I verified my site in Google Webmaster Tools and tried to submit a sitemap. In the webmaster tools panel, it informed me that my robots.txt file was blocking Google from grabbing my sitemap.

This confused me, as I know I would never knowingly make a robots.txt file to block search engines.

Read on to find out what the problem was, how to fix it, and how it happened in the first place…

The Problem

I checked out my robots.txt file and saw the following:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

As if disallowing all bots wasn’t enough, I saw all the pages of my site had the following meta tag in it.

Okay, so now my SEO was killed on two different levels – search engines can’t index or follow links, if they could somehow first get past the robots.txt.
The Fix

How did I remedy this crucial mistake? It’s a simple fix.

WordPress SEO Visible

I navigated to my privacy settings in the WordPress administration panel and selected I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Sphere, Technorati) and archivers.
Prevention

When installing WordPress, make sure you don’t deselect the checkbox that reads: Allow my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati.
Conclusion

You should always verify your site(s) in Google Webmaster Tools to see if there are any problems with indexing. I hope you found this quick WordPress tip informative, because although this is a simple mistake, it’s something to be aware of when SEO’ing WordPress sites.

[via Themelab]

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1. Fast Loading web site designs – This is the number 1 tip that every web designer should follow. You might design a web site that looks fantastic but few people are going to see it if it takes a long time to load. Your designs should be optimized for the web and should not take more than 15 seconds to load. Remember, you might have a great design but very few people are going to see it if it takes a long time to load.

2. Clear Navigation – Once a visitor has come to your site you need to make them go through your site. To do this you need to have clear navigation. Make sure all your important links are at prominent places. Preferably right on top – that’s usually where a visitor first looks. Make use of menus on the right and the left. Try to link to as many pages of your site. Let your information be accessible from all parts of the site. You never know what a visitor may be interested in. Try to also use the footer for your important links.

3. All Resolutions – Today, there are computers with all kinds of resolution. They range from 640 x 480 to 1024 x 768 and go even higher. Your job is to design your site for all these resolutions. The best way to do this is to design your site in terms of percentage and not pixels.

4. Browser Compatibility – Make sure your site is browser compatible. Your web site should look good in Netscape as well as in Internet Explorer. Don’t stop designing your site as soon as you find that it looks great on IE. Usually Netscape gives some problems, especially when you try doing complicated HTML designs. But don’t give up too soon, usually with patience these problems can be easily fixed.

5. Readable and professional looking fonts – Don’t ask me how many times I’ve clicked out of a site just because the font is in Comic Sans and the color is a bright pink or green. Just by looking at the font you feel that the site is not a professional site. Don’t use Comic Sans and other fancy fonts that may not be available on most computers. If the font you use is not available in a visitors computer the web site will use the default font of your computer which is much worse. So try to keep to common and professional web fonts. The fonts that I always stick to are Arial and Verdana.

6. Minimize the use of images – I believe that sometimes simple designs are the most effective for the web. Keep your site simple but neat. Don’t clutter your page with big, bulky images that take ages to load. Instead use tables creatively and design eye – catching icons that will draw a visitor’s attention to a particular section of your site. Tip – Visitors are usually more interested in content than in design.

7. Use of white space – Try not to clutter up your page with too many images, backgrounds and colorful fonts. Again use the Keep It Simple principle by minimizing the use of graphics and using a lot of white space. White space gives a sense of spaciousness and overall neatness to a site. Notice the white space in our site.

8. Check for broken links – Always check for broken links within a site before uploading it to your web
server. In Dreamweaver you can check for broken links by right clicking on any file in the Site Files Window and then clicking on Check links – Entire Site. If you don’t have this facility you need to upload your site and then check it using online tools like Net Mechanic.

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#2 Never do it yourself, even if you know how to.
The greatest thing about online business is ALL of it can be outsource for cheaper and with better quality than you could ever do by yourself.

Web design, content, product fulfillment; even customer service can be acquired for cheap through outsourcing or even for free by doing creative joint ventures with those in your industry.

#3 Be sustainable.
Don’t try to be the best in everything. It’s better to submit a 200 word blog post only once a day than have 200 different site features that you can’t maintain. Not only will you own your niche, but you won’t water down your brand by spreading yourself to thin.

#4 Launch small.
When starting out, Facebook, Amazon and Google were not the best, biggest or the first in their industry. Instead, the stayed extremely focused on only one aspect of their business, launch it right away and grew it organically. Try to launch perfectly and you’ll miss the boat.

#5 Listen.
If you are always catering to your online audience’s needs, you’ll always be relevant. The greatest thing about doing business online is the market research is intrinsic part of the daily work flow. Visitors and online customers will be the first to tell you what product or services they want, what content they wish to read and where the industry is headed.

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1. Upgrade your WordPress. Hate the thought of saying goodbye to WordPress 2.6? Don’t. You need upgrade to the latest WP version, and you need to do it now. Don’t worry; it’s easy. Just look for the Upgrade button in Tools or your dashboard.

2. Update your plugins. Anything old is a security risk. Keep your plugin versions up-to-date.

3. Delete the default user. In this case, it’s Admin so bin this. Replace it with a new user (naturally, this user has admin rights) and create a nickname for this user. That way, the username on public display is not the same as yours.

4. Limit the access to wp-admin. This restricts .htaccess of your wp-admin to your IP. The downside to this security measure, though, is that you will need to update the .htaccess folder whenever you move to another area. You may need another website walkthrough for this; but obviously, this step is out of the question for you if your IP address is dynamic.

5. Install the plugin Login Lockdown. This plugin records the time stamp and IP address whenever someone tries to log in to WordPress and fails. It works great at preventing attempts to discover your password through brute force attacks. If attempts to log in by one IP range exceed the maximum number of tries allowed, the plugin automatically disables the login function.

Of course, there are many more ways you can make your blog hack-proof. This website walkthrough only covers the basics and the ones that are easiest to do. Feel free to look for more! When it comes to website security, it’s better to go over-protect than be sorry.

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WordPress is flexible: With WordPress you can choose whether to use a post or a page to promote a product. You can also choose to enable comments on your product pages in order to solicit user-generated content on your website in the form of reader reviews. It also allows further customization by choosing whether to have a static front page (rather than a long page of posts) so you can highlight particular products or your mailing list.

WordPress supports themes: There’s a saying that you only have once chance to make a good first impression. Designing and testing a new look every other week for a traditional site is time-consuming, but with WordPress, it’s as simple as picking out a theme you like, uploading it, and clicking a button. WordPress’ theme capabilities make modifying the look of a site based on whether someone is looking at the homepage, a category page, or a single entry page a reality. That means you can better optimize each area of your website for higher conversion rates.

WordPress can be extended with plugins: Being a lightweight software application, WordPress doesn’t come with every capability under the sun right out of the box, but that doesn’t mean you can’t add that capability. With plugins, you can have WordPress do a number of things such as maintain a mailing list, create shortened affiliate links and track their clicks, or even import affiliate product feeds directly into your website.

WordPress has built-in author management: One part of growing an affiliate marketing business is learning when and how to delegate. Since WordPress allows for multiple authors, you can easily have other people create and add content to your website without giving out your personal admin information or giving them too much power over your website, only enough to get the job done.

The WordPress community is huge: Since WordPress is so widespread, there are many volunteers who develop themes, plugins, and understand the intricate workings of the software and can offer help should you encounter a problem. There are also a number of guides and books to help you get started installing and using WordPress. Basically, if you ever get stuck on something, there is most likely someone right around the bend that has an answer.

It should be more than clear that WordPress isn’t just for blogging anymore. Use the software to help manage your entire affiliate website and watch your productivity go through the roof.

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1. All in One SEO Pack

This wordpress plugin helps you to prepare the basics of SEO for your blog. You can have metatags for your entire blog or different sets for each different page.

2. Redirection

There may be changes to your permalink URL of a particular page of a blog. You may have updated it, may have shifted hosts, or have renamed the link URL. What happens is the user comes to the URL which was there before, but doesn’t find it, resulting in loss of traffic and goodwill. Redirection takes care of this and automatically redirects the user to the
Updated page resulting in lower loss of traffic, it is a very useful wordpress plugin for SEO.

3. Robots Meta

Search engines entire sites by default, and sometimes that result in penalty due to duplicate content present in different pages. Proper SEO should take care of this, and robots meta helps this by telling engines which areas of site to crawl and which not to crawl. Robots Meta is a good wordpress plugin for this. Good for SEO and hence good for traffic on your wordpress blog too.

4. SEO Smart Links

Internal link structure is one of the key issues of SEO. Search engines give more importance to pages that are linked again and again from a site, giving that page more importance than the others. Doing that manually would take hours and would be a continual task. SEO Smart links allows you to specify a word, like ‘traffic’ and then link it to a post on your site. Then each time the word traffic appears on your site, it’s automatically turned into a link you specified.

5. SEO Friendly Images

For good SEO, image should be tagged properly and meaningfully. SEO friendly images do just that. If you are keen to use images in your wordpress blog, you should be keen to use this wordpress plugin as well.

6. Google Positioner

Know what the users are searching for, instead of guessing what they could search for and building accordingly. This application gives you the group of keywords users used to get to you, so that you can position your pages accordingly. Cool, isn’t it?

7. Permalinks Moved Permanently

This works like the redirect plugin, only in a simpler and better way.

8. Nofollow Case by Case

The nofollow is used so that no pagerank value is given to comment links. However, a new blogger may want to give away that juice to attract new users, who gets value for their posts. This wordpress plugin does exactly that.

9. SEO Slugs

Stop words are ignored by search engines, but they are indispensable in post titles. Suppose you have a title like “What can you do in SEO for higher Wordpress traffic”. Your permlink will be “what-can-you-do-for-higher-Wordpress-traffic” but what you want is “higher-worpress-traffic”. The wordpress plugin automatically removes stop words from the permalink, helping you to rank better.

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As we grow and learn as web designers, we all tend to lean to one style in particular, and it helps define us, and our work, as individuals. However, to grow, we need to learn new things.

Sometimes a client wants something else, so we need to abide — though we can (and should) learn to design in new styles for our own personal benefit as well. With that, we can discover and perfect our understanding of alternative design principles, learn how to work with new design elements, and overall broaden our skill set.

When venturing into a new style we’re not familiar with, we can’t just open up Photoshop, expecting our design to come out as spectacularly as the style we’re more familiar with. Just as we grew to know our niche design style, we must, in a sense, re-teach ourselves design for each particular style.

Here is how to define, what to look for, and what to research when venturing into a new style of web design. Many of these features are better defined in our previous article, 5 Ways to Become a Better Designer, Right Now. Be sure to check that out in addition to this.

1. Define the Style

Whether this new style your researching is grunge, sleek, web 2.0, hand-drawn, typography, or whatever else, we can follow the same steps to research it. That first step to take is to actually define the style. Be sure to define the style in detail based from examples, sources, and any historical implications.

Below are a few great examples in blog posts, but the same technique can be used for this stage of discovering a new style.

Grunge Style

“as Web 2.0 style is all about glossy and shiny look, another option would be something rather crude, radical and provoking. Such as the grunge style — dirty look with irregular, nasty, sometimes even ugly and crooked visual elements. Will it establish itself as a trend? Probably not. However, it may be used once some creative and unconventional design approach is needed.” — Smashing Magazine, on grunge web design

Web 2.0 Style

“If I had to sum up “Web 2.0″ design in one word, it would have to be “simplicity”, so that’s where we’ll start.

I’m a great believer in simplicity. I think it’s the way forward for web design.

Today’s simple, bold, elegant page designs deliver more with less:

• They enable designers to shoot straight for the site’s goals, by guiding the site visitor’s eye through the use of fewer, well-chosen visual elements.
• They use fewer words but say more, and carefully selected imagery to create the desired feel.
• They reject the idea that we can’t guess what people want from our sites”

— Web Design from Scratch, on Web 2.0 style web design

Hand-Drawn Style

“The most valuable and innovative ideas had all been handwritten first. That’s no big news, since designers tend to produce first sketches as paper prototypes anyway; still it’s important, because web design is different from “usual” design. Of course, it also has a personal note and it is hand-made, however users can’t see that. As CSS is “boxy but good”, designs tend to have a rather limited appearance — they are too boxy and too right-angled.

…The main purpose of hand-drawn elements lies in their ability to convey a personality and an individual note in times when colorful, sharp and rounded Web 2.0 elements can be found almost everywhere.

…Since hand-drawing is a typical feature of graphic artists, designers and illustrators and is often associated with creativity and inspiration, it is often used in portfolios and showcases.” — Smashing Magazine, on hand-drawn web design

Get out a piece of paper, and actually define the style on paper. This is an essential step in brainstorming, and knowing what and what not to include. Write down when this style is appropriate, what elements should be there, what should not, and notes on colors, typography, texture, and more.

2. Find Examples

After defining the style on paper, the next step is to actually find some inspiration. Doing a quick Google search on “Hand-drawn web design” or “Web 2.0 web design” is a great way to start. Many showcases will pop up and you can choose any to get started.

Going through showcases, pick out your favorite designs in each. You may want to pick up a similar design strategy when venturing into this new style. Despite sharing a design style, different websites can still have a lot of variety. As an example, the two web designs below are both grunge style, but they are also very different.

Further define examples of the style you prefer, again looking at texture, color, shapes, layout, etc.

3. Define Colors

We should have already defined color in a basic sense when defining our style in step #1, and when writing an extended definition in #2. However, let’s get even more specific. To get more inspiration, a Google search on “Grunge style colors”,  or “Web 2.0 colors”. Also check out a website like ColourLovers and do a search with similar keywords.

Of course, some web design styles will be color independent, such as the hand-drawn design style, or a typography-based design style. This is where viewing your favorites when looking for examples comes in. What colors did you like on these examples? Did you like the colorful hand-drawn websites, or the black and white typography designs? There can be a lot of variation in color for these types of designs, and it can leave a lot of room for creativity.

Bookmark some palettes on ColourLovers that match the style your looking into, and that match your personal style.

4. Analyze Textures

Grunge style isn’t the only style known for textures. Each style has it’s own set of textures — whether it be earthy, man-made, glossy, gradients, subtle, or whatever else.

For example, many hand-drawn styles have a paper or watercolor texture to them. The popular blog, Web Designer Wall is a great example of this:

For even something like a website that features simple gradients for texture, check out how heavy the gradient is (difference between the lightest and darkest part of the gradient), and where it is used most. The apple website is a great example of a Web 2.0 and minimalistic web design style mix. Note that the heaviest gradient is on the navigation, where they would like the user’s eye first. This is a very user-centric web design, as defined for the Web 2.0 style above, in point #1.

5. Don’t Forget to Look at the Wireframe

We’ve researched general design elements that make up a web design, but let’s also not forget about the wireframe. Of course, we should always strive for alternative layouts that are still user-friendly, but some design styles work with interesting layouts more than others.

As a general rule, the simpler the design style, the more complex and original a wireframe can be. This can add interest to the design, as long as the designer pays attention to other elements that will help guide the user’s eye around a layout they’re not used to. In contrast, more complex styles, such as hand-drawn and grunge style should stick to more generalized wireframes that are quickly easy to navigate.

Of course, the rules for this can be variable, and one should look into a number of different options when determining a wireframe to go with their new design style. Check out some examples again while paying closer attention to the wireframe, and see if there is much variety. If you come across an interesting wireframe sharing that design style, how did the designer make it work? Would it be better with a more traditional wireframe?

6. Take a Close Look at the Details

As any experienced web designer knows, a web design is not complete until it has a bit of polish. There are tiny details in each web design style that make it appealing in it’s own sense, and when lurking into a new style, the details also have to be researched.

Minimalistic or Web 2.0 styles tend to have icons that do the trick, while hand-drawn or grungy styles tend to keep the detail in the imagery. It can become much more advanced than this though, so be sure to look back to the examples and see where and what the details of your chosen design style are.

Below is a zoomed in example of the Envato website. Rounded corners aid in the “sleek” look, and there is a huge amount of detail in the placement and construction of icons on the website.

7. Check Out Further Resources

It is very likely you’re not the first to try to define and research this design style. Look through other resources that do the same, and see what they have to say on the subject. You may read something you forgot in your own analysis. Below are a few helpful articles on popular web design styles.

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1. Lines and Borders with Depth

This feature is often used in amazing sleek web designs, but overlooked by beginners trying to create a similar feel. An example of this effect is below. On the left are two lines, that could possibly be used as a line or border in a web design, and on the right is the same, but with a bit more depth.

As anyone can see, the line with depth is a lot more visually appealing.

How to Create a Line with Depth

1. Create a new layer on top of the background color.
2. Instead of a 1-pixel solid color line, create two lines: A 1px black line on top of another 1px white line.
   (For a horizontal line, as one can guess, just put a 1px wide black line next to a 1px wide white line.)
3. Set this new layer to overlay, then merge the new layer on top of any bottom layers as necessary.

Examples Used in Web Design

2. Reflective/Gradient Shine

Anything that looks glossy can just about be considered Web 2.0. The use of a few short techniques to add gradient and gloss can spice things up. The example below is what it looks like in action, just applied to a rectangle of solid color. The same effect can be used on logos, the background for content areas, text, images, and more.

How to Create a Reflective/Gradient Shine

1. Create a new layer over the original image. (In this case, the plain green rectangle.)
2. Using the Elliptical Marquee tool, create a portion of an ellipse on the top part of the rectangle.
3. Create a white to transparent gradient vertically upwards. Make sure the white is on the bottom. (To create a completely vertical gradient, hold down the shift key.)
4. Change the layer’s blending mode to Soft Light.
5. Press “Ctrl [Cmd], Shift, I” to invert the current selection. Then, create another new layer.
6. Create a black to transparent gradient in this selection, with black on the bottom.
7. Change this layer’s blending mode to Overlay.
8. Put the opacity of both gradient layers down by about 50%. Alter the opacity of both until the image looks right.
   

3. Drop Shadows

Drop shadows are used surprisingly often in Web 2.0 design, despite their bad reputation for being old-fashioned and cheesy in the web design world. This is because they are great for adding a sense of realism to a design, like a realistic sense of a flat piece of paper (or other material) setting on another flat surface. That’s the effect we get on the right.

However, on the left, it’s easy to see the effect is cheesy, old-fashioned, and should never be used. On the left, the dropshadow gradient is so large that it seems as though the green block is unnaturally floating above the flat background.

The trick is to use dropshadows to make things realistic. Don’t use dropshadows just for the sake of using them.

4. Rounded Corners

They’re not included in the new CSS3 for nothing. Rounded corners are often times a great way to add a bit more appeal to a design, especially a modern design. Many sleek and modern product designs often feature smooth curves and edges. Blocky feels old and clunky — smooth is new and modern.

Wrapping Up

Not all of these have to be used simultaneously for a great Web 2.0 design, but they are a closer look at some simple tricks one can try to see if the effect will improve a sleek web design. In the end, though, good design comes from experience and a good eye for design.

These are, of course, very basic principles and are meant for beginners in web design. Anyone looking for the next step, or for anyone looking for more advanced techniques, should check out How to Accurately and Effectively Research a Web Design Style. The article goes over how to discover your own techniques when learning Web 2.0, or any other design style for that matter.

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To a large degree this is true, and is emphasized in the latest patent. If you provide fresh, unique content on a regular basis, and do nothing that Google or the other search engines consider as spam, then likely you will eventually start rating well in the search engine SERPS.

There lies the problem; most of us do not want to wait until we are “eventually” rewarded by the search engines. Therefore it becomes necessary to apply some SEO to help speed things along. If we do not know what is considered as spam,

then we run the very real risk of actually damaging the ratings our website receives instead of helping them. This and the following articles contain our observations on the latest Google patent (20050071741).

In no particular order I will address some of the things I have found in the latest Google patent that may be useful in helping the search engines see your site in the best possible light. The goal of these articles are to identify what Google and likely other search engines consider to be acceptable practices and what they may consider to be “Black Hat” SEO. In all cases though it is the individual Webmasters responsibility to decide if the information contained in these articles is suitable for use, and therefore assumes all risk in applying the thoughts contained therein.

Another point to note is that although these points are noted in the patent they are not necessarily currently being implemented. However going though the patent you see that what is lined out makes sense, and applying points from it will be beneficial to most sites.

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Here is a diagram to illustrate what web point is and what it has become:

Image Source: O’reillynet.com

Here are some quick and easy modifications and ad-ons you can make to your website to become “Web 2.0” if it isn’t already.

1. RSS Feeds: Feeds have become great assets to websites. The user now has the option to receive all you’re websites updated information without actually having to visit your website. RSS Feeds have greatly improved repeat visitors and readership/subscriptions across the board.
2. Blogs: Blogs have personalized companies/products with consumers. Users want to feel like they buy (either product or information) from a trusted source and someone they know. Blogs have personalized this relationship between the companies and users. Start a blog on your business (service or product) to better inform the customer and that will also keep them coming back, asking questions, etc.
3. Bookmark Submission Buttons: Any site you have that can provide information to a user should have Bookmark submission buttons. If one person is interested in what you are saying, there is a chance another million are as well. These button will facilitate and better expose your information to the masses on pages such as Digg.com, Stumbleupon.com, Netscape.com, and others. They are not only great traffic drivers but link builders as well.
4. User Interaction: To me, this is the most important tool you can implement on your website today (if possible). User’s want to interact with what they are looking at or reading, its human nature. We have opinions, we like to share. Over 80+ million people share their lives over their profile on Myspace, Over 2 million people are now sharing websites they think others will find interesting on Stumbleupon.com, and Over a million people are sharing stories they think others will enjoy on Digg.com, and in all these together, many more millions of people place comments. Make you’re user be hands-on if possible with your website, and interact with your company.

One great example of a website which redesigned it’s look to become “web 2.0” is USAtoday.com. After it’s makeover, the website had a 380% bump in traffic! Their new design not only engages users in all their stories but also has the look and feel of the new Web 2.0 design. Its very clean and simple.

Redesigning you’re website can be a difficult task if you’ve had something in place for a long time, but it’s a must to move forward and keep up with the ever-developing web. Start by making small changes and implementing whatever you think can work best to better engage your visitor.

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