Problems with bbPress

I have been a big fan or WordPress’s forum software called bbPress. The reason I like it is, it is very light weight and easy to use.  However, a few people have been upset as the project has not taken top priority at Automattic. I take another point of view. I have had a small forum run on it for a while now and it has worked fine. I am grateful towards Matt Mullenweg dedicating his time to great open source software to use.

The main problem has been, it has been very slow to develop. A major release has taken forever, because of the project has been going through some growing pains with the developers and I think the ultimate goals was to wait for WP 3.0 MU to be developed before energy was channeled to this project.

Why get excited about bbPress plugin

I think there is a reason to be excited about bbPress. That is developers are taking it to the next level and integrating it fully as a bbPress plugin for WordPress. This is much like BuddyPress has become a simple plugin for  WordPress.

These means you can run bbPress from your control panel. For free forum software it will be part of the WordPress CMS. Why is this important to you?

If you have a website it is all about content. Content is king and user generated content is the best as you do less of the work. The community will always create more than you ever could. Perhaps you direct the flow of content but if you have a good forum or social community, you are all set.

Your goal should not be hiring an SEO firm or outsourcing company to do all your work for you, your goal should be to develop an active community. I participate on forums and I have no problem leaving comments and making contributions to other people’s websites. If there is something of value, people will do this also.

This is an ancient forum - bbPress plugin will integrate with WordPress so your forum will not fall to ruins

Build it and they will come with bbPress forums

If you think you can build a forum and people will rush to join thing again. However, if you have a website and it has reasonable value people will start to check back and maybe comment. If they like other commentors on your site, they will sign up and register (the big huddle for forum owners) and come back.

Some things I would like to see in the bbPress plugin for WordPress

I am a fan of bbPress and right now its functionality is fine, and there are a few plugins that help it out. I mean it is a forum, you simply have posts and threads and monitor it. However, there are a few things I would love to see as the core part.

• Automatic moderation, including filtering bad words and chat style. I do not like on my blog when people write ‘u’ for ‘you’ and bad words. Personal attracts could be reduced automatically if you can filter certain words. I think the best community is a clean community. Thing about he city you live, if its clean and safe people want to come and visit.
• Right now bbPress closes inactive comments after 2 weeks, I would like this open forever. My oldest treads rank the highest.
• Full integration with your online community including MU. The users on your blog and MU (BuddyPress) seamlessly go between the forum, social network and blog without too many registration hoops.  Maybe this is not important, I am not sure.
• Controlling outbound links on post and threads. Not with no follow but taking the front off so it leaves the text address rather than a link.
• Language usage control integration for the community users something like ‘after the deadline English grammar and spell check appearing when people leave comments as forums tend to get out of control in terms of language structure.
• bbpress plugin ideas to use at your own risk – A commenting ability like WordPress, that is someone could just leave a comment and move on with out a registration process. Deactivate registration option I know this would create pure chaos but to get a forum started I think you need commentors, nobody will comment on an empty forum. Most of my wish list is connected with attracting new users by making it simpler for a user to sign up and start posting, maybe I am very wrong about all this, but for a forum to get going you need to get people commenting without too much effort. Basically ways to promote and encourage people to use your forum. There are many forums out there with great ideas but they are empty as no one is into spending time on forums.

The current state of bbPress plugin

I have heard about September 15th there will be a very early alpha.  I would expect by the end of the fall something more robust will be ready.

The legacy stand alone forum users will be able to export their posts and then import them to the new system. I think if you do not have an active forum today, just wait for the bbPress plugin. I am doing that for one of my sites and advising other people to do the same. So right now my big idea for a forum is on hold. And yes I will use bbPress, rather than some pay for or heavy software for forums. I know there are many good ones out there but WordPress has a great community and I am always looking to the future not just the current state with a what can you do for me now attitude.

However I advise also to start looking at:

• bbPress plugin – great site for just poking around and seeing what it is all about.
• Become an active member or at least a watcher of their bbPress forum – you will be aware of development issues and ideas so when the bbPress plugin for WordPress does come out, it will be an easy integration.

If you have any questions as to forums, how to get a forum going or any user generated content questions just ask. I mostly have this website as a hobby site.

Search engine optimization emergency service

To build a trusted site on the web takes at least a year maybe five. If you find yourself in a position that you need to make your website traffic grow fast these are my recommendations:

• Get a WordPress blog - WordPress and SEO go hand in hand if you set it up right. Like with any CMS system WordPress gives you a lot of options to be creative or create a user community site with BuddyPress and BBpress etc. There are a number of plugins to help promote your site in a social media and search engine optimization way. This is your first set when you feel you have a marketing SOS.
• Do keyword research – Do you want to attract visits? Think about what people will type into the search box. Do not go for one or two-word keywords. Think about natural langauge questions and ideas that you could be typed in. Do you feel all the best keywords are taken? Think again. Everyday 25% of the keywords typed into google are new. Further languages evolve and change. Use your imagination and create a list of phrases connected to your website theme. Most of my traffic on most of my websites come from a small percentage of highly targeted keywords rather than just lots of verbage.
• Get links from trusted sites - In my mind the most ethical and only way to get links is be a resource. Some people like guest blogging, but I prefer being a resource. This means do not write posts like poetry, a haiku or what is on your mind today. Rather, construct something that is organized planned and well thought out. Make this many pages and layers. It might be something like the ultimate guide for your topic. Make it rich in useful outbound links to quality site and internal links to deeper areas of your site. If you create lets say a 50 page guide on your website theme, that is useful and different from others that exist (I create interactive tutorials for example), then links will come in. You might even want to write a personal e-mails to a website owner pointing to the educational area on your website and beg them to link to you. This is the safest form of link bait there is. In my opinion, despite your distress you should be a long run planner rather than trying to achieve quick search engine rankings.

Channel all your anxiety and stress about your website and search engine marketing into writing large amounts of content. If you set a goal of say 3000 words a day for 100 days you can transform your website. I know it is a pretty lofty content goal, but if you have a real SEO emergency, this is what you have to do, that is be aggressive in terms of writing and marketing your website. If you want to simply hire someone to fix your site, it will not  work. Hire someone to help you with the set up or coach you, then to take your website to the next level use it.

Where are you with your SEO emergency?

Did you:

1. Set up a WordPress blog?
2. Have a list of 100 keywords phrases you will write about?
3. Are you creating a resource and writing about 3000 words a day?

If you are not doing two of these three something like these things, then I do not think you are operating on all hands on deck type marketing strategy for your website.

Blogging buddy vs virtual friend

I have friends on the web I communicate with on a regular basis about websites and SEO and blogging.  This is not a blogging buddy. These are virtual friends. They are nice for rapports and an occasional exchange of ideas.

A real buddy is a guy like my friend Erik.  When my wife and daughter are out, he comes over for about 5 hour and we create lots of content.  And I mean a lot.

What do you do with a blogging buddy?

We have a content and creativity jam session. Sometimes we set a goal of 3,000 words a day each. Even sitting next to each other and pushing each other that one extra step is something that is very effective. We get psyched up and try to create up to 3000 words of quality content in one session.  It is almost like a sporting event. While other guys are playing on the Xbox we are getting an adrenaline rush from producing content.

We might take a break and go to a  for a lunch at a greasy spoon restaurant or drink a few quarts of carrot juice, but even then we have out clip boards and are brainstorming ideas.

This is a blogging buddy. If you can find a partner like this it is worth more than any amount of paying someone for SEO consulting or going to a Website workshop or camp. No one will take an interest in your site as much as you. It’s all up to you.

Further, being a blogger is a pretty independent thing. Having a real business partner where you split the profits is not as effective as one person working on their site alone and having a blogging partner to help you. Why? With partnerships there tends to be a diffusion of responsibility. One person never works as hard as the other. This often turns friendships sour..

What about outsourcing? If you are a rich blogger making 100k a year be my guest but if you are making 10k on your blog it is better to do it all yourself. It is better to find a like minded person to team up with to help inspire you towards your goals.

Another advantage of having a blog buddy is if you have ever read about web useability like Steve Krug you will know that having a friend looking at and playing with your site while you are  looking over his shoulder is one of the best ways to improve your website. A real live person looking and critiquing my site.  The I help him with this and he helps me.

This is synergy. A buddy for blogging with is recommended by people like Darren Rowse. If you have a real life person who is serious about making a quality site this is where you can amplify your own energy.

Summary of the positive effects of a blogging partner

• More content
• More creative ideas flowing via brainstorming
• Better website useability via another set if eyes
• Blogging becomes fun breaks you out of your routine
• Cross social media
• Positive energy

Therefore, more than white hat tricks or even links I have found user experience from various ips around the world is an indication of if a page should rank high.  This makes sense. If people are happy with your content, even if they do not link, they might leave a comment or social media it.

All SEO and SEM is a subset of user experience

If someone links to you, that is a plus vote for user experience. If some social medias you, another vote, if someone comments another vote, if someone spends time on your page, another vote.

• Search Engines like user experience as a measure of content because it is very hard to manipulate. They see people coming from different IP addresses and different searches phrases and doing different things on your site.

In theory you could manipulate this if you were an evil genius but in the long-run you might get caught. Further, all that energy being spent being a cheat could have been spent building real useful content.

If I were to start a website today how would I SEO it?

1. Define the purpose in on clear crisp mission statement. Something of value to people.
2. Do WordPress SEO. That is install a good theme and plugins. Try to work within the system as much as possible without any hacks.
3. Create three aspects of the site 1) an educational resource side 2) a blog side with some good landing pages and pages made to help people find the other two parts of your site.  3) a community side where people can participate in a dialogue.

This model is very different from five years ago.  Web 2.o has moved from just blogging, links and on site factors to considering the user.

Ideas to improve user experience for SEO

• SEO your navigation if a guy from the street – Make sure the navigation clear and easy. If you do not know how, take a friend or neighbor who is not an IT WordPress geek. Stand over their shoulder as they navigate through your page. Do not say a word, just watch them use it. Ask them how it could be improved. I have noticed often IT guys made the worst looking sites.  You want something to be easy for John Q. Public not some IT geek. Therefore as your friends to help you improve your website.
• SEO your site with long pages – I have had 400 word posts rank pretty high, however, my posts that are well written and are more like 1400 are better ranked. I think if a post is too short people scan it and click off. This does not look good for user experience.
• SEO your site by making it scannable – We all like to hear ourselves talk, but readers are impatient. If they land on your they want information. Make the page itself easy to read. Use Headers and lists and bold. This helps out the user. It might also help out search engines define what the page is about and all you will need to increase on site factors for a boast in rankings.
• Call to action – once people read your page, ask them to subscribe to your RSS, Twitter the post or leave a comment, do to another post on your page or whatever, but help them take more steps to stay active on your site. A landing page is just that. People land on it. If you want to rank high in the Search engines, make them stay on your site.

Let me know what you think is the most important factor for SEO and how it might be practically implemented.

• Have a website that is a resource site
• Have a website that is community site
• Have a website that has a following

The reason these types of sites do well is because search engines are looking at user behavior. If someone lands on your site and penetrates one or two pages it is OK. But is someone goes to you website over and over again and is all over your site, looking at different pages and spending a lot of time there, it sends a message to search engines there much be something valuable here. If people find your site from various IPs and keywords and the traffic is organic this is the best sign to a search engine that your site is of value. It only makes sense. Search engine companies are trying to serve their users better, and reward valuable sites.

Sites that do not take off for no reason.  Website that do not have a focus or bring anything interesting or organised to the web, tend to draw low levels of traffic. For example, most people do well with a blog and a website. Any good CMS system, be it WordPress or CMS made simple, helps you organize your content. This is not a bad way to build a site.

I build this WordPress SEO site this way. It is a hobby site for me so not my main site, I blog when I feel like it. It is slowly growing based and ranking better on search engines as it attracts links now and then.

However to make a site really grow lets take a look at the three basic methods I mention above to have a strong website. Remember it is all about user experience and the message the users are sending to the search engines.

Having a resource site for website traffic

I have a website on the Russian language. I put this together not only in the form of a blog but I organized it in a methodical way from A to Z to teach the language. It is a real resource and people find it and go back to it over and over. I still add pages and post, but the core foundation is set. Why do people not create resource blogs? I think they are lazy. All it takes is a little organization. Even if you do not want to start from scratch, I think you can organize posts that you have.

For example what would I do on this SEO site? If I were to organize this site, I would take my most valuable posts on search engine marketing and create one main page or landing page that will summarizes search engine marketing with liberal wiki type links to my other posts.  I might link out to trusted sites that add value. It will be designed for people so they can easily find information and reference with a glossary and clear summaries.

I would do this for each valuable topic and then create a master page with an SEO training page or something.  This would be much more organized than tags and categories, which no one goes to. This is in my opinion the easiest way to increase  website traffic and have a strong website.

• organise your blog posts with hierarchical pages and an easy to follow sequence of information.

Creating a website with a community

I was telling my wife last night that even when I feeling a little down, I go to one of my community sites and reply and hang out there. Why? It is fun. People go to community sites because the people on the site are interesting and fun to interact with. WordPress has BuddyPress and BBpress to create a community site for any niche. However, at this point my most successful sites are my blogs that have a forum like aspect. The problem is people do not like to register to leave a comment, they prefer the blog style open registration. If people come back by subscribing to your comments RSS feed this is the same as a forum. Try to encourage them to subscribe.  However, I have found interesting content is the best way.

• Reply to every comment and make your topics hot and something that gets people blood flowing.

Having a strong website with a following

It would be great to be free of search engine traffic. What if one day your site just disappears from the SERPs. This happened to me, one day as one of my WordPress sites got hacked. It took me a while to repair all the damage and was really never effective again. I cancelled the domain and moved relevant content to a new site.

However, if I had a following I would not care as much and could have waited even years for my site to return in the SERPS.  Therefore, if you can somehow get a strong following you will be more diversified. Many people just focus on getting direct traffic.

If you have a following you can sell physical goods off your website easier than if people just land on your site. Many affiliate marketing guys want to create a snazzy website and rank high in Google. Sell does not work this way. People buy from people they trust. People buy physical things from people when the trust rating is high, that is usually people they know (via the web).

For you to have a following:

• Put your picture and about page as a central focus
• Make it easy for people to subscribe
• Encourage people to subscribe
• Write long posts that are worth something, rather than many short posts that annoy people
• Create a logo so your site looks more serious

People basically have to fall in love with you to follow you. Try to impress them in ten seconds with a wow amazing about page that is both real and sincere and compelling. If you have weakness, you can admit them. Be honest but people like girls, fall in love with sincere guys, but guys pumped with falseness.

My success with SEO has come from building resources and communities, however, I tend to be weak in terms of getting a following. I would say my community sites are the most successful website traffic wise. If you ever can build a site with a community, it will be self-perpetuating with user-generated content. I would be curious about your experiences with building  resource sites, community sites or having a following for having a strong website and lots of traffic? Or what methods have you use are you trying?

To start with the SEM vs. SEO question I will tell about some of my results. I have a couple of website all connected with a few of my hobbies. I have one on the Polish language as I live in Poland and another one on the history of economics as I have a master’s in economics.

These have a reasonable amount of traffic, all from organic search engine results. They grow steady, as long as I write interesting things. I have done nothing on those sites except write about the things I love, and somehow traffic started to pick up. Using WordPress with a theme that is well written, and a few plug-ins, it goes a long way in terms of promoting your site. I do no search engine marketing, yet.

How search engines work

You do not need to market your site because the way search engines seem to work. From my observation search engines work like this, when you publish a post, it will rank high for a day or so, then drift down. If people like it (based on ‘time on site’ and how deep they penetrate your website, comment actitivty and other stats) it stays high in the ranking, if not it falls in the search results.
Therefore, in one sense there is no need to market your site, just focus on quality content.  I think this is very fair. However, many people want a site to go viral and cut out the years of work and writing. Therefore they try SEM.

Search engine marketing benefits

Search engine marketing is about getting more people aware that you even have a website. The advantages of SEM are:

• You are not at the mercy of search engines
• After you market you can promote your RSS and other subscription feeds and develop a loyal fan base. A loyal fan base promotes you as they refer other people to your website. Loyal fans buy physical good more than people just landing on your site by a search.
• SEM breaks up the monotony of just being a writer and it is fun. Creating a crazy video or a viral image is fun.

SEM vs SEO why SEM might not be the best way to get traffic

A friend of mine is an author, the guy wrote a book with a major publisher in the US and Europe and was on CNN and in Time magazine. However, the traffic to his site did not pick up a lot. He tried traditional marketing and Seth Godin type marketing. He focused on SEM but no SEO. The result was his blog is weak. The take away if you need some level of SEO. SEO is nothing more than making your blog user friendly and appealing to people who land there. It should be easy to navigate and no too cluttered. Oh yes content that is useful, that is the summum bonum of search engine optimization and marketing.

What the Lost cast can teach us about why SEM will not rock your site

I just started to watch the series Lost. I have watched a few of the episodes from the first season. Its pretty good. I want to talk about two of the cast members.

The guy on the TV series Lost,  Jorge Garcia (Hugo Reyes). I think the guy is a great actor and personally a good human (very interesting person). I read his blog. But for a major star who was on TV every week, his blog has a good rank but not as high (I know that is not his purpose) as some of my no name friends who use SEO  in terms of traffic. Why?

Publicity only helps if people find a reason to come back. Therefore, the take way is SEM works if and only if you have something meaningful to write.

Not to pick on the Lost cast (it is an excellent show and the actors are great), there is Evangeline Lilly who played Kate Austen. She is a super actress and good human (she is into the charity and serving other people).  Now the series is over, she is writing a children’s book .  It is about magic and secrets. Yawn. Like I would ever read that, its like every other children’s book out there.  Maybe its a good book but, everyone is trying to write a Harry Potter book. My point is you can have all the publicity and marketing media behind you but if your content is like everyone else you will not get traffic, fans or sales.

Therefore, being marketed or famous does not drive traffic to your website, but only helps if you are unique and different. If  Evangeline Lilly wrote a book on the morality of Lost – Good vs Evil – an insider’s perspective, then I would read it.  It is unique.

Viperchill marketing vs. Lost TV series cast

There is a young guy who runs the Viperchill SEM site. His site rocks. Why? Not because he markets but is content is very good. Once people find his site, they like he writes. He is good with writing and marketing. But I think his writing comes first, He is an excellent writer.

The take away here is organic search engine traffic or marketing takes a back seat to good writing.
However, if  once you do the well written content part, try a little marketing.

SEO  (that is well written content in a good CMS structure) first then Search engine marketing

Here are some ideas to help with promoting your content.

• Make it easy and desirable for people to subscribe with big RSS buttons and asking them to.
• Make a logo (it helps branding and makes the site look professional).
• Use Stumble and Twitter etc, but do not clutter up your site with those buttons.
• Guest blog like crazy. It is the one thing in SEM that really works

Guest blogging works for promote your site:

• If the content is good people will come back
• You might get a link
• You will get branding
• It is free advertising

As far as I have read it is white hat, it is simply a way for other people to become aware of your site.

Therefore, my conclusion is the winning foumla for ranking high and getting a lot of traffic is this:

• Content + WordPress + SEO theme and plug-ins + inviting RSS + guest posting = lots of traffic.

Write content that has a wow factor, I never thought of it this way, even be a resource on the web, use WordPress and some good plug-ins and theme for SEO. Then set up your RSS to be inviting and guest post like crazy. SEO vs SEM,  both but focus on writing well this is the first and most important step. So stop wasting time and write.

What I have learned about SEO consulting, WordPress and design

I have some sites that were and are less than optimal in terms of structure, domain name, idea, plug-ins etc. However, no matter where you are in terms of your site (s) develop it is OK.  Do not feel you need to hire some hire powered consultant to engineer the way you do everything.  In fact, my recommendation is just build from what you have without ripping apart everything.  Website development and design should be simple and natural. Where you are not with your site is perfect as long as you are not doing anything spammy. Just try to add content and gradually simplify your site.

Try to find the plug-ins and widgets you do not really need and remove them. Try to see if your site can almost work with the basic install and maybe five plug-ins. WordPress was designed to help you. Do not feel you need to modify it much beyond changing the basic permalink structure to %postname% and maybe using a good theme or the SEO platinum pack.

Why less is better for SEO and WordPress

Because your real mission is to create something interesting for your visitors. It could be a picture or a video or content or a tutorial. However, most people spend an inordinate about of time and energy on on-stite and off-site SEO factors and website design. Many of these are questionable and even counter productive and only benefit the people offering you the service or tool.

Every second you spend worrying about search engine optimization is a second you could either be writing content or being with your family. I know new guys to the web are disappointed to hear there is no magic sauce beyond their own imagination for creating something of value, but that is the way it is.

But that is actually good news. It frees you to focus more on self-expression than being a tweeker or monkeying around with your site all day. Therefore, do not be mislead by large cost projects and major undertakings. Do not buy any affiliate type get traffic now type things. They are a waste of money and time and I have seen too many people get burned with this.

If you want my help with getting traffic to your website I can be hired. However, I do not do long-term projects, intentionally. I think SEO consulting should be short and sweet. Search engine optimization information is really something that is not something you have to spend years researching on the web as the opportunity cost is too high. Think of what the opportunity cost is of researching this all yourself.  Simple  WordPress SEO consulting

With WordPress 3.0 SU and MU are one. However, you have to do a few extra steps to make sure that multi user installs if that is what you want.

• Backup your database.  WP gives you the tool or use a plug-in. Really do you wan to lose all the work you have done?
• Deactivate all your plug-ins. I have gotten into trouble with this many times, do not be lazy. It took me all afternoon to fix some things.

With 1and 1.com on an MU installation for WP you must insert this line of code

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

at the top of the .htaccess file.

Customer support at 1and1 told me I could use php6 as it was in beta but it did not work. This is all set. Do a normal installation or WordPress.

Normal MU WordPress install

Once you made the modification above if you are a 1and1.com user, all you have to do is the following.

• It is simple and low stress. Just add one  line of code in the wp-config->>
  (‘WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE’, true);
• Then you are all set go to your WordPress dashboard  and go to-> tools -> networks. From there you just press and buttons.
• Everything else WordPress development has written  very simple directions, they prompt you to do. In the early beta’s of 3.0 people got confused, or at least I did and I complained. But now it has been reworded and should take you only a minute or two. You basically have to replace some existing code in your wp-config file with some new code. Even I could do it.

General Lee the Southern Civil war general had as his assistant a very good hearted soldier, however, was easily confused, because he was so stressed out. Therefore, before he gave any order he would read it to this guy to see if he understood the instructions perfectly. If this guy could understand the information conveyed, Lee had confidence it would be clear for his sub-commanders. This is how WordPress has written their WordPress 3.0 MU instructions. Something that even I can understand. Therefore, if I can install WordPress MU on 1and1, so can you.

If you have any questions on how to install WordPress MU with 1and1 please let me know, just leave a comment. I think I can help as I have done enough of these installations. With MU you can use all of BuddyPress and its features such as allowing users to set up their own blogs on your site. How is that for user-generated content.

• Being fit will help your blog because you will be less stressed, more focused and more blood will flow to your most vital organ, your brain.
• Learn that just as your body functions as a whole, your blog also functions as a whole.  It’s a metaphor. If you want to SEO your blog do not think about ranking high, think about the your website holistically.

What is a WordPress Body?

Well I was a gym rat and was in top shape. At one point I was 220 lbs of solid muscle (now I am about 170 lbs).  I am in OK shape even though I have done nothing for years, except eat Polish kielbasa (I live in Poland) and other heavier Polish dishes.  However, since moving to Europe I sold my car. Therefore, I have maintained some condition.

A  WordPress body is achieved by sitting on your blogs for hours a day.  Putting blogging before physical health. Resting on the sofa with your laptop on your stomach (I wonder if Steve Job’s health problems were caused but this type of exposure to electic fields close to his vital organs).

Getting so into blogging, you get home from work and hit your blog instead of walking in the park.  This is a WordPress body.   WP is addictive because it gives positive  feedback and reinforcement as traffic begins to build on your blog.  But being a blogger has a dark side. Many former fitness buffs find themselves with a WP body instead on the once gym honed bodies of their former life.  My point is do not let your body go just because you are a blogger. The Roman’s said ‘all things mind and body – strong body and mind’.

The purpose of this post is:

• If you are a blogger do not forget to work out as blogging is an easy way to let your body go down hill.
• If you are a Website owner think of your website as a body, it needs to function as a whole.

WordPress SEO – a metaphor

Fitness and WordPress should go together

Even though I am no longer a gym rat, many of my friends have come to me for fitness advice. The conversation usually goes as follows:

Conversation with a friend about fitness

Friend: ‘How can I lose my gut’?

Me: ‘I say easy, just go to the gym or do activities you really enjoy for about an hour a day’.

Friend: ‘They ask me ‘what about sit ups’?

Me:  ‘The body functions as a whole and there is really no such thing as spot conditioning or weight loss’. ‘

Friend: ‘Really?’

They do not believe me and try to lose their stomach fat with sit ups. A year latter they do not have the results they were looking for.

Now he is basically the same conversation I have with someone who has had a website and has little amounts of traffic but wants to make a lot of money online.

Conversation with a Website owner about SEO

Website owner who wants to make money online: I want to rank number high in Google, maybe 1 or 2 for the following 3 keywords (usually the guy has a website less than six months old, maybe one link  Basically a ten page brochure site, maybe some flash and the keywords he is targeting are highly competitive two-word phrases).

WordPress Consultant (me): The web today does not work like that, your site functions as a whole, just like you can not trick your body to remove fat from your stomach, nor can you  trick search engines to rank you high for a couple of keywords while the rest of your website is lame.

Website owner: Yeah but I want it. There is some firm that will give it to me if you can’t. usually some guy from Ebay or Craigslist or worse some affiliate marketing program is tempting him. (The guy usually paid some web designer a few bills for a way cool website, however, what good is a website is no one comes?)

WordPress consultant: Knock yourself, and as you PayPal them the money, remember me in a year. (I often look up their sites and in a year they are either gone or have no traffic, just like the guys who stopped going to the gym after the first 3 weeks).  However, remember if you do it right your site will have all the traffic you want. My main site is getting close to a million page views a month. All you have to do is get some coaching and then work hard, like training your body.

I of course do consulting. If you have ever read my WordPress blog you know I tell people the same thing about their websites.  Many people ask how can I rank high in a particular keyword. I hear it all the time, ‘I want to rank high in a particular keyword’.  They think this is SEO, just like spot conditioning.  That is like just doing lots of sit ups will get ride of they gut.  These are the same guys who think stuffing keywords will get them to rank in this one keyword and they will be all set. Their site will be in top SEO shape.

If you want a good body remember your body functions holistically.  If you want a website to rank high in Google, remember your website functions holistically, like your body.  At the gym do the things you like and you will stick with it. With WordPress write about things you like and you will stick with it.  In fact write like there is no such thing as a search engine. Of course there is a lot more to each, however, the basic metaphor applies.

Think holistically about WordPress SEO, just like you should think holistically about your body.  If you want to know how to drive traffic to your blog, as a WordPress consultant I can help.

I will take a different tack then what you might expect someone to write about when talking  about search engine marketing. I will not go into code and hacks or social media, but rather convey a general strategy on how to meet your goal of promoting your online community. If you take my advice to heart it will be all you need to make your BuddyPress site SEO friendly rock.

BuddyPress SEO is a bit different from normal blog SEO – the Problem

It will be different in the  following ways each one is a problem. However, I will in this post offer a recommendation for each of these.

1. Membership has to be at a critical mass. In order to get members to your social networking community you will have create pages for the sole purpose of recruitment and for  helping users learn quickly how to sign up and use your website (remember web design mantra ‘don’t make me think’).
2. Hopefully your BuddyPress site will have a lot of user generate content, however, this is a double edge sword as user generated content is very hard for search engines to put their hands around in terms of SERP. Further it will be very disorganized in general, even chaotic.
3. User content often is not well written in terms of grammar and style.
4. BuddyPress has some unique challenges in terms of code.

Learn from the Shaker community about building your BuddyPress community

What does your BuddyPress community have to do with the Shaker community?

Your goal as the webmaster is to keep up some rules to create order, structure, harmony and cleanliness to your community.  The Shakers did this. However, you have to do something the Shakers could not do to make your social networking community succeed.

SEO for BuddyPress solution 1 – Landing pages written with latent semantic content

Create some well optimized landing pages that are thematically related to your social networking community. These should not be spammy or stuffed with keywords. They should be natural and sincere and personal. For example, you could write:

“I remember the day my life changed forever. I was twelve years old and my parents took me to Lexington and Concord to see the re-enactors… ” That is if you wanted to set up a BuddyPress community connected to the American revolution.

This way you will attract new members.  Like minded people will identify with your experience and maybe be motivated to take 30 seconds to sign up. Your whole goal is to get a critical mass so your BP community will be self-sustaining.  This has to start from you writing content, not by doing a simple BuddyPress WordPress 3 MU install and thinking you are all set. And certainly not from paying some SEO to market your site for you.

This brings me back to my metaphor, the Shakers were a beautiful well run community in the American history, but they were not great at getting new members. This is and important point as do not want your community to go the way of the Shakers of the 18th century. That is technically running smooth from an on-site perspective, but like the Shakers not getting the critical mass of new recruits and new blood to keep up their community to the present day. My recommendation is write some natural writing pages that will invite, tempt, and guide people to join.

SEO today – I know everyone is looking for that secret sauce to make their site rank high. But no matter what the format, blogs, websites, forums or communities, I feel it all comes back to content that people will get value from and make them have some emotional connection to join and take part. Write content that will be popular and then people will check out your Buddy-Press community.

Some people with BuddyPress run communities recommend setting up one thousand fake profile with beautiful girls. This will make it seem like an active community and some reason to sign up. They say this will attract members. I do not like it. I would rather spend those hours creating pages that will get people’s interest.

Resource for social networking landing pages – Most likely your social network will be an extension of an existing WP site, not a new niche. Something you already are interested in. Therefore your goal will be to create a few very well written pages (not 140 character tweets) that will explain and invite people to your site that are focused on the keywords connected to your site theme.  Darren Roswe from problogger.net does a good job talking about the idea of calls to action and single post SEO.  Nothing new right? Yes, nothing new.  You can use LSI or whatever you want, but I think the best posts are those written naturally from your heart.

BuddyPress SEO solution 2 – help users create structure to their pages

As mentioned above there is a lot of user generated content that creates chaos. The problem is this because search engines are machines and they are always looking for patterns and order.  However, the content your users create is often not focused or structured, it is rather chaotic like a MySpace or YouTube page.  Think how Google has had trouble determining ad relevancy to YouTube pages.  This disorder is further not helped by the fact users left on their own to create content  often write with poor grammar or in chat style format.

Further,  users creating their pages  may or may not be focused or value added. Therefore, you might have a mess, but it is OK if you get back to the basics of writing some quality content pages in addition to your community pages.

My point is user generated content is great for fresh new content being applied to your blog everyday, but it is often very chaotic.

This is what you need to do. Again, take your members by the hand and guide them through your social networking area of your site.  Do not expect them to think too long, web users are impatient. Think how Amazon has user ratings under the books.  Help your online community create content that is valuable by guiding them to a structure that you have planned. A review section is one idea. Help users bring order to your site, by writing pages that guide them into structure and organize.

SEO for BuddyPress solution 3 – keeping BuddyPress pages clean

I can not recommend highly enough using After the Deadline for improving the quality of your writing. You will be able to control users who do not know how to write or have poor style with a little house cleaning ever day. Search engines are all about user experience. Do you like poorly written pages? Well neither do search engines. Use something like After the Deadline by Automattic to help your pages stay clean.

SEO for BuddyPress solution 4 – A plug-in for On-site factors

I feel there is an over emphasis on “on-site factors”, like using headers strategically instead of naturally, bold and no-follow, pretty permalinks, reducing duplicate content. These are all important to some extent.  That being said, how much can the WP community write about these known, or more important on-site factors and that are not already handled in a WordPress SEO plug-in or the basic install? So why is there so much focus on this?

Most important, as search engines like Google, Bing and Yandex (and who knows maybe Apple search?) become more sophisticated, sculpturing page rank or pages to rank higher become a little like trying to generate meaningful long-term traffic from Twitter, everyone is doing it and the marginal benefit barely exceeds the marginal cost (time, effort). Does this sound shocking? It’s true. For a good on-site factor guide Yoast has a good “SEO for WordPress” summary (even though is a little of a self-promoter ).  There is no need to repeat what he has written and clutter the Internet with yet another definitive guide. Much of what he or writes about is contain in the following BuddyPress plug-in.

Therefore, my recommendation for controlling on site factors will be to use this plug-in BuddyPress search engine optimization is use the basic install and this plugin and glance over the above mentioned article, but please do not feel you have to apply every aspect yourself.  The above plug-in deals with the basics.  The real purpose of this post if to get you to start thinking in another way about ranking high and getting traffic.

The take away for BuddyPress SEM is stop thinking code and start thinking content

So if you are scratching your head and wondering what is the take away for BuddyPress SEO?

• Write content on your normal blog like search engines do not exist. Write like there is no such thing as a search engine.  The the purpose of these well written pages is to get people to find your community.  Write some pages that broadcast the fact you are building a community but not in a spammy way. Write pages that guide users by the hand to it, make it s users can figure out what it is about and how to get involved in minutes. This is good content.
• Write content to supplement that will help users bring structure to your site. Look at other well designed community sites and how they do it.
• Keep your site clean and user content well written with After the Deadline or a similar tool.
• Use a optimized basic install of WordPress 3 with things like pretty permalinks and directories with and MU install. I prefer MU over the SU as it will greatly extend the functionality of your online community. Then add BP and one SEO plugin and a few of your standard site map and stats plug-ins. But do not focus too much on trying to get search engines to recognizes you as much as people. Therefore, to not overload your site, let WP do the work it ws designed to do out of the box.

BuddyPress can change your online life (sincere thanks to Andy Peatling). Let it change the lives of your users by letting them know about your community and keeping it clean and simple. The simple reveals itself after the complex has been exhausted. The ideas in the post are not some secret about code manipulation, but rather nothing more than my philosophy of the content strategy for attracting visits and getting people to stay on your site. That is write content to supplement your community, like you do with your blog. It has worked for me so I suggest you give it a try before you spend countless hours find the holy grail of BuddyPress SEO through theme or plug-ins or code hacks. Let me know what your thoughts or if you have additional insights.