I can’t login to Google Analytics this morning for some reason (see the reason here) and did a quick search on Google to see what the problem was.  The initial results didn’t show anything, so I tried out the new “Latest” filter to show only the most recent results.  Here’s the SERP:

This was a big help because I easily found other users having the exact same problem at the same time I was.  That immediately ruled out my browser, computer, internet connection or anything else related to me.

So this is pretty useful for me as an individual, but again doesn’t help me as a SEM trying to sell products or gather leads.

Google’s old page design:

Google’s new page design:

I was still able to pull up the old design in Chrome.  I was checking some cookie tracking, and right after I removed all cookie data from Firefox, I noticed the new design.  And I’ve been clearing my cookies frequently the past couple of days to re-test tracking, so this is a very recent update from Google.

Search Filters

Google is now putting a column of filters on the left of the SERPs – but they are the same as the ones along the top-left.  They have, however, added a “recommended tools” section below that that allows users to choose page images, or fewer or more shopping results.  Users can then click “more options” and filter by timeframe, geo-location (you set your location just below the search box), standard view and timeline (very odd), or a few more standard page options.

Geolocation Filter

When I searched for “shoes” and used the “nearby” filter, Google pulled out the top results and replaced them with local listings – mostly superpages and citypages.  But there were a few results from local stores in my area that would not have come up on page 1 without this filter.  And after I chose “nearby”, options to refine my location filter even further appeared, including the ability to choose a custom location, or my default location.  I could also choose to filter by city, region or state.

Timeline filter

The first thought I had was “useless”.  Unless I’m doing some research for a mid-term or my thesis, I don’t want to get the complete history of shoes because I’m probably looking to buy some new ones.  Here’s ascreenshot below, and let’s see how long this option lasts:

Recency Filter

Google’s options to filter by time looks like their big answer to integrate comments and social conversations.

More filter options

The other two filtering options of note are the Page Images (showing thumbnails of images on the page) and Page Preview (shows a preview of the page to the right of the Title & Description).  Both of these features are not new for a search engine.  I consulted with a startup-search engine that had a good implementation of the page preview feature in early 2007.

Google Page Images

Google Page Preview

The big picture for Search Engine Marketing

What I did notice is that each time I chose a new filter, the ads reloaded, meaning a new pageview for each advertiser on the page.  And Ads were not filtered; they were either reloaded or removed on certain filters like the timeline.  This means every advertiser received another impression each time, without further filtering the ads.  Unfortunately, might mean lower Click Through Rates and lower Quality Scores.  I’ll be watching my campaigns closely to see if there are any changes as more Google users are switched to the new interface.

There are two domains that have been sitting in my registrar account for quite a while now, but I haven’t done anything with them.  The finished sites are BassOutfitter.com and FanChair.com – they are build using the same process, so don’t expect much difference (it’s just a splash page, rememter).

So why should you take the time to set something like this up?  Several reasons:

• Domain age – the age of a domain is considered to be a small factor for SEO.  All things equal, take two domains targeted for the same keyword, and the older domain will rank higher.  Of course all things are never equal, but every little bit you can do helps when your are trying to rank well in the SERPS.
• Content – I can provide a small amount of targeted content on the site.  It’s just the domain name in an H1 tag, META info, and a couple of paragraphs, but that’s all I need right now to put three good, targeted keywords on the page several times.
• I am collecting email addresses.  Opt-in email lists are a great way to increase revenue for your site.  By building a targeted email list, you can greatly increase your profit per visitor by gathering long-term, repeat customers.
• I’m too busy right now.  Yep, but one site is an extension of work I’m already doing… the next evolution, if you will.  The other is a business idea that I’ve been thinking about for years, and am very excited about once I can get to it.

The Rundown:

Here’s a quick step-by-step to tell you exactly what I did.  Hopefully you can put this to good use on some of your dormant domains.

1. Install Wordpress & do the standard config stuff (permalinks, blog name, analytics & other basic stuff)
2. Install a Theme I like – I chose one that would have a good, strong content page with a wigitized sidebar and footer.
3. Build my “Action Page” – Create a new page and put a little content telling users that visit the site what is is about, when it’s coming, and a call to action.  Mine was sign up for an email when the site launches.
4. Set Static Page – Go to Settings > Reading and set the front page to your Action page.
5. Remove Navigation – You don’t want any other pages on the site – only the one with the call to action.
6. Install Opt-In Plugin – Set up one widget that can collect email addresses.  MailChimp has a good Wordpress plugin.  Then set this as the only widget in the sidebar.

That’s it. Now you have a great looking placement page that will work for you collecting email addresses while you build your site.  Check mine out here:

BassOutfitter.com - Bass Outfitter will carry the stuff that we use personally and recommend. Great fishing gear, killer lures, awesome accessories, and all the stuff you need to catch a lunker.

FanChair.com – Fan Chair will bring you the best stadium seat available.

“we’ve constantly been adding and updating new features. The result was a set of tools we’re pretty proud of—but also a site that had become pretty unwieldy and often difficult to navigate. That’s why we decided to redesign Webmaster Tools from the ground up.”

Here’s a quick preview from Google’s post about the new look:

My Thoughts on the New Look

I’ve only spent a little time kicking around, but the new site is pretty good. The first thing you’ll notice is a different home page showing all the sites you have verified in your account.  The Sitemaps link and the verify columns have been removed.  Instead there’s a “details” link on the right that takes you to your verification page and also has some helpful information about verifying your site for yourself, for multiple users, and what verification means.  This is helpful because just a few weeks ago I had to dig around Googls help docs to find out how to allow a site in more than one account. (the answer: upload a verification file for each user you want verified and that site will be accessible from that persons account.)   If your site is not verified, the details link is not there, but shows a “verify my site” link instead.

The best enhancement is the Dashboard, which has replaced the Overview, for each individual site.  Following suit with the redesigns of AdWords and Analytics last year, Google provides a dashboard of some common data, specifically the Top Search Queries, Crawl errors, Links to your site, and Sitemaps reports.

The navigation has been redesigned from six top menu items to three collapsable menues.  That immediately speeds up navigation because you don’t have to reload a page to get to a report from a submenu.  Nice.

Most of the reports remain unchanged, although they have been cleaned up or enhanced a little bit.  Still, you’ll recognize most of the same information.  For example, the Keyword report shows the top 200 most common keywords, where previously you could only see the top 100 keywords, and the external links is easier to read and shows more pages at a time.

One item I’m still not sure with is the dropdown menu that switches between websites.  Previously, all websites were shown except the one you were currently viewing, and only a few were shown at a time.  The old menu made it a little weird to quickly know where you currently were and if you wanted to move up or down.  This new menu, though, does not contain all of the sites.  Instead, the new menu only shows up to the last six site profiles you have visited, and a “View All” link that takes you back to the home page.  I’ve got 21 sites in my account, so this requires me to go back to the home page if I’m reviewing more that the most recent sites.  And I do so at least on a weekly basis.  But for the most part I stick to only four or five sites.  That’s why the verdict isn’t in on this feature for me yet.  I’ll have to spend some more time with it befoce coming to a final decision – not that I could change it at this point anyway.

I was playing around with some demo software on a subdirectory and there were a couple of times I typed in the wrong subdomain.  My default 404 error page popped up instead of what I expected.  After this happened a couple of times, it struck me how bland and absolutly useless my error page was. So I found the AskApache Google 404 plugin and just got it configured.

It works great!  See an example of my new 404 error page here,  or here’s a screenshot:

Installation

Easy!

I was able to download, install, and configure the whole plugin in less than 5 minutes.  It does require a Google AJAX Search API, but that’s easy enough to get with your Google account. (If you don’t have a Google account by now, you are seriously behind.)

Here are the install steps:

1. Download and activate the plugin
2. Add your Google API key in the given blank in the settings page and save.
3. Insert a line of PHP code to your 404.php file in your WordPress template, and a couple of lines of code to your .htaccess file.

Be careful, though.  There was an error in the PHP that is given to place into your 404.php file.  It was missing a “?” just before the final “>”.  I’m going to message the plugin author to mention it and to thank him for the great plugin.

Customization

The default width of the search results are 750 px wide with no margin.  I need 600 px wide with a 17px margin on the left.  Thankfully this plugin allows you to easily edit the HTML, CSS and JS that controls the search listing display from within the admin settings page.

I changed this line in the HTML:

<div style="width:750px;overflow:hidden;margin-left:0;">

to this:

<div style="width:600px;overflow:hidden;margin-left:17px;">

That fixed the width of the search results container to fit in my left column, but it also squeesed the text results on top of the video/image listings on the right.  That was easily changed in the CSS.  I found this:

#rDiv {width:500px; min-height:400px;}

and changed it to:

#rDiv {width:450px; min-height:400px;}

And that was it.  Now I’ve got a functional 404 error page that will help visitors reach relevant pages, search engines to find my content easier, and keep me from getting annoyed as much when I type a wrong URL.

But most of these points are real crap.  Follow along above, and here’s my counterpoints:

1. Maybe multi-touch can enhance some features and keep me from flicking my finger over the touchscreen twice. Big deal.
2. Maybe I can’t get my Storm to fart like the iPhone – I use my phone for business, so that’s probably a good thing.
3. iTunes sucks. Period.
4. The next version of Storm could have Wi-Fi.  I’m patient.
5. 99% of the time, I only want to have data access in about 1/3 of Texas.  If I ever go around the world  it will be for vacation.  I want to leave my data access behind for a few days.
6. Maps huh? I’ve been pleased with the maps on my Curve, and that is the Edge network without Wi-fi.
7. Real HTML, well this one probably isn’t crap.  I use Opera and it works pretty well, but a better mobile browser would be nice.
8. Call with a touch of the finger?  Seriously, all the phones I’ve owned for ten years have that.  It’s called an “answer” button.  And if the real-HTML-browser works well I could care less if it was Safari, Firefox, Opera, or whatever (not IE).

So I agree with one out of eight.

I’m a real fan of AT&T, and was even a customer of Cingular years before that.  I’m not a fan of the iPhone.  And I love the Blackberrys that I have owned.  So overall, I’m waiting for a touchscreen Blackberry with a full QWERTY keyboard, Wi-fi, GPS, and 3G speed offered through AT&T.

Oh, Research In Motion, when will you come through for me?

I have lots of social media accounts (twitter, facebook, and identica)  that allow for status updates.   I’m also running chat accounts, which allow for status.  So I finally found a way to update all of these accounts at once from anywhere I can IM.

1. Identi.ca account – There is a setting to manage your Gtalk IM settings to confirm your Gtalk address, and a checkbox setting so that you can post a note it your Identi.ca profile each time you update your Gtalk status.
2. Gtalk buddy list – Add “update@identi.ca” to your buddy list.  Each time you chat, identi.ca adds a dent (aka tweet in identi.ca-speak) to your profile.  (important: do this!)
3. Identi.ca account – Add your twitter account to your Identi.ca settings and check the box to send new notices to your twitter account automatically.
4. Facebook account – Now add the twitter app for your facebook account, and set it to update your facebook status when you tweet.

That’s it. you are done. Your status flow will look like this:

Now you can update your status from the Gtalk client, from the chat in Gmail, from Gtalk on your blackberry/iPhone, or from another client like Pidgin or Digsby.

(By the way, Meat Loaf doesn’t have any bad songs)

As of the time I write this post, there were 4,245 plugins available for download in the Wordpress Plugin Directory.  So the question is this: How do you decide which Wordpress plugins to use?

MattMauldin.com runs on WordPress 2.7.1 with quite a bit of custom work, but the main functionality on this site comes from my use of 15 Wordpress plugins (at the moment).

15 Best WordPress Plugins (because I use them)

Akismet – Keep your comments spam free (or damn near) with this plugin.  It will automatically remove comments marked as spam from your comment queue.  This plugin has saved me a ton of time weeding through jibberish, stupid “great post, admin” comments and sale notices at oversea pharmacies.  I mean, come on; I don’t want a stupid Viagra ad running on my website (unless it’s from my own affiliate link).

No Self Pings – This plugin keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site.  It’s incredibly helpful if you record pingbacks as comments, or if you are trying to manage your internal link juice.

All-in-One SEO Pack – This is the #1 most popular plugin on WordPress.org.  And there’s a reason why: you can manage most of the lacking SEO items for your blog from a single settings page.  Set how your Title and META tags are displayed for each page and post, tag, archive, and category page.  Set the same tags for your home page individually.  Beyond that, you can customize the Title and META tags for each page or post if you choose to.

Google Analytics for WordPress – There are a few other plugins that integrate Google Analytics into your WordPress install, but none are as easy or as configured out-of-the-box as this one.  There’s also a great resource available from Joost de Valk here to help you with some of the more powerful (or complicated) tracking options Google Analytics offers.

Google XML Sitemaps – Keep your XML feed to Google Sitemaps up to date with this easy plugin.  Take some time to set your settings correctly, and then you can forget it – it runs itself.

FeedBurner FeedSmith – Manage your RSS feed with Feedburner.  Then use this plugin to ensure all of the subscribers subscribe through your Feedburner feed so your tracking is accurate.

PS Auto Sitemap – Use this plugin to quickly create a Site Map for your WordPress blog.  It comes installed with several CSS skins you can choose through the admin settings page.  In fact, there are quite a few powerful settings you can choose through the settings page to create a helpful sitemap.

Page Link Manager – Add additional navigation and pagination to your blog.  Although I’ve got an archive, categories, and a tag cloud, I thought it was important to provide the pagination at the bottom of this blog for usability.  The last thing you want is a blog that is difficult to navigate.

WP-PageNavi – This plugin allows you to choose which pages appear in your blog menu if you use the wp_list_pages hook.  It works will with the next plugin.

My Page Order – This plugin provides a drag-and-drop interface for changing the order of your pages.  It’s great to easily manage the menus on your blog.  Use it in combination with the previous plugin and you have almost total control over your blog’s menu.

Simple Tags – Simple Tags offers three powerful new options to manage your tags.

1. Manage your tags: search tags, rename tags, delete, add or edit a tag, change the sort order of your tags, and even see how many times each of your tags are used.
2. Mass Edit your tags: changes tags on multiple posts at once instead of going post by pont – a huge timesaver. and
3. Auto tag: this is by far the most powerful function of this plugin. Choose the tags you expect to repat among your posts and enter them here, then Auto tag will automatically apply them to new posts if they match the headling or content.

Popularity Contest – This plugin scores your posts by calculating the number of comments, links, and a number of other attributes.  You can then show the result in a number of ways.  My footer contains a “Popular Posts” that uses this plugin.  I also use this plugin to help rank my page importance in my XML sitemap.

Twitter Tools – The Twitter Tools plugin is just what I was looking for to integrate my twitter account.  I’ve scheduled a post once per week, early on Monday mornings, that pulls all of my tweets over the past week.  I also use it to post a notification tweet each time I publish a new post.

Contact Form 7 – Create multiple forms with a ton of options for input fields.  You can create forms with text fields, comment boxes, and even CAPTCHA support.  I use it on my contact form, and have used it on other WordPress installs for much more complicated forms with ease.

Note: You will notice that I do not use Sociable.  Instead, I’ve custom coded five social icons that show up inside The Loop beneath each post that allow readers to share my posts on Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and Facebook.  The only reason I bypassed Sociable is for style.  In many other instances, I’ve used it and it will work just fine.

If you have a suggested plugin, please comment.

IM: I have a username for chatting through Google Talk, Yahoo & MSN Messengers, and AIM.  I have a number of colleagues and friends who use each chat client, so it is beneficial to have more than one IM login.

Email: I have a gmail account as my primary address, but I also have a Yahoo email address to access Yahoo’s Site Explorer and some of their other services.  I have a hotmail account that serves as my MSN login, and I have a number of email addresses for the blogs and ecommerce sites I run.

Social Networks: Among others, I have a facebook account to stay connected with my friends, a LinkedIn account to keep connected proessionally with current and past coworkers, and a twitter account to tie all of my activities together, from personal, professional, blogging and miscellaneous.

So how do you stay connected with multiple IM accounts, social networking accounts, and a whole host of emails to check every day?

Digsby.

Digsby talks with each of your IM, email, and social accounts above, and I’ve found that really saves me time during the day, while still allowing me to keep up to date with what is going on in my network of connections.

Digsby offers personalization through different skins and window styles.  Choose how you are notified for each account through discreet popups in the corner of your screen, or through sounds.  You can even create a Digsby widget to put on your blog or website so visitors can chat with you directly, even if they don’t have you set as a friend.

You can learn more or download Digsby here.

The question being asked is this: do the speed increases in Google Chrome and IE 8 forecast the demize of Firefox?

Above and beyond any other aspect of the browser war, it’s Firefox’s add-on support and also that huge library of add-on goodies. The huge library of Add-Ons are what make my browsing experience unique, and customized to my own tastes.

• I get to choose the theme that is most appealing to me. Noia 2.0 (eXtreme)
• I keep my bookmarks synced between three different computers. Foxmarks
• All my bookmarks are in a easy-to-use sidebar that hides when not in use. All-in-One Sidebar
• I can control my tabs for multiple windows and how I switch between them. Tab Mix Plus and Fox Tab
• I can easily see search status, PageRank, Alexa Rank, download info and if Google Analytics is installed on the site I’m currently browsing. SearchStatus, Download Statusbar, and GA?.

No other browser offers the level of customization as is available for Firefox. IE’s toolbars (except for the ID Developer toolbar, which is not yet compatible with IE8) are laughable.  Chrome is still so new to he game that they are still lacking some important features. And because of the newness, their addon and plugin options are embarassingly sparse.

With all of this taken into account, I ask myself again, “Is Firefox dead?”

Answer: Not anytime soon.