Destinys child

Imagine tweaking your WordPress theme for hours, aligning those images, increasing line height so text is easier to read, setting that call-to-action button color, making featured images bigger… Weeks later you see there's an update for your theme. You hit that Update button and BAM, your site's a soup. Things are misaligned, sidebars look awful, images overlap, everything's a mess. If you're using WordPress as your CMS of choice, it's important to allow the parent theme to be updated easily without compromising your website looks and functionality. Creating a child theme is the easiest way of modifying your WordPress theme. But, not everyone needs a child theme. If you're running a custom WordPress website, then you probably don't need a child theme and all changes should be dealt by the developers. Public WordPress templates, on the other hand, get bug fix updates and other upgrades, so your site may not look the same when you hit that "update theme" button. WordPress best practices … [Read more...] about How a WordPress Child Theme May Save Your Business Some Day

As it turns out, I’m not the only SEO professional in the family. At 14, my daughter Chloe started creating a passive income stream, enviable to most teenagers, of up to $1,100 per month. She did it with only a few ingredients: a WordPress blog, a Google AdSense account and some basic SEO knowledge. Like many young teenagers at the time (which was about 10 years ago), she was obsessed with the Nickelodeon-owned “virtual pet” website Neopets.com. So, like any enterprising young internet entrepreneur, she started a fan site, at NeopetsFanatic.com, and monetized it. She researched profitable keyword niches like game cheats, avatars, neopoints and so on. Then she developed content around those niches. After that, she started building buzz and links, leveraging the angle that here’s a kid doing SEO. It doesn’t take very many bloggers picking up on that before you get traction in the Google results. Pretty soon, she was getting enough visitors to make consistent … [Read more...] about SEO So Simple A Child Can Do It: In 5 Easy Steps

UK prime minister David Cameron unveiled a wide-range of efforts today to protect children against pornography on the Internet. A significant part of his speech attacked the search engines of Google, Bing and Yahoo for not doing enough and demanding changes by October. Below is Cameron’s speech, which I’ve annotated with observations on how difficult the things he demands might or might not be to implement. Search Engine Already “Deter” But How Can’t Be Said Cameron starts out somewhat softly, saying that the major search engines are already involved in a “major campaign” to “deter” people searching for child porn, but that he can’t give more details about what’s being done: The internet service providers and the search engine companies have a vital role to play and we have already reached a number of important agreements with them. A new UK-US taskforce is being formed to lead a global alliance with the big players in … [Read more...] about UK Prime Minister Attacks Google, Bing & Yahoo On Child Porn, Demands Better Efforts By October

The growth of mobile search is like seeing a second child grow up. SEO isn’t bull. The knowledge graph, speech recognition and natural language are search’s biggest challenges. And, he really, really likes Star Trek. That’s just some of what the head of Google’s search efforts, Amit Singhal, shared when talking at SXSW today. Singhal is senior vice president and a Google Fellow who oversees Google Search. He spoke during the “The Future of Google Search in a Mobile World” keynote at the SXSW conference in Austin today. The session didn’t stick just to mobile search — that was probably a tweak made because Singhal was a last-minute replacement for Android chief Andy Rubin, who, until a few days ago, was set to talk. Why Rubin disappeared was never explained, though Singhal joked about being Rubin and having worked on his tan. Singhal was interviewed by entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki. Perhaps Kawasaki’s recently becoming an advisor to … [Read more...] about Growth Of Mobile Search “Like Seeing My Second Child Grow” Says Google Search Chief At #SXSW

Bing has been escalating its attacks against Google Shopping over consumer transparency since launching its “Scroogled” campaign just over a week ago. Well, consumer confusion is a serious issue. Indeed, Bing itself can be used to illustrate some of the problems consumers face at both Bing and Google. The day after Bing’s campaign launched, I found the full-page ad to the right in my copy of the Wall Street Journal. A similar ad apparently ran in the New York Times. Meanwhile, at least one blogger has gotten a “Scroogled” t-shirt, and the official Bing blog has done two further anti-Google posts. The post from December 4th chastises Google for not responding to Bing’s campaign. Bing wrote: How did Google respond? They distributed a statement praising their service. They highlighted how great products look on Google Shopping without really explaining how the products get there in the first place. They did not contradict or argue any of the facts and … [Read more...] about Bing Shopping As A Poster Child For Consumer Confusion About Ads