Here are the twenty four kickass plugins that are used on DailySEOblog. Some are active and some are not. Marked against each is the reason why it’s cool and what it won’t do.

1. Akismet
   The must have spam catcher. It’s already present in your default wordpress installation, if you haven’t activated it, please do it before those spams accumulate.
2. All in one SEO pack
   (Inactive)This is an great plugin that will help you manage the meta tags for articles enabling them with unique meta and titles.I use an even better plugin now (Headspace2), which is AllinSEO x 10 times. So this one is inactive. You may want to use it if you are looking for a hassle free and easy meta tag management.
3. Feed copyrighter plugin
   This one is reposible for throwing up those copyright statement at the end of the feeds in RSS readers. It is one way of fighting the scrappers, not sure how effective it is, but it is indeed one weapon we hve right now.Bad thing - The credit link will appear on all RSS footers.
4. Better comments manager
   This is one of the best plugins I’ve always cherished using. It enables easy management of comments, lets you reply to them easily, mass edit/approve them. And yes, this is from Keith and team. His plugins have exceptional quality after all.
5. Comment Luv
   This plugin is responsible for placing the link to your latest posts on comments. Nice plugin, it crawls your site (from the info you submit while commenting), and get’s the latest URL, parse it as HTML beneath your name.Bad thing - To tweak the text that appears with it, there are no options menu, and you have to edit the code. Not too many are comfortable doing it.
6. Duplicate sidebar widgets
   This plugin helps you to duplicate the widgets modules to drag and drop on the sidebar. Ex: If you want two instances of the random posts widget, this one replicates it.
7. Enhanced Contact form
   This plugin is responsible for all those contact forms appearing in the pages.
8. Feed footer
   Adds anything in HTML to feeds appearing in RSS reader. 10 spots available, suitable for advertising and throwing up messages.
9. Google AdWrap
   You know about Googles section targeting right?This plugin adds the “sections” to be targeted to comments and content area thereby the ads that appear on Google AdSense will be heavily contextual to the information in these sections.Bad thing - You can’t manually add te google_ad_section code to any other place on the blog.
10. Google XML sitemaps
    Must have for all blogs. Generates an XML sitemap making the contents visible for search spiders.Bad thing - If you enable the robots.txt rewriting, everything you set manually on robots.txt is rewritten.
11. HeadSpace2
    The best meta tag management plugin I’ve seen in the recent times. No words to describe - killer plugin!Bad thing - Initially, difficult to understand how it functions and yo use.
12. Homepage Excerpts
    Adds a “more” link cutting posts on the main homepage within certain limit of characters. Good for curbing duplicate content on wordpress.
13. I love social bookmarking
    (Inactive)Great plugin that displays a pull down menu for social bookmarking on all the top social media websites.Bad thing - Serious alignment issues.
14. KB Linker
    Great plugin to increase the number of links within your site. It enables you to select a keyword for which you can set a link. Where ever this keyword appears, it would make it a link.Bad thing - It injects the link code even to links and in between html codes ! And you get html errors sometimes.
15. Random posts widget
    Throws up a set of random posts on the sidebar. Good options available.
16. Search Meter
    Gives me access from the dashboard to search phrases on DailySEOblog search box. And also shows if the person who searched the phrase got the info he wanted or not. Good plugin to get an idea of topics to blog.
17. SEO for Wordpress
    A little outdated plugin, it says is reduces instances of duplicate content. But it doesn’t show us how and where. Otherwise a good concept.
18. Shylock AdSense
    The killer plugin that allows you to inject adsense codes anywhere on the post, and decide which ads to go where.
19. Ultimate Google Analytics
    Great plugin that will manage Google Analytics code injection and tracking a breeze. You could very well do it manually, but this one is a laymans friend.
20. WP- Stats
    Displays the wordpress blog stats from the dashboard. A better stats if you wat uptodate results. Analytics is a day and some hours late.
21. WP-Cache
    Makes wordpress faster and quick loading.
22. WP- category posts
    Includes a widget that will display posts from a particular category in the sidebar. Neat and clean code. Serves the purpose with no glitch.
23. Yet Another threaded comments plugin
    (Inactive)This comment allows to have newly created comments relate to existing comments, so you can comment on a comment. This information allows to display the Comments in a hierarchical fashion (e.g. a Tree).This is an alternative to te Brian’s threaded comments plugin that’s got some issues while installing and working.This plugin adds a pull down menu while you comment listing you the names on the previously commented guys name. You can select the guy you wanted to reply and comment.Works on many sites but not mine, hence inactive.
24. Who Sees Ads
    Another Killer plugin from OZH. You can decide whether your AdSense ads should be displayed to a search engine visitor or not, or a regular direct hit reader or not etc. Great in incresing the CTR and revenue of Google Ads.Bad thing - Can’t really track as to how the ads are performing and how they gave you improved revenues.

If you'd like to stay updated with SEO, grab the RSS feed now !What's this?

Link building is an off-site optimization process SEOs can’t live without. Honestly, this is a tedious process. Because, what we all need to work on are one-way links. There are lot of reciprocal link building softwares available today, but many of them are equal to spam. What these reciprocal link builders do is - find out sites from a category(which you select) that are open to link exchanges, and spam their inboxes with link exchange requests. Many a times, this strategy will not work as the emails end up as spam.

Now, there are genuine softwares that will do this in a better way. Find you one-way links that will help you increase your ranks on the SERPs.

Link Assistant is one such software. It has the following features..

Now there is a thin line here. If you automate this software completely, it will become as equal as spam.
Here’s how it works.

- Select a category of websites with which you’ll like to exchange link with. It’d be good to search for websites that are in the same niche as your’s. 

- Find your link partners by searching for  sites that are offering link exchanges in this category.

- Select from a list of potential linking sites and finalize their list taking off the weeds from the list. You can hand pick them or the software will filter them out.

- Now, the site will make a list of all the selected websites and create a page with all of them listed. So basically you are creating a link directory of all your link exchange sites. We are doing this because in the next step, when we ask them to link back to us, we need to have placed their link in the first place.

- Link Assistant has a set of email templates, from which you can select one and add a bit of your personal touch and automate the software to send emails to all your potential link partners.

- The next step is to wait. Since we have send our email requests to all our potential link partners, we will wait for them to link to us.

- Next, Link Assistant will check if your link partners have linked to you according to your request. If they haven;t you can pull them off your link directory otherwise keep them.

As I mentioned earlier, there is a thin line between spam and genuine email here. Link Assistant can be easily mistaken for spam if you don’t use it properly. BE careful when selecting partners whom you are emailing and also when selecting email template. I think customizing the email to give your personal touch will help much.

I don’t recommend using this software completely automated but yes with a bit of hardwork it can be useful to you.

- Find link partners by using the software. Select a category of websites you are interested in and ask the software to find the qualifying websites to you.

- In the next step, visit the sites manually and see if they are really genuine and if they fit to be linked with. First ask for one-way links bye sending them personalized emails. It won’t work, then you can go for link-exchange.

Link exchanges are not recommended by Google therefore I don’t recommend you to do this at all. Instead use this software just to find potential link builders. Beyond it, the software is as good as spam.

Well, I personally is of the opinion that all SEO softwares are basically bull-shit, at one point or the other, you’ll find that the one you are using it is negatively affecting you. But Link Assistant is the best spam, I’d say! So it’s a matter of using these softwares wisely. This one has a fully functional version available for trial for 15 days. So give it a try anyway and get rid of it!

With the new Google PR updates, I thought this might be the right time to go for the site redesign I’ve been planning for quite some time. So here it is!

Daily SEO blog will now sport a new look. The new theme highlights content along with advertising options which was limited in the earlier design from Scott. It was an excellent theme with highly semantic coding and cross browser compatibilities. But the advertising real estate options were limited in it.

This theme is a free one called Green Wave 1.0 from Romow. I hope it runs smoothly, if at all you come across anything worth noting, please do let me know.

Just noticed that DailySEOblog is ”awarded” Page Rank 4 !

And, I still strongly stick to my words.

I just don’t give a damn about it.  Eat that Google! (Courtesy-JC)

Interestingly, there seems to be shuffling again all over the web. Here is the old list from DBT with the updated changes. Seen in green are the ones that managed to hit back and seen in red are the one’s gone further down.

• Statcounter (from 10 to 6)
• Engadget (from 7 to 5)
• AutoBlog (from 6 to 4)
• Problogger (from 4 to 6)
• Copyblogger (from 4 to 6)
• AdesBlog (from 7 to 5)
• Search Engine Journal (from 7 to 4)
• Quick Online Tips (from 6 to 3)
• Search Engine Roundtable (from 7 to 4)
• Blog Herald (from 6 to 4)
• Weblog Tools Collection (from 6 to 4)
• JohnTP (from 4 to 3)
• Coolest Gadgets (from 3 to 4)
• CyberNet News (from 4 to 1)
• Washington Post (from 7 to 5)
• Washington Times (from 6 to 4)
• Charlotte Observer (from 6 to 4)
• Forbes.com (from 7 to 5)
• SFGate.com (from 7 to 5)
• Sun Times (from 7 to 5)
• New Scientist (from 7 to 5)
• Seattle Times (from 6 to 4)

New entries - Bloggingtips.com (0 to 4) and DailySEOblog.com (0 to 4)

So, it’s regret time for Google? Seems like they have taken off the penalty on some websites like Problogger and Copyblogger, while maintaining it for some, and even further degrading on a few like John TP.

Is this the end or is there another shuffling going to happen? 

Felt like something is not right the way it is as of now. Lot of blank spaces and some cross browser issues. So managed to sort it out with some minor design changes. I hope you have already noticed it. If not, here’s what happened.

• Placed Categories box to the right hand.
  The categories box had bullet points including subcategories, which when placed in the left tab was aligned to the right while it was supposed to align the to the left. This had some cross browser issues. On viewing in Safari, the categories weren’t properly listed according to hierarchy. All sorted now.
• Placed skyscraper ad to the right and below the fold.
  The Tech-dispenser skyscraper ad was placed on the left almost above the fold on requests from my “tech - representative” from tech-dispenser. they insisted that the ad will perform better above the fold. but, I found out that it does not perform well at all at this spot.So I took it below the fold in a more comfortable space.
• Added a Google AdSense spot to the left.
  My square button ad on the right have been performing well, so instead of the Tech-dispenser ad, replaced it with a Google ad on the left. You can see targeted ads there.
• Since the number of comments are increasing everyday, I decided to increase the recent comments to be displayed. They will have link to your sites(if provided) from the homepage.A nice way to get some extra traffic!

Though I’m not keen on design changes too often, small tweaks like this will help in enriching the user-experience and hope readers will enjoy it. Meanwhile, if you have any suggestions regarding the design, do pen it here.

I was thrilled to download and install the new Safari Browser for windows today.

As proclaimed it is the fastest and the safest browser around. It is said to be 1.6 faster than firefox and 2 times faster than IE.
True that may be, it handles javascript and image loading pretty quicker than FF or IE.
Safari handles page elements pretty quicker making the user feel a faster browsing experience.
Honestly, being a firefox user, i could not find the functionalities and “power browsing” experience with Safari though the user friendliness is great - just like a Mac.

I admit that any FF user will not find the sudden change seamless, but let me list out what i found awkward.

• It misses the status bar.
  Instead, the page load status is shown in the url bar itself. But i could not find any link previews there, not anywhere else either. Disappointing! So i have to click a link blindly to see where it will take me. That is not a good security feature. Is it?
• Font smoothing.
  With the default font smoothing option turned on, i could not stand all those bold items they were simply blaring out! Tried to turn the smoothing down to “lite” but still it would blare out. Probably that’s the Mac standard bold lok, but i don’t think any FF/IE user can stand it. It seems like Four times the normal strong attribute to the font.
• When you maximize the browser, it over rides the previous run application on windows. In FF or IE hitting F11 enables you a full screen preview, here maximizing the application itself puts you on a full screen view(the footer is still there, unless it’s on auto-hide).

I think this is deliberately done, so that all windows users get a taste of Mac OS, and hopefully it may get popular among them.

Now the killer thing - Safari crashed twice in 14 minutes during my browsing experience - both times when i was using the Google Reader. Booohoooo!!

But i really liked the minimalistic view and the popout message animation. For every message, a slip juts out from the title bar - it’s the classic Mac thing anyway!

On the whole, the safari browser did not meet my expectation. So thumbs down. but hey, it came out with a prima bail remember? It’s the beta version. Okay, Steve, I’ll wait for the full version.

Free Outsourcing? Wicked Google! - That’s what came to my mind first when i read about this product.(It’s an old one from Google though)

Google Image Labeller is a product launched by Google where in it gives you an “oppurtunity” to label the images indexed on google.

While you start it here- Google plays it more like a game. You get a partner who would have already tagged or labelled a few images, which is now thrown at you. Now you get the chance to label the image, within a particular amount of time. And if yours and your partners labels match - you win points to your credit.

No you can’t get a gift hamper from Google or ebay with those points, but hey your name flashes on the homepage if you made it huge.

Well, guess what - Isn’t google trying to get their enormous images database tagged/keyworded for free with this silly game? Huh..huh?
When stock photo agencies worldwide are outsourcing such kind of keywording/labelling work , Google plays it smart by taking advantage of the folksonomy effect.

Let’s also think about it another way - what if the flickr fans(or any anti-google guy) want to corrupt the algorithm? All they have to do is - Go to google images, sign in as a guest and start labelling images wrongly with the most in appropriate tags. That’s a cool way to play it back on Google! I’m only talking about a possiblity here. Google Images - I don’t want to corrupt your algorithm but could you make some arrangement so that when i search for a cat on your engine, i get a cat’s image and not a flower’s image - in the future that is?