Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

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Fixing Tracking Contact Form 7 with Google Analytics in WordPress

Wednesday, October 1st, 2014

Contact Form 7 advices to add this code to the Additional Settings field at the bottom of the contact form management page

on_sent_ok: "_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Contact Form', 'Submit']);"

Actually that is a bad idea. Be tracked by Google is not every one’s favourite idea of a free internet, so people block Google Analytics either by any tracker blocker, like Ghostery or Disconnect, by Googles official `opt out extension` or by simple blocking the script in a firewall.

Yes, Internet is the only one place on earth you have to `opt-out` to live quiet and peaceful.

When a user has blocked the Analytics script and visits your contact form, he can’t submit it. It will not submit nor show any error-message. It will do nothing, except show an obscure JS error in the console.

`Uncaught exception: ReferenceError: Undefined variable: _gaq`

To fix this, wrap your code up in a try and catch, so it won’t stop on the error and submitting will not halt:

on_sent_ok: "try{_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Contact Form', 'Submit']);} catch(e){}"

Integrating Contact Form 7 and Google Universal Analytics this way is more robust.

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Can you trust Google translate? Ehh..

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Dunno, maybe it’s a new kind of spam. Or another quick and dirty SEO trick.

Maybe the two beautiful cities London and Amsterdam are battling to lure German tourists into their hotels. The English national tourist-agency just scored a superb goal:

London – Amsterdam: 1-0

A `wandeling door amsterdam` in Dutch  (`a walk in amsterdam`) is translated by Google to `London Walks` in German.

Really?

Trust me

Really!!

(more…)

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CSS Counter for search results

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

Most SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts claim they can offer services to any webmaster by helping pushing more traffic to their websites. Not necessarily the PageRank, which is an importance ranking of Google, but the position in Google result pages will be the goal most people are targeting.

Inbound links help, but most traffic to ordinary sites will come from search engine result pages. Even my aunt simply types everything in Google, including URL’s.

The power of Google is that they made their homepage so simple, and the searchbox is so centered, that newbies automatically start typing in there. Addressbar, what’s that? Even the technically smart and userfriendly way of making the addressbar a super searchfield, which was introduced years ago by Opera – and stole my heart immediately – and that is now copied by Firefox and Chrome, and now known as Omnibox – is too difficult for computer illiterates

I’m getting of topic. For generated traffic it does make a difference if your website is listed 7th or 68th. I prefer to have the default amount of results changed to 100. Sometimes it’s a bit hard to see, their is no explicit numbering in Google or Yahoo, so I’ve created a little CSS file that adds a that number: Search Engine Counter CSS

Works in Google

Google counter

Works in Yahoo

Yahoo counter

As a CSS Userfile

For Opera users just save this file in the User CSS directory, normally in the profile/css/user path. The you can simply select it in the dropdown menu.

Operation

Working in Opera

As a Javascript bookmarklet

An alternative way of operating is a bookmarklet powered by Javascript. Drawback: it doesn’t work, when javascript is disabled.

To install it: drag the bookmarklet to your Bookmarks Toolbar, Links Bar or Personal Bar or whatever it’s called.
Result-counter

A bookmarklet is a little javascript helper to execute some small automated tasks in your web browser

Use: push the button on a  Google or Yahoo result page.