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What are the best WordPress Plugins? There are four WordPress plugins that I can’t live without. They are:

Akismet — the only way to stop spam comments from ruining your blog. Akismet is very accurate and works like a charm.

Google Analytics for WordPress — I used to cut and paste the Google Analytics script into the footer of my blog, but then you have to worry about it every time you change your theme. By using a WordPress Plugin, you can change themes without worrying about changing the Google Analytics script.

Google XML Sitemaps – This is a very handy WordPress Plugin not just for creating the XML sitemap every time you make a change to your blog, but also for notifying the major search engines of the change.

All in One SEO Pack — It takes a little work to fully put this plugin to use, but it is very helpful in allowing you to set the title tag for each post and each page, including your main page. The title tag seems to be the most important one for search engines in identifying what a page is all about, and this plugin lets you tailor the title tag as well as other parameters.

What about Google AdSense or other advertising-related plugins? I usually put the AdSense script in a text widget, so I don’t use a plugin for this.

YouTube now allows deep linking to videos, or linking to a spot deep within a YouTube video so that when launched, the video starts at the minute and second that you ask it to, rather than at the beginning.

Here is how it works: Simply add #t=1m19s to the end of the YouTube video URL to start the video 1 minute and 19 seconds into the video.

Launch the “Where the Hell is Matt” video at the beginning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

Launch the “Where the Hell is Matt” video in Zambia, one minute and 19 seconds into it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY#t=1m19s

I tried it a bunch of things but it does not seem to work yet for embedded videos from YouTube.

I did, however, figure out how to change the YouTube Embed Code so that it will produce valid XHTML:

YouTube Embed Code Before Changes to Valid XHTML

YouTube Embed Code Before Changes to Valid XHTML

This produces invalid XHTML:

YouTube Standard Embed Code Produces Invalid XHTML

YouTube Embed Code After Changes to Valid XHTML

YouTube Embed Code After Changes to Valid XHTML

Now the Validator passes the test:

Modified YouTube Embed Code Produces Valid XHTML

Slideshare is a great service that allows you to upload powerpoint presentations and then embed them in your blog, but the default embed code is not valid XHTML and it also clutters your site with lots of extra links back to Slideshare.net. When your own presentation links with your keywords back to Slideshare, you will find that Slideshare ranks higher than you on Google for your own content. This presentation will teach you how to cleanly embed a Slideshare presentation on your blog while maintaining your own Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as much as possible.

Transcript

1. How to Embed a Slideshare Presentation in your Blog with Valid XHTML
2. Slideshare: YouTube for Slides. Slideshare.net is like YouTube for slide shows: You can upload PowerPoint presentations to Slideshare.net and share them by inserting some embed code in your web page. Unfortunately, if you use the Slideshare.net embed code “as is”, your web page will no longer be valid XHTML as determined by http://validator.w3.org. This presentation shows you how to modify the Slideshare embed code to produce valid XHTML as well as a cleaner presentation without the clutter of links back to Slideshare.net.
3. Here is the embed code that Slideshare gives you
4. Here is what it looks like with the default Slideshare embed code
5. It also doesn’t validate at http://validator.w3.org
6. W3 Shows you the errors in detail.
7. Some of this code is unnecessary, cluttering your slideshow with extra links back to Slideshare
8. Let’s remove the backlink code and see what happens
9. The code sure looks cleaner
10. It’s also cleaner on the screen without all those extra links
11. But it still doesn’t validate
12. The problem is with embed. embed tag is not not valid XHTML, but you can add more information to the object tag and you don’t need to use the embed tag at all
13. Make these edits
14. Here is what the new embed code looks like
15. It looks the same on the screen
16. And now you have valid XHTML
17. And you can put this badge on your site if you want to