Your Orchid Blog Supports Google Authorship and extended Author Bio information.

Google is displaying of author information in their search results to help users discover great content.

Google’s new Authorship system represents a big change in how content on the web is presented to users: authority will now be derived from the author’s identity instead of just the website’s statistics. The goal of Authorship is to make writers more accountable for their content by associating their articles to their Google+ profiles, placing the emphasis on who wrote the content rather than where the content is posted.

If you want your Orchid blog content to be part of your authorship, with your name and photo to appear in Google’s search results for all the content you create on your Orchid blog, you’ll need

• A Google+ Profile
• A good, recognizable headshot as your profile photo.

Then, verify authorship of your orchid blog content by associatingit with your profile using the method descibed below:

1. Sign up for Google+ and create a Google+ profile.
2. Make sure you have a profile photo with a recognizable headshot.
3. Login to your orchid blog and navigate to your author profile: USERS->Your Profile
4. Make sure your Orchid blog “Nickname” field matches the name on yourGoogle+ profile
5. Now, while still on your orchid blog profile page, scroll downand fill up the sections titled “About Yourself” and “Fanciest AuthorBox User Details“
6. In step 5 you will be able to link yo your orchid blog author bioyour other social network accounts such as Facebook and twitter.
7. Assign yourself as an author to the orchid blog on your Google+profile by editing the “Contributor to section”
   1. In the dialog that appears, click Add custom link, and thenenter the website URL
   2. If you want, click the drop-down list to specify who can seethe link.
   3. Click Save.
8. To see what author data Google can extract from your page, use the structured data testing tool.

Happy Blogging
Hanuman

Adapted from a post by Michael Martine

When should you use a blog page instead of a post? How do you know
what should be a category versus a tag? After this post, you will
know exactly what to do.

Pages vs. Posts
Blog pages are timeless permanent content. Blog pages live outside
the normal date/time chronology of blog posts. Most of what you
write for your blog should be posts. Frequently updated new content
belongs in posts. Here are some examples of what should be in pages:

• Information about you and your blog (the “About” page)
• Your artist statment
• Information about your studio
• Contact information

TIP: Orchid bloggers can control the blog Navigation Menu links.
To add pages or category links in nav menu select: THESIS OPTION
menu under DESIGN.

Here are some things that could be in pages instead of being posts
or being in your blog’s sidebar:

• Archive links
• Blogroll or resource links
• Author information on a team blog
• Articles (longer than posts)
• Glossaries
• Image galleries

Any OTHER CONTENT you create should go into POSTS.

Categories vs. Tags
Categories have been around for a long time. Tags are a more recent
way to classify content on your blog. There is a difference between
them. Categories only live in one place, but tags can repeat
themselves and live in many places at once. Categories are like big
buckets to divide the information itself, but tags are ways of
labeling and identifying characteristics about the information.

Food is a great example of how to use categories and tags correctly.
Take Feelgood Eats, for example, which has categories for major types
of recipes. In fact, they’re not even called categories, they’re just
called recipes:

anytime recipes, fall recipes, holiday & party recipes

But the tags on Feelgood Eats are a more detailed breakdown of the
ingredients that might end up in any recipe, plus other ways of
classifying food info:

bread, breakfast, dressings & spreads

The analogy works for any kind of blog: what are your “recipe types”
compared to your individual “ingredients”? Think of it that way, and
you’ll be more easily able to assign categories and tags to blog
posts.

Does this clear things up for you? Let me know if you have further
questions in the comments!

Crafting an effective title is genuine art as it should aim at two main targets:

• to increase click-through
• to achieve higher search engines rankings (reads: Google).

Thus writing an effective title can’t be taken lightly; it is really difficult to craft a title that will both “help rankings and work in effect as a marketing message.”

Here are some of the most important criteria that should be kept in mind when creating a good title:

• page title should be short and concise
• each page title should be unique and the unique part should go first (if a visitor keeps several tabs from the same open, he should clearly see what each tab is about);
• it should be catchy (to communicate an effective message);
• page title should conform to the page purpose (e.g. calling to action or informational);
• page title should be based on your keywords
• page title should be focused (don’t try to include all your keywords in the title the home page);
• page title should be semantically correct (Google is likely to apply some kind of semantic analysis to titles to make sure they are not spammy).

Chances are your titles do not all comply with all above criteria. However before you go back to your blog to change its titles, keep in mind that this should be done carefully.