google | Jason Palmer, CPA, CITP

WordPress – Claim Google Authorship for your Content

July 30, 2013 By Jason Palmer Leave a Comment

Google recently introduced a new way to identify, validate, and rank content called “Authorship.” This is accomplished by linking your Google+ Profile, which should contain a head shot picture, to the content (article posts) on your WordPress site.

By claiming ownership of your content, it enables Google to know that the article was presumably written by a real human being, you, as it is linked to a Google+ Profile. When your article appears in the Google search results, a picture of you will be displayed next to the search results.

The coolest things about the new Authorship search result are the two links: “by Jason Palmer” and “More by Jason Palmer.” When you click on the “by Jason Palmer”, you will see my Google+ Profile page. When you click on the “More by Jason Palmer”, you get a mini-Google Search engine of all my content which enables readers to find other articles that I have written.

Google has not yet fully disclosed exactly how the new Authorship link will improve your content position. One could assume that authenticated content will rank higher because it is from a real person instead of an anonymous source that could have simply plagiarized or copied it and republished it with erroneous attribution.

Another great benefit is that if you use Google Analytics, you will get additional activity statistics on your Google Authorship enabled content.

If you have the Genesis Framework, implementing Google Authorship can be accomplished in three easy steps: Find your Google+ Profile URL; Enter it in the Google+ box on your user profile page in WordPress; Add your site to your “Contribute To” section in your Google+ Profile. Rather than duplicate other great content, see this article at CopyBlogger.com “Claim Google Authorship for Your WordPress Website in 3 Easy Steps” for screen shots and an extended narrative on how to do it.

If you are not using the Genesis Framework, you can use a generic “Google Authorship” WordPress plugin to accomplish the same task.

Two of the more popular “Google Authorship” WordPress Plugin options are:
Google+ Authorship WordPress Plugin by WP-Buddy.com (Pro Version $8)
and
AuthorSure WordPress Plugin by Authorsure.com

Once you have this setup, you can test what your article search results will look like with the “Google Structured Data Testing Tool” available in the Google Webmaster Tools site.

If you are still not convinced of the value, again from CopyBlogger.com, here is another great article entitled, “10 Reasons Writers Should Claim Their Google Authorship Markup”

Microsoft Windows 8 vs. Apple Mountain Lion is like comparing Gasoline vs. Diesel Fuel

July 25, 2012 By Jason Palmer Leave a Comment

The blogosphere has been in overdrive with reviews of the latest operating system releases from both Microsoft and Apple. It is very entertaining to read the endless commentary debating the merits and faults of each operating system. In many respects it is a classic “Coke vs. Pepsi” style debate. Most people have a definite taste preference that is unlikely to change. We all recall age old question: “Are you a Mac or a PC?”

Both camps seem to miss the point entirely: Unlike Coke vs. Pepsi where both are Cola products that can, and frequently are substituted for each other, the same does not apply to the Windows and Apple operating systems. Apple operating systems only run on Apple hardware. And, barring 3^rd party software (Parallels or VMWare Fusion) or custom installations (Boot Camp), no version of Microsoft Windows can run on Apple Hardware. (And if you are running Microsoft Windows in some capacity on an Apple computer, is that not making them equal? – but I digress.)

I view Apple like Diesel powered vehicles and Microsoft like Gasoline powered vehicles. You can sing the praises of Diesel engines and their increased fuel efficiency vs. the performance of Gasoline engines. The fact is that no matter how many Diesel vehicles are sold this year, the number will pale by comparison to the number of Gasoline vehicles. And, if you were to add up all the gas vs. diesel fueled vehicles in similar fashion to the installed base of Microsoft Windows vs. the Apple operating systems, you start to see the futility of debating who is going to win the operating system war.

Does it really matter how great Diesel is vs. Gasoline as a Fuel for an engine? If you have a Gasoline powered car, you are using Gasoline in the fuel tank. Diesel is not an option or substitute. The same holds true for running most line-of-business software applications: The Apple operating system is just not an option. Microsoft Windows, and its’ many flavors are the only choice on the menu. As an example, virtually all Professional Tax preparation, Accounting System, and Audit/Write-up software applications are Microsoft Windows only. (Cloud based products excluded.)

We can discuss how spectacular Apple Mountain Lion is: the iPad/iPhone like experience brought to an iMac or MacBook Pro, the new cool graphics, widgets, whatever… But, the practical reality is that if I am in a Microsoft Windows world, debating the merits of Microsoft Windows 8 vs. Apple Mountain Lion just makes for either wishful thinking or great cocktail conversation. We can even marvel at the new interface of Windows 8 and how Microsoft is trying to unify the user experience across all devices but you will never see it running on an iPad or an iPhone.

Some will say it is not about the Business environment but about Consumers and which operating system, Microsoft or Apple, is going to power my Toaster, or on a more serious note, my Smartphone, Tablet, and possibly Computer – if not replaced by a Tablet.

I respond that the conversation is not about which Fossil Fuel will power my next car: Gasoline or Diesel – but what comes next? Using the car analogy, it will most likely be a hybrid or perhaps a fully electric vehicle. Maybe Fusion technology will be available in my lifetime.

The next operating system to power my Smartphone, Toaster, or Computer could be Android or ChomeOS – both from Google. If that becomes true, where does that leave the Microsoft vs. Apple operating system debate?

It is spectacular that Microsoft and Apple are definitely making technology easier to use than ever before with their evolutionary changes in the operating systems.

The concern is that Microsoft and Apple may be perfecting the Buggy Whip for the the Horse Drawn Carriage, both of which were completely replaced by the Motor Carriage, within one generation. And, Microsoft and Apple may wake up one day and realize that Google has completely changed the model by eliminating the concept of an operating system and having everything run in “The Cloud.”

Google Webmaster Tools

June 30, 2012 By Jason Palmer Leave a Comment

Google Webmaster Tools provide you with detailed reports about how visible pages on your site are to Google.

Using Google Webmaster Tools you can:

See how Google crawls and indexes your site and see specific errors generated such as “page not found.”
Learn about internal and external links and which key word search queries bring traffic to your site.
Upload a Site Map file which tells Google which pages are most important and which URLs (pages) you want Google to index.

One of the most helpful aspects of Google Webmaster Tools is the “Site Health” area. Here Google tells you about Crawl errors. Google is extremely efficient and subsequently many sites have their generic sample posts indexed at Google. You delete them but Google still thinks they exist. The Crawl Error report will tell you the exact page location and the date the error was detected giving you the opportunity to investigate further.

Google has no way of knowing, without a little human intervention, if a “Page Not Found” is a technical problem, a page that is now behind a secure login, or has been removed. Once Google indexes a page or is told to index a page at a certain URL, it will keep trying until told otherwise. It is through the Google Webmaster Tools that you can mark these errors as “fixed” or permanently remove a URL from Google’s index.

Similar to Google Analytics, (Read my post on “Google Analytics for WordPress“) Google Webmaster Tools provides specialized traffic analysis focusing on and listing the search terms that caused your site to be displayed somewhere in the results listing of the query and its’ average position. And there are extensive reports on which sites link back to your site as well as how your site links to itself between categories and pages. Of course, Google+ activity reports are included showing search impact, activity, and audience.

The most important feature of Google Webmaster Tools is the Optimization Section. It is here that you can upload a SiteMap.xml file that tells Google about pages that it might not otherwise find during the Index Crawl and it gives you an opportunity to definitively tell Google about the content of your site. In a similar manner to the Search Engine Optimization discussed in my Post, “All in One SEO Pack for WordPress”, the SiteMap file can also provide metadata about the types of content on your site such as video, images or news. A SiteMap entry for a video might include the run time, category, and format information. For an image, the subject matter, type, and any license information. A SiteMap file can also alert Google to the last time of a site update and the frequency of change of or addition of new content to the site. (A future post will discuss how to create SiteMap.xml file.)

In short, using the Google Webmaster Tools Dashboard allows me to keep my site as “Google Friendly” as possible by alerting me immediately to any Indexing Crawl Errors, the status of my SiteMap.xml file updates, and it helps me determine which keyword searches are drawing traffic to my JasonPalmer.com WordPresss web site.

Useful Google Webmaster Links:

Google Webmaster Tools:
– http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

Google Webmaster Academy – Everything you ever wanted to know about Google
– http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=checklist.cs&tab=1095542

Google Webmaster Tools Help:
– http://support.google.com/webmasters/?hl=en

Google Analytics for WordPress

June 28, 2012 By Jason Palmer Leave a Comment

Google Analytics for WordPress answers the age-old question, “I built it, did they come?” Every web server creates a log file that tracks details about the visitors to a web site. The challenge becomes getting access to that file and then having the tools to process the raw data to get meaningful information. It all sounds very complicated and it was, but not anymore. Furthermore, traditional web visitor log file analysis was very generic and not optimized for Content Managed Web sites such as WordPress.

Is there an easier way? Yes, Google Analytics for WordPress. (Note: Google Analytics can be implemented on any web site even though the scope of this article is specific to WordPress.)

Google Analytics for WordPress is a plugin that instantly reports back the activity on your site to the Google Analytics Engine for analysis and reporting.

Information includes Analytics on:

Content – The parts of the web site that had the most activity.

Social – Determines the interaction with Social Media platforms such as Google +1 and many others.

Mobile – Activity/Visitors using devices such as iPads, Tablets, and Smartphones.

Conversion – Response rate to Ad campaigns, direct response, and eCommerce – as applicable.

Advertising – How well social, mobile, search and display ads are working at bringing traffic to the site.

To view the information being communicated to the Google Analytics Engine, you need to sign up for a Basic Account, which is free, at the Google Analytics website at http://www.google.com/analytics. (If you already have a Gmail or other Google Site account, you can simply activate Google Analytics for your account.) Once you have an account, you need to perform a few simple steps to validate your web site domain (i.e. JasonPalmer.com ) to prove to Google Analytics that you are authorized to collect information on the domain. You can do this by manually entering your Google Analytics account number also called the “UA Code” in to the settings section of the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin. Or, if you are using Google WebMaster Tools, you can authenticate the site via an entry in the Zone file of the Domain Name Server (DNS) that is Authoritative for your domain. (Note: If you understand the term DNS, and you know who you are, this will be the easier method. For those that do not, Google WebMaster Tools will be discussed in another post shortly.)

Once everything is fully configured and connected, it may take up to twenty-four hours for Google Analytics to start creating reports from the collected visitor data. These reports will be extremely beneficial in helping you understanding the activity on your web site. The reports will break down your visitors by geography, language, location; are they new or returning visitors?; the frequency of their visits and how long they stay on the site; which web browser and operating system did they user – (Internet Explorer or FireFox or Safari) and are they Mac, PC, Android, IOS, etc.; source of traffic such as Google or a Social media site; analysis of the content for speed, page visits, page response time; internal search; and numerous other variations on the major reporting areas listed.

Learn more about Google Analytics for WordPress at:
– http://yoast.com/wordpress/google-analytics

The Google Analytics for WordPress plugin at WordPress.org:
– http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress

WordPress, Anti-WebSpam, and the Akismet Plugin

June 24, 2012 By Jason Palmer 1 Comment

One of the great things about WordPress is the ability to get immediate feedback. Readers can leave comments on individual entries, and through Trackback or Pingback can comment on their own sites as well.

Imagine how excited I was to see that within hours of my first official WordPress post on my newly launched site, I had a comment. In fact, on a fairly consistent basis, within hours of most of my posts, I had received comments. Wow! Is this Internet thing great or what? What is it they say, “If you publish it, they will come?”

And come they did, but “they” were BOTS (Computer Programs acting like people) and not actual people. This weekend Google honored what would have been the 100^th Birthday of the famed British mathematician, Alan Turing (born June 23^rd, 1912). (See the Google Doodle here.) His invention of the “Turing Test”, which is designed to test if a human can tell if the responses received from a series of asked questions are from another human or if they are programmed responses from a computer, was the inspiration for today’s article. The true purpose of this test described in a 1950 paper was to answer the question, “Can Machines Think?” (Entitled, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, click here for background)

At first glance, many of the comments received seemed perfectly legitimate. Sentence structure and grammar were correct and contextually relevant. On closer examination, even though the comments were complimentary in nature, they were also very generic and could have been written about any post. Other clues that the comments were not sent by humans, but by machines, were that the sending email addresses were mostly made up of random characters and all from free email services. The final clue was the link provided by the purported author of the comment. (When you make a comment on a WordPress Site, you enter your name, email address, and optionally, a link back to your own site.) None of the links went to legitimate sites. Some went to sites that offered fraudulent software license keys at extreme discounts, others were to doorway pages setup strictly to generate revenue from Google Adword impressions, and some went to discount offers for well know pharmaceutical sold through questionable channels.

WordPress has a number of features to make sure that only legitimate comments appear on your site. The first and most powerful is that all comments can be moderated by the Administrator. On the WordPress Dashboard, a little message cloud appears showing the number of comments awaiting approval by the Administrator. If you have a low traffic site, moderating the comments manually and without the assistance of a WordPress Anti-WebSpam Plugin may be sufficient.

However, if you would a little help from technology inspired by Alan Turing, you can let a “machine” determine if the comment is from a human or another machine. This is where the Akismet Anti-WebSpam plugin can help. Akismet provides a monthly subscription service for commercial sites (free for personal sites) that applies hundreds of tests to each comment and returns an up or down answer to the question: Is this comment WebSpam? The result of the Akismet tests properly tag the comment and place it in the correct Comment Queue for your further review giving you a head start on your comment moderation tasks.

The Akismet Plugin is installed by default with every installation of WordPress. However, you must visit Akismet.com to register for a subscription, free or paid, to get an activation key so that all of the comments to your site are submitted to the Akismet engines for review.

Learn more about Akismet
– http://www.akismet.com

Learn more about Alan Turing
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
– http://www.alanturing.net/

Learn about the Turing Test
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

Becoming the “Jason Palmer” on Google

June 21, 2012 By Jason Palmer Leave a Comment

Anyone who meets me would never confuse me with any other Jason Palmer. In fact, people say that I make a strong first impression that makes me virtually unforgettable – all good of course. You may read in to that as you will but it is along the lines of “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. And that brings us to a new series of articles on becoming “the” Jason Palmer on Google.

For the past twenty-five years of my career, I have been virtually invisible. To use a term of art, I was “off-the-grid” and nowhere is that more apparent then if you try to find me in a Google Search. Much of my consulting work has been for high profile accounts where being below the radar and discrete is good form. Almost all of my work has come from referrals where I am a well-known quantity prior to the introduction, and my credentials and references, if even asked for, are more than sufficient for me to be essentially hired before I actually meet the client. You could say in my field that I am a little like the “A-Team”, if you have a job, and you can find me, I can definitely help you. And there in lies the issue: Since most of my work comes from referrals, you have to know someone who knows me to find me.

To that end, approximately two weeks ago I decided to start to make myself visible on the Internet – Google specifically. There is no magic bullet but there are specific tried and true techniques that I will be sharing to demonstrate that one can go from invisible to highly visible in a reasonable period of time. In fact, the very first article I posted, if you search the proper two keywords, (M451 Error 13 – click here to see the proof), will appear as the very first listing in a Google Search. That is actually pretty impressive – if you are looking for one of my serious tech articles or what I call “Complex Solutions to Complex Problems.”

However, that simply demonstrates that I have highly specialized knowledge to solve a very specific problem with a very specific solution. It does nothing in particular for making me “the” Jason Palmer on Google. Search “Jason Palmer” (click here), and I am buried amongst a sea of “Jason Palmer’s” not appearing until the third page – at least as of the date of this post.

So, how am I going to become “the” Jason Palmer on Google? The answer? Incrementally. First if you look at the title of my site, I am not just “Jason Palmer” but “Jason Palmer – Tech Consultant.” My name is not so unique that there are not many other “Jason Palmer’s” but by adding the “Tech Consultant” tag line, I can narrow the field. This change alone, along with two weeks worth of daily posts allows someone to put in “Jason Palmer Tech” (Click here and see) and put me on the first page of Google.

It’s a start.