WordPress Plugin to remove date from Google Search Results

This is one useful plugin for WordPress Blogs that have been around for sometime. Bloggers have something called evergreen content - so content and pages that appears on Google Search results even after a few years of being published. Might still be relevant and useful. There seems to be one small problem however - users might feel the need to click on something more recent however. So how do Google Search users know what is most relevant?. The answer is very simply below each search result Google shows the date of publication.

So content that might show up even after two or three years, although still useful and relevant might get ignored by users. This seems to be one of the problems for large blogs that might have suffered from Panda and Penguin updates. Panda and Penguin are Google programs that either push a blog or website further up search results and also does the opposite. Penalizes blogs and websites bringing down their traffic by about 40%. There are a lot of blogs and websites out there that have been penalized and have suffered.

If you see the usefulness of now wanting a time stamp to appear with your page showing up on Google. There is a quick WordPress plugin to help you do just that. Once installed it will remove the date that appears alongside your indexed pages on Google search results.

How to Install the Date Exclusion SEO Plugin
1. Please follow this link to install and plugin
2. These are the settings we choose for the plugin

You can also set the number of days before the date inclusion expires. We choose 60 and once 60 days are over the results will not show-up with the date. So there you have it - a plugin to help your WordPress blog SEO and help you recover from Google's Panda and Penguin.

Try the Date Exclusion Plugin for WordPress here. 

How to know how many pages are indexed by Google

Good news for all webmasters and people who run their own blogs and websites. Behold Behold Google index secrets, revealed! - a feature available in Google Webmaster Tools know as Index Status will help you learn more about your site and pages indexed by Google. The constant question on webmasters minds is always 'Did Google Index my site', 'Google Index Search' and 'How many pages did Google Index'. If you're new to this and want a little more info. When Google sends their Bots to crawl a site, they will try to crawl all pages from a site or blog. Each of these pages are then Indexed by Google and this Index Google will use to send visitors to a site or blog. It is therefore so important to people who run blogs or websites to know how many pages are indexed by Google and out of those pages how many are showing up on Google searches. Google remains the most important place on the internet to send traffic to your blog or site.


So if you are a seasoned veteran or a newbie to the world of being a webmaster fear not, Google has an excellent tool as part of their Webmaster tools to help you figure this whole thing out. Google's Webmaster Tools are an important destination if you own a blog or a website. You need to go there and create an account and place a little bit of code on your site or blog -verify you're the owner and you're good to go after that. So once you have a Google Webmaster Account this is what you need to do to check the Index Status of your Website or Blog.


How to check the Index Status in Google's Webmaster Tools

1. Login to Google Webmaster Tools
2. Click on the site you want to check the index status for
3. Click on 'Health' found on the right-hand column
4. Now click on 'Index Status'


Under Index Status there are two Grey buttons - Basic and Advanced
Basic: By default you see the basic view, as seen above there is a graph and this graph gives you your total index count. If you blog or site has been around for sometime it needs to be pointing upwards. This means your index status is healthy. You can also see the number of pages that have indexed by Google
Advanced: When you click on the advanced tag you get 4 tabs 

1. The blue tabs (Total Indexed) shows the total number of webpages indexed by Google 
2. The red tab (Ever Crawled) the cumulative total number of URLs from your site that Google has ever crawled
3. The green tab ( Not Selected) URls that were not selected because they redirected to other pages or URLs which content very similar to other pages on your site. Good idea not to keep repeating content.
4. The gold tab (Blocked by robots) the number of pages Google could not crawl because they have been blocked in your Robots.txt file. 


This feature is available and ready for use, check it now to monitor the health of your site and see if Google is able to access all of your pages or are there some errors showing up. Please leave a comment below to continue this discussion. 
Source: Google Webmaster Blog - Behold Google's Index secrets revealed. 

An original post by

Sociolatte

Facebook for WordPress plugin now available

Facebook has a new plugin for WordPress. It seems Facebook engineers are not leaving any stone unturned and since WordPress powers 16.6 percent of the web it makes sense that Facebook has just made it a lot easier, for WordPress bloggers to integrate a complete solution plugin for WordPress. This new social integration feature available for WordPress have already made Blogger's blogspot users to ask why something like this has not been released for Blogger. The new social plugin allows for easy integration of social publishing and mentions. There is no coding required and works on mobile and also supports internationalization.available


Facebook for WordPress plugin: How it works for Social Publishing
Once you install the plugin you can then cross-post content published to your WordPress blog to your Facebook Timeline and all the Facebook pages that you manage. In addition you can also mention all the pages as friends on Facebook, which allows for further and deeper distribution of your content.


WordPress Widgets that are available:
1. Activity Feed - Shows readers their friends' activity on your site or blog
2. Recommendations Bar - suggest content to users and allow them to post it to their Timeline as they read.
3. Customizable buttons for like subscribe and send
4. Comments Box - let users use this Facebook comments box to add comments on your site or blog. it also comes with automatic support for SEO


Starting today WordPress users get easy integration with the Facebook for WordPress plugin. So if you are  a users with a full-time WordPress blog or site or a newbie starting of, this will be easy to install and run. 
Source: Facebook Blog - you can also download the plugin here or learn how to install it here. 

An original post by

Sociolatte

Google Correlate: Helps in better SEO and keyword research data

Now this is another good product from Google and will be especially helpful for people who are into SEO, research or marketing. With Google Correlate you can find out information on products, seasons, trends and a host of other correlated subjects. So once you enter a search term you can find keyword data and search patters that you might not have though existed before. This really helps SEO experts find new keywords that they can use to optimize their content. So if you are a website owner or a blog owner this is one tool you might want to look into regularly. It will show you how search terms that are important to you are related to other terms and how these patters might emerge and do the same patters change with seasons. 


Google Correlate is a part of Google Trends and helps in analyzing data chronologically. It is different from Google Trends and insights for search in that it gives you a historical picture of the data that you want to analyze.All the web search data that is being used by Google Correlate is Google date starting from January 2003 to present. One fine feature of the product is it's ability to show best matching keywords based on search volume and how related keywords might have changed over time. So if you are a student and need help with products or searches that might relate to your topic, correlate can help you. If you are a blogger or website owner use this product to help you come up with better website and keyword optimization. Give you content a broader perspective and gain a newer audience.
Google Correlate

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Sociolatte

How to add Search Description and Meta Tags to your Blogger blog and posts for better SEO

Now this is something that every person using Blogger would need to do. A little bit about the history and use of description for posts. This is something that was not available to people using Blogger or blogspot blogs as some people like to call them. This is one of the main reasons why WordPress was a preferred blogging platform. Many an online blogger would tell you that a description for your posts does wonders. One would also wonder why it took Google so long to implement it. 

What is Search Description

If you are a blogger and you know a little bit about SEO you would know then when someone searches for a search term on search engines like Google. The title of your post shows up and below that is the search description. You can from the image below of Google's description see how it is laid out in results. The site title appears and below that is the search description. 

Google's Search Description

Do users see the search description when they land on the page or blog

Uses and visitors to your site do not see the search description on the actual page. This description is only for search engines to find and understand the content of your page. It users the information found in the description to show visitors what the page is all about. So once your page or post is found on a search engine, visitors see the description and decide whether to click and visit the page. Same things holds true for your Blog description. If you blog's index page or main page shows up on Google. Visitors get to see in a short snippet what the entire blog is about. So if your Blog is about Social Media then without a description containing the words Social Media, your website or blog will not show up on the search engines. 

Is search description good for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Every person who uses WordPress would say yes. This is one feature that they claim ensures their blogs rank better that Blob hosted on Blogger. Since search engines use the page description as a window to the post and blog and are very SEO friendly. Ensures according to many bloggers online better rankings with Google, Yahoo and Bing.

How to add a Search Description to your blog posts on Blogger

1. Login to Blogger

2. Use the New Interface if you are not already using it

3. Click on the pencil icon to create a new post

4. Click on Search Description found on the right hand side

5. Enter a sentence that best describes your post 

6. Click done to finish

How to add a Meta tags search description to your blog

1. Login to blogger

2. use the new blogger interface

3. Click on more options

4. Click on settings

5. Click on search preferences

6. Beside Meta Tags description click on edit

7. You have 150 characters to use and create a short description

8. Click on Save Changes

9. You're done

You blog will now appear with a Search Description on search engines along with Meta Tags. Meta Tags are a good way for website and blog owners to provide information to Google on what their websites or blogs are all about. You can check out the Google webmaster help section to learn more about Meta Tags. While all of this might be important it is equally important to remember that all of this is no substitute for good quality content. No matter what SEO practices you follow if content is not good and does not enhance visitor experience then all else will fail. 

  

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Sociolatte

SEO Vs Good Content: Who Wins?

This comes as good news for people who have just started their blogs or websites. Matt Curtis who heads the WebSpam team at Google has this to say. Just because a site has poor SEO and maybe not well done code does not mean that the site will get penalized by Google. On the other hand Google looks for good content and will try everything possible to find your content and display it to users. So don't worry about making coding mistakes and all. Just keep your content good and Google will do it's best to find it and return it to users. 


On the other hand if your site or blog is well coded with the latest web-scripting language but ahs poor content, that is a minus point. People on the web are searching for information and not well made websites and blogs. Content is king and this is now being stressed more and more by Google. 


Cutts also says even if you do brain-dead stupid things and shoot yourself in the foot it still does not matter as Google will work around it and bring your content to the forefront. This is good news especially if you are just starting out and are really worried about all these things SEO (Search Engine Optimization) guys often tell you. You might have a lot of people telling you to work out various SEO strategies and a whole lot of other stuff that is going to cost you money. Google hints at something else - concentrate on what you doing best, producing content and the search engine will find it and ensure users searching for relevant content are able to find your site or blog.
Check Matts' video out below to know more. Also please leave a comment with what you think about this whole SEO thing.

An original post by

Sociolatte