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Posts Tagged ‘Blogging’

First off the bat I want to explain that I only use wordpress. I use it on all my sites even if they are not blog sites. In fact I just set up a finance comapny website for my brother in the UK and used wordpress as a CMS (content management solution) and he was astounded with the result. Due to the built in features like permalinks and and the rss feed, not even going into the sheer number of themes and plugins there are, that you can now add with a few clicks of the few mouse, it is without a doubt, hands down, the best there is. PLUS it is free and there are loads of forums dedicated to it where you can get help and support.

For the beginners (newbies) to website design, building a website, trying to make money online, the five minute install explained on the main wordpress website, http://www.wordpress.org, really does work. You can search youtube nowadays for anything and almost all reputable hosting providers offer free video tutorials on how to do things. You can also install wordpress through fantastico, if your hosting proivder offer cpanel.

The only problem with the above methods are that for each install you need to go through and delete the first post, the blogroll links and set all your settings to how you like them. Then you have to add all your plugins and themes.

I personally have two ways of installing wordpress so that all my themes, plugins and settings are ready from the off, one free and one paid, hence the debate

The FREE Way

I have a test site with a blank version of wordpress installed. It has all the plugins I want installed and a range of themes that I use often. It also has all of the settings set just how I like them, including the permalink.

When I want to set up a new site I zip up all the files via the file manager in cpanel and download them.I download the wp-config.php separately and change the details to that of the new domain. I then backup the mysql database to my desktop via php myadmin and do a find and replace with the details of the new domain.

I have done this many times and it takes about 45 minutes as I then have to check it is all working.

The PAID Way

About a year ago I found out about an online piece of ’software’, if you can call it that, that installs wordpress in a few clicks with the settings, plugins and themes set just right. On top of that, which is already fantastic, it can bookmark your posts automatically across a range of social bookmarking sites AND ACCOUNTS. It can also add keyword targeted content, to be dripped over time, in just a few more clicks. You can then submit your site to the main rss directories with another few clicks. AND this all happens from one main control panel. You can even access your wordpress admin through it. There are a few more fab features which you can read about on the sales page …

As a current member I know that a new version of Firepow is going to be released in the next few weeks. Andrew (the owner) has also told us that the price is going up, which is why I wanted to give you the chance to get in before it does.

There are two levels of membership … Basic Level, which is not basic by any stretch f the imagination as you get everything, and Premium Level, which has everything the same as the basic level, but you have the added option to you add blog posts with links back to other blogs using Firepow, owned by other people. Andrew has also added a lot of his own sites to ensure that every topic is covered. As the blog owner you can also deny articles, if you want to ensure that they are 100% on topic (I don’t as this is great for ensuring your site is using latent semantic indexing, which basically means you cover exercise if you have a weight loss site).

There is also of course a support forum and I have never had to wait more than 24 hrs (a little longer over the weekend) for an answer from the actual staff.

I think that any time saver like this is worth the money. I have a few people that work for me in India and the Phillipenes, so I can get them to set up 10 sites in less than an hour (the same time it would take to manually put up one site) and the cost to me is less than $5. I can then spend that time doing other more productive things.

What programs do you use and how do they help you?

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There have been many discussions and there are still many different theories on backlinks and what they give you and what they don’t.

We know links are important and I have already discussed the issue of who links to you and who you link to, but I was asked by a client about reciprocal linking so I did a bit of investigation before confirming my views.

I did some research and came back to Matt Cutts’s blog, as I so often do. In summary I could not find much info on reciprocal linking, but stumbled on a very interesting post about ‘paid links for passing pagerank‘. Matt stated …

Clear disclosure of sponsorship is critical, and that includes disclosure for search engines. If a link in a paid post would affect search engines, that link should not pass PageRank (e.g. by using the nofollow attribute). Google — and other search engines — do take action which can include demoting sites that sell links that pass PageRank, for example.

He then went on to say …

The Forrester report discusses a recent “sponsored conversation” from Kmart, but I doubt whether mentions that even in that small test, Google found multiple bloggers that violated our quality guidelines and we took corresponding action. Those blogs are not trusted in Google’s algorithms any more.

So, what did we learn here? Google wants to see natural linking. It does not want you to link to someone because they paid you to. Why? Because they want to provide relevant and unbiased content to thir searchers. This method of giving their searchers the relevant unbiased information has earned them approx 48% of the search market. Due to all their extra activities, like Adsense and Adwords, you can understand why they do not want to loose their market share.

To prove thier point they even penalised themselves. Their Japanese site was getting links to themselves that did not have the ‘nofollow’ attribute. You can read more about it here.

Also, Matt’s post mentioned an ‘paid’ article about brain tumours. I live in France and they are talking about making any website with health related items on illegal, unless they get checked over by the person in charge of the health here.

If you want to learn more about Google’s quality guidelines, you can see them here. They can and do follow though on these things.

So, with regards to reciprocal linking …

It seems that it is not frowned upon, but one way links are better. The thing with reciprocal linking too, is that you have to check that the links back to you are still there and that the sites are not now in bad neighbourhoods. In my opinion it is better to use one of these ‘3 way linking’ programs. I use Neurolinker on my sites and have found that the slow growth looks and feels more natural than other programs. Don’t go mad though, get only relevant links.

What are you using on your sites, if anything, and how is it going?

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An excellent question asked by Stephen when he signed up over at IMMembership.com.

I blog as it is a bit like a diary. I love wordpress and want to share my experiences and what I have learnt with others. I have other blogs on other things I am interested in and I write on them when I have something interesting to say on that topic.

I found a blog post that covers the basics of why EVERYONE should be blogging, which you can read about here.

What are you interested in? Are you blogging about it? If not, why not? Do you monetise your site? If not, why not?

As always, please leave your comments below

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