Nashville Web Design | Mask Your Keyword Snipping Site

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Mask Your Keyword Snipping Site

Posted on February 16, 2008
Filed Under Blogging, Internet Marketing, SEO, Wordpress |

Courtney’s post about keyword snipping is one of his most popular posts, and resulted in the creation of the Keyword Snipping theme. I’m making this post to warn of the potential down falls of using this theme.

This is not an attack against the theme. The theme is great. The problem results from the growing number of people who use this theme. I can easily spot a keyword snipper. I’ve located a few across the net and a couple during my time on bloggingzoom. Its a dead give away that the site is set up primarily to target a search phrase and generate ad revenue. The generic theme is a give away that the site has been designd for search engines and not primarily for the readers. I quickly navigate away from these sites. I worry that the use of this theme could label you a “potential spammer”. Its a red flag that the site is just part of an SEO’ers portfolio. And this type of image could negatively effect your site.

  • You’re labeled as a spammer by your visitors. And can reduce your traffic that way.
    • Especially if they start to see the same theme over and over.
  • Google may flag you as potential spam.

I know this blog is fairly new and I don’t carry much authority. So, let me point you to a recent article by Vic, who does carry some authority in this area. Go read his post: Niche Changes. He says “It is all about the footprint. To many niches are using the same theme, I would start using themes that are mainstream in other words themes you see real legit blogs using.”
This is the exact issue I was concerned about myself when I made this site. I use almost the EXACT code for the word snipping theme, BUT my site looks NOTHING like the original theme. My site does not stick out at all as an SEO niche blog.

So the important thing is: Vary your theme! Use what Court teaches you, but break ahead of the curve by learning to apply his concepts to other themes! Don’t have so many sites in your portfolio that look exactly the same.

I’m not just going to leave you there, but will help you achieve this. I hope that you have at least a basic understanding of HTML/CSS/PHP. If not, that’s cool. Just leave a comment, and I’ll help you out.

I’m a firm believer that a person should make serious effort to learn and teach themselves. The lessons learned this way stick, and you better understand what you’re doing. Here are the guides you’ll need. First you’ll want to check them out, then you can return to this post.

The Guides You’ll Need

If you need HTML help:
Check out Lissa Explains it All, which is a basic HTML help site for beginners and kids. (For those with no clue when it comes to HTML)

New to PHP:
Damn, just Google search: PHP tuorial and get to reading!

Yes, learning to program takes some time, but the benefits and the advantage it gives you is HUGE!

How to make a Wordpress theme? How to edit a Wordpress theme?

Check out this, Wordpress theme tutorial! I thought it was a great guide, and followed it to make my first theme.

Then, check out the official wordpress theme guide.

Now, what makes a theme a “Keyword Snipping Theme”

  • A dynamic h1 tag at the top of each page that includes the post title.
  • A keyword link to home page at bottom of page.
  • Valid xhtml/css
  • SEO side bar

A basic guide to altering your theme would be to download your desired theme and the keyword snipping theme. Open them side by side. Make the desired theme’s code mimic the keyword snipping theme’s PHP.

In-depth guide to creating a Keyword Snipping Theme:

First, download one of Courtney’s SEO Themes. He’s already coded SEO benefits into these themes, and cleaned them up. You CAN use any theme, but using these will save you time.

Second, lets walk through what Court did to the Modern Paper theme, to make the new version so special.

Dynamic H1 Title.

Courtney added the following code:

<body>
<div id=”headliner”><h1>
Your Keyword Here
<?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> | <?php the_title(); ?><?php } ?><?php if ( is_page() ) { ?> | <?php the_title(); ?><?php } ?></h1></div>

Right after the <body> tag, Court added a new div called headliner. Inside this new div, he added PHP code that creates a dynamic H1 at the very top of every page. The H1 will include: your targeted keyword AND the post title. This way, you always have your keywords in your H1’s, but will also have a different H1 for every single page.

Simple copy and post the above code into your page as shown. It goes right after the body tag.

Since we created a new div, we’ll need to style it and the H1 tag with CSS. Court used the following CSS:

#headliner {
background: #000000;
width: 960px;
height: 14px;
margin: 0px auto 0px;
padding: 0px;
text-align: right;
}

#headliner h1 {
font-size: 12px;
margin-right: 10px;
color: #666666;
line-height: 13px;
display: inline;
}

This will make the content inside this div align to the far right hand side of the theme, at the top of every page. The second entry dictates the style of the H1 text. Its made to be smaller than the standard H1 tag. These style elements can be changed to better fit your theme.

He then replaced the h1 tag, that was originally used, with a div tag. The blog title originally used the h1 tag, but was replaced with:

<div id=”headertitle”> …. </div>

Replace the original CSS code for the h1 tag with #headertitle, so that it applies to the new div.

Keyword Anchor Link on Every Page

The next thing is to add a back link on every page with your keyword as your anchor text. Court added this to the footer.

Be sure to add the following code to your footer:

<a href=”<?php echo get_settings(’home’); ?>/”><?php bloginfo(’name’); ?></a>

This will create a link to the blogs home page using the text you enter as your site name (your keyword). You can enter both of these through the WP dashboard.

Valid XHMTL/CSS

This is debatable. Valid code isn’t a “must”, but the cleaner the code, the less likely a search engine will make a mistake in crawling your site. There isn’t much of a reason not to do this. The cleaner the code, the more efficiently a bot will crawl your site. To learn more bout valid code, read my brief post on standards compliance. I link to a few article discussing the benefits of valid code.

The W3C code validation service to check your code. Correct errors until your remove all errors, or reduce them as much as possible.

SEO Sidebar

Lastly, be sure that the side bar is formated properly. Many themes use the H2 heading in the side bar. It is most effective to use this for the post titles. So, here is what Court did with the side bars:

Left Sidebar:

<!– begin l_sidebar –>

<div id=”l_sidebar”>
<ul id=”l_sidebarwidgeted”>
<?php if ( function_exists(’dynamic_sidebar’) && dynamic_sidebar(1) ) : else : ?>

<li id=”Recent”>
<h3>Recently Written</h3>
<ul>
<?php get_archives(’postbypost’, 10); ?>
</ul>
</li>

<li id=”Categories”>
<h3>Categories</h3>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_cats(’sort_column=name’); ?>
</ul>
</li>

<li id=”Archives”>
<h3>Archives</h3>
<ul>
<?php wp_get_archives(’type=monthly’); ?>
</ul>
</li>

<li id=”Blogroll”>
<h3>Blogroll</h3>
<ul>
<?php get_links(-1, ‘<li>’, ‘</li>’, ‘ - ‘); ?>
</ul>
</li>

<?php endif; ?>
</ul>

</div>

<!– end l_sidebar –>

Right Sidebar:

<!– begin r_sidebar –>

<div id=”r_sidebar”>
<ul id=”r_sidebarwidgeted”>
<?php if ( function_exists(’dynamic_sidebar’) && dynamic_sidebar(2) ) : else : ?>

<li id=”About”>
<h3>About</h3>
<p>This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.</p>
</li>

<li id=”Search”>
<h3>Search</h3>
<ul>
<li><form id=”searchform” method=”get” action=”<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>”><input type=”text” value=”To search, type and hit enter” name=”s” id=”s” onfocus=”if (this.value == ‘To search, type and hit enter’) {this.value = ”;}” onblur=”if (this.value == ”) {this.value = ‘To search, type and hit enter’;}”/></form></li>
</ul>
</li>

<li id=”Admin”>
<h3>Admin</h3>
<ul>
<?php wp_register(); ?>
<li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li>
<li><a href=”http://www.wordpress.org/”>Wordpress</a>
</li>
<?php wp_meta(); ?>
<li><a href=”http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer”>
XHTML</a></li>
</ul>
</li>

<?php endif; ?>
</ul>

</div>

<!– end r_sidebar –>

It doesn’t look like Court actually changed anything from his SEO theme to his Keyword Snipping theme, but that is understandable. He had already done a large amount of SEO work to the side bar, so it was taken care of (and so should his other SEO themes)

Basically, he switched out the H2 tags that must people use. Try to use the following header structure.

  • <h1> Unique title on each page. Needs to include keyword. Only appears ONCE per page.
  • <h2> The title of the post. Can include multiple times per page (does on home page). Usually only once on article pages.
  • <h3> The headings for the side bar

Lastly, be sure to check through the code, and compare it to the Keyword Snipping Theme, and make sure the code is clean. You should now have a a Keyword Snipping Theme that doesn’t look like everyone else’s Modern Paper theme. Same benefits, but not so obvious.

Don’t forget:

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