Skybox Creative Blog

Skybox Creative, an award-winning branding and web design firm, attended the San Diego SEO Meetup Group in Clairemont Mesa last night, and we wanted to share some of the quick and easy WordPress SEO tips we learned. (One of the most important themes of the evening being that WordPress is an EXCELLENT tool for SEO, so if you aren’t familiar with the open source blogging software/content management system, we suggest you get on the bandwagon!)

1. Use a question in your blog post titles. Why, you ask? Because when people are searching for information, they are often asking a question in their search.

2. There are thousands upon thousands of plug-ins for WordPress out there, but beware. Older plug-ins often don’t work with the most recent versions of WordPress (which is on 2.9, but getting close to launching 3.0). There are some great SEO plug-ins however, such as the SEO All-in-One and Ping Optimizer (Check out: WordPress Plugin Directory)

3. Utilize Blog Directories and Social Bookmarking Sites. They can be really great ways to drive traffic to your site, and the more niche the directory, the better!

Check out:

StumbleUpon
Mister Wong
Delicious

4. Don’t be a victim. Read up on WordPress Defender so that you can figure out the best methods to secure your blog from hackers. Always make sure you’re using the most recent version of WP and downloading all security updates are good starting points.

5. Blog at least once a week. An inactive blog doesn’t help anyone – especially you or your business. Blogs are meant to have fresh and changing content on a regular basis.

SIDE NOTE: Did you know that the word “Twit” comes from the English? (You Monty Python fans out there no what I am talking about).  Actual meaning is a drunken, upper-class Brit – happy tweeting!

A few of our clients have recently been affected by a malicious WordPress hack/virus. It took their entire site down and displayed a white screen with a few strips of error code on the screen. We have spent the last 24 hours troubleshooting these issues and what we have learned is that the best way to protect your website from this malicious activity is to always upgrade your WordPress to the most recent version.

If you notice an alert at the top of the page that says “Please Update Now”, please make sure you do so. Select “Upgrade Automatically”.

Since hackers are very creative in finding loopholes, there is no guarantee this will prevent any future issues, but it makes your site much less vulnerable. The most recent version of WordPress is 2.8.4, today, Wednesday September 9th, 2009.

For more information, perform a Google search, you will find many people had this same problem and offer suggestions for clearing the files of the harmful code.

Happy Blogging!