With the coming of Google webmaster tools, having a dynamic sitemap in the Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap has become one of the most important steps of Search Engine Optimization. But creating sitemaps manually for dynamic websites blogs can be very much uncomfortable. For the purpose, the Google Sitemap Generator Plugin for wordpress has been released. This plugin creates a sitemap.xml file in the web server and updates this file whenever a new page or post is created or whenever there is any changes in the blog. Also, every time you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.

In other words, with this new plugin, the blogger no longer needs to update his sitemap as everything is done by its own. All the blogger has to do is install this plugin in the wordpress blog.

Where to Get the Latest Google Sitemap Generator Plugin for wordpress

You can read the documentation of Google Sitemap Generator Plugin for wordpress here.

Download Google Sitemap Generator v3.1.0.1

Akismet is a free wordpress plugin which checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. This plugin is a free plugin and it comes with the wordpress package but you need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.”

How to activate Akismet plugin?

You need WordPress.com API Key to activate the free Akismet Plugin. You can get the WordPress API key by registering in wordpress.com. Once registered, log in and go to your global dashboard and then go to “profile”. There, you will be able to see the API key. It is a lettered word consisting of only numbers and alphabets. Now, In your wordpress blog’s admin panel, go to plugins and activate “Akismet”. It will then ask you to enter the Akismet key and you can enter the key you got above and it’s activated.

Akismet Is a very important plugin because of the increasing number of spammers. Without it, it is almost impossible to check all the comments you receive as a large number of them will be spams. You can also change the settings of Akismet under the Plugins tab > Akismet Configuration. You can set the Akismet to automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month by checking the check box.

In other words, Akismet is the most important and the first plugin that you need to install once you create your wordpress blog.

Get Latest Akismet Plugin

Click here to get information on the the latest Akismet Plugin or Download here.

Until recently, I had been using the free sitemap generator of xml-sitemaps.com. The sitemap generator works fine and is useful for getting your page indexed by Google. Specially for putting the sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools, the sitemap generated by this tool is great. However, the main problem with this tool is that it can’t create a sitemap with more than 500 pages if you are using the free version. You can definitely create a sitemap with infinite number of pages using the pro version but hey, who gets a paid one these days? Everyone’s looking for a free one.
But now with the new Free Google sitemap generator plugin for wordpress, your blog doesn’t need to buy a pro version. All you have to do is download and install the free plugin which is available here. With this new plugin, you will be able to dynamically generate xml sitemaps which are compatible with google and therefore can be much more useful and easy to use. With this new plugin, you don’t need to recreate the sitemap again and again. So, cheers to Arne Brachold who created this plugin. By the way, feel free donating him a few bugs if you really like this plugin.

It’s been around 3 days since the last Google Page Rank Update (I don’t remember exactly). Now, everybody must have seen how the Google page ranks are going these days. Even those sites with thousands of backlinks have a 0 Page Rank and even a simple site with 10 or 20 backlinks has a 3 or 4 Page rank. So, what do you think? Is there a bug in Google’s Page rank algorithm that instead of giving page ranks depending on the backlinks, they are just assigning the Page ranks in some random unknown way? Nope, it’s definitely not a bug and I can assure you a few simple ways to fight against this uncertainty of Google’s Page Rank.

Almost everybody knows some idea on how Google assigns Page Rank to websites. It’s definitely based on the number and quality of backlinks and some other factors. But how come some sites have 0 page rank even though they have thousands of backlinks. The reason is that there are some factors which can let Google blacklist your sites. And those factors are what I’m going to talk about today.

If you can simply avoid these mistakes, I’m sure you will get a Page rank that your site deserves. Now, let’s go to the 5 mistakes that most web developers make in the blind hope that it will increase their page ranks or SERP.

Mistake no. 1: Getting reviewed or linked from blacklisted blogs.
You do this; I’m sure you get a 0 page rank in the next update. I’m not talking about a single blacklisted blog linking to you. I’m talking about hundreds of blacklisted blogs linking to you. This usually happens when you pay a network blogger to post a review of your site in his/her collection of crappy/blacklisted/useless blogs or paying blogger networks like , blogvertise, payu2blog for reviews of your site. Because unknown by many advertisers, there is a mass out there in such sites with thousands of useless, made for money and anti-quality blogs. Many people do this thinking that this will increase their Search Engine Rankings but this will definitely affect your site’s page rank. And the more number of such blogs linking to your site, the more chance you have of getting blacklisted or getting a 0 page rank.

Well, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t advertise on these sites but you should advertise only on quality sites. Paying $100 for a review in a quality blog will do a lot better that getting reviewed by tons of crappy blogs. I mean “Don’t go by quantity. Prefer Quality instead”. Now, “How do I find out whether a blog is blacklisted or not?”. That is a good question and here’s the simple clue – “Does the blog has quality information?”. If the blog is a quality blog writing about useful information rather than pointless reviews of advertisers, then certainly, the blog is not blacklisted. But also see if the Page Rank of the site is 0. If page rank is 0, there is a big chance that the blog is blacklisted unless it is a new blog less than 3 months old. The point is – choose a blog which has a high page rank (check if the blog’s page rank is valid or not at http://www.checkpagerank.net), has quality posts and less number of advertisements.

Mistake no. 2: Very High Outbound Links
Unless your site is a directory or some link related site, linking to too many sites can be a threat for your site’s Page rank. This is not about the total links in your site but the number of links to other sites. This is because if you link to too many sites, Google thinks that you are selling links to other sites or something like and you already know that Google’s not happy with link sales. Having a high outbound links is not a good idea especially for blogs because blogs are not meant to link to other sites, they are meant to give information. So if you have a blog, cut off your outbound links, make it as few as possible.

Mistake no. 3: Having a tag or phrase or disclosure in your site
If your blog is in , you might have already added the disclosure policy. This policy declares that the content in your blog are not always your opinion and may be based on advertiser’s views and ideas. This is where Google kicks your ass. If your blog is not about a useful information but advertiser driven, it doesn’t have a place in Google. Google will definitely give you a 0 Page Rank in the next update if you still have the disclosure unless your site is some big old one like the Daren Rose’s or John Chow’s blog. So, if you are working hard to increase your page rank, it is a good idea to stay away from and that is why I insert an image instead of the word . Even having this word can be a threat.

Mistake no.4: Having very short posts with many links
Many bloggers whom I wouldn’t call bloggers have this habit of writing posts only for money and when they do, they write it so short that it just has the minimum number of words in it as it is required. Google knows it; Google has already taken necessary steps to blacklist such sites. So, keeping your posts lengthy and having lesser links will help you in the long run.

Mistake no.5: Cheating with Google
The biggest reason why Google dominates the other Search Engines is because they deliver quality results in their Search Engine Result Pages. It delivers the most relevant results when you search for a query. And the mystery behind this great Search Engine is its Page Rank. Page Rank is one of the most important factors upon which Google search results are based. So, if you try to increase your page rank or SERP (Search Engine Results Position) by cheating Google, Google will sooner or later detect it and will kick you out when it does.
The point is – Never try to use cheats or deceives to increase your search engine rankings or your page rank or try to deceive your users. Google wants a quality site and will definitely leave you with a bunch of page ranks if your site is useful to the users and if you don’t break rules.

In one of my blogs, I had been using the url format of http://www.mydomainname.com/index.php/2008/07/post-name . This url structure is not used by many people but somehow I used it because it wasn’t working when I tried to use the http://www.mydomainname.com/2008/07/post-name . So, I had been using this permalink style for around 2 years and I never changed it because my advertisers would simply complain that their post urls can’t be found. And it went alright until recently when wordpress 2.6 was released.
When I installed the new wordpress 2.6, this permalink is no more working and I have to change it to the more correct one – http://www.mydomainname.com/2008/07/post-name . But the problem is that if I change it, my post urls will all be changed and many advertisers won’t be able to find their posts -especially those posts which are written for advertisers. So, I had only one choice – to restore to the previous version of wordpress 2.5. For now, that is the only solution to this problem. If you are also having the same URL structure, I recommend you not to upgrade to the new version until a compatible version is released. However, I don’t think that the next version will work on this URL structure because I think they are trying to remove this structure altogether and the last option still remains the same.

I have seen many bloggers having an archives page where all their categories and monthly archives are listed. However, I never thought of adding this page into my blog because I always thought that this feature might not be available with the wordpress itself and may be it comes with a wordpress plugin. But, today I did a little search on google and it comes out to be a default feature of WordPress and it can be done in a minute. I just added this archives page and removed my archives section from the sidebar. I think this will decrease the OBL (Outbound Links) of my homepage without the expense of archival navigation. In short, adding the archives page can save you unnecessary homepage links.

If you are an experienced blogger, I’m sure that you already know how to add an archives page but if you are also a beginner like me, you might wanna read this. To enable your archives page, go to “Write a Page” page of your wordpress admin control panel and create a page called “Archives” or whatever you want. Now, all you have to do is change the Page template whose default value is “Default template” into a “Archives ” Template.

So, you can easily add the archives page. Now. if you want to change the page structure, you can change that in your theme editor’s “archives.php” file and with this simple step, your blog will look much better and become SEO Friendly. Good for SEO Guys.

Today, I just upgraded my wordpress into the latest version of wordpress – the WordPress 2.5. Unlike the various versions released in the past year, this one has a very different look and has new interesting features. This version marks a major change in the theme of the admin control panel and addition of new features in the admin area like the addition of special features in the writing editor. As I start using this version of the wordpress, I found some interesting new features and some drawbacks too. Therefore, I’m listing some of them here.

New Features of WordPress 2.5

• It has a more advanced rich editor with more advanced and easy to use buttons like “Add media”, “Add Video”, “Add Audio” buttons.
• IMO, this new version seems to load much faster than the previous one – especially when you are opening the “Write a post/page” page.
• Addition of filenames in parenthesis in the “theme-editor” page. This one is great because in the old version, sometimes we get confused which file to edit especially with “index.php” which used to be listed under the name “Main Index Template”. Now, every file in a theme is listed like “Main index Template (index.php)” and therefore it is easier to identify the file that we want to edit.
• The “Add link” feature has now come under the main tab “Write”. So, next time you want to add a link, first go to “write” and then choose “link” under it.
• The “Blogroll” main tab has been completely removed and some of them has been put under the main tab “Manage”.
• A new feature called the “Media Library” has been added under the “Manage” Tab.
• The “Tags” tab has also been added under “Manage” with which you can see all the tags used in your posts.
• There is an option to change the admin theme colors under the “Your profile” tab in “users”.
• And finally it has a much different theme which looks lighter than the previous one.

In fact, there are many new features in this one and is much better than the previous one but still I have to say that the previous theme of the admin control panel looks more pleasant and is easy to use. The new theme is somewhat confusing. I’m not sure if this new theme will fit me after some time but I do like the previous one. However, in overall, this new wordpress version is much better and I also recommend you to upgrade your wordpress into this new one if you are already using wordpress. You can download the wordpress 2.5 version at http://wordpress.org/download/ . Use it and enjoy blogging  .