A Free and Handy SEO Software Tool

Lately I have been getting back into the whole SEO thing and I have just been reading Khalids review of some very clever SEO software.

SheerSEO might have a funny name but it certainly seems to be very useful!

What it does is checks and reports your search positions for your most wanted keywords. Because it is automated (and currently free!) you can save a lot of time, time that you can put towards improving those rankings.

The site allows you to add up to 200 keywords to check for your site ranking: The interface to add the words is straight forward to use. The current number of keywords sheerseo tracks is 200 but I am sure they will be expanding this in the future.

Check out the software and Khalids full review.

Which SEO software do you use?

WordPress Hacks: Build a Techmeme River of News Clone, Part 1

[Intermediate users] If you’ve seen sites like Techmeme and Megite and find them handy, you might be wishing you had something similar for a specific niche. Techmeme’s owners do have similar sites for specific niches (including politics, baseball, celeb gossip), but maybe you want something for a different niche. Since as a freelancer, I cover a number of niches on a regular basis, I’ve got my own personal dashboard tools for monitoring niches. But I’ve been on a quest to find/ build a generic tool similar to Techmeme/ Megite. Fortunately, you can produce something similar: a river of news. It doesn’t offer the topical clustering that makes Techmeme and Megite so useful, but it’s a start.

What’s a River of News, and Why Use It?

A river of news is just a stream of headlines from various websites, possibly with text excerpts. See Techmeme River for an example (a snapshot is below).

Techmeme River does not provide any item excerpts, but that doesn’t mean your river of news cannot. (However, in this post, I’m discussing a headlines-only version.) You can format the text presentation any way you like, as well as insert the information you need to appear.

Ok, Show Me How

Here is the simplest process for building a river of news:

1. Take a bunch of related feeds that you want to monitor, then mash them up. (I like to use Yahoo Pipes for feed mashups because of the relative ease and the great functionality.)
2. Sort the mashed up item stream. You’ll very likely want them presented reverse chronologically (most recent first).
3. Truncate your list to X items – say 25, 50, or whatever.
4. Publish the list to your blog – either in your navigation column, or on a page of its own, or a subdomain. (You can use the new Yahoo Pipes badging or custom code.)

Instead of writing a lengthy explanation of the coding process, I’ll refer you to Splashpress’ own Thord Hendgren and his recent article, Mashing Up Feeds Using Yahoo Pipes. I’ve written similar posts (linked above), but Thord has done a nice job of showing lots of screen snaps. What’s more, he’s provided and explained HTML/ PHP code that you can use in WordPress to parse your mashed feed stream and badge it on your blog.

How Can I Use a River of News For Niche X?

Assuming you apply the instructions that Thord gives, here’s what you might do:

1. Pick out the RSS feeds you want to monitor, including building custom feeds using Google News, Yahoo News, etc.
2. Apply the process I’ve given.
3. Use Thord’s badging process and code.
4. Tweak your WP theme’s CSS stylesheet to present your river of news text in whatever way you like.

The result will look something like this snapshot, below, from Wisdump’s right hand navigation column (depending on your stylesheet settings). You can also modify Thord’s code to add an excerpt, though I’ll cover that later.

Summary

Thord’s code is intended for use in a navigation bar on a WordPress blog. In the next installment of this series, I will discuss presenting a river of news on a separate blog page or on the home page. In a subsequent installment, I might get into a more customized presentation.

WordPress Hacks: Techmeme River of News Clone, Part 2

[Advanced users] To review, a river of news is a mashup of RSS feeds, arranged in (reverse) chronological order and presented on a web page. Normally, an RSS reader might suffice to monitor a blog niche, but my intent is to produce a Techmeme clone. A step in that direction is a Techmeme River clone, which is what this post is for. Either tool can be immensely useful if you want to keep on top of

Please review Part 1 of this mini-series, which goes over the basics of building a clone of Techmeme River. In that article, we produced an HTML badge that shows a block of headlines collated from multiple source feeds. The intent in this article is to present the headlines block in the content area of a blog instead of in the navigation column.

As with the previous article, I am not supplying 100% of the code, just the basics. This article, unlike the last, is intended for advanced WP users as a stepping stone for producing a Techmeme River clone that lives on its home page. If you’re serious about building your own version, I’m assuming you will likely pursue your own development, based on what I discuss here. (If you simply need such a tool, I’m available for consulting.)

I’ve built a tool, RideSpottr, for monitoring automotive niche blogs, and I’ll use it as an example below.

What You’ll Need

Here’s what you’ll need for this WordPress hack:

1. Theme: You can use any WordPress theme you like, but I chose the Popurls clone theme package from Ericulous. It includes a modified version of the Simplr WP theme, as well as instructions for specific WP Plugins.
2. Plugins: I only used the Exec-PHP plugin, which the Popurls clone theme also uses. The other plugins are not necessary. This plugin, when activated, allows your blog to execute WP/PHP code that is contained in a blog post.
3. Feeds: Mashup your selection of feeds to create a superfeed. As previously mentioned, I prefer using Yahoo Pipes because of the ease with which I can manipulate RSS feeds. You can use whatever web service you prefer. Notes:
   • Be sure that the superfeed you use for monitoring a blog niche is
     actually in the RSS format and not the Atom or RDF feed formats.
   • Make sure that you sort the superfeed’s items reverse chronologically.
4. Code block: The engine for your river of news is a block of PHP code that will only execute properly on a WordPress blog. The code block starts off identical to the code show in Thord Hendgren’s article Mashing Up Feeds Using Yahoo Pipes, which I referred to in the previous article. After that, I apply a serious of tweaks, which are only partially discussed below.
5. WordPress: Of course, you’ll need an installation of WordPress to test this. You might be eager to use the brand spanking new WP 2.5, but I highly recommend that you DO NOT use anything in the WP 2.3.x or higher series, else you might run into technical difficulties. WP 2.3.x (or even slightly earlier) have significant database changes that normally wouldn’t introduced into an intermediate version. (That is, such changes should have been reserved for, say, 3.0.) So you could run into problems like I did.
6. Blueprint CSS Grid Framework code: This is only necessary if you want to pretty up the river of news with some structured layout framework. It is not a Google product but can be downloaded from the Blueprint CSS pages at Google Code. Follow the install instructions discussed there. Do not use the “compressed” version, which typically gets placed in a subdirectory of the WP theme you’re using. I had trouble getting this to work. The default approach allows you to change themes if you like. (The default of Blueprint is 950 px wide pages. So your theme should support this, unless you feel like doing a lot of tweaking. That’s why I used Ericulous’ modified Simplr theme, as mentioned above.)

A Few Cautions

There are a couple of factors that you should be aware of before starting.

1. The WP/PHP code block uses a WP function, fetch_rss(). This function is very sensitive, and if there are any problems with the input superfeed, nothing will show up. I was constantly in a hair-tearing frame of mind because some of the source feeds had a different format for the “pubDate” field (publishing date/ time stamp). Yahoo Pipes would sometimes work and then immediately after would not. There’s absolutely no way a production web service should rely on Yahoo Pipes. Use it as a prototyper only. If you use Pipes in this hack, like I have, expect that your test site’s home page will occasionally show no headline items.
2. More Pipes issues: use only RSS formats, not RDF or Atom. Also make sure that if you plan to display the date/ time stamp in your river of news, that the source feeds use the same format. Else Pipes may not sort properly.
3. The WP/PHP code block I use (presented in full somewhere below) is not robust. It does not have full error handling and is simply meant as a starting point for you to work with.
4. I did manage to get my test sites working on WP 2.3.3, but not without problems. If you apply this approach, you’d better have patience and enjoy a challenge. I have a long way to go before I have robust web service, despite the hours I’ve already poured in.

Just don’t give up on this hack – it’s very useful as a niche monitor. If you have a more reliable way than Yahoo Pipes to “normalize” all the input feeds for the superfeed, then try that. If you have any questions about this WordPress hack, drop a comment and I’ll do my best to answer.

Example: Automotive Blog Niche

I’ve built two test sites in a slightly different manner, to test different theories. The one mentioned below is RideSpottr, which depending on what I’m trying in the code, may show headline items or might not (because of the problems in Yahoo Pipes). RideSpottr’s layout, at the time of this writing, is no work of beauty and is by no means robust. Though I intend to apply the principle of kaizen and improve it by slow degrees over time – in hopes that it might actually be something other people will use.

Stage 1: Raw List

The instructions below assume that you have already installed WordPress, Ericulous’ modified Simplr theme (for his Popurls clone), and the Exec-PHP plugin. (See above for links.)

1. In your WP admin panel, change your “Reading” options to allow only one blog post to display on the home page.
2. Follow Thord’s instructions (linked above) for building a “network feed”. He offers the necessary HTML/ WP/ PHP code necessary to produce an HTML badge.
3. Take the exact code in Thord’s article and paste it into a new blog post in WP. Make sure you have turned off “WYSIWYG” mode in the WP editor.
4. “Publish” the blog post, then view your home page.
5. If you can see headline items, then you can now use your own feed.

Suggestions: Don’t monkey around with Yahoo Pipes to start with. I suggest that you use a single source feed (not a superfeed) while you’re testing, and when you have headline items displaying the way you want, you can use a superfeed.

The result of using Thord’s code will look something like the snapshot below.

Stage 2: Prettying Things Up

From here, you can apply a series of improvements using WP/PHP code tweaks. (My experience over two years is that most performancing members don’t care to see the code step by step. What I’ll do here instead is, as with the last article, describe the steps. There’s also a section somewhere below where you can obtain the final code block and use it for your river of news.)

1. Add a timestamp.
2. Change Feedburner URLs to native URLs. Many sites use Feedburner to “burn” their news feeds. But Feedburner feeds retain the original source URLs, so you can publish these in your river, if you prefer. I did this in Yahoo Pipes.
3. Add floating item excerpt. In an earlier version of my river tool, I did not display item excerpts. Instead, I set up the river so that if a visitor moused over a headline, an item excerpt would appear in a floating box. In later versions, I dropped this. If you want to do this, it is already set up in Ericulous’ modified Simplr theme. You’ll need to study his sample code to understand how this works, as I’m not discussing it here.
4. Insert author name of news item. Some RSS feeds publish this as an “author” field, others as “dc:creator”. Since I’ve used Yahoo Pipes for building the superfeed, I’ve converted all dc:creator values to “author”. But some feeds do not contain any author info, so be warned of this. This does not cause an error in the river of news, though. The author will just show blank.
5. Apply a grid layout. After I got the headlines and related info displaying in my river of news, I applied the Blueprint CSS grid framework to control overall presentation.
6. Add feed sources column. To spiffy things up, an earlier version of my river had a column showing the URLs of blogs/sites used in the superfeed. I later changed the text links to 240×90 banners, though I could also have used screen snapshots of home pages. (If you build a serious, robust tool, you might be able to sell that banner space as advertising.)

Additional Improvements to Consider

Before I get into the actual code used, here are some additional improvements that you might consider trying.

1. Normalize all the date formats. I found that many of the feeds that I wanted to include in the superfeed had different pubDate formats. Some didn’t even use “pubDate”. Without having to do a great deal of hacking in Yahoo Pipes, I simply could not include many feeds. It would be nice to add date format handling to “normalize” item publishing date for any RSS feed.
2. Format the date. The current date/time stamp format isn’t pretty. A nicer format might be “Sun Mar 30, 2008; 10:05:00 am,” or some such.
3. Limit the number of items per source feed. Currently, if one blog has lots of recent items and others have few, the former will dominate in the river of news. Limiting the number of headline items per source feed is one way to resolve this. If you use 50 display slots like I have, thenyou’ll want to trim each input feed to a maximum of X items each. X will decrease as the number of input feeds, N, increases (Xv,N^).
4. Filter for authority sites. Don’t randomly add blogs from a given niche. Pick those that are authority sites.

Just the Code, Please

Okay, if you just want the short summary and code, here it is:

1. Pick an unused domain or subdomain.
2. Install WP. I recommend something before 2.3.
3. Install and activate Ericulous’ modified Simplr theme.
4. Install and activate the Exec-PHP plugin.
5. Install the Blueprint grid framework code. Follow their installation instructions, as there are a couple of lines to add to your header.php file.
6. Set WP to only display one post maximum on the home page.
7. Take the code shown below and paste into a new blog post. Publish the post and refresh your home page.

The HTML/ WP/ PHP Code Block

The code shown below gets pasted into a blog post. You could try pasting it into your index.php file, but I haven’t gone there yet. You’re on your own.

RideSpottr - automotive news

    

    items) && 0 != count($rss->items) ) {
          ?>


              items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, 50);
              foreach ($rss->items as $item ) {
                  $pubdate = wp_specialchars($item['pubdate']);
                  $desc = wp_specialchars(substr(strip_tags($item['description']), 0,200) );
                  $auth = wp_specialchars($item['author']);
              ?>



        
by 
      

        ' . $item['title'] ?>
        
      




              



           no rss items to display
\n";
          } ?>





RideSpottr Sources





































    

Now you’ll need to change the code as follows:

1. Replace the heading text in a way relevant to the niche you want to monitor.
2. Replace the feed URL used in fetch_rss();
3. Change the HTML code where the site banners are displayed.
4. Spiffy up the CSS to make the river of news more attractive than I’ve got it.

Summary

To keep this article relatively readable, I’ve not gone into great detail about the coding. Experiment on your own, and ask questions in the comments, if you like. Good luck.

What’s your dream blogging career niche (that is, to make a living with)?

WordPress 2.5 Just Released – Feature Highlights

WordPress 2.5 was just released, and if you read Matt Mullenweg’s post, you’ll see that it has lots of great new features. I’m simply summarizing here.

User Features

Here are features that a user with access to the admin panel will see:

1. Cleaner dashboard.
2. Dashboard widgets, including statistics.
3. Multiple simultaneous file uploading, with progress bars.
4. EXIF extraction for camera metadata.
5. Search that includes both posts and pages. (Previously, search was post-only.)
6. Tag management without plugins.
7. Password strength meter.
8. Edit protection, so that two or more authors cannot simultaneously edit a post or page.
9. Minimized plugin upgrading. This is host-dependent, but WP 2.5 can download and install plugin upgrades for you.
10. Non-desctructive WYSIWYG (visual) editor. The old visual editor mangles your HTML code after saving. The new one uses TinyMCE v3.0 to avoid this issue.
11. Built-in photo galleries.

Developer Features

Developers of WordPress plugins and themes, or those who customize WP installations have these new features to look forwards to:

1. Salted passwords. (If you don’t know, don’t worry.)
2. Secure cookies.
3. Easier URL creation from page taxonomies.
4. Inline documentation.
5. Database optimization. (Matt’s post says they haven’t changed the database table structure with this release, but I’m not clear on this. My experience shows they changed the database schema back around 2.2x. (I don’t remember what X was.). I feel this was a big mistake for a non-major release version. However, it’s possible they changed back in a subsequent release.)
6. Optimized database queries.
7. Media buttons.
8. Shortcode API, for applying custom short notations in posts that expand into content during page render. This is accomplished through custom WP PHP functions you can develop for each shortcode. So you might have a “gallery” shortcode with parameters, “, and then write a PHP function called “gallery_func” to define the shortcode behavior during page render. [Note: this alone will make WP an even more powerful all-purpose CMS for both blogs and websites.]

As you can see, there are a great deal of new features for everyone. I’m going to be working with a WP 2.5 installation, and I’ll blog about positive and negative aspects on an ongoing basis.

Should You Upgrade to WP 2.5?

No one can argue that there are not lots of incredible new features in WP 2.5. Just watch the 4-minute video screencast of the new interface for starters. Just be sure that you’re prepared to upgrade. Here’s a very generic upgrade process:

1. Backup themes, plugins, and uploaded files (e.g., images), in the same directory structure. Use your favorite FTP software.
2. Depending on the version of WP you currently have, backup the blog content or export it. If your WP is very old, you may have some hair-pulling time ahead of you, thanks to database changes since around version 2.2x.
3. Remove your current WP installation and reinstall a new version. Depending on how long you think it’ll take you to re-install, you might publish a temporary index.html that says “Back shortly” or some such message.
4. Reactivate your theme and plugins, and make sure you’re using the same Permalinks options. (There’s a community-built list of plugins that work and don’t work with WP 2.5.)
5. Test everything.
6. Rejoice.

I also wrote a quick and safe WP upgrade approach earlier. I recommend this for those of you that are concerned with messing with your live blog. I’ve been reading since before WP 2.3 of how annoyed some WordPress bloggers have been that older themes and plugins no longer work properly. I’ve experienced this as well and for that reason, I’ve only installed WP 2.3x and up on brand new blogs. (I.e., no time to monkey with upgrading.)

Performancing Link Roundup – Sun Mar 30, 2008

A lot of the links in this roundup are aimed at freelancers, bloggers for hire, network bloggers.

1. Deb Ng and Jennifer Chait have recently launched a great resource, Network Blogging Tips. The focus here is on blogging for networks, and there’s some juicy advice there. They also define what a blogger for hire is, and what “network blogging” is all about. Recommended reading for aspiring freelancers.
2. Over at FreelanceSwitch, Muhammad Saleem offers part 1 and part 2 of his Social Media and Simplicity series. These articles are his advice on how to effectively use social media sites to build your business. (In case you didn’t know, Muhammad is the #2 Digg user.)
3. Warren Greeley has a guest post at Anywired on getting local clients while working pretty much anywhere.
4. Darren Rowse has an interview with Victor Agreda Jr., who is a blog producer. Victor “produces” blogs for Weblogs Inc. While you’re there, also visit Should I Change My Website into a Blog. (This might be good advice for you freelance writers that I know who are not sure whether you should create your blog or not.)
5. Steven Snell asks, Is There a Career in Blogging, and offers some sage advice on becoming a pro blogger or alternately a freelance blogger. Personally, I think that once online publishing revenues stabilize and publishers offer livable rates, there is a career in this, just as with any writing career.
6. David Peralty at Xfep is looking for weekly columnists. Please read his description carefully, as he needs specific qualifications.
7. WordPress 2.5 has been released, and Matt Mullenweg writes about all the incredible new features it has at the WordPress blog. There’s also a 4-minute screencast of the new interface.

Practical Problogging Tips: Structure Your Writing Time

Do you ever get into a frame of mind where you have too many ideas to write about and end up “spinning your wheels” a bit? Very recently, I had a bit of difficulty getting posts out on Performancing. I have about a dozen partially written posts and ideas for literally dozens more, though I found I couldn’t complete any and get them posted. Part of the problem comes from overloading myself, the other part from being caught up in “research mode”. The solution: self-imposing deadlines and structuring writing time.

My unfinished writing is unfinished because it’s lackluster, which is giving me the boring content blues. I have been working on some very large projects of late, each of which might take 40-80 hours of work but pay off well. It’s what I’d call working in my dream market, though it’s easy to get caught up in those projects and neglect my bread and butter daily freelancing work. The other problem is that I like to spend time thinking about my posts, and if I’m spending 40-80 hours over 1-3 calendar weeks (on top of regular work), there isn’t a lot of time for that. Unless I enforce a timetable.

Organization is key for success as a freelancer (or even just problogging), though the laid back environment of working at home isn’t always conducive to having a structured work day. I have to find my own discipline. While I don’t like to apply too much scheduling to blogging, I do block off parts of the day for clusters of activity. I still have some freedom of task choice within a specific block.

1. Early morning to 12:00 noon – browse and answer email, browse sites in my “daily sites” folder, plan posts, run custom searches and bookmark results, do some initial writing. (I have found, since 2002, that if I write at least 1000 words by 11:30 am each day, I always have a very productive day. Though I was more successful at this with short fiction than I have been with blogging.)
2. 12:30 pm to mid afternoon – focus on writing a single article/ project (or two). That is, apply very dedicated time.
3. Mid afternoon to 5 pm – edit recent writing, post some completed work, answer email, review tasks, or sometimes complete personal tasks (e.g., grocery shopping).
4. 6 pm – 8 pm – focus on big projects, personal projects, personal tasks, as necessary.
5. 8 pm – 11 pm – watch TV, research online, watch a DVD, or go to the theater.
6. 11 pm – 3 am – pretend I’m relaxing but I’m actually catching up reading the million blogs I follow.

However, if I find I’m falling behind on something, I’ll use Google Calendar to block out a specific time for a must-do task. Google Calendar has an immensely annoying but very practical feature: a reminder option. You can specify the time frame for a reminder, and how you receive it. My calendar reminds me of a pending task by displaying a browser popup 10 minutes before start time. (You could choose the email reminder option, but that’s not really annoying enough.)

Now from the above schedule, you might assume I’m obsessive. That’s probably true, though in the last 3 months or so, I’ve blocked off a lot of “play” time on Friday night through Sun evening, sometimes even through Tues evening. (My fave TV shows are on Mon nights.) I still work over the weekend, but the emphasis is on relaxing.

What about you? What do you do to meet deadlines, and to ensure that you’re balancing your life with some play time?

Performancing’s Friday Blog Link Roundup

This is a quick rundown of blog posts published in the past week that caught my attention and might be of interest to Performancing readers (in case you’ve got nothing to do this weekend

1. Need to move large files around online? Charlene at Essential Keystrokes has a summary of thirteen file sharing/transfer services that might interest you.
2. If you’re putting together a professional blog that promotes your own personal brand, you should consider Darren at Problogger’s advice andadd some or all of the 20 types of pages that every blogger should consider.
3. Darren also wrote about how he uses Twitter to promote his blog – an activity that seems to be becoming more common. Also check out Nathania’s post at Copyblogger on using Twitter for networking, marketing and fun.
4. Smashing Magazine presented summaries and snapshots of 20 free first-class WordPress themes, with bonus info about a couple of WP admin themes.
5. Skellie at Skelliewag.org offered 25 paths to an insanely popular blog and why you’ve got to dig digg to get dugg.
6. David at Xfep compares the top 50 make money online blogs, showing the ranking change over five months. He also lists nine blogs that should be in his list but aren’t.
7. If you’re having trouble focusing on your writing, check out the text editor Dark Room, which Maki at DoshDosh discusses. It’s a full-screen editor that obscures all your other windows, thus reducing distractions.
8. Kris at Blogging Tips discusses revisionist blogging. We’ve had this discussion at Performancing before: whether or not to revise your archived posts. I operate on the “relevancy” principle, so I believe it’s okay, though some SEOs say Google penalizes you. (If that’s really true, I’m hoping it’s temporary, because relevant editing should not be penalized.)
9. Yuwanda at Blogging Tips offers advice on building freelance writing credentials.
10. This is from last Friday, but in case you missed it, Chris announced an Authority Blogger contest that includes $2,000 in SOBCon and ChrisG consulting prizes. Check it out, and if you’re near Chicago, considered going to SOBCon.

What’s In Your Blogging Toolbox: Blog Editors?

4 Simple Time Management Tips For Bloggers

Time is valuable to all of us, and for a part-time or full-time blogger, it might seem there are just not enough hours in the day. While none of us (as far as I know) have the ability to manipulate time, there are things we all can do to keep on top of things. Time management is a skill that anyone can take advantage of, and here are some tips to make the best use of the little time we are given.

Plan Ahead

A calendar is a blogger’s best friend. I use it to plan out all my upcoming articles. It can also be used to create reminders or other important events for your blogging schedule. Regardless of whether you use your calendar for planning out articles or keeping track of what you have going on in life, it is important to stay ahead of the game. Also, it is better to be able to jump right into the creative process instead of spending time thinking of what to write about. Google Calendar is something I urge all of you to get familiar with.

Create Goals & Challenges

It is motivation and rising to the challenge that gets things done. A goal is a source of motivation — it is something to aim for. It is probably the best sources of motivation for a freelancer. For example: create a goal to reach a certain number of subscribers or daily visitors. Challenge yourself — getting things done lead to better time management. Some of you might not need to create motivation for yourself, but many of you probably do, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Use Reminders & Deadlines

On the line of goals, there is something similar, but much more serious — a deadline. Get into the habit of creating and completing deadlines. It is something that will help you in life. This is even more true when you are left to work for yourself, as the temptation to become lazy constantly lingers. You might not make every deadline, but at least you have a point to measure progress, and that is a very good thing for proper time management (and possibly clients as well).

Take it to the Max

There are certain days where I just feel unstoppable while I am writing. The words just seem to flow perfectly, and it is a great feeling to have. Unfortunately, those days don’t happen every day, but when they do happen, I know to take advantage of them. Get stuff done! I also use this time to write backup articles incase it just happens to be one of those days where I need some downtime. I also use these times to come up with new article ideas for the future. It would be almost insane to not take advantage of golden opportunities, and if you are in the zone, it is time to step up to the plate and swing for the home run.

These tips will serve as a starting point, but there comes a time when you simply need to shift into high gear and get things done. Remember, knowing where you are is pretty useless if you don’t know where you need to be. Think about it.