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2012-12-20, 11:58:12
Ok so this is more of a tutorial but had no idea where to post it so im going with it here.
Fact is there are no SEO optimized Blogging or News plugins in Extend at all. 18N Special pages is the closest thing but the way it formats URL's creates alot of extended problems and costs some points in SEO. Plugins store data slightly different than GS core pages and this does have an impact on how Google perceives your content. The creator of 18N seems to be one that actually acknowledges this and does the best job of creating plugins which integrate well with the GS Core making the content his plugins create alot more relevant to Google.
Heres the thing. Get Simple Core is already highly SEO optimized in and of its self and creating a blog using the 18N search & Special Pages features in combination with GS paging system is the best current way to run a blogging engine.
Pages already have the necessary meta descriptions, tagging and formats the URL's in a way that Google simply loves. Providing fancy URLS are turned on. If fancy URL's is not enabled then you will lose a few points but not nearly as much as using plugins with non-integrated content.
The ingredients for your Blog should include
1. The 18n Search Plugin & 18n Special Pages, id recommend installing all of his plugins just to have on hand. Special Pages is going to just make organizing this blog easier from the page manager.
2. A special Jquery RSS Feed Reader called ZrssFeed http://www.zazar.net/developers/jquery/zrssfeed/
The setup is simple.
Copy the Zrssfiles in to your template directory, its ok to separate it in to whatever folders you store your CSS and js in as long as your header properly links up the files. Be sure you link them before the get_header argument otherwise you may get a conflict here or there.
I would suggest creating a fresh template file and include a blog sidebar component. How you set it up is up to you.
Create a page in GS, Call it Blog or whatever you want.
Next in your new Blog page place the codes
As you can see, the tag we will be focusing in on is blog. Or if your page is for news use the news tag to increase refinement you can even do something like _blog or _news just to give the search results a tighter confinement.
The Blog page is essentially targeted search results page but works excellently for display of your blog entries.
Now view your new blog page and you will see a new rss feed icon and a link.
Right click on that link and copy its location. Now open your ZrssFeed setup instructions which are easy to follow and paste the RSS feed link in to the config of Zrss. Zrss displays feed results through a simple <div> tag.
Now go to your components and edit side bar and paste the call to ZrssFeed someplace in your code.
with the div id being any name you want
the variable before the .rssfeed should match the id of your div tag. You can edit settings in the Zrss Script to disable the header so the title of your rss feed wont display. Replace it with an <h4> title or something. Once set this will give you an optimized listing of as many recent blog posts as you want. Just edit your script settings to your liking.
Remember this is an SEO optimized blog so a little setup is needed since we are using GS Core as the entire engine.
Now when you go to post your blog entries you will always open page options when you create a new page.
In Tags the word blog or news or whatever tag you used needs to be present. I also add a month and year tag to help build archive pages just be sure the tag format you choose never changes otherwise your in for issues. Then add whatever other tags might be associated with your posting.
Your post should be a Child of the Blog page so it will collapse with the parent in your admin and not clutter things up. Then of course select the blog template if you created one. And dont forget to fill in the meta description or else this whole process just became useless.
Save your first post and go view your new blog page. You will probably need to make CSS edits to get Zrss feed to look good on your site but that part is a breeze.
Now you have a fully SEO optimized Web blog in Get Simple CMS.
You can also use the same technique to build individual archive post pages. Make an Archive page, use the search code but change the focus tag to the month and year formatted tag you pick then just add a link to the page in your side bar. It requires a little further setup but repeating the technique is all there really is to it.
You can also go as far as setting up categories using the tag system then just manually linking to them in the sidebar.
A little manual work is alot better than damaging a potential Google ranking with unoptimized content.
If there is anything anyone could add to this or even change to make it better that would be great. This was just the best current way I could figure out how to do it with the past 4 days worth of research.
Fact is there are no SEO optimized Blogging or News plugins in Extend at all. 18N Special pages is the closest thing but the way it formats URL's creates alot of extended problems and costs some points in SEO. Plugins store data slightly different than GS core pages and this does have an impact on how Google perceives your content. The creator of 18N seems to be one that actually acknowledges this and does the best job of creating plugins which integrate well with the GS Core making the content his plugins create alot more relevant to Google.
Heres the thing. Get Simple Core is already highly SEO optimized in and of its self and creating a blog using the 18N search & Special Pages features in combination with GS paging system is the best current way to run a blogging engine.
Pages already have the necessary meta descriptions, tagging and formats the URL's in a way that Google simply loves. Providing fancy URLS are turned on. If fancy URL's is not enabled then you will lose a few points but not nearly as much as using plugins with non-integrated content.
The ingredients for your Blog should include
1. The 18n Search Plugin & 18n Special Pages, id recommend installing all of his plugins just to have on hand. Special Pages is going to just make organizing this blog easier from the page manager.
2. A special Jquery RSS Feed Reader called ZrssFeed http://www.zazar.net/developers/jquery/zrssfeed/
The setup is simple.
Copy the Zrssfiles in to your template directory, its ok to separate it in to whatever folders you store your CSS and js in as long as your header properly links up the files. Be sure you link them before the get_header argument otherwise you may get a conflict here or there.
I would suggest creating a fresh template file and include a blog sidebar component. How you set it up is up to you.
Create a page in GS, Call it Blog or whatever you want.
Next in your new Blog page place the codes
Code:
(% searchrss title="Subscribe to my Blog" name="blog" tags:blog numWords:30 %)
(% searchresults tags:blog max:0 numWords:50 HEADER:"" %)As you can see, the tag we will be focusing in on is blog. Or if your page is for news use the news tag to increase refinement you can even do something like _blog or _news just to give the search results a tighter confinement.
The Blog page is essentially targeted search results page but works excellently for display of your blog entries.
Now view your new blog page and you will see a new rss feed icon and a link.
Right click on that link and copy its location. Now open your ZrssFeed setup instructions which are easy to follow and paste the RSS feed link in to the config of Zrss. Zrss displays feed results through a simple <div> tag.
Now go to your components and edit side bar and paste the call to ZrssFeed someplace in your code.
Code:
<div id="blog-feed"></div>Code:
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function () {
$('#blog-feed').rssfeed('http://www.yourRSSurl.com', {
limit: 5
});
});
</script>Remember this is an SEO optimized blog so a little setup is needed since we are using GS Core as the entire engine.
Now when you go to post your blog entries you will always open page options when you create a new page.
In Tags the word blog or news or whatever tag you used needs to be present. I also add a month and year tag to help build archive pages just be sure the tag format you choose never changes otherwise your in for issues. Then add whatever other tags might be associated with your posting.
Your post should be a Child of the Blog page so it will collapse with the parent in your admin and not clutter things up. Then of course select the blog template if you created one. And dont forget to fill in the meta description or else this whole process just became useless.
Save your first post and go view your new blog page. You will probably need to make CSS edits to get Zrss feed to look good on your site but that part is a breeze.
Now you have a fully SEO optimized Web blog in Get Simple CMS.
You can also use the same technique to build individual archive post pages. Make an Archive page, use the search code but change the focus tag to the month and year formatted tag you pick then just add a link to the page in your side bar. It requires a little further setup but repeating the technique is all there really is to it.
You can also go as far as setting up categories using the tag system then just manually linking to them in the sidebar.
A little manual work is alot better than damaging a potential Google ranking with unoptimized content.
If there is anything anyone could add to this or even change to make it better that would be great. This was just the best current way I could figure out how to do it with the past 4 days worth of research.
