There have been a couple of minor changes made to our humble abode over the last couple of days. I’m always toying around with this thing trying to make it better.
I came across a combination of plugins that do a pretty neat thing.
When people use search engines and find the blog, often they don’t land on exactly what they are looking for. A good example of this would be a Google search for “Phoenix real estate stats”. This search currently returns an entry in the number 7 position of page 1. Not a bad result, but the problem is, if the search result is clicked on, the searcher is sent to the blog home page, which may or may not have a post currently displayed that pertains to Phoenix real estate stats. Mr. Visitor likely quickly scans the page, and if they don’t see what they are looking for they are apt to leave — maybe to never return, which makes me sad.
Enter The Landing Sites plugin. This slick little gizmo will display a list of posts related to their specific search in a prominent place. And it will only display this list if the visitor is coming from a search engine referral. Visitors coming from a bookmark, clicking through from another blog’s link, or directly from entering a URL won’t see these results.
Here’s a screen shot showing the results from the above mentioned search referral:
Here is a close up of the Landing Sites results:
In theory, this plugin could result in visitors from search engines being able to quickly find posts that are more “dialed in” with what they are searching for — which is always a good thing to provide your visitors.
Landing Sites works in conjunction with the Related Entries plugin, which I’ve seen on many blogs but never been able to get properly implemented here until I tore into some theme specific PHP files. It’s functioning now and you will now see a list of potentially related posts linked at the bottom of every blog post.
Another addition is the list of monthly top commentators in the right side-bar. I had a similar plugin installed at one point but it counted pingback spam links as comments. The Show Top Commentators plugin seems to fix that nasty problem.
Here’s a shot of what this plugin looks like in action:
This plugin was installed to share a little link love with frequent commentators. It resets monthly (the time period is completely configurable).
And speaking of the pingback spams, I deactivated Spam Karma 2 and reactivated Askimet as the primary spam filter of Phoenix Real Estate Guy. Time will tell if Askimet better handles ping/trackback spam. In just over 18 months, Spam Karma blocked over 350,000 comment spams (how ridiculous is that?). It’s a great plugin, but the pingback spam was getting beyond tiresome. If Askimet doesn’t help, the next step is to install the version of SK that includes Askimet. We’re also running Bad Behavior as another weapon in the ongoing war against comment/ping spam.
As always, if you see anything acting goofy due to these changes, please let me know.
[tags]Wordpress plugins, Landing Sites, pingback spam sucks[/tags]
The Phoenix Real Estate Guy was started by Jay Thompson, and I have a little blogging problem... he liked to say...
Nice going. It is nice to see my name on the top commentators' list. I still think that you can do something to speed up the response time in your site. Other than that, it is quite nice.
Hi Jay –
I like the Landing Sites Plug-in idea a lot; I only wish I could work enough wordpress magic to be able to use some of these plug-ins!! I also think readers (new readers who find your blog) find the Related Posts very useful. Looks good.
DRS – I'm working on that.
Chris – this plugin was a PITA to install. Any time I have to go into the theme PHP files and add stuff it scares me. And yes, I broke the blog several times while doing it. We still need to do lunch. Sorry, been swamped…
I hate diving into the underlying files. I break my website more often than my Jeep… and that is just wrong.
Very very helpful, and WAY cool. Thanks
I think I may have to steal that landing page plug-in; only quirk I can see is if you come here direct, it doesn't know what to do and still says I came via Google.
JD – that's weird. If you come direct (ie: typing PhoenixRealEstateGuy.com in the browser) is shouldn't show *anything*. It doesn't when I do that….
Maybe it's some cache thing. What happens if you hit refresh?
Karen – unfortunately, the landing page plugin won't work on a Point2 blog. It'll only function on a WordPress blog.
Keep up the great work on your blog! Anyone reading this, stop by Karen's blog here!
Jay – You just made my day! Praise from you on my blog means a lot! I'm still learning, but my goal is to provide useful information for real estate consumers that will be timeless, plus relavent market updates.
I still haven't had much success in getting others to link to my articles, but I figure if I just keep chugging away it will eventually come.
Thanks for the plug!
Jay – I really like the landing page plug-in. I’m assuming it won’t work with the P2 blogs. If it can work, I’d love a suggestion on how to get it onto my site.
My new blog is actually getting pretty decent traffic from random searches for a blog that is only 1 month old…at least I think it’s decent traffic.
Actually…ANYONE finding it randomly through a google search is impressive to me. So far all but one of my posts are still on the home page, but they’ll start scrolling off soon.
Jay – I am going to have to file this for future use. Very cool ideas. But like Jonathan I got the
You came here from http://www.google.com searching for . These posts might be of interest:
No related posts
I came from my google reader. – Ashley
Ahh… Apparently when you click through from Google Reader, the plugin thinks you are coming from Google search. I don't think I can do anything about that. Sounds like a question for the plugin author.
It seems to work fine for a truly direct link (typing the URL in the browser, or clicking a link like this then nothing shows at all, as it should be…
Thanks for the feedback!