Here’s code to install in your functions.php to follow the above tutorial:

remove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');
remove_action('wp_head', 'feed_links', 2);
remove_action('wp_head', 'index_rel_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'feed_links_extra', 3);
remove_action('wp_head', 'start_post_rel_link', 10, 0);
remove_action('wp_head', 'parent_post_rel_link', 10, 0);
remove_action('wp_head', 'adjacent_posts_rel_link_wp_head', 10, 0 );

Laying the Groundwork for Your New Sidebar

So what we’ll do in this tutorial is to add a second sidebar to one of our custom template pages in our WordPress theme. We have a custom homepage in our template where we want to include a robust call to action to our website visitors rather than a Category list which is more appropriate for blog readers. The screenshot below shows the default “Sidebar 1″ sidebar from our simple template, and we’ll add a second sidebar called “Homepage Sidebar”.

Let’s first take a 10,000 foot view, we are going to employ the following steps to add our sidebar:

• We are going to register our sidebar within the template by making an entry in the template’s functions.php file.
• We are going to create a separate, custom sidebar file called sidebar-homepage.php.
• We are going to include a reference to our custom sidebar-homepage.php file in our custom page template.

That’s it! With these three steps, we’ll have a 2nd sidebar that will display on our custom homepage. With the same technique, we could create additional sidebar areas, the steps would be the same.

Step 1: Registering the Additional Sidebar Within the WordPress Template

First step: we start by registering our sidebar within the template’s functions.php file. 99% of all WordPress templates/themes have a functions.php file. If your theme doesn’t have one, simply create a file in a text editor (we like Notepad++ in the Windows environment and TextMate in the Apple environment). If you don’t know how to find your theme files, you’ll find them in your web host in the following directory: www.yoursite.com/wp-content/themes/yourtheme/.

You’ll want to begin by finding any existing “register_sidebar” entries in your functions.php file. Ours had the following existing sidebar definition for our single default sidebar:

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') ) {
register_sidebar(array(
'before_widget' => '<li id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
'after_widget' => '</li>',
'before_title' => '<h2 class="widgettitle">',
'after_title' => '</h2>',
));
}

To register our second sidebar, we simply add the following code to the functions.php file:

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') ) {
register_sidebar(array(
'name' => 'Homepage Sidebar',
'id' => 'homepage-sidebar',
'description' => 'Appears as the sidebar on the custom homepage',
'before_widget' => '<div style="height: 280px"></div><li id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
'after_widget' => '</li>',
'before_title' => '<h2 class="widgettitle">',
'after_title' => '</h2>',
));
}

So what did we just do?

• We told our WordPress installation, “we are adding a second sidebar area that we’ll use in our theme”
• The sidebar’s name is “Homepage Sidebar”
• The ID of the sidebar (we’ll refer to that ID later) is “homepage-sidebar”; you can choose “footer-sidebar”, “second-sidebar” or anything you want
• We added the description “Appears as the sidebar on the custom homepage” that will display just under the sidebar’s title.

If you upload your new functions.php file to your WordPress installation, you should see your new sidebar if you browse from your WordPress dashboard to Appearance, then Widgets. It should look like the following picture. We’ve already added a Text Widget with the title “Contact Us” to ours, but yours will be empty when you first look at it. But, all we have done is create the sidebar so far; we haven’t yet taken the steps to display the sidebar anywhere in our theme, that will come in the next steps.

If you see your new sidebar in the Widgets area of your WordPress Dashboard, you are ready to move on to the next step.

Step 2: Create an Additional Sidebar File

Wordpress themes use a default file called sidebar.php to display sidebars on pages and posts. But, our goal is to create a second sidebar, we’ll do that with a separate file called sidebar-homepage.php.

Again, we’ll open our text editor and create a file and paste in the following code and insert the ID of your new sidebar within the “dynamic_sidebar()” declaration like so:

<div id="sidebar">
   <ul>
      <?php
      if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('homepage-sidebar') ) :
      endif; ?>
   </ul>
</div>

Now, we have to note that our example sidebar file is highly simplified. Most sidebar files have more code–this extra code displays core navigation in the event the sidebar does not have any widgets installed in it–but for the purposes of this tutorial, we have to simplify it. As an alternative, you can simply copy your sidebar.php file and rename it. Don’t forget to include your sidebar ID within the dynamic_sidebar declaration (shown in red in the code example above)–that sidebar ID tells WordPress which sidebar (which we registered in Step 1) to display.

Step 3: Call the Additional Sidebar from Your Theme Files

We’re almost there. Now, all we need to do is call our new sidebar file, sidebar-homepage.php from our template files–keep in mind that our file name must follow this construct: sidebar-_______.php; we’ll see why in a moment. In our example, we’ll call our sidebar file from a custom template page–but you can call your new sidebar from a footer file, header file, or any theme file that displays on your WordPress site.

The function in WordPress that calls sidebars is get_sidebar(). When get_sidebar() is used with no information within the parenthesis, WordPress grabs the default sidebar.php file. But we want to grab our sidebar-homepage.php file, so we put “homepage” in single quotes within the get_sidebar parentheses. This tells WordPress to grab a file called sidebar-homepage.php . The code we want to insert in our template file is the following:

<?php get_sidebar('homepage'); ?>

What we’ve told WordPress to do is the following: we want to grab a sidebar file, but not the default sidebar, we want a file called sidebar-homepage.php. With this string of code, we’ve successfully grabbed our custom sidebar file.

Our New Sidebar

If you’ve coded your additional sidebar correctly, you can drag Widgets from the WordPress dashboard to your new sidebar and you’ll see the widgets displayed on your WordPress site. Here’s our new sidebar displaying on our homepage, while we display our default sidebar on interior pages and blog posts:

Other Approaches to Adding Sidebars

Our method is one of many, there are more elegant ways of accomplishing the same result without creating separate template files, but the method outlined here is simple and reliable. Please comment below if you have questions or run into trouble.

Our Favorite CSS Galleries, the Cream of the Crop: 

1. Urban Trash. This gallery is truly one of the best, and often our first stop when we seek to tighten up our design skills. [Odd, this site went down on 12/27/11, and we aren't sure what's up, could be temporary, but we've taken the link down pending].
2. CSS Elite. Another of the truly high-end CSS galleries. Many fine sites are featured here.
3. CSSDrive. CSS Drive is one of the elite class of directories, and CSS Drive has many other design-related features as well.

Exceptional, Noteworthy CSS Galleries:

1. CSS Heroes
2. Most Inspired
3. CSS 2.0
4. CSS Based
5. CSS Beauty
6. CSS Slip
7. CSS Collection
8. Web Digity
9. Alvit CSS Showcase
10. Best Web Galley
11. Brdcast
12. CSS Demo
13. CSS Website
14. CSS Based
15. CSS Clip
16. CSS Exchange
17. CSS Galaxy
18. CSS Gallery
19. CSS Heaven
20. CSS Import
21. CSS Impress
22. CSS Liquid
23. CSS Mania
24. CSS Smooth Operator
25. CSS Tux
26. The CSS Gallery Lists (helpful compilation site).

New CSS Galleries Added by Our Readers:

1. http://supersit.es

There are a lot of fun things Siri can do including transcribing text to voice, setting reminders, playing music, checking the weather, getting directions, and yes carrying out search queries. Undoubetedly, Siri will catch on like wild fire, and as a result will compete with many apps and tools, including search engines.

Optimizing for Siri

The integration of Siri will begin to affect strategies and optimization efforts, but most of these things should be part of an immersive SEO program from the start.

Local Search for Siri

People search from mobile devices on the move; they’re not sitting down to do indepth research. A majority of mobile searches are loaction-specific including directions, finding nearby restaurants, or other local services.

With Siri, it’s not about people getting to your website through Google placement alone because visiblity comes from other sources. Siri wants to give users a visual experience and draws data from local listing sites such as Yelp, Google Maps, Citysearch, YP, etc. There are more than 60 of these sites on which it is well worth your time to create a listing. It’s not just for Siri, getting listed on (and links from) all these sites improves local listing and organic placements in SERPs as well.

Obviously you’ll want your information to be correct, up to date, and fully filled out on these sites with accurate address, phone number, images, positive reviews, and a high number of ratings. For more info on local optimization, check out our post on local listings SEO.

Rich Snippets and Schema Tags

Schema.org lets you use a specific markup language (web code) to identify specific information about your business and web presence and make that information more easily found by search engines.

Search engines are using on-page tags in a variety of ways. Google uses them to create rich snippets in search results and will continue to do so more and more. These snippets include author information, address, phone number, operating hours, and so on. So you can see how these tags have value to local searches such as are the focus of Siri. Offering a highly structured format for this information, makes it that much earier to be found.

Variety in Linkbuilding and Long Tail Keywords

This is the first version of Siri, and its depth of language capabilities will continue to increase with new versions. Therefore the following effect will only continue to grow. Already, the length of Siri queries are longer because users are searching in natural speach rather than pecking away at keyboards or small iphone touchscreens.

The result is more long-tail and highly targeted searches. Optimizing for long-tail means more words on the page and more flexible link building. Both of these strategies work in organic search as well, so you won’t even have to duplicate your efforts.

It used to be that you chose your anchor text and could simply bang away at it over and over. With enough links, you’d move on up. That hasn’t been best practice for a while, and Google is becomming even more focused on natural-looking anchor text profiles. Not only is this a saftey-first method, but it’s also more efficient. Flexible anchor text (anchor text with the keyword integrated here and there, but also broadly varied) is more efficent in increasing rankings, even for the targeted, high-volume terms.

Back to Siri, the efforts you make to naturalize and get the most out of your link profile will also help you rank for long-tail searches, which Siri is all about. As a bonus, long tail searches are more targeted to the specific needs of a given search query and therefore convert at higher rates.

The iPhone 4s (S is for Siri? Seems that way to me…) is Apple’s best selling phone to date, with 4 million sales in three days. Verizon started carrying the iPhone earlier this year and even Sprint has had no choice but to jump on the bandwagon. It’s a monolith, and it’s the impetus for a new fold of search optimization.

Leo Laporte’s Keynote Address:
Marketing in the Social Era and the Future of Search

Leo Laporte is an Emmy Award winning veteran of technology broadcasting, and a great thinker with respect to internet and marketing. He had some noteworthy messages.

Leo offered some insights into where advertising and marketing has evolved to the present day. If we look back to say, 1890, and examine a Sears catalog, we’ll see basic descriptions of “features and benefits”–no marketing fluff there. But as the 20th Century progressed, marketers injected skill and technique to bend a product’s message to appeal to buyers on an emotional level, or to force brand identities upon consumers. An effective technique to be sure, but not necessarily in the interests of consumers. A related idea: “brands are the refuge of the ignorant.” In other words, a brand is what a consumer refers to when they have no true benchmark for the underlying quality or suitability of a product or service. More recently though, in the very recent few years, consumers have come to depend on online reviews, ratings and recommendations from their social circles to make buying decisions. This is a fundamental shift in purchasing motivation. As Leo notes, it’s as if the circle has closed and “features and benefits” now become the linchpin of purchasing decisions. He sees social media and websites with engaged users as the great drivers of purchasing decisions in the present and near future.

Leo also offered some predictions about the future of search engines and Google specifically. He does not feel that Google will be as relevant in the future and went as far to say that Google will have some serious challenges in the future. The example he gave was Apple’s new Siri app. Siri lets users speak a command like “find me a dentist near 78704″. Siri then completes the search and offers the user an answer to that query. Note that something very fundamental just changed: the interface (Siri) now controls how the query is executed, rather than the user (as is the case with a simple search at Google.com). So, if Apple chooses to direct Siri queries to Google, then Google controls the query. Leo noted that the internet was a “disintermediary”–it killed travel agents because users could simply make their reservations at the airline directly. Services like Siri are “re-intermediaries”– they insert themselves between the user and the search engine. So, theoretically, if a manufacturer like Apple can control the user interface (as is the case with Siri), Apple can control the search, thereby threatening Google.

Google’s Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal Talk About Upcoming Initiatives at Google

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s spam team (he also authors and appears in Google’s Webmaster Central Channel Videos on YouTube), and Google’s Amit Singhal spoke at the commencement of the 2nd day of the session. Conferences like this are a great way to learn what Google thinks is important and how they value sites and decide rankings.

I ran into Matt Cutts at the Wynn Casino. He was gracious enough to spend a few minutes speaking with me and my wife.

Beside some expected disagreement with Leo Laporte’s earlier warning that Google was in big trouble, one particular highlight caught my attention:

Google Testing an “Above the Fold” Algorithm

Matt Cutts stated that Google was testing an “above the fold” algorithm change that “so far…looks pretty good.” The term “above the fold” refers, simply, to the top of a webpage. The term is inherited from the newspaper industry, the fold being the upward-facing part of the newspaper as it lays flat. This algorithm change would look for quality content at the top of a webpage. So, if a particular website were stuffed with ads, that website might not perform as well in search following the change. No word on if or when this will be implemented.

Some additional insights into search headed forward: Mobile search will continue to grow in importance, and Google will be working to continue to build quality in that area. Social sharing and activity will continue to be more important headed forward. Matt Cutts also proposed a way to protect the original creators of content from having that content stolen by scraper sites. He said that Google may soon begin allowing a notification system that works as follows: when new content is created by a website owner, the creator can ping Google with an alert that confirms that “I am the creator of this content and all other copies are not to be indexed and appear in search.” If implemented, this improvement will be a valuable tool for website owners. Matt also spoke about author reputation in search, noting that author reputation and authority can serve as a great measure of the value of content created by those authors.

General Ideas Presented at PubCon

From the broad pool of speakers, some general ideas emerged that present great opportunities for ranking, placement, and visibility headed forward.

Author Profiles in Search Results

This idea echos what Matt Cutts said about author reputation. In the screenshot below, you’ll note a screenshot image of some search results with a thumbnail photo of Matt Cutts and the text “by Matt Cutts – In 135,595 Google+ circles”. This is a recent search feature that links an author’s content to his or her Google+ profile.

This feature is easy to implement by tagging content with a link to each author’s Google+ profile. We’ll be rolling this out for our clients in upcoming weeks, and of course, we’ll be working with clients to help build out properly optimized Google+ profiles. It is also important to note that this connection between author profiles will add authority to the content and potentially can increase the ranking positions of such content. In a WordPress environment, this feature will apply to posts, but not to your commercial pages, and contact pages, etc.

The Power of Social Sharing

Another prominent theme at PubCon (the second PubCon in a row, actually) is the power of social sharing to increase ranking and visibility. Besides the obvious effect of gaining additional placement through the sharing of content (after all, if content is shared, that means other people will see it), sharing of content can serve as a signal to search engines that “this content is valuable” and “this site is a legitimate source of content.” Remember, Google’s mission is to filter out thin content and deliver valuable content in response to search queries. Social sharing continues to rise in importance as a ranking factor within Google and other search engines.

Site Value Over Page Value

Another topic discussed at PubCon was the continued shift in how Google values individual pages of content. Typically, in the page, Google would tend to rank an individual page based on the merits of that page: the page elements, keywords used, load speed, inbound links. More recently, Google is shifting its focus to the value of the site as a whole. And so, a loose collection of well-optimized pages will not perform as well as a website that has developed overall authority. Ways to achieve this? Start by removing weak content from your site–weak content can actually harm your valuable content by lowering the authority of the site as a whole. Also, social sharing, discussed above, can increase the authority and power of a site.

We have compiled a list of experts available for comment and appearances in local/national media and the press. All listed experts are leaders in their fields and are available for prompt comment. To reach any expert on this list, contact TastyPlacement at 512.535.2492 or email michael@tastyplacement.com.

Expert on Search Engines, SEO, and Social Media: Michael David

Michael David is the owner and founder of TastyPlacement and is the author of WordPress 3.0 Search Engine Optimization. He is a veteran of the search and social media industries, and a frequent speaker on the subject.

Areas of expertise:

• Search Engines; Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Social Media such as Facebook and Twitter
• Web technologies and trends

Contact information: call 512.535.2492 or email michael@tastyplacement.com.

Expert on Dermatology, Skin Care, and Skin Disorders: Dr. Roopal Bhatt

Dr. Roopal Bhatt is a board-certified dermatologist and Diplomate of the American Board of Dermatology and Fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology.  She is a member of Austin Dermatologic Society, Travis County Medical Society and Texas Medical Association. She is the founding physician of Four Points Dermatology in Austin, TX.

Areas of expertise:

• Dermatology
• Skin diseases
• Skin care
• Injectible products such as Botox and Juvederm

Contact information: call 512.535.2492 or email michael@tastyplacement.com.

.

You should always start by claiming your business on Google Places, then work your way down by submitting information to Yahoo Local, YellowPages.com, and maybe even Bing Local. From there, you want to convince search engines that your business exists and is significant to users. To do that, you’ll have to submit to many alternate local directories.

In Chapter 9 of our book, SEO for WordPress, we talk about local listings and their explosive power in the hands of local businesses.

We at TastyPlacement have been scouring local directories to figure out which best factor into local rankings.

That’s something that we talk about in chapter six, the link building chapter, of our SEO for WordPress book.

But which directories are good and which are junk? There are a lot of lists of free article directories out there, but most of those lists are out of date, or they don’t have the needs of SEO in mind. You need directories that won’t give you too much of a hassle. You need a directory that will give you a lot of PR juice through a fair number of dofollow links, and you can’t have them throwing in a lot of editorial back talk.

That’s why the TastyPlacement team has compiled a list of the easiest SEO article directories out there. This is all current information, with the directories listed from most to least suitable. We had to look at over 600 directories to find 80 that are suitable to your needs. We’re posting this resource for free because we feel that you shouldn’t waste your time with article directories that won’t give you dofollow links or will be careless with your valuable content.

So give it a shot and let us know how it works out! We’ll update this post every month, so keep coming back!
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Updated November 2011

We’re getting great questions from readers of our book, WordPress 3.0 Search Engine Optimization. Today, Michael tackles a question sent in by Jeff of Houston, TX. Remember, send in those questions and feedback! We’re always  thrilled to help out our readers.

Hi Mr. David,

I’m sorry to contact you with such an insignificant matter, but I just got your book today and wanted to ask if you could clarify an issue that I have encountered. My site has been up for about 6 months and I had been using a permalink structure of /year/month/day/postname and I changed it to /category/postname. I also used Deans Permalink Migration plugin to add 301 redirects for published posts.

I want to use your Ultimate Robot.txt file to my site, but I’m wondering if I add the “Disallow: /2011/ ” directive to eliminate duplicate content in my archives, will it disallow my previous posts that had /2011/ in the old permalink structure? Any help or clarification on this issue would be very appreciated. Thank you for your time.

Jeff

Houston, TX

Jeff,

We love hearing from readers.

Yes, I believe that if you add the directive Disallow: /2011/ you will remove year archives from indexing, but also any post that uses the year in that position as part of its permalink structure. I tested it, and it appears to disallow the content.

You can test your robots.txt file by using Google Webmasters’ Crawler Access testing tool. The tool lets you test the text of a robots.txt file and compare it to a specific URL. The tool then tells you if your robots.txt file is allowing or blocking the URL. You can find the tool by logging into Google.com/webmasters and then selecting “Site Configuration” and then “Crawler Access” from the left menu. We didn’t cover this specific tip in WordPress 3.0 Search Engine Optimization, but we will implement it in a future edition of the book.

Now, but you say you’ve changed your permalink structure–that should solve the problem. In the case where a robots.txt entry would block regular blog posts from getting indexed when blocking year archives, the solution is clear: don’t block either. Just make sure your year archive is set to display excerpts of the posts, rather than the full text of the posts.

Michael
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