SEO Automatic

Updates to Wordpress 2.7 - This Plugin is Next

Scott Hendison — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:17:51 +0000

The back end of SEO Automatic has always been a stand alone application, but towards the end of the summer I began to get an itch to put it inside of WordPress.

Until Tuesday of this week, that wasn’t possible, but thanks to an amazing programmer, it’s up and running 100% smoothly.

This coincides perfectly with the WordPress 2.7 release which came out late last night, so this morning I’ve now updated this site completely to WordPress 2.7.

After trying it on a couple of meaningless websites and having no problems, I decided to try it here and the upgrade went flawlessly.

Just for good measure I turned on all 16 of my plug-ins at the exact same time to see what would happen, and not a single thing broke, the forms work, sign up, etc.

I’ve also decided to the next step is simply to add the plug-in, and kill off the standard app, and things will be ready to roll.

I’ve put that off and written this post instead because I’m still not quite sure what I’m going to do with the plug-in, but I’ll have to do it before the end of the day, so I can say that it came out on the same day as WordPress 2.7.

What’s Going On With SEO Automatic?

Scott Hendison — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:24:56 +0000

A number of people have asked me, so here’s the deal on the tool… As those of you know who follow me on Twitter, SEO Automatic is being turned into it into a WordPress plug-in.

My original goal was to have it completed before Pubcon, but we barely had the tool working correctly by Halloween, and frankly just didn’t have time to fight with bringing it into WordPress.

Had I known ahead of time that Rand Fishkin was going to devote three slides to it in the Top Secret SEO Tools presentation in Las Vegas, we’d have worked faster! Thank you Rand, it was much appreciated.

At the moment (literally) I’m awaiting another test so that it can be run on my own Apache 1.x server with the default mods and permissions. At that point after implementing , some beta tester suggestions, we do plan to offer a free and a paid versions, but the details on that are still sketchy - because I’m making it up as I go along

So, that’s what the hold up is, because we can’t be saddled with tech support questions about this thing once it’s in the wild. We already have it working successfully on multiple servers except, funny enough, my OWN server that’s hosting Searchcommander.com.

As soon as we nail down that final piece of the pie, I’ll be reporting more, but in the meantime, have fun with the tool, and thanks for signing up.

Nested Tables & Image height/width incorrect

Scott Hendison — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:36:40 +0000

A user reported two more bugs (that did use t obe fine).

First, she said that nested tables were showing as incorrectly present, and also that the height / width atttributes were present on a page but the tool showed otherwise.

Well, it’s broken - she’s right, and thanks Pam

Favicon Image and Proper Code

Scott Hendison — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:21:30 +0000

Having a favicon makes your site stand out in someone’s web browser when they’re using tabbed browsing, making it easier for them to return. The favicon also shows up in the address bar next to your URL, and it will show up in their favorites when they bookmark your site.

Here are a couple of easy Favicon generators here and here that use your logo, and if you haven’t got a logo, you can be creative with this one. Once you have your favicon.ico file, upload it to the root, and you’re done.

Just having the favicon present isn’t enough though, and you need to add a little bit of code too.

Before the top tag, place this in your code so that you’re telling the entire world that you have the favicon.ico and exactly where you’ve located it.

(obviously you need to change YOURDOMAIN.COM to your own domain)

While I can offer no scientific proof, or qualified testing results that having a favicon.ico will improve your rankings, that is my belief. Why?

Because these extra steps that are helpful for your site visitor, and show that you’re making more of an effort than just slapping up a domain.

Would I rather have a favicon than a well anchored inbound link? Of course not. But as time marches on, I believe that the little things are going to make more of a difference, and showing that you care about your visitors is going to distinguish better quality sites.

Cleaning up the Theme

Scott Hendison — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:47:09 +0000

This theme is a strange one, and today we’re cleaning up some of the issues that many friends have pointed out… Namely, that I don’t seem to have any eye for detail or concern for looking professional!

That’s not exactly true, but I do admit that I didn’t check this thing for browser compatibility and it seems to have quite a few issues with Internet Explorer. Sigh… I’m so tired of fighting with this.

Anyway, the contact page finally looks better, the lines are lining up over on the right hand side now, and all of the bugs seem to be worked out of the program.

Because the page checking application is a stand-alone installation, and is not running inside of WordPress (yet) we seem to be having fits trying to get it to run the URL search box on the homepage.

For now I’ve placed a link there, but our programmer is working diligently to try and get things working inside the WordPress environment entirely.

Bug Reports - Public Beta

Scott Hendison — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 07:14:51 +0000

The more I use this automated SEO tool, the more little glitches I see that bug me. Besides making it better and adding more features, we need to be certain that everything here works as advertised. There are so many possible combiunations here, there we’re bound to have more tweaking.

i’ll start…

Data pulled from pages is showing up on the first instance, but not in the summary. Namely, H1 data, Alt tags. More an annoyance than a bug, i guess.
A “good” result” has the site’s actual favicon showing up visually on the top, but not on the bottom in summary. Since it says “can you see it here?” it would be preferable.
No green checkmark for Image Alt Atribute in the top section for a positive result, and no listing of the individual tags in the summary - same as #1.
Summary order doesn’t match the order the results fall in the top of the sute. Weird, not critical though.
A site that is serving compressed pages is showing no, it’s not, but then lists the compression ration, then the compressed .html size. (THD)

I’m looking for help here, from anyone willing to give it. Help squash the rest of the bugs please?

Suggestions for Improving This Tool

Scott Hendison — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:50:28 +0000

What other factors would you like to see here, and how can it be made more useful?

I always like to see a 404 check for broken links, both internal and external, but adding that here that would slow it down too much. Besides, Xenu is great, and as a free download, it really can’t be beat.

I still think sites need a static sitemap too, so we’ll be adding a check for that sometime soon… What other factors are left that should be added?

SEO Automatic is not REALLY Loading

Scott Hendison — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:34:48 +0000

We’ve got just a little glitch going on, and as soon as you arrive at the tool page, the “loading” icon begins gyrating, but it’s really NOT loading. You don’t need to sit and wait.

We’ll get that fixed, but in the meantime, just type in the URL as usual, hit the button, and THEN it will actually load, giving you the results you need…

Funny looking results, but SEO info is good

Scott Hendison — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 04:00:47 +0000

It’s late, and my programmer needs to go to bed. She’s been able to pretty much integrte the look of this WordPress theme into the tool, and although it’s a bit hard to read, the information provided is all still the same.

Everything should be finalized this week, and thanks for stopping by…

SEO Automatic is Live

Scott Hendison — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:49:43 +0000

This was going to be the development blog, where we tracked changes to the program, tracked improvements, and posted user feedback while working the bugs out but it didn’t work out that way.

Most of the work was done here via chat, and until someone develops a plug-in that automatically posts chat transscripts as they happen (hey…) the speed of the progress accomplished was such that we just couldn’t be bothered by having to make posts. I hope you like what’s here…