• Day 1  – Write an Elevator Pitch
• Day 2 – Write a List Post
• Day 3 – Promote a Blog Post
• Day 4 – Analyze a Top Blog in Your Niche
• Day 5 – Email a Blog Reader
• Day 6 – 27 Must Read Tips and Tutorials for Bloggers
• Day 7 – Write a Link Post
• and more.  Remember, he’s on day 24 as of today.

I highly suggest that you take his blogging advice and work it into your own business.  It’s completely free provided you want to give up your email address or take the time to subscribe to his RSS feed but if you’ve ever wanted some basic blog instruction for free from a “pro” and I mean that literally, have a look at these tips.

As Quick Online Tips found out, the new update to this plugin, version 1.4.9 now adds the canonical link element (also referred to as the canonical link tag).  But, it might not work the way you would expect it to.

Here’s what was discovered:

We host our WordPress blog in a subdirectory called “Archives”. Its easy tohost WordPress in an alternative directory. So the canonical url of the front page should be

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.quickonlinetips.com/" />

while the hosted blog archives page should be

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/" />

But when I looked into the source code of the main page and the archives page, both show this

which basically means that when search engines visitquickonlinetips.com, the canonical url tells them / redirects them with information that the actual page of choice which we want to index  isquickonlinetips.com/archives/and that creates a whole lot of confusion in the search engines.

What they discovered was that the All in One SEO plugin was taking what it felt was the right canonical link tag and assigning it to pages as it saw fit and which at first glance, seems logical.  However, what this did for Quick Online Tips (as well as many other sites I would imagine), was erronously assign the wrong URL.

Just to double check this information, I updated this same plugin on one of my other sites, http://KristineWirth.com just to see how the new update to the All in One SEO Plugin worked.

I currently have my URLs set to the non-www version for this site.

When updating the plugin I noticed that the canonical link element updated to http://KristineWirth.com/ (notice the ending slash).  This URL (with the ending slash) is considered a completely separate URL in the eyes of Google.

So with the new canonical link element added to this plugin, it was telling Google to index my pages with the slash rather than without which could end up hurting my rankings.  (And yours as well).

You can read the earlier post on BoneheadSEO about the canonical link element as well as watch Google’s Matt Cutts explain how it works in a 20-minute long video.

One way to alert Google of the preferred way of indexing the URLs of your site is to add your site to Google’s Webmaster Tools (if you haven’t done so already and under the “Settings” link on the left choose the preferred domain for your site.)  This will tell Google which URL you prefer for your website.

Additionally, Google will also make reference to your sitemap file.  When you add your sitemap to Google’s Webmaster Tools it will also use this as a reference point.  So if your sitemap file points to http://www.BoneheadSEO.com for example, then Google will know that your preferred URL is with the “www”.

Within the Bonehead SEO Course, I explain how to set up this XML file the right way.

So, if you’re currently using the All in One SEO Plugin on your WordPress blog, and either have or intend on updating it to the new version, I would suggest that after you update the plugin, you go into the settings of the plugin and uncheck the “Canonical URLs” box.

Image via CrunchBase

First, my apologies for doing two blog posts in one day.  I felt that this was just far too interesting to not pass along and I’m sure you’re going to be hearing a LOT about this in the upcoming days and weeks.

An interesting story just came across my desk (read email) about how Twitter is currently beta-testing something called the “Discovery Engine“.

This improvement to Twitter which is currently being beta tested by a few users, places a search box at the top of the page and then displays the results of that search within your current Twitter window.

If you currently use Twitter, you know that all the Tweets of people you have chosen to follow show up in your own Twitter window in real time.  With the new search feature that Twitter is testing, whenever you search on a term, your Twitter window will then be populated with those users you follow who have referenced that search term themselves.

This new feature also allows you to save searches.  So if there is a search that you do on a regular basis, you can tell Twitter to keep this search phrase available for you and it will do so by placing it on your Twitter window.

I’m still not certain (since this new feature is still in beta) if that means that the search terms you have saved will be available for others to see.

Twitter is also testing out trends.  Another program called Tweetdeck does this already but Twitter is now testing it out within their own program (again, in beta). Essentially how this works is that Twitter will be able to determine what topics are “hot” right now.

So what does this have to do with Google?

As it stands now, whenever Google decides to add something to their index regardless of what that “something” is; a blog post, a news story, an updated web page, etc., Google’s bot first has to find that information, add it to its index, sort it out to see where it belongs and then eventually have it show up on a related page.

Here’s a great example.  Let’s say that you’re an American Idol fan.  You watch it religiously and just can’t wait to talk about the latest “Idol” that has been voted off.

Since the results are read (and not known) until it’s revealed on the air live, no one (aside from the group who tallies the votes) knows who will go and who will stay.

But once those results are read you can bet that hundreds if not thousands of Twitterers are talking about the results within seconds after the vote has been read live on air.

The problem is that in order for Google to show this information in its search results, it first has to be placed in print somewhere online.  One could argue that the Twitter feed itself that is updating could be considered part of that “print”.

Where the delay lies however, is that Google’s bot needs to first find that information, organize it, decide where to put it, and then finally start to display it within their search results.

Since Twitter is “powered by the people” this information is instantly available and no one has to sit around and wait for news on the topic.  If you want to know, just login to Twitter and see what people are saying.

What’s interesting is that Google just earlier this year set up their own Twitter account and this has led to a lot of speculation.

Is Google “checking out their competition?”

Is Google going to make an offer for Twitter?

Do Twitterers even want that?

You can bet that Google is smacking themselves over the head wondering “why didn’t I think of that?”  (I personally picture Homer Simpson saying “D’oh!”).

None the less, it will be an interesting story to keep tabs on.  What have you heard through the Twitter grapevine?

While you can’t prevent this all together, there are some steps that you can take, especially when it comes to your blogs in order to make it more difficult for these scrapers to take your content, or at least if they do, be sure you’re getting a link back to your site.

One of the ways is to add one of a number of free plugins to your blog.  One of these is the feed footer plugin.

This plugin adds an RSS footer to each blog post you make which contains not only a link back to this blog but which also links to the Bonehead SEO product itself.  Whenever an automated scraper makes a visit, and copies any of the content on this blog (or on any other blog that uses this plugin), the footer will automatically be included.  Now this doesn’t mean that the person stealing the content will not remove this information in order to post the content on their site, but it does add an extra step to the mix.

Another one of these plugins is one called Ozh’ Better Feed. This plugin also allows you to add a footer to your RSS feeds.  The copyright plugin also adds information to your feeds but allows for a lot more options.

Lastly, there’s the AntiLeech plugin.  This one is very unique to say the least. This plugin creates fake content for the scraper but still includes links back to your site.  When your content is stolen, it provides the thief with useless content.

So if you were ever concerned that your content was being out and out stolen on your site, or you have a fear that it might come to that in the future, just install a few of these plugins to get your protection started.