SMHeart.org

Simple, Useful, Free Tools to Drive Traffic to your Site

1. Google Analytics is free and if you do not have an account it is easy to create one. Set up an account to see who is coming to your site, how they got there, and what they are doing.

2. Use your domain branded email address. ie kd(at)kdderr.com This helps drive traffic to your site with putting the annoying links in your email closing.

3. Using descriptive names for your images rather than img8647.jpg is much more effective than tagging.

4. Use word press. I think this is the best web organization product available today. I recommend adding these three plug-ins to your word press account:
Feedburner
Site Map Generator
Google Sitemap Generator

5. When updating your site it takes time for the search engines to realize you made changes. Set up an account with Webmaster Tools to upload your site map and tell the web crawlers to go look at your site.

6. Set up a Feedburner Account to set up RSS feeds.

7. Think of your website as a work in progress. Frequent updates to your site will drive more traffic because new data is ranked higher by search engines.

Reasons to Avoid Tables and Iframes

I few weeks ago, I met with a former collaborator and we got on the subject of websites. This was a natural topic because most of the funding he receives is to manage a database resource for his community. He has an excellent site with a lot of data. His site gets over one million page views a month. And is considering putting up ads to help fund his site. In fact, he has been approached by a vendor that wants to place an ad on his site. This sounds like a dream situation…

I started researching what he could charge for an ad. I started with a simple Google search to see how his site ranked. I was surprised to find that his page did not rank first on any of my searches. The site had traffic and the content. Why was Google ranking the site so low? A quick check of the code revealed that the site was built on tables and iframes.

At SMHeart, we glibly tell people that Tables and Iframes are 1996 technology. What we mean is that Google’s algorithm changed the webdesign game. Iframes and tables are BG (before Google). The web crawlers cannot read the content inside a table or iframe. This makes it look like your site has no content. Hence, it is ranked low.

This is a heartbreaking story because the website in question is highly established. It will take over a year and an incredible amount of energy to migrate it to a SEO friendly format. I am not sure it is worth the effort. This is why it always better to start with best design practices and work from there.

Google Privacy Policy

A Google compliant privacy policy you can insert into any page or template.

Current Version

Past Versions

SMHeart Security

A security and hardening plugin for WordPress.
The Administrative User is presented with several independently selectable options for making their default installation increasingly secure.

Current Version

Past Versions

ICRA Label Generator

ICRA labels are part of a global effort known as the “Semantic Web.” That is, a system to make sense of the mass of data available online. Your label is created using the same technology used for things like RSS news feeds. As more and more tools are developed to make the semantic web a reality, labels can play an increasingly important role in making your content visible to users.

Content providers check which of the elements in the questionnaire are present or absent from their websites. This then generates specific meta-tags placed in to the header of the web pages.

Users, especially parents of young children, can then use filtering software to allow or disallow access to web sites based on the information declared in the label. A key point is that ICRA does not rate internet content – the content providers do that, using the ICRA labelling system. ICRA makes no value judgement about sites.

The broad topics covered are:

• The presence or absence of nudity
• The presence or absence of sexual content
• The depiction of violence
• The language used
• The presence or absence of user-generated content and whether this is moderated
• The depiction of other potentially harmful content such as gambling, drugs and alcohol

Within each broad category the web author is asked more detailed questions about whether a specific item or feature is present or absent from the site.

Download

Current Version

Other Versions

Post Recycler

This plugin allows for the automatic daily reposting of the oldest post. The selected post has the oldest post_modified date. The post_modified date is changed to the current time and Ping.fm and HelloTXT.com social notification networks are updated with information from this post. Any ‘Update Services’ configured in the Writing Settings in your WordPress installation are also notified of the repost.

Current Version
Other Versions

Accounts on Ping.FM and HelloTXT.com are required for this plug-in to function.

* This plugin was formerly listed as rePost Oldest Posts.

* Format for the information sent is (see screenshot):

(Preamble to the message) (Post title) (Post Link) (Post Content -truncated to keep message no larger than 140 characters) (Ellipse)

* Sample message would resemble:

Flashback: Here is the Post Title: http://posturl.com/post – This is the first several works of the past…

hellotxt

Plugin sends a message to the HelloTXT social notification network when a post is published.

Current Version

Other Versions

Last Post Notification

This plugin is designed for sites that set future dates for content.  It will notify an individual via email then there is one week, three days, and one day before the last post will be automatically published.

Download

Current Version
Other Versions

Repost Oldest

This plugin is no longer actively developed under this name.

It is now found under Post Recycler

This plugin allows for the automatic daily reposting of the oldest post.  The selected post has the oldest post_modified date.  The post_modified date is changed to the current time and Ping.fm and HelloTXT.com social notification networks are updated with information from this post.  Any ‘Update Services’ configured in the Writing Settings in your WordPress installation are also notified of the rePost.

Current Version
Other Versions

Accounts on Ping.FM and HelloTXT.com are required for this plug-in to function.

* Format for the information sent is (see screenshot):

(Preamble to the message) (Post title) (Post Link) (Post Content -truncated to keep message no larger than 140 characters) (Ellipse)

* Sample message would resemble:

Flashback: Here is the Post Title: http://posturl.com/post – This is the first several works of the past…

Social networks that matter

A new paper released by the Social Computing Lab of HP Laboratories discusses the core social network beneath the web of friends and followers a person may have across many social media sites.

By studying over 300,000 Twitter accounts they developed some parameters of what defines a friend as opposed to a follower or followee: in this case to become a friend two posts had to be directed to another user.

Not one to give away the ending I highly recommend you give the paper a read. For you non-academics out there the writing is digestible albeit dense and worth the time invested.

Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope
Bernardo A. Huberman1 , Daniel M. Romero1,2 and Fang Wu1
http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/scl/papers/twitter/twitter.pdf