So here we are in week four of this series, and I’ve got another handful of plugins to share. This week I’m introducing tools to help with Web site analytics.

A crucial aspect of Web site management is tracking performance and observing visitor behaviour. This process provides valuable insights that can be used to improve a Web site, create happy, loyal customers and make an online business more successful. This post talks about three plugins that make this process easier on your WordPress site.

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So here’s the third installment in the series. This week I have a handful of plugins to help in the area of SEO.

From its solid foundations WordPress is very ‘search engine friendly’ out of the box. Its default themes and template system are built on modern Web standards and the clean, valid code makes it easy for search engines to find, understand and index content. However, that doesn’t mean there is no room for improvement for those wanting to take every possible advantage when creating exposure for their products or services.

The plugins I have selected today enable little tweaks and techniques to make your site play nice with search engines – and ultimately help them help people find their way to you.

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Following on from last week’s post that kicked this series off, here’s three recommended plugins for maintaining a WordPress site.

WordPress is renowned for its ease of use and its extensive features for keeping a site running smoothly. The comment moderation is first-class, the user management is a breeze, and with the help of the security plugins I recommended last week it’s simple to keep your installation safe. So what other areas of site management are there to improve?

Three areas we like to have covered, on our own sites and client sites, are backing up the data WordPress holds, a user-friendly way of managing site updates and rooting out broken links from site content. (Broken links are also a big issue in the world of SEO, but I wanted to include them this week because of their impact on user experience).

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We at Tactic Group are big WordPress fans. For any project requiring a blog/news based site it is our platform of choice. We’ve installed and maintained a number of sites on WordPress and I would like to share our list of essential plugins to make it fly.

There are over 8,000 plugins available for WordPress. I’m not claiming these are the only plugins you’ll ever need. The plugins I’m listing here are those we’ve used time and time again for specific tasks. Each of them does their job very well, and as a result we’ve grown to love them.

We’ve identified four areas of WordPress that can be beefed-up for easier management and better business: Security, Maintenance, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Analytics. It’s quite a long list so I’m going to break it up into four weekly posts. This week I’ll look at Security and reinforcing your WordPress site, keeping any vulnerabilities to a minimum.

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Just recently I found myself choked for words to use in a headline for a news post I was writing.

This led to a good foraging through many blogs for inspiration. What I found was an abundance of information and advice about how to create good headlines. There really is endless amounts of articles that have been written on this subject, so I thought I’d boil a few down for our audience here at Tactical Thinking…

At Copyblogger: How to Write Headlines That Work

In this post Brian Clark, Author of Copyblogger, outlines eight different types of headlines all suited to different situations.

He begins with direct and indirect headlines, i.e. one that states the selling proposition directly or one that uses curiosity to raise a question in the reader’s mind. Here’s a relevant example for our audience:

Direct – “50% off on all 2009 outerwear!”
Indirect – “Why pay full-price for your new jacket?”

He goes on to describe News headlines, How-to headlines, Question and Command headlines, Reason Why headlines and finally Testimonial headlines. Very useful stuff as it opens the doors to many more headline-writing options.
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It’s been a while since our last Tactical Thinking post hasn’t it? One of the draw backs of being a small company, something has to go on the back-burner when you get too busy.

Well, we’re back on the business blogging buzz with some new thoughts and ideas to share with you. Our latest project, amphitheatre, has provided us with some amazing insights into the world of large-scale, multi-author blogging. First on the agenda; how to increase user interactivity through voting polls.

Some call it link-baiting. I think of it as improving a site’s user-interactivity to increase the number of return visitors.

First, let’s just clarify why one would want to increase their web site’s user-interactiveness. If a web site truly engages it’s users there is a greater chance of those users coming back to the site, improving the number of repeat visits as well as visitor loyalty. Think about some of the web sites that you visit on a regular basis. I think you’ll find that many of them encourage your involvement in one aspect or another.

Polls and surveys are a strong method to encourage this user-interactivity.
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Today is May 1st. Aside from being the 56th anniversary of the day Mr Potato Head was introduced to the public (a historic day indeed), it is also RSS Awareness Day.

As enthusiastic purveyors of RSS here at Tactical Thinking, we were as keen to play our part in the initiative as kids were eager to stick plastic eyes and ears into potatoes in the 1950’s.

So why do we need an RSS awareness day? Well, as useful and powerful as RSS is, it has yet to become a mainstream technology in the big picture of global internet use. (more…)

Lately we’ve noticed many RSS-themed posts popping up on blogs of all shapes and sizes. What’s caused this little surge in interest on the topic of RSS? That would be the up-and-coming ‘RSS Day’ on 1st May.

What’s the purpose of RSS Awareness Day?

All blog writers want more readers. We all know there’s a thirst for knowledge around the world and many of us have something worth sharing, so this awareness day is simply about making the knowledge-sharing process much easier (and less time consuming). As the old proverb goes, ‘Time is money’.

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It’s something we’ve been waiting a while for here at Tactic Group, but yesterday it arrived. The guys over at WordPress posted a sneak peek of the new version (version 2.5), of their formidable blog engine.

Being ardent WordPress fans here (as it powers Tactical Thinking and is our recommended weblog solution), we’re very excited at this news. Since reading about the usability and interaction design work by Happy Cog I’ve been itching to see the end results.

The re-designed administration interface looks just as good as the new features sound. Features such as a customisable dashboard, built-in photo galleries and Gravatar support. To give you an idea of the emphasis on this major new release:

This isn’t just a fresh coat of paint — we’ve re-thought the look of WordPress, as well as how it’s organized so that you can forget about the software and focus on your own creative pursuits.

We’ll be giving this new version a whirl here in the next couple of days, as it’s reputedly very stable, and will post our early thoughts as we put it through its paces.

Update 26.03.2008: View a short screencast of the new WordPress in action.

Ever wondered why it feels good to write bullet points in sets of three? Two just doesn’t seem worthwhile, whereas four can feel a little excessive.

Brian Clark at Copyblogger explains How To Use The ‘Rule Of Three’ To Create Engaging Content. In this rather compelling post Brian describes why the human brain is drawn towards three-part structures. (more…)