Best stats plugin for WordPress: ShortStat
This is just my opinion, based on what I was looking for, which is: a very simple WordPress blog plugin for gathering and reporting stats like unique and total hits, referrers, and search keywords. I wasn’t interested in a heavy-weight stats program. I already use Google Analytics, but for this blog I wanted a plugin to put exactly the stats I’m interested in on my WordPress dashboard.
ShortStat does exactly what I want. It’s a simple and (as of this writing) actively-maintained WordPress stats plugin that provides a quick dashboard link, putting your stats a mere click away. Read more
Using word clouds for SEO keyword analysis
Wordle is an online tool that creates “word clouds” out of text. Basically, you feed it some text and it generates an image of jumbled up words, with the size of each word determined by how frequently it is repeated. One way to think about it is, Wordle gives you a rough idea of how a search engine spider sees your page. This may be helpful in your SEO efforts.
For example, here is a word cloud of my blog post on geolocation. (click for larger size)
Instantly, the main theme of the post jumps out, with words such as “geolocation”, “city”, “code” and “GeoIP” featuring prominently. Then you also see secondary words, such as “region”, “PHP”, and “database”, adding additional context. In SEO terms, the larger words are your keywords. The font size represents your keyword density.
Another word cloud after the jump: Read more
