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As you would expect from a major update, the new version has some sought after features for store managers, developers and customers, who all benefit greatly from an upgrade, which isn’t all too hard to do either. Compatibility with previous themes and modifications (if done rightly) is a breeze.

You can read more about what’s new over on the WooThemes blog.

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A personal favorite are the videos with Matt Cutts who usually talks about items related to SEO and what Google considers to be spammy. Check out the channel. It’s a great resource.

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An overview of what is new and what they have fixed in this version, head over to the official blog post on WordPress.org where they outline a few of the most important ones and link to the trac for the full changelog.

If you don’t want to worry about the updates yourself, just contact us and we will happy to update your site for you to save some time, or invite you to sign up for our service plan where we make sure your site is safely backed up and updated at all times.

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Facebook’s new Graph Search aims to change that completely, and is Facebook’s way of saying that people and social connections ultimately matter much more than algorithms, or to put it in another way, that you should now stay within Facebook when searching too.

Aggregating Lots of Social Data = Big Advantage

Using Facebook on a day-to-day basis, it is quite unbelievable that the network is as big as it is. You hardly ever notice most of the other billion people also using it, and rarely do you find that billion useful either. In the way that Google has always excelled—using the data they have from their users—Facebook can potentially become even greater.

The reason for this is simply that Facebook has much more in-depth data about us through our social connections than does Google. Thus, the idea behind the new Graph Search is that you are more likely to want to see links that have been shared by others on Facebook, an assumption that could absolutely potentially hold up.

Facebook’s new Graph Search puts an even greater emphasis on what has been touted for what seems like an eternity: Content for humans matter the most.

From a website owner point of view, this means an inherent change in the way we think about sharing content online. It truly reinforces what Google has been saying and trying for years (and many ignoring for just as long): Content is what matters. This is even more prevalent with the new Facebook Graph Search, because once it rolls out, what your social network shares and considers valuable, is what is going to be shown and recommended automatically to their network. Who wouldn’t want to tap into that?

Further Reading

Graph Search is big in the news today with all tech sites writing about it. Do start by going to Facebook itself where you can get a demo and also sign up for the beta, which is rolling out in very limited editions.

Other good sites that have written about Graph Search from different perspectives are: AllThingsD, Forbes, Wired, Wall Street Journal and Search Engine Land.

Also, take a look at this video from The Verge, showing the graph search in a live demo:

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As a website owner, it is easy to think: “Visitors clearly won’t mind if this little thing isn’t fully perfect”. We cut ourselves far more slack than we perhaps should do. In psychology you talk about the attachment we have to our own creations and how we value them far more highly than others do.

In our website visitor role however, we are extremely critical. We now seem to instinctively know that if this site doesn’t want to please us, there is a next one just a click away. And since we had nothing to do with making the site, there are no mitigating circumstances.

Knowing this should in theory help us in the website owner role. We know that visitors are critical and I believe that we also know deep down when something we made really isn’t as good as we would truthfully like it to be, or need it to be.

Being truthfully critical with yourself can greatly improve your creations.

Overcoming this attachment to our own creations is not easy, but doing so can be very powerful. Just asking a trusted friend for truthful advice and taking it to heart instead of becoming defensive is a great first step to greatly improve the website you made.

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While some settings will need to be set specifically for your goals and site specifics, the tutorial gives you a good set  of defaults and in it, I point out if there are settings you can experiment with on your own to tweak the performance.

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Today, we have updated it with some bug fixes, code cleanups and most notably, by removing the customized CSS framework we have been using (custom + parts from Boostrap) and replaced it with Foundation.

Our goal with posting it on GitHub is two-fold:

1. Contribution. We want to contribute back to the community. WordPress itself is open source and there is no reason why our base theme shouldn’t be. If you have use for something that we are doing in the theme, please be our guest to use it.

2. Improvements. If you find something badly written or filled with bugs we hope that you contribute to make the world a better place, so to say. Feel free to fork it, or just come with a comment or two.

So, if you have use for it, enjoy the little, but for us very meaningful tweaks.

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What I find interesting about this, is reading the follow up post on Smashing Magazine, and one by Joost de Valk to learn that I, like Paul, have another image of the SEO industry that they so fiercely want to defend, and rightly so.

This leads me to think however, that if Paul is wrong, and I am wrong, how many more of us are there out there with the same view? It is no secret that many would consider SEO as only trying to get a page as highly on Google as possible, promised results for any keyword and for any company willing to pay big time for it—and pay a lot they must to keep ranking highly.

Clients Don’t Know

Frankly, the money issue and the internal fights and debates over what is proper and what is not is a big problem for the SEO industry. Most customers I talk to have heard about SEO, but think that it is a magical dust powder that you sprinkle and suddenly end up at the top of Google results.

In fact, I spend a lot of time with clients explaining that this is not the case, that SEO is hard work and possibly now, is not quite all what they expect it to be. However, with clients asking for this, companies rise that provide this service—however dubious and downright bad it may be.

Realize the Situation

With this in mind, I am even more surprised that the true professionals in the SEO industry—the people doing the real and ”true” SEO work—are infuriated that people believe SEO is something different than what they are doing. Yes, it may have falsely turn out this way, but frankly, more “SEO companies” are doing what the “true SEO professionals” are saying is not SEO work. Doesn’t this show just how big the problem then is, as I alluded to in a tweet in response to the articles?

I think the article on @smashingmag by @boagworld today reflects what the big SEO industry has become, rather than what the true pros do.

The fact that this discussion has now blossomed is a great step. I for one have learnt a lot over the past few weeks, reading the follow up articles to Paul’s—whom I want to thank for writing the post in the first place—post, articles by both himself and others.

Finally, the question still remains: How can we together take a firm stance against the misleading and dubious SEO industry and promote and favor the more correct practices (if one can use the term correct and SEO in the same sentence)?

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