Author Archives: chameleon

WordPress Delete All Comments SQL

We get asked many times “Is there a way in wordpress to delete all comments using sql”?

Well the answer is yes, rather than having to delete around 50 comments a time using the backend of WordPress you can login to the database using a SQL program such as PHPMyAdmin or Navicat and run the following command:-

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = 0

This will query the database and find in the table wp_comments an entry that has not been approved yet and delete the entire entry.

An example on clients website there was 10,872 spam comments waiting to be approved. We ran this command to delete all the WordPress comments and the result:-

[SQL] DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = 0

Affected rows: 10872
Time: 0.422ms

So it took 0.422 milliseconds to remove all 10,872 spam comments.

how to get backlinks

Google Disavow Links Tool

On Tuesday 16th October 2012, Google announced the launch of its new Disavow Links Tool. This new tool is intended for the use of experienced webmasters who are well-informed of aggressive SEO techniques. The tool aims to help solve the problem of “unnatural links” pointing to your site due to manual spam action.

Disavow links

Building lots of low quality backlinks to your website is not good practise and can be interpreted as black hat SEO. As it has a negative effect upon your page ranking, creating “unnatural links” is sometimes done as a means of attack from competitor sites. The Google Disavow Links tool aims to give website owners a chance to have these links discounted by their spiders.
The tools states “If you believe your site’s ranking is being harmed by low-quality links you do not control, you can ask Google not to take them into account when assessing your site.”

If you website contains links to unreliable sites, you will be notified of this by Google via email. The email will detail some of the types of links that are considered unnatural up to a maximum of three. These emails will not detail all of the bad links that you have associated with your website however; it is up to you to investigate them yourself.

It is important to note that the vast majority of people should not need to use this tool as they will not have a large number of unnatural links. The process takes weeks to be completed from the time your list of disavowed links is submitted to the time they are ignored by Google as your site will have to be crawled and indexed again, which takes time. You also need to be aware that reinstating a link that has been disavowed takes even longer than disavowing it in the first place; therefore please ensure that it is definitely the right decision to make before you disavow a link. The tool is designed to be used by experienced webmasters who have a good working knowledge of aggressive SEO techniques.

This statement is clear that Google are trying assist people with problems relating to a large volume of low quality links:-

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main

Disavow links

The Google Disavow Tool is to be used as a last resort to stop your website being associated with unnatural links. Removing the link completely from the web is the most effective way of improving your page ranking; this is done by contacting the person responsible for the other page and having the link removed manually. There will always be a small amount of people that are unreachable and this is why the disavow tool has been introduced. This tool does not remove the link, rather suggests that Google ignore it.

If you believe your website ranking has being harmed by low-quality links that you do not control then you can ask Google not to take them into account when assessing your site rankings.

For more information about this go to:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/a-new-tool-to-disavow-links.htm

How to Backup WordPress

If you have a WordPress website then you need to make sure you backup the website data just incase something goes wrong.

What to Backup in WordPress

WordPress is made up of the core files and a database. So you need to backup everything. seo websites . To Backup the WordPress Core Installation you will need an FTP client. If you take a copy of everything you will be copying:-

1. WordPress Core Installation Files
2. WordPress Plugins Files
3. WordPress Themes Files
4. Images and additional Files.
5. Coding fiels such as Javascript, PHP, etc
6. .htaccess file
7. Robots file
8. Sitemap.xml file

Taking a full backup ensures you have everything you need to rebuild WordPress and once you have these files safe you can also use them if you get hacked to quickly erase what the hackers changed.

You now need to backup the complete database using something like phpMyAdmin. WordPress provide an export facility to export the content of the website but this is not a complete backup of the data.

EMD Update – Exact Match Domain

Matt Cutts gave us another weather warning or should we say a warning about another update. This time it is the EMD update which is designed to remove low-quality and exact match domains from the Google search results.

The idea is to prevent people coming up with perfect domain names that match the keywords that they are going to be buying. Matt Cutts wants people to be a domain name that works for people.

If your website has suddenly disappeared from Google in October and the domain name is an exact match of keywords then you are likely to have been hit with the EMD update.

Google vs Apple

August 2012 and Apple’s market value exceeds that of Microsoft’s during 1999 growth and Apple announced on Monday 20th August 2012 that the market value climbed to a value more than $623 billion making Apple the most valuable company of all time.

But Google now own Motorola and they have unleashed an attack on Apple in the courts using asking the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to ban the import of all iPhones, iPads, and Macs and this at a time when Apple are celebrating success.

Motorola Mobility has commented that “We would like to have settled these patent matters, but Apple is unwilling to work out a license and this leaves us little choice but to defend ourselves and our engineers’ innovations,” .

Apple has already been in this argument regarding Motorola’s licensing and they have said that the fees are disproportionally too high.

The ITC have also said Apple had infringed one of Motorola’s patents and this could mean that there is a ban on iPhone imports as soon as early as next week.

Apple has been asking for it, and it looks like Google are giving it to them. Larry Page, Google’s chief executive said: “Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.”

If Google wins and the ITC agree, there might not be any iPhones, iPads or Macs in stores in the near future.

Apple might be regretting ever getting into this patent war with both Motorola and Samsung.

Nepali to English dictionary .

50 Shades Of SEO

Shocked yet thrilled by SEO it became a singular erotic task. For all the trappings involved with Google success for our clients multinational businesses, our own wealth, we find ourselves tormented by Google and consumed by not being controlled.

Chameleon embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair of discovery to find Google secrets and we explore every dark desire.

We scowl with frustration at Google results in the monitor. Damn the results just won’t behave, and damn to Google as this is making us all ill and we feel hate towards Google for subjecting us to this ordeal. We should be spending time with family, yet we find ourselves working all hours in an attempt to improve results and the final keystroke is a submission.

We must not sleep until we have completed certain tasks,  we must not sleep until all factors that make Google happy are completed. Reciting this mantra several times, we attempt, once more, to bring the Google dance under control with the latest SEO factors. We roll our eyes in exasperation and gaze at the latest rankings, up and down with daily shifts that are too big for our clients to understand, and they want to give up. Our only option is to restrain our clients and make them understand Google in hope that we make a presentable effect on the results and educate clients that SEO takes months not days until such a time that we hit page one of Google and grow to the number one spot.

A new day and we must visit a potential new client, our destination is the headquarters of Mr. Grey’s global enterprise. On arrival we are presented with a a huge twenty-story office building, a beautiful curved glass and steel finish which is an architect’s utilitarian fantasy, with the words GREY HOUSE written discreetly in steel over the large darkened glass front doors. It’s a quarter to ten when we arrive, greatly relieved that we are not late due to morning rush hour traffic in Birmingham as we walk into the impressive, enormous—and intimidating glass and steel lobby with white sandstone tile floor.

Sat behind the solid sandstone desk is a very attractive, perfectly groomed, blonde young woman who smiles pleasantly at us as we approach. She is wearing a charcoal suit jacket and white shirt with her hair twisted into immaculate perfect curls.

“Morning, we are here to see Mr. Grey. Ian and Mark from Chameleon Web Services.”

“Ok, let me check.” She arches her eyebrow and flicks her hair as we stand self-consciously before her. Ian is beginning to wish he’d ironed his shirt rather than taking the time available in the morning to eat a bacon and egg sandwich. We have made an effort and worn nice suits and a tie but the shirt is letting us down. For us, this is smart as we are geeks and geeks do not care about fashion. We stand in wait and pretend she doesn’t intimidate us.

“Chameleon is expected. Please sign in here, Ian. You need to take the last elevator on the right, press for the tenth floor.” She smiles kindly at us, amused no doubt, as we sign in.

She hands us a security pass that has “visitor” very clearly stated on the front. We can’t help but smirk. Surely it’s obvious that we are just visiting. We don’t fit in here at all. We inwardly sigh, thanking her and proceed to walk over to the bank of elevators and past the security man who is far more smartly dressed than us in well-cut black suits.

The elevator whisks us at terminal velocity to the tenth floor and the doors slide open. We enter another large lobby all glass and steel with white sandstone tiles. We are confronted by another desk of sandstone and another amazing young blonde woman, this time dressed impeccably in black and white, who rises to greet us.

“You must be Chameleon, could you wait here please?” She points to a black leather seated area.

A door opens and yet another elegant, flawlessly dressed blonde comes out of the large door. What is it with all the immaculate blonde’s?. Taking a deep breath, we stand up.

“Chameleon?” the latest blonde asks.

“Yes,” Ian croaks, and clears his throat. “Yes.” There, that sounded more confident.

“Mr. Grey will see you in a moment. May I take your jacket?”

“Oh, no thank you.” the unironed shirt will not deliver the right impression here.

Moments later the blonde returns “please follow me”, we are led to a huge directors office we dark wood furnishings and leather with a over sized flat screen monitor hanging on the wall, “please be seated, Mr Grey will be with you shortly”.

We take a seat and carmly start up our laptop and review our paperwork portfolio, the door opens and in comes Mr Grey, we shake hands firmly and all sit down.

“Thank you for coming today!, now I want to be top of Google for my keywords, and you have got my competitor in the top spot”. We think quickly and explain we only work with one company in each sector and then get told “I just explained, I want to be top of Google for my keywords”.

Ian stands up “thank you for your time Mr Grey, we are loyal to our clients and we work for a competitor of yours so sorry we cannot do business” and we then leave feeling we have the upper hand.

To be continued…

 

Google Panda Alert 25th July 2012

Google Panda went live in February 2011 and as Google continually make updates to the Google search to make improvements the latest announcement to a Google algorithm refresh is today 25th July 2012.

The announcement made via Twitter said “New data refresh of Panda starts rolling out tonight. ~1% of search results change enough to notice. ”

The “Panda” algorithm change improved rankings for a large number of high-quality websites but also removed many websites that had used black hat SEO techniques.

This latest update is targeting quality and it looking for site with low quality content. So if your website drops you need to look at the content on your website.

Google sent out messages in since March alerting webmasters, “We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines“.

Google have also said “everyone should not panic” and they have added “we are assuring everyone this was just a case of Google trying to be more transparent and not a warning that a penalty is nigh”.

But this has still left SEO consultants and websites owners worried in fear of what will happen next.