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Part 1 in a Series on using the HeadSpace plugin for WordPress for maximum SEO impact. This article gives an overview of HeadSpace’s comprehensive features. Next up, we’ll look at SEO tactics using the plugin.
by Scott Frangos, Managing Editor for WebHelperMagazine.com
If you’re a WordPress BlogMaster, or developer who uses WordPress as a Content Management System or blog, you can’t overlook the importance of the “HeadSpace” plugin, by UrbanGiraffe, for SEO… and a variety of other uses including page specific themes, and RSS management.
View the above illustrations (screenshots of the software) by clicking for a larger view.
I both write for this magazine, and also develop WordPress CMS websites for clients, so like most WebMasters and BlogMasters, I stay pretty busy. That’s another reason I like the Headspace plugin — it provides a lot of time saving automation like mass editing, and dynamic data extraction features. We’ll see how those features can help you, below. Remember to support the development of this plugin — donate to its fine author, John Godley at the above link (UrbanGiraffe).
Go get the plugin. We’ll take a look at Five administration controls in HeadSpace, then finish up with some thoughts about SEO for your WordPress CMS website.
Global Settings…
Above, under OPTIONS > HeadSpace > Page Settings, are a number of settings for different types of pages in your WordPress CMS website. Under each, you can enter a Tile, Description, and Keywords that will be placed in the MetaTags for that page. The program uses a “Nesting Concept” which means that it looks at the “Global Settings” found here first, and applies that to every page, unless page specific tags have been set elsewhere.
Page Modules…
Next there are some drag & drop modules that you can add to your page/post editing screen by dragging a module under “Disabled” (far right above), to either the “Simple” column (far left), or the “Advanced” column (middle). If you drag a module you wish to activate to the Simple column, that module will always appear when you edit a post or page. If you drag it to the middle, “Advance” column, the module options will only appear after you click on the “advanced” link under “Headspace Meta Data” (see below).
Site Modules…
Above, underneath “Page Modules” you’ll find the “Site Modules”. As shown, I’ve turned on Google Analytics, CrazyEgg (another way to analyze site stats), Frame Breaker (prevents other sites from using your content on its site in a Frame), and WordPress Widgets (allows you to specify widgets for individual pages) — CAUTION: If you enable “WordPress Widgets” under “Site Modules”, your sidebar widget set-up will be changed — mine lost 6 sidebar widgets until I turned off this option.
When you activate a module (by simply click the check box next to its name), you then have the opportunity to change settings which affect the behavior of your WordPress site. For example, if I click on “Page Counts”, it becomes active, then I can click on the Edit icon (at right) and I get the options for this module:
Above, the Page Counts option allows you to choose how many excerpts will be shown on Archives pages, and in Search results. Note that the pop-down also offers an option to display the full posts.
Individual Post Tags & Meta Data…
{smartads}
Above, one of the most helpful features of HeadSpace is that it makes it quick and easy to add “Suggested tags” to your posts for SEO purposes — just click on a tag to add it in the “Tags” field. Note that the program suggests an initial list of tags, and you can also click on “Yahoo” to get more related tags to add to your story. If you are on an older version of WordPress, you may not see the “Tags” field shown — this feature is a major reason to upgrade (WordPress 2.3 screenshots shown here).
Notice just under the Suggested Tags, that HeadSpace has “HeadSpace Meta Data” fields for Page Title, and Description. If you’re in to SEO, you know that even today, a well written Page Title and Description can still help you with search engine ranking. The “advanced” link (bottom right), when clicked, reveals additional page modules which you may have added in the previous step.
Mass Management…
Let’s say you run a site with quite a few posts that are archived. It would take a long time to go back and individually change tags and meta data for each post, right? Well, HeadSpace has that covered, as well, using Mass Management:
To take advantage of HeadSpace’s Mass Management feature, you first navigate to Manage > Meta Tags, then a list of all of your pages and posts appears. There you can manage, change, and edit not only tags and keywords (shown), but also pate titles, slugs, site description and name, page description and more text for each and every post and page in your WordPress site. Wow. How powerful is that?
SEO and your WordPress CMS Website…
Search Engine Optimization… how important is it? Tags are recognized by search engines — they are treated like keywords, and so increase your page rankings over time. Most small businesses do not have the resources to spend on SEO. That’s where a plugin like HeadSpace comes in.
Even if you don’t know a lot about SEO, you should realize that keywords, titles, site descriptions, and other important text items that your CMS generates are all a part of the formula a search engine uses to rank your site… and move it up in the search returns. Google “SEO Strategies” and spend a couple of hours reading up. Then, wrap your head around HeadSpace and spend another 3-5 hours inputing SEO rich keywords and phrases into the search data for your site. That 5-10 hours should pay off bigtime in site traffic.
There’s more to tagging than just SEO. This concept is simple — tags are another way to make navigation, around your own site when using the WordPress tagging system, more easy. Some BlogMasters use Technocrati tags — their tags link visitors over to Technocrati. Is this a good idea… to send your visitors off of your own website? I’ll let you be the judge of that, but when you have a content rich site… the answer is obvious — give them links to related content on your site. That’s another strength of the WordPress tagging system that HeadSpace helps facilitate.
About the Author: Scott Frangos is a web developer, college instructor and graphic designer. He is Managing Partner at WebFadds.com, a web development firm specializing in WordPress Content Management Websites. He lives in Portland, Oregon with wife and partner, Pepper, and their three dogs: Wisdom, Spirit, & Steggman.
Using Headspace WordPress Plugin for SEO
HeadSpace Part 2
Part 1 in a Series on using the HeadSpace plugin for WordPress for maximum SEO impact. This article gives an overview of HeadSpace’s comprehensive features. Next up, we’ll look at SEO tactics using the plugin.
by Scott Frangos, Managing Editor for WebHelperMagazine.com
If you’re a WordPress BlogMaster, or developer who uses WordPress as a Content Management System or blog, you can’t overlook the importance of the “HeadSpace” plugin, by UrbanGiraffe, for SEO… and a variety of other uses including page specific themes, and RSS management.
View the above illustrations (screenshots of the software) by clicking for a larger view.
I both write for this magazine, and also develop WordPress CMS websites for clients, so like most WebMasters and BlogMasters, I stay pretty busy. That’s another reason I like the Headspace plugin — it provides a lot of time saving automation like mass editing, and dynamic data extraction features. We’ll see how those features can help you, below. Remember to support the development of this plugin — donate to its fine author, John Godley at the above link (UrbanGiraffe).
Go get the plugin. We’ll take a look at Five administration controls in HeadSpace, then finish up with some thoughts about SEO for your WordPress CMS website.
Global Settings…
Above, under OPTIONS > HeadSpace > Page Settings, are a number of settings for different types of pages in your WordPress CMS website. Under each, you can enter a Tile, Description, and Keywords that will be placed in the MetaTags for that page. The program uses a “Nesting Concept” which means that it looks at the “Global Settings” found here first, and applies that to every page, unless page specific tags have been set elsewhere.
Page Modules…
Next there are some drag & drop modules that you can add to your page/post editing screen by dragging a module under “Disabled” (far right above), to either the “Simple” column (far left), or the “Advanced” column (middle). If you drag a module you wish to activate to the Simple column, that module will always appear when you edit a post or page. If you drag it to the middle, “Advance” column, the module options will only appear after you click on the “advanced” link under “Headspace Meta Data” (see below).
Site Modules…
Above, underneath “Page Modules” you’ll find the “Site Modules”. As shown, I’ve turned on Google Analytics, CrazyEgg (another way to analyze site stats), Frame Breaker (prevents other sites from using your content on its site in a Frame), and WordPress Widgets (allows you to specify widgets for individual pages) — CAUTION: If you enable “WordPress Widgets” under “Site Modules”, your sidebar widget set-up will be changed — mine lost 6 sidebar widgets until I turned off this option.
When you activate a module (by simply click the check box next to its name), you then have the opportunity to change settings which affect the behavior of your WordPress site. For example, if I click on “Page Counts”, it becomes active, then I can click on the Edit icon (at right) and I get the options for this module:
Above, the Page Counts option allows you to choose how many excerpts will be shown on Archives pages, and in Search results. Note that the pop-down also offers an option to display the full posts.
Individual Post Tags & Meta Data…
{smartads}
Above, one of the most helpful features of HeadSpace is that it makes it quick and easy to add “Suggested tags” to your posts for SEO purposes — just click on a tag to add it in the “Tags” field. Note that the program suggests an initial list of tags, and you can also click on “Yahoo” to get more related tags to add to your story. If you are on an older version of WordPress, you may not see the “Tags” field shown — this feature is a major reason to upgrade (WordPress 2.3 screenshots shown here).
Notice just under the Suggested Tags, that HeadSpace has “HeadSpace Meta Data” fields for Page Title, and Description. If you’re in to SEO, you know that even today, a well written Page Title and Description can still help you with search engine ranking. The “advanced” link (bottom right), when clicked, reveals additional page modules which you may have added in the previous step.
Mass Management…
Let’s say you run a site with quite a few posts that are archived. It would take a long time to go back and individually change tags and meta data for each post, right? Well, HeadSpace has that covered, as well, using Mass Management:
To take advantage of HeadSpace’s Mass Management feature, you first navigate to Manage > Meta Tags, then a list of all of your pages and posts appears. There you can manage, change, and edit not only tags and keywords (shown), but also pate titles, slugs, site description and name, page description and more text for each and every post and page in your WordPress site. Wow. How powerful is that?
SEO and your WordPress CMS Website…
Search Engine Optimization… how important is it? Tags are recognized by search engines — they are treated like keywords, and so increase your page rankings over time. Most small businesses do not have the resources to spend on SEO. That’s where a plugin like HeadSpace comes in.
Even if you don’t know a lot about SEO, you should realize that keywords, titles, site descriptions, and other important text items that your CMS generates are all a part of the formula a search engine uses to rank your site… and move it up in the search returns. Google “SEO Strategies” and spend a couple of hours reading up. Then, wrap your head around HeadSpace and spend another 3-5 hours inputing SEO rich keywords and phrases into the search data for your site. That 5-10 hours should pay off bigtime in site traffic.
There’s more to tagging than just SEO. This concept is simple — tags are another way to make navigation, around your own site when using the WordPress tagging system, more easy. Some BlogMasters use Technocrati tags — their tags link visitors over to Technocrati. Is this a good idea… to send your visitors off of your own website? I’ll let you be the judge of that, but when you have a content rich site… the answer is obvious — give them links to related content on your site. That’s another strength of the WordPress tagging system that HeadSpace helps facilitate.
About the Author: Scott Frangos is a web developer, college instructor and graphic designer. He is Managing Partner at WebFadds.com, a web development firm specializing in WordPress Content Management Websites. He lives in Portland, Oregon with wife and partner, Pepper, and their three dogs: Wisdom, Spirit, & Steggman.