A couple of months ago I changed the way that this blog’s browser titles are constructed, by placing the keywords first and the blog name last. I explained it in detail as well as the initial results in a post titled How Do HTML Title Tags Affect SEO?. For about two months I saw a negative change in my page rankings, but suddenly my rankings returned and improved. This chart shows the change over time.

So I am pleased to say that all three keywords traced rank better now. What I also learned in the process is that Google seriously penalizes certain changes to pages and that it can take a few weeks to months for the rankings to return.

I upgraded to WordPress 2.1 today, mostly motivated by the editor updates. The upgrade itself was painless and all of the plugins seem to be working fine. The only problem was that embedded YouTube videos didn’t work. This was a good opportunity to test the new editor and I was able to fix the videos by getting the embed code from YouTube and replacing the code in the posts using the new “code” view of the editor. The new editor is a bit better than the old one, but I like the improved image handling. The autosave is also great. Here are some of the key features (more…)

Over the last couple of months many people I know, mostly non-technical, have shown an interest in creating their own blogs. It is very easy to set up a free blog, but it gets a little more confusing when you are more serious like wanting your own domain name. So based on level of seriousness, here’s my recommendation to find a blog solution that works for you. (more…)

One of the motives behind blogs is earning some extra cash from ads. To add Google AdSense to a Wordpress blog is a breeze. First sign up for a an account with AdSense. It may take a few days for the account to get opened. In the mean time you can download the AdSense-Deluxe Wordpress plug-in. I have not tested it, but I am sure that the plug-in should work for most affiliate programs.