“Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings.”

If you want to improve in this area, Google Webmaster Tools are an absolute must. The first step is to make sure that you have your site set up with Google tools. Check out our Quick Start Guide to Using Google Webmaster Tools With WordPress. It will take you a couple minutes to get hooked up, but once you are, you’ll have access to the tools you need to start diagnosing any issues you have with page speed.

Investigate Your Sites’s Performance

You can start by going to Google Webmaster Tools >> Dashboard >> Labs >> Site Performance. The Site Performance feature will show you your average page load time, the trend over the last few months and suggestions on how to make the page load faster. Google’s definition of page load time is the total time from the moment the user clicks on a link to your page until the time the entire page is loaded and displayed in a browser.

Below the graph you will see some example pages from your site. You can expand the details section to view Page Speed suggestions:

Another excellent tool is Firefox’s Page Speed Add-On, which will help to give you an in-depth evaluation of the performance of your pages. You’ll get even more specific suggestions on files to combine and optimizations that you can make to speed up your site:

Now, based on the recommendations from both tools, you can apply support to your site as needed through specialized WordPress plugins, designed to help with these specific issues.

Take Advantage of WordPress Extensions to Improve Page Speed

Because you’re using the WordPress platform, you have a number of advantages over other site owners. You have access to thousands of open source tools and an active community that has probably already created a solution for any page loading speed issue you might have. If you’re getting suggestions such as these…

• Leverage browser caching
• Enable compression
• Minify JavaScript

…then you may want to look into a caching plugin, such as W3 Total Cache, which will knock out a good chunk of your page load issues in one sweep. W3 Total Cache also integrates your blog with a Content Delivery Network. However, if you want CDN without all the extras, have a look at CDN Tools, which allows you to load all of your attachments and JS in one click. If you’ve got an image-heavy site, you may want to look into a plugin such as WP Smush.it, which will automatically optimize your images without losing quality. These are just a few tools to get you started. Depending on the results the diagnosis gives you, you’ll need to search out a solution specific to your site’s unique needs.

One thing to note is that page speed tools are not always accurate in their suggestions. If your site utilizes social plugins, advertising, or anything that calls external resources, you may be given a lower score. This is where you weigh your page speed score against your site’s needs and make realistic decisions based on what you feel is necessary to include.

Site speed has always been important to good web development and a positive user experience. Google’s ranking attention to the matter gives you even more reason to improve your page speed. Take some time to improve you user’s experience and you’ll find that the major search engines will be more likely to send you traffic.

Other Optimization Articles You Might Be Interested In:

• How to Optimize WordPress Images Automatically Without Losing Quality
• Maximize WordPress and BuddyPress Performance With W3 Total Cache
• Dramatically Speed Up WordPress/WPMU Load Times With This Simple Tip!
• WordPress Maintenance 101: How to Optimize and Repair Database Tables

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Consider this your quick start guide to hooking up your WordPress site with Google Webmaster Tools. The great news is that you don’t even have to be a developer to get started. Setting up access for your site is easy and can be done in three simple steps.

How to Get Started with Google Webmaster Tools for Your WordPress Site

1. Sign in to Google Webmaster Tools with your Google account.

2. Add your site, as shown below:

3. Get your site verified.

Google offers three ways to get your site verified. The easiest way is to grab the meta tag and add it to your theme’s template files. Copy the tag that Google gives you and paste it right inside the < head > tag in your header.php file.

After you add the tag, click “Verify”.

Congratulations, you’re finished! Now you have access to all of the tools in the Google SEO arsenal, including an array of stats about your website, how many other sites are linking to it, keywords, search queries, and your subscriber stats. You’ll also have access to site performance and diagnostic tools for optimizing your site and finding 404 errors, crawl errors, SSL certificate problems, etc.

We’ll help you to get acquainted with these tools in upcoming posts and maximize them for use with WordPress. Stay tuned!

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Today we’re going to put a spotlight on six of the best professionally supported business plugins available from WP Plugins. From memberships and newsletters to SEO, these plugins deliver functions that all businesses need, with the support necessary for getting them working right the first time. Be assured that all of these plugins have been assesd, checked and scrutinised to ensure they are of the highest quality.

All in One SEO Pack – Pro Version

This is the professional version of the #1 most downloaded WordPress plugin. it optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines, which is essential for all businesses. It comes packed full of additional premium features and is the only plugin to provide full SEO integration for WP E-commerce sites.

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Subscribe2 HTML

Subscribe2 HTML provides all of the features of Subscribe2 with the addition of enabling HTML emails to be sent to all confirmed public subscribers for a more professional image. It also has the ability to send HTML emails from Post->Mail Subscribers and to sends Digest Emails containing HTML.

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CMS Members – WordPress, WPMU, and BuddyPress versions

CMS Members is really much more than a WordPress membership plugin. It not only provides a perfect WordPress as CMS solution for your site, but it can also be your new eCommerce platform. This enables you to build a paid membership site, accept credit cards, create order forms, integrate affiliates, offer newsletter subscription, create a premium theme community, etc. There’s also a version built specifically for WPMU and BuddyPress!

Download WP Version

Download WPMU / BuddyPress Version

Advanced Events Registration Pro Version

This WordPress plugin provides a way to take online registrations for events such as conference and seminars that are held live. The plugin uses the PayPal IPN to record payments to a database. It allows you to capture the registering persons contact information to the WordPress database as well as provides the ability to send the registrar to your PayPal payment site for online collection of event fees.

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Pop Over

This plugin is one of the most effective ways to advertise your mailing list, special offer or simply to show ads is via javascript ‘pop over’ on your site. It is very easily customized through the dashbaord to allow you to target your visitors with your own strategy and easily customize the look and feel of the pop over. We’ve seen dramatic increases in page views and time spent on the site when using this plugin.

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MailChimp Newsletter Integration

This plugin slots into a WordPress MU or single user WordPress.org blog and allows you to simply login and then select which MailChimp list you want to add new users to or import existing users to. If you’re sending email newsletters, this plugin will help you to expand your list and send professional emails with style.

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When you’re on a production schedule for your business website you can’t afford a hiccup on your development that could affect your bottom line. Sure you could wait for a free plugin to be released, but there’s no guarantee that it will updated in a timely fashion or available when you need it. Your business cannot afford to put itself at the mercy of plugins that
come with no support or guarantee. So if you like the functionality of these plugins offered through WP Plugins, you’re going to absolutely love the stress-free integration and support.

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The next step is to keep your visitosr on your site by showing them content that will keep them clicking through, discovering more information they want, and hopefully bookmarking your site or subscribing to your updates. Did you know that WordPress can do this dynamically, based on how the user arrived to your site?

Have a look the Search Engine Keywords Related Posts Widget, a new powerhouse plugin, designed to showcase the content your user is looking for. When a user arrives via Google, it will drop him off on what it sees as the most popular page for the keywords. However, this may not be the best match for what he’s looking for. By matching the Google keywords to other posts, the user is more likely to connect with relevant content on your site. This is what the plugin does:

1. Search Engine Keywords Related Posts Widget will detect if your user has arrived from a search engine.
2. It collects the query string from Google, Bing and Yahoo and extracts the keywords that the user used in his search.
3. The widget then lists posts related to the search engine keywords.

What does it look like? Options on the widget include how many related posts to display, the ability to change the widget title, and to set the widget to appear on posts and/or pages only. It will take the style of your theme’s widgets and will output a list similar to this:

The widget is only visible when a user arrives through a Google, Bing, Yahoo, AOL, Ask, or Baidu search. Users arriving through bookmarks, direct links or referrals from other sites will not see the widget.

The benefit of having posts available to a user based on what he’s searching for is that if he sees a number of pieces directly related to his interests, he is more likely to add you to his bookmarks or subscribe. It’s like being able to put your best face on for your visitor with the secret knowledge of what brought him there and what he wants to see. Your site’s appearance when a user arrives via a search engine is just like a first date, or maybe even more like a blind date. Adding this plugin is a quick and easy way to start making a good impression and ultimately win more repeat traffic.

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With a few added tweaks you can bend WordPress into a fully customized CMS for your site. This is a hand-picked list of recently updated plugins that will make WordPress easier to use, minimize functionality that is unnecessary for your site, and speed up content publishing. Many of these have already been updated for WP 3.0. Grab a few of these plugins and open up WordPress’ full capabilities as a powerful CMS. In no particular order:

1. Simple Fields

Simple Fields acts as a replacement to custom fields and adds textboxes, text areas, checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdowns, and a file browser to the post admin area to make it easier to use. It also adds the ability to group fields together into logical, reusable groups.

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2. Content Sort

This plugin adds a grid under “Posts” in the admin where you can use drag drop to sort posts published on the first page, which gives you more control over posts without having to write complicated custom loops.

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3. CMS Tree Page View

This plugin adds a CMS-like tree overview of all your pages to WordPress – like the view often found in a page-focused CMS. Within this page tree you can edit pages, view pages, add pages, search pages, and drag and drop pages to rearrange the order.

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4. White Label CMS

This is a great plugin, recently featured on our blog, that will help you fully brand WordPress as your own CMS and edit the navigation menus and dashboard to suit your site’s needs.

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5. CMS

A collection of plugins to make WordPress feel more like a CMS. It has some small adjustments and some bigger ones. Also includes some other plugins I’ve made like Multiple content blocks, Page manager and a FAQ plugin.

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6. CMS Dashboard

This plug-in creates a dashboard widget with clearly labeled large buttons of the most common tasks one would perform when using wordpress as a content management system. This helps new WordPress users get to where they want to go much more quickly than hunting through the menu system.

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7. Dashboard Heaven

Dashboard Heaven offers Widget to User-level/role customisation so that you can control which user levels see which widget.

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8. CMS Press

CMS Press opens up the ability to create and manage custom content types and taxonomies for your WordPress site. It adds the flexibility to have more than just posts and pages for content by allowing the user to register their own post_types that can use their separate theming from the post and page template along with its own permalink structure.

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9. Front Page Category

This plugin lets you easily choose posts in one or more categories to appear on the front page. You can exclude any categories so that they show up only in the archive pages and not on the front page.

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10. Multiple Content Blocks

With this plug-in you can use more than one content “block” on a template. You only have to insert one tag inside the template, so its easy to use. It allows you to specify content blocks on your pages that can be easily edited by clients.

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11. Pods CMS

Pods is a CMS framework for WordPress. It works with WordPress and allows you to easily add and display your own content types, among a host of other handy features.

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12. Menus Plus+

Create multiple customized menus with pages, posts, categories, and URLS. For CMS applications of WordPress, organizing a menu list can be a pain; this makes it easier. Drag and drop to order them as you like.

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13. Inline Editor

Adds the capacity to edit your content from the front end of your WordPress blog using the styling of your blog.

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14. Flutter

Flutter is a feature rich WordPress CMS plugin that focuses on easy templating for the developer and simplifies content management for the admin by creating custom write panels that can be fully customized (radio buttons, file uploads, image uploads, checkboxes, etc).

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15. WP-CMS Post Control

Post Control gives you complete control over your write options for every user level/role. It not only allows you to hides unwanted items like custom fields, trackbacks, revisions etc. but also gives you a whole lot more control over how WordPress deals with creating content.

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16. Core Tweaks WordPress Setup

This plug-in completely automates the proper setup of your WordPress blog for search engine optimization. Almost everything is covered, from changing the permalink structure to deleting the Hello World sample post and comment, and all the options are accessible from one single page.

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17. Blog-in-Blog

Blog-in-Blog allows you to use the WordPress platform more as a CMS system, but still have a blog page on your site. Posts in a specific category can be used to feed the ‘special’ blog page, and can optionally be hidden from the home page. You can have more than one category hidden from the homepage, and subsequently more than one page full of posts.

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18. Magic Fields

Magic Fields is a WordPress CMS plugin, focuses in simplifies content management for the admin creating custom write panels.

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19. Edit Flow

As recently featured on our blog, the Edit Flow plugin improves the WordPress Admin interface for a multi-user newsroom’s editorial workflow with custom post statuses, post metadata and editorial commenting, and user groups.

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20. Page.ly MultiEdit

This plugin allows you to create multiple editable content blocks on page templates. It uses custom fields to create simple tinyMCE editable regions on page templates.

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Why is interlinking your WordPress content good for SEO?

Linking to your older content will give you the opportunity to improve your rankings with keyword-targeted anchor texts. It also provides more paths for the search engines to crawl. SEO Smart Links will also give you more clicks per user. Don’t lose that reader after just one post; keep them interacting with more of your content.

Features of SEO Smart Links Plugin

• Find keywords in your posts, pages and comments and link them to your other posts, pages, categories and tags
• Full control with customizable options
• Ignore list for keywords you do not want to link
• Improves your site’s interlinking
• Control external links with custom keywords
• Add nofollow attribute or open links in new window
• Caching for speed – make sure you have define(‘ENABLE_CACHE’, true); set in your wp-config.php

Installation and setup is incredibly easy and most of the process is automated:

1. Upload the whole plugin folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ folder
2. Go to the Plugins page and activate the plugin.
3. Use the Options page to change your options.
4. That’s it! You can check your posts for new links.

SEO Smart Links looks for keyword phrases that match the titles of your posts and pages and turns them into links. You can even customize the settings to futher enable category and tag matching. You don’t have to be an SEO expert to give your blog a boost right now. If you want to monitor your results after installing SEO Smart Links, you can use Google Webmaster’s crawl stats or the WordPress Crawl Rate Tracker. With a little bit of tweaking you’ll be able to find that sweet spot that most effectively promotes your content.

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Solution: Grab a plugin such as Broken Link Checker and put it to work for you so that your site doesn’t lead to any dead ends.

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Want to Submit a Daily Tip to WPMU.org?

If you’ve got a great tip for WordPress, WPMU, or BuddyPress users, send it our way on Twitter: @wpmuorg and we’ll happily credit you. Create a tweetable title and let us know if you have a more info or an article you’d like to link it to.

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The WordPress plugin repository has some great SEO plugins but they aren’t made with BuddyPress in mind. Imagine how much better is it to be able to give specific tags to your members and groups directories, based on the specific user base you are serving. For example, if you’re using BuddyPress to build a site for musicians or educators or any kind of specific niche, this plugin enables you to do a better job of promoting your site’s unique qualities to search engines.

SEO for BuddyPress allows you to provide keywords and descriptions for each of your components. This plugin automatically checks the components in the database and offers you the SEO optimization for only the components and BP plugins you are using. For example, If you have deactivated ‘forum’, the plugin won’t display any forum SEO options. You will, however, be offered options for any extended components you are using. If you have a plugin to extend groups, ( ie: group_documents, event, etc …) you will also have the needed SEO options for the plugin you’re using.

SEO For BuddyPress Features:

This plugin features a massive array of options for promoting your site to search engines:

• Options to give directory pages unique titles, descriptions, keywords/tags
• Profile, Groups, and Main Blog and User blogs optimization
• Buddypress SEO configuration for extended components
• Extensive list of special tags available for both WP and WPMU
• Simple upgrade from previous version with “Update Database” button
• Easy uninstall button for complete removal from the options table

Upcoming Features:

I’ve been keeping up with Sven Lehnert, the developer of this plugin, and he is committed to improving it. He plans to add the following features in the next release:

• Nofollow control
• Image-title and alt-tag management
• Letter and word counter for the meta edit pages
• Add meta description in the post edit screen

In short, this plugin completely customizes the SEO for your BuddyPress site individually, based on which components you have activated and which plugins are extending your components. This provides an excellent dynamic foundation for future releases of the plugin, because it removes the burden of having to statically support every new BuddyPress plugin that comes out. As far as I know, this is the only BuddyPress-specific SEO plugin currently available. Help Sven test it out and send feedback in the BuddyPress forums or at the plugin’s home page.

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