Anyway, the book gets a big thumbs up from me. I could not have arrived at a better time as I was needing to do some SEO friendly URL rewriting in the .htaccess file. There is a whole chapter devoted to this and it managed to turn a previously seemingly impossible to learn task into something that took me just 15 minutes to implement. I think I’m starting to get regular expressions sorted out too thanks to the book.

So far I have got through the following chapters:

• Provocative SE Friendly URLs – Very handy explanation of how to implement dynamic URL rewriting with regular expressions and htaccess – and I started implementing these straight out of the book.
• Duplicate Content – Very handy information on how to avoid it. If you are implementing database driven website, then you really need to take a good look at whether you are creating duplicate content.
• Black Hat SEO – I always like reading about Black Hat SEO. However, this chapter is more about how to avoid it or fall victim to it. However, How-not-to-do-it guides are often the most informative
• Link Bait – This is really cool if you are a PHP programmer and not a master copywriter. Most of the resources I have read about link bait involve being creative with your pen. This has useful tips about how you can create some cool stuff with PHP to attract the link love.
• Cloaking, Geo-Targeting, and IP Delivery – Another great chapter on what is sometimes considered part of the dark arts. Including lots of useful code to get started.
• Simple Regular Expressions – This is actually an appendix to the book, but very handy none-the-less.

That probably covers just 1/4 of the book.

If you are a PHP programmer and are wanting to develop SE friendly websites, then you should really consider getting this book.

One thing that would have been handy is a disk with the source code for the extensive coding examples in the book. I’m not sure if this is because mine is a review copy so was not shipped with a CD. I’ll dig around and see what I can find.

Get Search Engine Optimization With PHP here.

Really Simple Sitemap basically lists all of your published posts so that a user (or search engine) is never more that 2 clicks away from any post on your blog – See my Sitemap for an example.

I reckon that using this plugin would be especially useful if you are considering stopping the GoogleBot from indexing your archives, categories, feeds, etc… with a robots.txt file.

Here are the instructions to get it working:

1. Download Really Simple Sitemap then unzip it and save it to the plugins folder of your WordPress install.
2. Activate the plugin.
3. Create a page and call it Sitemap (or call it whatever you like).
4. Add the following text : <!--rs sitemap--> – This text will be replaced by your sitemap.
5. Use the Options->RS Sitemap to set the ordering of your posts, show or hide private posts, and show or hide pages.

All of your published posts will then be output as links in the order of most recently published.

If there is enough interest in this plugin, I may add some extra functionality like sorting options.

I would be keen to get some feedback, so please leave a comment – including any extra functionality you would like to see included.

Really Simple Sitemap only works with WordPress 2.1.x.
Current Version: 1.2.

Updates 20 April 2007 (V 1.2):

1. Made the code more efficient so the database is only hit if the post or page requires a site map.

Updates 13 March 2007 (V 1.1):

1. Added an Options page to set ordering of posts, showing or hiding private posts, and showing pages.

2. Default table prefix is no longer hard coded.

Download Really Simple Sitemap

The layout is such that the post area appears to the left of the screen and two sidebar columns are at the right. This provides a bit more space for adding more links and adverts and other bits and pieces.

You can see the regular and 3 column themes in action here. I have added a theme switcher so that you can toggle between them both.

Download: SEO Simple 3 Column

<UPDATE>
Aaron has recently hinted that he may quit selling his SEO Book and changing his business model. So, you may want to get this highly undervalued tool sooner rather than later.
</UPDATE>

My first take on SEO Book is that it is incredibly comprehensive. So far I’m on page 20 and have learnt a heap of ideas – not so much about SEO – but it has made me think more about running an online business. It makes me thing about things like strategy, goals, and making the most of personal strengths and weaknesses.

Allready I’m looking at other peoples websites and getting ideas for sites that are not the ‘content’ type sites that I normally work with.

Anyway, I’ll return to this post to update it as I get further into SEO Book.

You can visit the SEO Book website here.

The goal of creating this theme was to play around with CSS so that I could get the title of a post followed by the post text to appear straight after the html body tag.

The reason for this is that there is less code for the search engine spiders to chew through before they get to the meat of your page. And when they do, they are greated with a nice H1 tag with the post title, and then the post text – instead of going through you page header, navigation, etc..

Go to this page and view source to see what I mean.

Is it worth doing this? I reckon it is. I’ve seen websites that are listed in the serps with their navigation text as the description of their website. And this has been very frustrating when when it has happened to me! I also think that every little helps when it comes to getting your pages ranked.

I guess that it’s important to remember that this theme is implementing on-page SEO, and at present, this seams to be no-where near as import as off-page SEO in the form of trusted links. What I’m trying to say is that by using a theme like this, you probably aren’t going to rocket to a number 1 position straight away.

It was also worth doing because I’ve wanted to do a WordPress theme for ages, and I got a chance to do the type of theme that I like to use – one with a really simple and clean layout. This means that it should be easy to hack to your liking if you want to use it.

Even the XHTML and CSS validate, which I am pretty chuffed about

I’ll be updating this theme on an ongoing basis. I plan to release a 3 column version with one of those spiffy 2 column right-hand sidebars as soon as possible (because I want to start using it myself!). Update – This is done and you can download it below.

Download SEO Simple.
Download SEO Simple – 3 Column.

Thanks go to:
Cre8d Designs Useful resources for creating a WordPress theme.
Floatutorial for helping me to get the content and sidebar in the right order.
Copyblogger – Sorry, I ripped off that shade of red that you use for your links.

There is nothing flash about Site Page Tracker, but it is incredibly useful in giving you ‘at-a-glance’ knowledge of how all of your websites are doing in the search engines by immediately showing you how many pages you have indexed and how many backlinks you have in the 3 major search engines – Google, Yahoo & MSN.

You can then simply click on the table of results to go to the live data at the search engines.

Site Page Tracker can also provide data on how many of your articles have been published around the internet – although I have not used this feature yet, but can see that it would be pretty useful.

For me, the beauty of using Site Page Tracker is that I can immediately see which of my websites need a bit of work on getting indexed. This is a really useful aspect for people who have more than a few websites.

It works by uploading a few php scripts to your web server. Once this is done, there are a few simple settings to complete to get Site Page Tracker working and then you can see all your websites indexed pages and back links.

One of the scripts needs to be run each time you add a new website so that it can update the stats.

You can also set up a cron job to do this automatically each day. By doing this you then get a daily historical view of how you websites are falling in and out of the search engines.

Site Page Tracker is especially easy to install since it does not require MySQL (or any other database) which means less configuration hassles for the user.

I don’t know that there is a limit to how many websites you can track with Site Page Tracker. I’ve been adding heaps without any problems … It’s pretty cool to see how your competition is doing too

It’s also pretty cool not having to check each site individually to see how it is doing in the search engines.

Click here to visit the Site Page Tracker website.

One of my goals for last year was to develop a WordPress theme from scratch. All of the WordPress themes that I use are usually hacked to the way that I like them, or used straight out of the box – like the one I use here – Andreas 08 3 columns ver 1.

So I failed to do it last year. Probably because it wasn’t such an important thing to get done.

However, after being inspired by DaveN’s post about using CSS, I’ve decided that I’m going to develop a WordPress SEO template/theme.

The idea is that I want to use CSS to jig the content so that the article text is read first by the search engines. This will mean that any navigation and sidebar text comes after the article text and will not interfere with SERP results or text in the listings. Sometimes my listings, especially Yahoo! seem to have navigation text in the page description.

Anyway, it’s the 8th of January 2007, so let’s see how long it takes.

UPDATE: This is done. The theme is called SEO Simple. You can see it here.

There are a few reasons for this which include:

• Getting links from sites that have Google Pagerank – so that you get some quicker
• Getting traffic from the directories to your website. If you website appears in the appropriate category, then this traffic will be targetted.
• Moving up the SERPS because of inbound links
• Link building should be part of you off page SEO campaign anyway.

I have created a page of the directories that I use for my Website Directory Submissions and will updated it as I find new ones. The page is called Website Directories.

If you know of any good Website Directories that you would like to share, then leave a comment and I will add it to the list.

I think that most of us agree that link building is one of the core practices that is required to build a successful website. And when I say successful, I mean getting as much traffic as possible.

By having implementing a solid linking strategy, you are looking to gain traffic from the linking websites and also from increasing the authority of your website pages in the Search Engines.

Whether you are a link building newbie or a seasoned pro, I suspect that you will learn something from this list.

The best place to start learning SEO is to go over to SEOmoz and download a free copy of their Beginners Guide to SEO – there are various formats for download.

I honestly believe you will not find a better place to start learning SEO on the internet.

Within its pages you will find important information about:

• What is SEO – And why you need to use it.
• How Search Engines Operate – And why your site needs to be Search Engine Friendly.
• Keyword Research – And providing content for what people are searching for.
• Critical Components of Optimizing a Site – Letting the search engines get around you site as easily as possible.
• Building a Traffic Worthy Site – Make people come to and stay at your website.
• Growing a Sites Popularity – Bring more people to your website.

This is all solid information and will provide a great grounding in SEO and applying it to your websites – and if you don’t know much about SEO, then I suggest you go and download it now.