Many of us will have the same post associated with multiple categories and want all of them to be displayed. The “the_category()” template tag will output all of those associated categories. But, some of us also use categories for structure… to display a post in an appropriate place in a particular theme design. For example, when you want a particular post featured you might use a category labeled “Featured” to ensure that the post shows up in a certain place on your page.

Here is the problem… unless you want the category list to display “Featured” next to it’s more appropriate category classifications you need to make a change to the category template tag’s output.

If only wordpress would allow a simple “exclude category” parameter in the template tag, but it currently does not. But, with a little extra coding you can accomplish this.

Take a look at the code below:

<?php
//edit below for categories you want to be excluded
$exclude = array("Featured", "Uncategorized");
//edit below for how you want the category items separated
$separator = " | ";
//don't edit below here!!
$new_the_category = '';
foreach((get_the_category()) as $category) {
if (!in_array($category->cat_name, $exclude)) {
$new_the_category .= '<a href="'.get_bloginfo(url).'/'.get_option('category_base').'/'.$category->slug.'">'.$category->name.'</a>'.$separator;
}
}
echo substr($new_the_category, 0, strrpos($new_the_category, $separator));
?>

Simply replace the “the_category()” with the above code and list the category names you want to be invisible where we have “Featured”, “Uncategorized”.

NOTE: Depending on how you have your permalinks set up, you will probably have to explicitly state “category” in the permalinks settings for the urls to work properly.

Today’s tip is how to display multiple loops the same page. By default, the wordpress loop (ie. the code that queries the database to display your posts) handles one list. But, here is an easy way to do multiple loops on the same page. This is especially useful when you have multiple categories that you’d like to highlight on your page.

On your “index.php” template (or any of your page templates, for that matter. NOTE: this only works directly on your page template files, you can’t insert it from the wordpress admin into the content of your pages) just paste the following code which uses “WP_Query”:

<ul><?php $my_query = new WP_Query('category_name=InsertCategoryNameHere&posts_per_page=5');
while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post();
$do_not_duplicate = $post->ID; ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</ul>

As you can see, all you do is replace the “InsertCategoryNameHere” with your intended category name (when using permalinks), and place it wherever on your page you want the list to go. You can also control how many links you want to display (in this case I chose 5). Then you just do normal css styling of your lists. For your next loop, again just replace the category name and place it wherever you want on your page.

I hope that helps. If you have any questions please feel free to comment below.

There are now many different ways that people read email. Long gone are the days when you only had to worry about “will they read this at work?” or “will they read this at home?”. Those days you had to only figure out if your readers would be viewing your email using their company’s default email program (like Microsoft Outlook, or LOTUS Notes) or via a web-based email tool like AOL, Yahoo, or Hotmail. Nowadays many people are reading their emails on their iPhones and other mobile devices. Because of that, I tend to recommend that the “meat” of your subject line be no longer than 40 characters (including spaces) in length. You can go longer (around 50 characters or so for promotional emails, no longer than 75 for most newsletters) but I would really try to get your main point across in those first 40 characters. In fact, make it less if you can. The iPhone appears to only show the first 37 characters of the subject line. I know that I read a lot of my email on my iPhone these days and the “from line” and “subject line” are very important in my decision to open the message or not.

Here are a few tips that may help you:

1. Create a great website.
There are no tricks to search engine optimization. Maybe there were tricks back in 1997 but search engines now are really just looking for good quality websites devoted to specific subject matter. Be mindful of your website’s content. Is it useful and informative? Is your content readable and easy to find? Always try to think from your customer’s or site visitor’s perspective.

2. Be realistic and patient.
Search engine optimization is a continual process that requires time and energy devoted to making your site as useful and relavent to your audience for your particular services. You won’t see immediate results but the long term benefits are very worthwhile. Results often take months to see, especially if you are new to doing business online or a relatively small company. You have to be realistic in your expectations. You should not focus on overly general terms like “doctor” because the competition for that word will be too tough. You should, however, focus on more specific terms like “philadelphia gastroenterologist”. 

3. Remove “barriers” that inhibit the crawling of your site.
Having session IDs or too many variables in your website’s URLs can affect the ability of the search engine’s to properly crawl and index your site. Also, an incorrect robots.txt file, confusing navigation structure or developing in all flash or all graphics can limit how a search engine accesses your content.

4. Pay attention to your page titles, meta descriptions and urls.
The page title is very important in SEO. Make sure that your page title contains 2 or 3 words that you hope to attract via search engine searches. The description, though not that important for the search engine rankings, will most likely appear under your title in the search listings. Be sure to write a descriptive sentence that captures the essence of what’s on the page. For the urls, it’s really good to have the main keywords in the url and filename… http://www.yourdomain.com/philadelphia-gastroenterologist/. Use hyphens instead of underscores and limit the hyphens to no more than 3 in the url (any more and you may be looked at as spamming your url).

5. Research your keywords at the start of your website project
Using such tools like WordTracker or Google AdWords, you can see which keywords are being used for specific subjects. Pay attention to the volume of one search phrase versus another. You may find that your audience uses words that you haven’t thought of regarding your business.

6. Use keywords as anchor text in your internal links.
Instead of using “click here” for all of your internal links put the link on a relevant keyword. For example, if you are linking to your site’s page about “email marketing” put the link on that phrase. It will tell the search engine spider what the linked-to page is about.

7. Increase your exposure wherever possible.
One great way to create fresh, relevant content is with a blog. Put your blog on your domain at http://www.yourdomain.com/blog and write useful articles about your expertise. Allow your blog’s readers to comment on your articles too. It generates a nice interactive community atmosphere and will most likely add more targeted keywords to your page. You can also think about providing content to other sites like yahoo answers on subject matter related to your site.

8. Use social media marketing.
This is still a new marketing medium which means that it can easily be abused. Sites like Twitter are great for creating links back to your website. Using their API tool, you can set up automatic links on your business’ Twitter page whenever you add new content to your site. Unless you really know your audience wants it, I would never recommend that a business make “random thought” tweets on the company Twitter page. Those are the comments like “I’m sitting on the couch watching baseball.” Maybe your company’s followers like that sort of thing but I usually don’t recommend it for businesses. You can also set up accounts with Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and others. You’d be surprised on how social media marketing can be used to increase targeted traffic to your site thus improving your SEO efforts.

9. Create a site map page.
While some of your readers will never visit this page, and others may prefer it over your default navigation, a site map page is most suited for the search engines. It creates a one-stop repository for your entire site. If you have a large site, however, limit the number of links per site map page to about 70 or so per page. Larger sites will just utilize multiple site map pages.

10. Have a baseline view of your website prior to your SEO efforts.
It’s best to know where you are starting from prior to making any significant changes to your website’s content or structure. Find out how your targeted keywords list your site in the major search engines like google, yahoo, aol, etc.

11. Create Google and Yahoo Site Map files.
Not to be confused with a visible site map page on your site, site map files are usually text or xml-based files that are used by google and yahoo to better index your site.

12. Don’t fall for SEO spam.
You will probably receive emails at some point that offer you “submission to over 1000 search engines and directories” and “2000 quality links for $60″ or something along those lines. Those tactics are unnecessary and considered to be SEO spam by the major search engines.

These are by no means the only things to consider with search engine optimization but they are a great place to start. Hire an honest marketing company to help you with your SEO needs. Just remember that no reputable SEO company can guarantee a number one ranking on any search engine for quality keywords and search phrases. A reputable company you hire will only follow best practices for SEO and not utilize any tactics that may be considered spam and potentially damage your online reputation. SEO work is a continual process and should always focus on improving your site content over time and create an overall better user experience. GKB Solutions will be happy to help you with your SEO needs.

I remember back in the mid 90’s, before the days of spam filters and bulk email folders, when you could go hours (heck, even a day or so) without getting an email. I remember the excitement of seeing a new message in my inbox. Back then I opened and read everything that was sent to me. I bet you did too. Can you honestly say that now? As I type this I’m looking at my inbox and it says “1704 messages, 599 unread”. Ugh. I swear I just cleaned out the stupid thing the other day… delete these messages, put client messages in their appropriate folders, delete even more, and so on. But they just pile up, and up.

Without the from field I would be completely lost. Everyone pays so much attention to the subject line that I think the poor from field doesn’t get its due respect. Let me explain… with 1704 messages, oops now 1705, do you really think I’m paying very close attention to the subject line? How can I? With so many subject lines with 10% off, no 20% off, no even better 50% off, wait buy 1 get 1 free, how about buy 1 get 2 free, they all just blend together. Who cares? I get it, everything is on sale. I would probably pay closer attention if someone said “Everything on the site is now more expensive than ever!!”

What I really care about is who the email is from. As a marketer, you always try to come up with new ways to wow your customers. So you keep throwing them deal after deal and hope that you finally pique their interest (piquing interest can be subject of another article because you should really be analyzing your data using previous behavior to better judge future behavior). As I said, the first two things that are visible with an email is the from field and the subject line. You should ask yourself a few questions… are all of the emails coming from my site whether they are promotional emails sent to your customer list, or automated transactional messages, properly identified by the name your customers know you as?

You need to determine the name that your customers most associate you with. If you have a recognizable brand name but your transactional emails are going out with “tech support” in the from name, you can just consider that email dead on arrival. In fact, unless you can test this otherwise, it’s never a good idea to have your emails say “support” or “webmaster” or anything that generic (unless your company is actually named “support inc” or something. If you have a newsletter, it’s probably a good idea to include your company’s name before the name of the newsletter. The “Disney Insider” is a good example. If the from name just said “Insider” I would be less likely to ever open it. Also, when sorting the inbox, it would come up as Disney. Just remember to test before making any permanent changes.

Hopefully most of you already have your most recognizable name in your from field. But, you should take a close look at the setup of your transactional emails. Everything from order invoices, shipping notifications, technical support tickets, to site registration emails. Just think, if your customers don’t immediately recognize your email by looking at the from field they may just click the delete button before even getting to your unique “everything is now more expensive!” subject line. To all the marketers out there, keep the emails coming, I’d love to hear from you… just make sure I can figure out who you are.