By SY (aka Hospitalera), on April 30th, 2012 Everybody knows that having a good internal linking structure is an important part of both, reader experience (they find other content by you they might be interested in) and on page SEO (the search engines find your older content and know which part of your site is the most relevant for which keyword). Plus it lowers your bounce rate if people visit more then one page on your site
But part of the latest Google update seems to have been also an ‘over-optimization’ penalty. Officially, according to Matt Cutts in the video below, this refers more to keyword stuffing (especially meta data like image tags etc), but it can also refer to excessive, automatic, internal linking.
I want, for the moment concentrate on the internal linking aspect of on page SEO. Many moons ago I had a discussion going forward and backward with Allyn H. from ‘BloggerIllustrated’, . . . → Read More: Internal Linking – The Do’ and Don’ts (IMHO)
By SY (aka Hospitalera), on December 14th, 2011 
Click here to see the latest Woothemes Coupon Codes!
Yup, it is the season for a lot of special offers coming in, some of them are crap, but others are worth sharing Woothemes offers until Christmas a daily coupon to get massive reduction on some of their themes and that is an offer I am happy to share with my readers, and yes, the links are affi links a woman has to live. But seriously, here is
Why I like WooThemes?! I am obviously not using it here on this blog, but I have worked with it on client sites (see >Custom Design by SY<) and I am really impressed with them. They are a close to ideal mix of editable WordPress Themes and ease of use. If you want to avoid to meddle with code and still be able to customize your site so . . . → Read More: Woothemes Coupon – 12 Days of Christmas
By SY (aka Hospitalera), on December 11th, 2011 
These are the best WordPress plugins I found and used in 2011. The WordPress logo is no endorsement by WordPress itself, it only serves as decoration
Ok, since it is already December 2011 (Tempus Fugit!) I think it is safe to write up a post about the best WordPress plugins I used in 2011 and will, most likely, also use in 2012! Here a list of those that I use on some or all of my sites, just bear in mind that the less plugins you have the better as your site will load faster and less plugin conflicts might occur. So choose wisely BTW the titles of each description will take you to the main page where you can download the plugin – and yes, all of them are free A bit of a pre-Christmas gift for my readers All of them in order of importance (at . . . → Read More: Best WordPress Plugins 2011
By SY (aka Hospitalera), on December 7th, 2011 
I thought it might be helpful and funny for others if I put together a mini series of SEO mistakes I made. Here the first post of my new SEO mistakes series: Image Links. If you use images in your blog posts and pages, chances are that you just upload them via the WordPress interface, perhaps give them a good caption and that’s it. If you are interested in improving your on page SEO when it comes to images, here some Do’s and Don’ts for you. If you are short in time, read at least the first paragraph, it really might lighten a light bulb, at least it did it for me as I discovered my own stupid mistake!
How not to do it!
Where is your image linking to? Ooops! When you upload an image to use on your blog, the image gets automatically a link . . . → Read More: Silly SEO Mistakes I Made – Images and Links
By SY (aka Hospitalera), on November 28th, 2011 
I was planning to publish this, How to write a blog post with the Keyword Strategy tool, a little bit later in this series, but as Lynn from College Athletic Scholarship asked a related question on my previous blog post ‘Keyword Strategy Tips 1 – How To Clean Up a Messed Up, sorry, an Established Site’ I decided to publish it earlier. The good thing is also that this blog post is even useful when you are not using Keyword Strategy, but it gets easier if you do . Here a link to my ‘Keyword Strategy Review’, in case you haven’t an idea what I am speaking about. Now to Lynn’s question and my usual long-winded answer to it:
“Thanks for a helpful article. I am not clear on a point. If you have several keywords going to the same url. Is this ok?”
. . . → Read More: Keyword Strategy Tips 2 – How to Write a Blog Post
By SY (aka Hospitalera), on November 24th, 2011 
Keyword Strategy Welcome Screen – Click to enter!
Lets face it, we all have them, sites that we love, that are old, at least in the terms of the internet, and that don’t perform as we think they should in the SERPentines. Or you have a site that used to do well, but suffered during the last panda updates. Reason being for both is that these sites come from the times when we haven’t had a clue about how to write reader-focused and keyword-focused content at the same time. If your site targets the same keyword with multiple posts, also called overlapping content, this can give it the look of a ‘content farm’ in Google’s eyes! There are two ways of solving this dilemma, ditch the site and start from scratch or try to save the site taking advantage of the content that is already indexed and ranking. . . . → Read More: Keyword Strategy Tips 1 – How To Clean Up a Messed Up, sorry, an Established Site
By SY (aka Hospitalera), on August 26th, 2011 If you have a travel related site, chances are that you have some sort of currency converter on it to make life for you, and your readers, easier. Who wants to write continuously things like:
The price for a 90min public transport ticket is 32CZK ($1.91/Euro1.32/GBP1.17 as of August 2011)
So much easier to just slap a currency converter into the sidebar or footer and just state the actual prices and let the reader figure out themselves what they equal in their own currency. Plus you don’t have to worry about currency fluctuations etc. That is the theory. Here the problem.
Some time ago I put the camfex currency converter on one of my sites and all worked fine for months. Yesterday I checked something on the site and, lo and behold, the site loaded for a second or two and then re-directed to another domain, full of ads. PANIC! . . . → Read More: Do You Use a Camfex Currency Converter? Your Site Might Be Re-Directed to Cash Parking by Now!
By SY (aka Hospitalera), on June 27th, 2011 27th June 2011
A quick warning to everybody that uses WordPress (which will be most of you ). WordPress.org admitted that three popular plugins in their plugin repository have been, maliciously, replaced by hacked versions in the last 24-48h or so. The affected plugins are:
Add This (social bookmarking) W3 Total Cache (caching) WP Touch (blog to iPhone application)
The full story can be found here at the official WordPress blog (link to story), here the summary for the impatient reader
It seems that only the three plugins mentioned above are affected.
You are only at risk if you have updated the plugins in the last days or so, when the hack happened and you downloaded an infected / hacked plugin.
If that is the case, simply download / update NOW your plugins as the WordPress repository has been . . . → Read More: WordPress Plugins Hacked
By SY (aka Hospitalera), on August 19th, 2009 I thought I post today about three books that helped me as I started out blogging If you are an experienced blogger or internet markete,r the first blogging book might be a bit basic for you. If you are just starting out, it gives you a good introduction into the world of blogging. The last two books I use more as a reference or tech guide for bloggers. They are great to have around whilst working on your blog or web site.
Blogging with Moxie
Blogging with Moxie was the first “blogging book” I got myself as I decided to start blogging seriously. It walks you through the basics of choosing a blog platform, setting up your first blog, how to interact with others in the blogosphere etc etc etc. It is a great book for somebody just starting out with blogging, but might be not what an advanced blogger . . . → Read More: Books that help blogging
By SY (aka Hospitalera), on August 15th, 2009 What is a 404 error page
A 404 page is what shows up if you click on a link that doesn’t work (anymore) or make a mistake by typing in an Url. WordPress displays this page automatically to each visitor that tries to access a Url that doesn’t exist.
How to make a custom 404 page for your WordPress blog
This will only work for self-hosted blogs, not for free ones on WordPress.com!
First of all I want to thank BinaryMoon for his very helpful post that finally pointed me in the right direction!
I promise, I will not bore you with my long journey full of failures, instead I will show you an easy way to add a custom error page to your WordPress blog. You can follow the instructions to create whatever error page you want. I just needed one for my 404 error page, because . . . → Read More: 404 custom error page for WordPress
By SY (aka Hospitalera), on August 9th, 2009 Writing catchy headlines for Google and SEO
Remember those old days when newspaper vendors would actually scream the newest headlines loud out? That was the time when a head line was a “catcher” of attention and a photo just a nice add on! The head line was, and still is, what catches the attention of the reader, and of Google. I want to show you a nice and neat and legal WordPress trick to have a catchy and SEO optimized headline at the same time! First of all you will need to download Market Samurai, as of time of writing, you can get a longer, free trial by signing up, for free, at the same to the 30 Day Challenge.
You can achieve a similar result also by using the Google Keyword Tool External, but it will take longer and be more complicated, so go, sign . . . → Read More: Using Market Samurai to write SEO optimized head lines
By SY (aka Hospitalera), on August 7th, 2009 Blog Setup – Blog Tools
I thought I would share today a bit which blogging tools I use here on hospitalera.com. in the hope that you find one or more of them useful for your own blog. If you know of something recommendable that is not included in this list, please feel free to add it with a comment.
Blog Setup
Domain names bought from Godaddy and hosted by Hostgator. I use Godaddy only to purchase and to manage my domains, that they do with excellence. Hostgator is my preferred host because they allow me to host an unlimited amount of web sites on one account, they have live support via chat 24/7 and their uptime is great. They also offer free one-click installations via Fantastico of WordPress and the like. I use WordPress with the free Atahualpa theme. I chose this . . . → Read More: Blogging Tools
By SY (aka Hospitalera), on July 25th, 2009 Setting up a new web site from scratch is easier then you think. Just follow this easy checklist from “idea” to “Finished Sites” and your new web site is up and running in no time. . . . → Read More: Checklist for new web sites
By SY (aka Hospitalera), on June 17th, 2009 I wrote previously about How to add google analytics to your wordpress blog and How to add google analytics to your blogger/ blogspot blog, describing how to add the analytics code to your templates directly. There are actually easier ways to achieve this, sorry, for coming up with this so late. This post describes only how to insert the google analytics code, for the rest, how to get it, etc, please refer to the two posts mentioned above. So here you go, some other, easier ways to insert the google urchin code into your blogs.
For Google Blogger / Blogspot Blogs This refers only to the ‘new’ blogger templates, not to the classic ones. Are there still some of those around?
OK, go to your Blogger Dashboard, click Layout > Page elements and add a new html / javascript gadget to your footer area. Copy and . . . → Read More: Google Analytics Help 1
By SY (aka Hospitalera), on April 12th, 2009 Some time ago I got this question on another blog of mine: ‘How do I actually subscribe to one of your blogs?’ Actually there is more than one method to do this, depends what you prefer. So, doesn’t matter if it is a wordpress, blogger or whatever blogging platform blog, if you want to get a basic introduction in how to subscribe to a blog, grab a cool glass of something and enjoy the read
What does ‘blog subscription’ mean? Basically it means that ‘something’ alerts you when one of your favourite blogs (or web sites!) gets updated. If you are like me and spend a lot of time in the internet than you discover a lot of interesting things. In the beginning, you just book mark them and check back on them when ever you remember and/ or have time. This leads to a couple of problems: Your . . . → Read More: How to subscribe to a blog- the basics
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