpg" alt="Page Analysis - Content SEO well done!" title="Page Analysis - Content SEO well done!" width="300" height="226" class="size-medium wp-image-4130" /></a><p>Page Analysis - Content SEO well done!</p></div>
<h2>What's in that page analysis tab that helps me with Content SEO?</h2>
<p>As you can see, there are three different types of messages: warnings, notices and messages. The messages are in the bottom, as they tell you stuff you probably don't have to do anything about. The notices are above them, they can range from saying "No images appear in this page, consider adding some as appropriate" or, if you do have images but didn't use your focus keyword in the alt tag it'll say: "The images on this page do not have alt tags containing your keyword / phrase".</p>
<p>Warnings are messages like "The keyword / phrase does not appear in the page title." Another useful message: "You're linking to another page with the keyword you want this page to rank for, consider changing that if you truly want this page to rank." </p>
<p>Other messages can concern the meta description, the page title, your use of headings, the number of links, the length of your post or page's copy, the keyword density and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid_readability_test#Flesch_Reading_Ease">Flesch Reading Ease</a> score for the page. The latter score determines whether your page is easy to read, by checking for long sentences and words with a lot of syllables. This feature currently only works properly for the English language.</p>
<p>You'll probably understand why I think that such feedback will help you write better (optimized) content and thus makes content SEO easier.</p>
<h2>This seems to good to be true, what's the catch?</h2>
<p>Let me be clear, even though this is a collaboration between Linkdex and myself, the new content SEO functionality featured in the plugin is 100% free and will remain free and open source. There is no catch. As said, this feature is free for all users of the WordPress SEO plugin, doesn't require registration or anything else and doesn't send your data to other servers. All the analysis is done right there within your blog. As you can see in the screenshot above there's some minor promo for Linkdex underneath the box, which is an awesome service, and if you sign up for <a rel="nofollow" href="http://yoa.st/linkdex">Linkdex</a> using one of those links, or the ones in this post for that matter, I get a little bit of money.</p>
<p>This release also features a set of updates to the General tab of the WordPress SEO box. The snippet preview has some enhancements, mostly relating to properly using ellipsis when the content is too long, as well as several JavaScript improvements. The focus keyword box, moved up in the previous release because it is so important for all these content SEO analyses, has gotten a new Google Suggest implementation using jQuery and jQuery UI that is far more robust than the previous one. Check it out:</p>
<div><a rel="linkdex" href="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/snippet-preview.jpg"><img src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/snippet-preview-300x223.jpg" alt="Snippet Preview with updated Focus Keyword Suggest" title="Snippet Preview with updated Focus Keyword Suggest" width="300" height="223" class="size-medium wp-image-4122" /></a><p>Snippet Preview with updated Focus Keyword Suggest</p></div>
<p>Lastly, there are some new features in the indexing area, for instance allowing you to noindex, follow all paginated pages in taxonomies, so you can have /cat/seo/ indexed, but /cat/seo/page/2/ noindex, followed. In all, I think this is a killer update. There's one thing left to tackle, the way XML sitemaps are built. It works but I'm not happy with it, once I've finished that the plugin will come out of beta. For now, enjoy version 0.3, and let me know in the comments what you think! Bonus points for the person who guesses the focus keyword of this article :)</p>
<p>So, <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/">go grab the plugin</a>!</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/content-seo-wordpress-linkdex/">Content SEO made easier by WordPress, Yoast and Linkdex</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/0Kf4dGcQgNA" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:7;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:39:"Site Speed tracking in Google Analytics";s:4:"link";s:58:"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/joostdevalk/~3/tCnTM12XZqI/";s:4:"guid";s:24:"http://yoast.com/?p=4164";s:8:"comments";s:149:"http://yoast.com/site-speed-tracking-in-google-analytics/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=site-speed-tracking-in-google-analytics#comments";s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:145:"http://yoast.com/site-speed-tracking-in-google-analytics/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=site-speed-tracking-in-google-analyticsfeed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:2:"21";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 09 May 2011 13:38:25 +0100";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:13:"Joost de Valk";}s:8:"category";s:61:"AnalyticsWordPressGoogle AnalyticsSite SpeedWordPress Plugins";s:11:"description";s:785:"<p>Just a quickie: I just updated my Google Analytics for WordPress plugin to incorporate the new Site Speed tracking feature that Google announced last week. The feature is on by default and can be disabled in the advanced section of the settings. As you can see from the announcement post, this new feature helps you [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/site-speed-tracking-in-google-analytics/">Site Speed tracking in Google Analytics</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:2005:"<p><a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress/google-analytics/"><img src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/GAfW-565-161-300x74.png" alt="Google Analytics for WordPress" title="Google Analytics for WordPress" width="300" height="74" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2966" /></a>Just a quickie: I just updated my <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress/google-analytics/">Google Analytics for WordPress</a> plugin to incorporate the new Site Speed tracking feature that <a href="http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/05/measure-page-load-time-with-site-speed.html">Google announced</a> last week. The feature is on by default and can be disabled in the advanced section of the settings.</p>
<p>As you can see from the announcement post, this new feature helps you determine questions like:</p>
<ul>
<li>Which landing pages are slowest?</li>
<li>How does page load time vary across geographies?</li>
<li>Does your site load faster or slower for different browsers?</li>
</ul>
<p><img alt="Site Speed report in Google Analytics" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RoXO31TXnJE/TcCHhjJbQuI/AAAAAAAABNk/So-Ra5CM6Dc/s400/galt_blog.png" title="Site Speed report in Google Analytics" class="aligncenter" width="400" height="246" /></p>
<p>You'll be able to find the results from this tracking under Content &rarr; Site Speed in Google Analytics. This release also fixes the slight error with the custom code option, that's now properly stripped from slashes.</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/site-speed-tracking-in-google-analytics/">Site Speed tracking in Google Analytics</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/tCnTM12XZqI" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:140:"http://yoast.com/site-speed-tracking-in-google-analytics/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=site-speed-tracking-in-google-analytics";}s:7:"summary";s:785:"<p>Just a quickie: I just updated my Google Analytics for WordPress plugin to incorporate the new Site Speed tracking feature that Google announced last week. The feature is on by default and can be disabled in the advanced section of the settings. As you can see from the announcement post, this new feature helps you [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/site-speed-tracking-in-google-analytics/">Site Speed tracking in Google Analytics</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:12:"atom_content";s:2005:"<p><a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress/google-analytics/"><img src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/GAfW-565-161-300x74.png" alt="Google Analytics for WordPress" title="Google Analytics for WordPress" width="300" height="74" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2966" /></a>Just a quickie: I just updated my <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress/google-analytics/">Google Analytics for WordPress</a> plugin to incorporate the new Site Speed tracking feature that <a href="http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/05/measure-page-load-time-with-site-speed.html">Google announced</a> last week. The feature is on by default and can be disabled in the advanced section of the settings.</p>
<p>As you can see from the announcement post, this new feature helps you determine questions like:</p>
<ul>
<li>Which landing pages are slowest?</li>
<li>How does page load time vary across geographies?</li>
<li>Does your site load faster or slower for different browsers?</li>
</ul>
<p><img alt="Site Speed report in Google Analytics" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RoXO31TXnJE/TcCHhjJbQuI/AAAAAAAABNk/So-Ra5CM6Dc/s400/galt_blog.png" title="Site Speed report in Google Analytics" class="aligncenter" width="400" height="246" /></p>
<p>You'll be able to find the results from this tracking under Content &rarr; Site Speed in Google Analytics. This release also fixes the slight error with the custom code option, that's now properly stripped from slashes.</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/site-speed-tracking-in-google-analytics/">Site Speed tracking in Google Analytics</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/tCnTM12XZqI" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:8;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:31:"Yoast – New & Improved images";s:4:"link";s:58:"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/joostdevalk/~3/rRXCSlWZvRw/";s:4:"guid";s:24:"http://yoast.com/?p=4146";s:8:"comments";s:111:"http://yoast.com/yoast-improved-image/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=yoast-improved-image#comments";s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:107:"http://yoast.com/yoast-improved-image/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=yoast-improved-imagefeed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:2:"58";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 25 Apr 2011 21:36:47 +0100";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:13:"Joost de Valk";}s:8:"category";s:14:"OfftopicAvatar";s:11:"description";s:734:"<p>I've been known online by my avatar for quite a few years now, even having people in conferences come up to me and say they recognized me from it. The original credit for the avatar goes to Paul Madden, the SEO formerly known as SEO Idiot. I decided it was time to start taking this [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/yoast-improved-image/">Yoast &#8211; New &#038; Improved images</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:1542:"<p>I've been known online by my avatar for quite a few years now, even having people in conferences come up to me and say they recognized me from it. The original credit for the avatar goes to <a href="http://www.paulmadden.co.uk/">Paul Madden</a>, the SEO formerly known as SEO Idiot. I decided it was time to start taking this exercise in personal branding a step further, so I'm having a friend and talented illustrator, <a href="http://www.erwinbrouwer.nl/">Erwin Brouwer</a>, draw some more images of me. </p>
<p>I thought it'd be fun to share the first two here for your enjoyment. One is me in a business suit, the other one me as superman, inspired by <a href="http://twitter.com/Pamela_Lund/status/54985495578554368">this tweet</a> from Pamela Lund. So here we go:</p>
<p><img src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Yoast-Drawn.jpg" alt="" title="Yoast - Drawn" width="500" height="300" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4147" /></p>
<p>Let me know what you think in the comments!</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/yoast-improved-image/">Yoast &#8211; New &#038; Improved images</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/rRXCSlWZvRw" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:102:"http://yoast.com/yoast-improved-image/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=yoast-improved-image";}s:7:"summary";s:734:"<p>I've been known online by my avatar for quite a few years now, even having people in conferences come up to me and say they recognized me from it. The original credit for the avatar goes to Paul Madden, the SEO formerly known as SEO Idiot. I decided it was time to start taking this [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/yoast-improved-image/">Yoast &#8211; New &#038; Improved images</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:12:"atom_content";s:1542:"<p>I've been known online by my avatar for quite a few years now, even having people in conferences come up to me and say they recognized me from it. The original credit for the avatar goes to <a href="http://www.paulmadden.co.uk/">Paul Madden</a>, the SEO formerly known as SEO Idiot. I decided it was time to start taking this exercise in personal branding a step further, so I'm having a friend and talented illustrator, <a href="http://www.erwinbrouwer.nl/">Erwin Brouwer</a>, draw some more images of me. </p>
<p>I thought it'd be fun to share the first two here for your enjoyment. One is me in a business suit, the other one me as superman, inspired by <a href="http://twitter.com/Pamela_Lund/status/54985495578554368">this tweet</a> from Pamela Lund. So here we go:</p>
<p><img src="http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Yoast-Drawn.jpg" alt="" title="Yoast - Drawn" width="500" height="300" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4147" /></p>
<p>Let me know what you think in the comments!</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/yoast-improved-image/">Yoast &#8211; New &#038; Improved images</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/rRXCSlWZvRw" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:9;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:40:"Upgrade WordPress, then upgrade plugins!";s:4:"link";s:58:"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/joostdevalk/~3/97NXcyuNIjY/";s:4:"guid";s:24:"http://yoast.com/?p=4139";s:8:"comments";s:105:"http://yoast.com/upgrade-wordpress/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=upgrade-wordpress#comments";s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:101:"http://yoast.com/upgrade-wordpress/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=upgrade-wordpressfeed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:2:"42";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 22 Apr 2011 07:32:15 +0100";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:13:"Joost de Valk";}s:8:"category";s:26:"WordPressWordPress Plugins";s:11:"description";s:761:"<p>The current version of my WordPress SEO plugin has a new feature: it supports post type archives in several places. It also has a bug: if your version of WordPress (ie. everything before 3.1) doesn't support post type archives, it'll break. Now, this is annoying and something I will fix in the next release, but [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/upgrade-wordpress/">Upgrade WordPress, then upgrade plugins!</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:3339:"<p>The current version of my WordPress SEO plugin has a new feature: it supports post type archives in several places. It also has a bug: if your version of WordPress (ie. everything before 3.1) doesn't support post type archives, it'll break. Now, this is annoying and something I will fix in the next release, but I'm absolutely astounded by the number of people that seem to upgrade to a new version of my plugin religiously (thank you!) but do not upgrade WordPress.</p>
<p>You see, the plugin is in beta. WordPress is not. Why, please do tell me, would you not upgrade WordPress first but instead upgrade the plugin and then decide not to upgrade WordPress? I've had 10+ threads on the WP forums about this same topic now (which actually is another issue in itself, people don't search and I can't close threads). </p>
<h2>Common reasons not to upgrade WordPress</h2>
<p>Let me list some standard reasons for not upgrading and my response:</p>
<ul>
<li>"I'll loose my customizations" - I'm sorry to say that you've done it wrong and should've built a plugin, which is your fault, not mine. At some point I will drop support for 3.0, so you really should go and fix it.</li>
<li>"My theme doesn't work with 3.1" - for starters, I don't believe it. WordPress 3.1 hardly broke anything that was built using normal WP standards. If it's really true, you've got a crappy theme and you should either fix it or change themes.</li>
<li>"I can't tell you why but it's not an option to upgrade WordPress" - if you can't tell me, I can't help you, but the above reasons probably apply.</li>
<li>"My developer says it's not safe to upgrade" - fire him and get another developer. If he / she thought it was safe to use beta software (my plugin) but doesn't think it's safe to upgrade WordPress, he has too high an opinion of my coding and too low an opinion of the WordPress development team. You're in luck though, apparently there are <a href="http://wpcandy.com/reports/20000-people-make-a-living-with-wordpress">20,000+ of them</a>.</li>
<li>"Other plugin X-Y-Z breaks when I upgrade." So, instead of complaining to the developer that doesn't update his plugin to work with the latest version of WordPress, you decided to complain to the developer who did do that, in fact updated his plugin to let you benefit of all the new functionality? Wrong way round.</li>
<li>"This plugin I paid for breaks when I upgrade". This is he worst of all. Read the line above and then add to that in your head that my plugin is <em>free</em>.</li>
</ul>
<p>Now, I'll point everyone here who has one of these issues. If you feel I'm too harsh: I'm sorry. That won't change my opinion though. If you really need my plugin and are at a loss at what to do, you can always, you know, <a href="http://yoast.com/hire-me/">hire me</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/upgrade-wordpress/">Upgrade WordPress, then upgrade plugins!</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/97NXcyuNIjY" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:96:"http://yoast.com/upgrade-wordpress/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=upgrade-wordpress";}s:7:"summary";s:761:"<p>The current version of my WordPress SEO plugin has a new feature: it supports post type archives in several places. It also has a bug: if your version of WordPress (ie. everything before 3.1) doesn't support post type archives, it'll break. Now, this is annoying and something I will fix in the next release, but [...]</p><p><a href="http://yoast.com/upgrade-wordpress/">Upgrade WordPress, then upgrade plugins!</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p>";s:12:"atom_content";s:3339:"<p>The current version of my WordPress SEO plugin has a new feature: it supports post type archives in several places. It also has a bug: if your version of WordPress (ie. everything before 3.1) doesn't support post type archives, it'll break. Now, this is annoying and something I will fix in the next release, but I'm absolutely astounded by the number of people that seem to upgrade to a new version of my plugin religiously (thank you!) but do not upgrade WordPress.</p>
<p>You see, the plugin is in beta. WordPress is not. Why, please do tell me, would you not upgrade WordPress first but instead upgrade the plugin and then decide not to upgrade WordPress? I've had 10+ threads on the WP forums about this same topic now (which actually is another issue in itself, people don't search and I can't close threads). </p>
<h2>Common reasons not to upgrade WordPress</h2>
<p>Let me list some standard reasons for not upgrading and my response:</p>
<ul>
<li>"I'll loose my customizations" - I'm sorry to say that you've done it wrong and should've built a plugin, which is your fault, not mine. At some point I will drop support for 3.0, so you really should go and fix it.</li>
<li>"My theme doesn't work with 3.1" - for starters, I don't believe it. WordPress 3.1 hardly broke anything that was built using normal WP standards. If it's really true, you've got a crappy theme and you should either fix it or change themes.</li>
<li>"I can't tell you why but it's not an option to upgrade WordPress" - if you can't tell me, I can't help you, but the above reasons probably apply.</li>
<li>"My developer says it's not safe to upgrade" - fire him and get another developer. If he / she thought it was safe to use beta software (my plugin) but doesn't think it's safe to upgrade WordPress, he has too high an opinion of my coding and too low an opinion of the WordPress development team. You're in luck though, apparently there are <a href="http://wpcandy.com/reports/20000-people-make-a-living-with-wordpress">20,000+ of them</a>.</li>
<li>"Other plugin X-Y-Z breaks when I upgrade." So, instead of complaining to the developer that doesn't update his plugin to work with the latest version of WordPress, you decided to complain to the developer who did do that, in fact updated his plugin to let you benefit of all the new functionality? Wrong way round.</li>
<li>"This plugin I paid for breaks when I upgrade". This is he worst of all. Read the line above and then add to that in your head that my plugin is <em>free</em>.</li>
</ul>
<p>Now, I'll point everyone here who has one of these issues. If you feel I'm too harsh: I'm sorry. That won't change my opinion though. If you really need my plugin and are at a loss at what to do, you can always, you know, <a href="http://yoast.com/hire-me/">hire me</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://yoast.com/upgrade-wordpress/">Upgrade WordPress, then upgrade plugins!</a> is a post from <a href="http://yoast.com/about-me/">Joost de Valk</a>&#39;s <a href="http://yoast.com">Yoast - Tweaking Websites</a>. 

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on <a href="http://yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/">WordPress hosting</a>!</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/joostdevalk/~4/97NXcyuNIjY" height="1" width="1"/>";}}s:7:"channel";a:8:{s:5:"title";s:29:"Yoast & The WordPress Podcast";s:11:"description";s:64:"This is the combined feed of Yoast.com and the WordPress Podcast";s:4:"link";s:22:"http://yoast.com/feed/";s:8:"language";s:5:"en-us";s:9:"generator";s:29:"http://wordpress.org/?v=yoast";s:2:"sy";a:2:{s:12:"updateperiod";s:6:"hourly";s:15:"updatefrequency";s:1:"1";}s:10:"feedburner";a:4:{s:14:"emailserviceid";s:11:"joostdevalk";s:18:"feedburnerhostname";s:28:"http://feedburner.google.com";s:9:"feedflare";s:158:"Subscribe with PodnovaSubscribe with NewsGatorSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with PageflakesSubscribe with My Yahoo!Subscribe with ODEOSubscribe with Google";s:15:"browserfriendly";s:195:"This is the combined feed for Yoast.com and the WordPress podcast. Subscribe now to get WordPress & Magento tips & tricks, helping you optimize your site for speed, search engines and conversion!";}s:7:"tagline";s:64:"This is the combined feed of Yoast.com and the WordPress Podcast";}s:9:"textinput";a:0:{}s:5:"image";a:6:{s:5:"title";s:29:"Yoast & The WordPress Podcast";s:3:"url";s:73:"http://cdn.yoast.com/wp-content/themes/yoast-v2/images/yoast-logo-rss.png";s:4:"link";s:22:"http://yoast.com/feed/";s:5:"width";s:3:"144";s:6:"height";s:3:"103";s:11:"description";s:17:"Tweaking Websites";}s:9:"feed_type";s:3:"RSS";s:12:"feed_version";s:3:"2.0";s:5:"stack";a:0:{}s:9:"inchannel";b:0;s:6:"initem";b:0;s:9:"incontent";b:0;s:11:"intextinput";b:0;s:7:"inimage";b:0;s:13:"current_field";s:0:"";s:17:"current_namespace";b:0;s:19:"_CONTENT_CONSTRUCTS";a:6:{i:0;s:7:"content";i:1;s:7:"summary";i:2;s:4:"info";i:3;s:5:"title";i:4;s:7:"tagline";i:5;s:9:"copyright";}s:4:"etag";s:27:"B5Fk4w07lMYILKg74kymAdrq8Gw";s:13:"last_modified";s:29:"Thu, 26 May 2011 13:12:25 GMT";}