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The Importance of Choosing a Domain Name

April 16, 2010 By Laura 2 Comments

By Eileen Phua

A domain name is an identification label. It is just like an address whereby will direct targeted audience to your shop. An example is name of your shop. It is always needed when you want to create a websites.

There are a lot of newbie venture with no awareness of where and how to get started. Choosing a domain name is never as easy as choosing a theme for your blog. It has to be recognize by search engine and attractive so as to drive more traffic. Therefore it is important to choose your domain name wisely. It has to be easily remembered, short, related to your company, brand or products of your websites. Common extensions used are com, org and net. Do not take this step for granted, because the domain name you choose can make or break your websites success. Finding a good domain name could be the critical factor that determines whether your business succeeds or fails. Take the time to really pick a good one.

You can start off by doing a keyword research under Google keyword tools which is relevant to your business. Do ensure the keyword you selected have the most search. Once this is done, you may proceed to check under Name Cheap on the availability of the domain name and register.

You can also purchase a domain from domain name “registrars”. Commonly mentioned including name cheap and Yahoo hosting. Price range from $6 to around $10 per year. The Domain Name administration is not an easy task and sometimes involves technical knowledge. However Name cheap is quite straight forward with just a few steps and get it done.

Discover how Eileen manage to achieve my Passive income through Internet Marketing, To find out more, click here to Download Free Report! http://imtowardrich.com

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Filed Under: SEO, WordPress Websites Tagged With: , , , ,

Finding The Missing Link

April 13, 2010 By Laura Leave a Comment

You have spent a lot of time creating an online presence. You have virus protection and maybe a firewall to protect the security of your system, you have located a web host to manage your online presence, then you define the direction of your site and work at developing a look that is appealing and a format that is easy to navigate.

You might think that after all this planning and preparation your work would be done, right? Well if you’re selling goods or services, you need customers. If you have a brick and mortar store then you may already have valued customers, but the ease of use in online shopping makes a global market an attractive addition to an already successful enterprise.

You may submit your site information to search engines and participate in a variety of link exchange programs, but it still might not be enough.

Many online businesses purchase a series of advertisements on amenable sites. Those advertisements drive additional customers to affiliated sites which makes online advertising so valuable.

Advertising: Where Did it Go?

What happens if you spend advertising dollars that provide no opportunity for potential clients to respond?

You may not think that something like this happens, but it’s actually a very common occurrence. You see, internet site updates are an important function of proper maintenance and web site enhancement. If a site always looks the same, a media saturated society tends to become a little ho hum which is why sites are constantly updating both content and design features.

Finding the Missing Link

That’s where your difficulty starts. When site design changes, sometimes the advertisements that have already been paid for are inadvertently eliminated from the site. You paid for the advertising, you expect the advertising, but it’s hard to keep up with every site that will be displaying your ad.

Many web savvy site owners are discovering the value of link checker software that properly tracks the continued use of pre-paid advertising or link exchanges.

A Matter of Time and Revenue

The reason a link checker is so vital is that it can advise you when a promised link is broken. A link checker saves you time and potential lost revenue. A link checker is the perfect mechanism for providing accountability on the advertisement that you have every right to expect.

Without link checker software many web business owners find themselves checking links periodically to see if they are still active. There are even those who never give it a second thought and may miss out on adding significantly to the bottom line of their web based business.

Link Checker: Ease of Use

Link checker software allows you to pick all of the links you need to check and it will do a thorough check upon request. The design of a link checker makes it user friendly and comprehensive in its findings.

By using link checker software you can minimize missed advertising and maximize earning potential.

Even if your advertising is part of a link exchange it is important to know that the exchange is beneficial to you and a link checker makes it possible to know for sure.

Headache Relief

The cost of the software could be offset by locating problem links as quickly as possible. Be sure to check for link checker software that provides a free trial offer. A test drive of the applications of a link checker may well convince you that this is one software application that really makes solid business sense.

Filed Under: SEO, Website Maintenance Tagged With: , , , ,

How to Securely Back Up Your WordPress Blog

April 7, 2010 By Laura 1 Comment

By Cecil Flynn

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging software applications that is currently being used for blogs and also as a content management system for websites. Just like any other software, with popularity comes troublesome security issues as people try to hack the program and cause problems for the users. In addition to doing frequent updates, backing up your installation is one of the best ways of making sure that you are secure in case your blog is taken down by a hacker.

There are two things that need to be backed up to have a complete backup of your WordPress installation. The first one is the database. You can manually use a tool to download your database and remember to do this week after week. There is also a tool that will do this for you automatically.

Get the plugin WP-DB-Backup. Install this into your WordPress blog under the plugin folder and activate it. Under ‘Tools’ there will be a Backup button that you can press. This is the area where you can set up an option to have this database emailed to you on a daily basis or at least once each week. Make sure you use an email that is not connected to your current hosting account in case the whole host gets attacked. Now you have your database automatically backed up.

The second piece you need is anything that you upload to your account like your plugins, themes, images, videos, and other things. To do this, simply use a FTP client software application to access the hosting account and copy all the contents of the public_html folder. This will get everything that you need. If you don’t upload items too often, this might only have to be done maybe once a month.

It is important to get into the habit of performing these two backups on a regular basis. By backing up on a regular schedule, if the blog or the host has some sort of security issue, you have the option of installing the blog again on that host or a new one without having to worry about losing any information, posts, pages, comments, or any changes that you have made to the account.

WordPress makes maintaining a blog or website simple and convenient. By taking steps to ensure your site’s security takes the simplicity and convenience to the next level and allows you to have peace of mind as well.

Cecil enjoys working in the garden and tinkering around the house. He realizes the importance of home security so he keeps a small safe in his home and office to protect his valuables. You can read all about different types of small safes on his website: http://www.smallsafe.org

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Filed Under: Website Maintenance, WordPress Websites Tagged With: , , , , ,

Spring Cleaning Your Websites

April 5, 2010 By Laura 1 Comment

Just like your house, you need to do regular cleaning or maintenance on your websites.  Here are a few spring cleaning tips that should be done regularly to keep your website running smoothly and your visitors coming back:

Upgrade WordPress Platform – New releases are sent out all the time from the WordPress team and all of us tend to fall behind in upgrading.  You don’t want to fall too far behind in these releases.  Every 3-6 months you should bring your site current with the most recent version.

Plugin Review – All of us are guilty of installing all kinds of plugins to test drive as we hear about them from our friends.  Some we keep using, others just stay loaded on our system collecting dust.  Here is where you need to spend a few minutes ensuring that the ones you are using are the latest version released and deactivate and delete those that are not being used.  With new plugins being released all the time, you may find that there is a newer model out there that can now do what 3 or 4 other plugins are trying to do.

Themes – Same can be said about theme templates.  When we start out designing our site, we test drive a number of different themes before we make a decision on the one to customize to fit our needs.  How many are still sitting on your system?  It is also important to check and see if your theme is still being maintained by the original author and is compatible with the most recent version of WordPress.

Style Sheets & Custom Templates - For those of you that make changes to your CSS style sheets and templates…Are you removing old codex once the new code is written or are you making your website work twice as hard to translate the necessary actions?  Don’t you normally throw out the old operating manuals once the new manuals are released to decrease confusion?  Same would be the case for your style sheets and templates!

Media Library – Go through all the images and files that you have uploaded to your media library and determine if they are still being used within your site.  If they are just taking up valuable space, delete them.  If you’re concern is that you “may” want them in the future, then download them on your computer before you delete them from the library.

Once you have completed your spring cleaning, take a moment to go through your website and make sure your links are all working and that all of your images are displaying properly.  Routine maintenance of your site will keep your site running smoothly and your visitors happy because everything is working properly!

Filed Under: Website Maintenance, WordPress Websites Tagged With: , , ,

5 SEO Plugins Every WordPress Blog Or Website Should Have

April 2, 2010 By Laura 1 Comment

By Roodlyne Mason

All in One SEO Pack – is one of the most popular plugins for WordPress. It helps to automatically optimizes your titles for search engines, automatically Generates META tags, Avoids the typical duplicate content found on your blogs and much more.

Google XML Sitemaps -This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog. Sitemaps make it easier for crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently. In addition it also notifies all major search engine about your new posts.

SEO Smart Links - Provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more. It automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog. Your readers are able to read more of your similar posts, so you can keep them on your site longer.

SEO Title Tag – SEO Title Tag makes it so easy to optimize the title tags across your blog or website, Posts pages, and any title tag on your site. Add a few hours of keyword research and optimized title along with this plugins should dramatically change your search engine traffic.

SEO Post Link – The post slug is the blog title you see in a browser’s URL bar, and if it’s too long, search engines won’t take a liking to it. SEO Post Link comes with an already populated list of words to cut from a title when it turns into a URL to make your post addresses that much friendlier. You can set it so that it’s limited to a certain number of characters, cut short words, cut unnecessary words and more.

Roodlyne Mason Share tips on online business, blog technics, being a working mom/mom entrepreneur, family, kids, even a laugh if you in for it. Connect with her on her blog at SuperMomPlace.com

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4 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your WordPress Blog Using SEO

March 31, 2010 By Laura Leave a Comment

By Jeanene Fisher

Congratulations! You have started your WordPress blog. Downloading, uploading, theme choice, plugins, widgets, niche – those are all done. You have even posted several articles. Now what? Who is going to read your blog? How are they going to find you?

As a website owner, have you ever wondered how some sites get on the first page of Google and others remain buried back on page 27? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is what it is all about.

Briefly, SEO is the creation of traffic and hits from other websites to your site. This increases the opportunity for the search engines to pull from your site. They may find images, keywords, local searches, or business specific searches. But when they find many hits on your website, they tend to like you better and rank you higher.

One way to increase your SEO ranking is to hire an optimizer. That means you pay to have your site reviewed, your keywords searched, and many other things. These services are usually expensive and require ongoing maintenance, which means an ongoing fee.

WordPress helps you to do it yourself. WordPress offers many plugins, most importantly “SEO All In One Pack,” that can help you increase your visibility on the Internet. Use these plugins, but follow these four rules, too.

1. Titles: front running words receive the most attention in a search string. Also, visitors read your page from top to bottom first, and then from left to right. The closer to the top you put your keywords (the beginning of your title), the more weight and attention the search engines will give them.

2. Increase Speed: Did you know that links in the beginning of a search engine result load faster than those near the end? Search engines actually weigh the length of time it takes for your site to load in their crawling matches. You can increase your site’s loading speed by cleaning it up. Remove code you do not need, lessen the video use, increase your cache speed. All of these will help increase the speed that your site loads.

3. Tag and Connect: If you tag each post with the same or similar keywords, you will increase your web presence. Pages are also weighted heavier than posts, so consider creating a page that links all the similar articles together with a “Read More” page or other link at the bottom of the page.

4. Keep Your Traffic: While links to other sites are a good way to lure visitors to your site, this may hurt more than help. Once someone links out of your site, you have lost the opportunity for them to browse your site further. If you do provide a linke, have it open in a new window – that way your reader can easily find their way back to your site.

WordPress actually supports several functions not found with other platforms. WordPress offers optimized descriptions, tagging, related posts, and defining titles. It is easy to use and allows the small entrepreneur to customize his site. This builds an online business presence through the use of search engine optimization without having to spend a lot of time learning the ins and outs of SEO or have to hire someone to do it.

Try these tips to enhance the presence of your site. Increasing your traffic will increase your web presence.

Did you find these tips on WordPress Plugin SEO helpful? You can learn more about WordPress by visiting http://www.learnwptoday.com. Here you will find videos that make it easy to learn all of the ins and outs of WordPress and having a successful blog. You can find it at http://www.learnwptoday.com.

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The Hidden Truth on WordPress SEO Exposed

March 29, 2010 By Laura 3 Comments

By Aron Zach

WordPress is the chosen blogging platform for many, even though they can go for many others in the market. So what makes the WordPress CMS so different? For starters, in developing websites that prove to be effective, this software is truly useful. It’s highly professional and easy to use. WordPress delivers the biggest advantage by helping you when it comes to attracting a much higher quantity of visitors towards your website. The kind of features that come bundled in WordPress are enough to boost your search engine rankings, which can only be done if you are able to utilize the full potential of WordPress SEO. To release the true strength of WordPress, you must use to the fullest some of the features in the WordPress blog. If you invest your energy into taking these steps correctly, your odds of establishing top spots within the big search engines, such as Google, become greater. This article will explore the best manner in which to use WordPress SEO to get that lovely, free traffic that everyone wants: organic traffic.

Your titles are critically important for the placement of your website in the rankings when utilizing WordPress for the management of your content. Since search engines depend on relevant keywords to rank sites, your post title needs to have your targeted keywords in it. These relevant keywords should be in the title as well as your content. Do not repeat the same title anywhere else on the site, only for the content in which the keywords are included.

Alternatively, it is a good idea to keep relevant keywords listed nearby for application in creating posting titles. This doesn’t mean your title should only impress the search engines; it also has to make sense for the reader. Since the title of your posts will be the first thing noticed by visitors, making them interesting and eye-catching is important. Titles are not meant to be lengthy, but instead concise and precise and easily intelligible for the reader.

Your website’s content is critically important in gaining a high placement with the search engines, and it should always prove to be of superior quality and related to the topic.

A lot of people don’t think about categorizing their blogs, but when you begin adding categories you’ll find it makes your blog seem more approachable. Those visiting your site will appreciate it, as it will make navigating and searching for something far easier. Search engines will also find it helpful. That’s one of the main reasons you should have your posts in the right order. When you’re creating categories, it doesn’t matter how much information you’ve previous published, it all gets its place. Not only is your category listed within the post, it is also listed in its URL if the permalinks feature is turned on. Since most visitors are usually in a hurry, it’s a great idea to let them know about your post right there in your URL.

When working with WordPress, your blog’s permalinks should be customized. The reason you need to do this is that the default structure that comes with WordPress is based on numbers/question marks so your post title needs to go directly to its URL. You can do this by simply modifying the permalink structure in the internal settings. Without taking these alterations, you can negatively affect your rankings within search engines. It’s a simple one step process, which will pay on the long run.

Niche site: motorcycle insurance rates.

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Hosted Or Self-Hosted WordPress Blog Website?

March 23, 2010 By Laura 15 Comments

By Linda Lassova

WordPress is a free, the most professional and the most customizable blog publishing application. It allows you to easily create a blog or website for free. Blogging is becoming more and more popular on the internet these days. WordPress is also now used to create Websites and for that reason you want your blog/website to be different to the other blogs. So when choosing the WordPress type of hosting, consider both the advantage and disadvantage that comes with each.

You can either use hosted or self-hosted WordPress. Self-hosted WordPress blogging platform needs you to manually install and host the WordPress software whereas the Hosted WordPress – WordPress.com blogging platform is managed by WordPress developer professionals. There are advantages and disadvantages for both hosted and self-hosted WordPress.

Hosted WordPress – WordPress.com

It is really easy to set up and you are ready to go online within minutes. It is also automatically updated when the new release comes out. It is less flexible than the WordPress you download and install yourself. Hosted WordPress is also limited in choosing your domain.

Advantages:

  • Free – you don’t have to pay for hosting and domain registration. All you need is an e-mail address.
  • Automatic Updates – Each time the new version becomes available, your blog will be automatically updated.
  • Easy to Use and Set-up – All you need to do is to create a WordPress account, choose your subdomain, theme and you are ready to go

Disadvantages:

  • No income – with hosted WordPress you cannot monetize your blog. All the advertisements are controlled and you are not allowed to display advertisements
  • Domain limitation – your domain will be like yourblogname.wordpress.com
  • Limited storage space – if you run out of space you will need
  • Limited Design – you will get to choose from over 75 themes

When you need a professional blog/website you don’t want to be limited with your design, domain name, (you only get a subdomain, like yourdomain.wordpress.com. Other limitations are also with earning revenue, as you can’t display advertisements to show your AdSense, Yahoo,… ads. All you can do is add affiliate links in your post.

Self-Hosted WordPress

With self-hosted WordPress you will need to download, install and host the free WordPress platform yourself. You will use your own domain name, which will make your blog/website more professional.

You will also need to get hosting and also will have to do upgrades when new WordPress is available. You can easily customize it, make all the changes you wish to make according to your niche.

But the main thing is that you can earn income from your blog/website. You can display all advertisements like AdSense, Yahoo etc. This can give you a big revenue. The cost varies on how much help you need, who you use to register your domain and hosting with.

A WordPress Blog that is hosted through your own domain ensures that your site is not only completely optimized for search engine ranking, but also provides the highest level of customization and options to earn revenue.

With self hosted blog you gain more power and control of your own blog.

Advantages:

  • Earn revenue – start selling your own products or promoting someone else’s products. You are allowed to add a shopping cart and any number of plug-ins for tracking, click-throughs, and other widgets that generate revenue.
  • Design – No limitation on themes. There are many free themes available and also customized or premium themes to make it more professional.
  • Complete control – you can customize your blog/website as you wish. No limitation on the design. This will help you to differentiate your blog from others. You will have many more options as your online business evolves and grows.
  • Search Engine Optimization – WordPress is Search Engine friendly and allows every single page to be indexed.
  • Own Domain Name – choose the right name for your blog/website, get recognized, brand yourself. Do your keywords research first.

Disadvantages:

  • Not as easy to set up – you will need to download and install WordPress. This also depend on the type of Hosting you use.
  • Not automatically updated – WordPress is becoming more and more popular and it is updated regularly and so you will need to manually update the self-hosted blog with the new release
  • Cost – you will have to pay for hosting and domain renewal. With the professional blog, or if you wish to use it as a Website, you will need a professional to design you a unique theme.

f you wish to have the WordPress Installation all done for you, get the Hosting with WordPress Installation and personalized header and pay only for the Hosting with RK Internet Solutions, just visit http://www.rkinternetsolutions.com/WordpressInstallation/

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Filed Under: Why Wordpress, WordPress Websites Tagged With: , , ,

Why WordPress Stands Out As a Content Management System

March 19, 2010 By Laura Leave a Comment

By Cecilia Santos

Though WordPress is known as a blogging software, it is no surprise that it is also being used for other things aside from blogging due its versatility. As an open source software with the strong support from a friendly community of developers, it became possible to use WordPress as a CMS or Content Management System. Even if there are other CMS options, there are a lot of advantages why WordPress is a wise choice for personal or business use, thus one of the reasons for its popularity.

One of the best features WordPress has is perhaps the fact that it is mostly free. With the right know-how, anyone can create an effective website at a minimal cost. Installation itself is free and some addons are usually quite easy on the pocket. This makes it an ideal option for small businesses that do not have the capability of funding a large budget for website development. In connection, most of the time it is also cheap to tweak the site later on.

As they use WordPress, both beginners and advance users would discover that because of a massive library of plugins available, they can be able to create a functional site with all the features they need without extensive coding as was done a few years back. Writing itself is a breeze because this software has a built-in WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. Those that plan to create a site would see that aside from being convenient, it is also less time consuming to make and it is quite user-friendly too.

Putting up a website is not just enough nowadays. It is also important to establish web presence, something that WordPress is good at. With the application of a few features, your website is more optimized and easier to index in search engines. The site would be able to sufficiently promote itself without the need to invest a lot of time in marketing. And since nothing is constant when it comes to page ranks, users are happy to note that in a snap they can easily modify some things to suit the current trends.

Indeed, WordPress used as CMS has changed not just businesses but the facade of the Internet itself. Because of it, a lot of people are more capable of producing well-made sites without pouring too much resources on the project. With the realization that it is less frustrating to produce a site that would fully answer their needs, cyberspace became friendlier for everyone.

Cecilia Santos is a Web Developer and SEO expert. She has published several related articles which you can read on her website http://w3c-compliant.com.

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Why WordPress is the Best Platform For Your Blog

March 17, 2010 By Laura 3 Comments

By Stephen Dutson

A lot of work goes into creating a blog. It is important to make the right decisions at the start of process – one of the most critical choices is which blogging platform to use. For me there is only one answer – WordPress – and here are some of the reasons why.

The WordPress Community

There are a lot of people involved with making WordPress better. From the creators of the core program, to plugin and theme developers right down to the people using WordPress on a daily basis. There are WordPress users answering questions in forums and writing about WordPress on their blogs – the community is massive, knowledgeable and willing to share – and it’s the backbone of everything great about WordPress.

WordPress Plugins

A plugin is a tool that adds extra functionality to a blog. They are usually free and you can get a plugin to do just about any task you think of relating to the management of a blog.

There are plugins that back up your database and email it to you on a daily basis, there are plugins that help get your blog listed highly in search engines, plugins to tell you how many people have visited your blog and plugins to help locate broken links.

There are just so many plugins around it would be impossible to create a definitive list as it would be out of date as soon as it was published.

WordPress Themes

A WordPress theme is the skin you wrap your blog in. It is more than the overall design as the way the theme has been built defines how your blog works. For example, the category list may appear on your blog in one theme, but not another, this is because one theme is built that way, while the other is not.

Most WordPress themes are available for free and can be installed and activated through the admin area of your blog. You can change the way your blog looks with just a few clicks of the mouse.

WordPress is easy to update and customize

The WordPress dashboard is very easy to understand and creating new posts and uploading images is simple. It can be used as an out of the box solution, or, if you want to get your hands dirty, you can delve into the WordPress code and develop it to your heart’s content.

A WordPress blog can be updated through a browser from anywhere in the world by any registered member. Member accounts can be created manually or automatically (through a registration process) and each member can be given a different membership level – subscriber, contributor, author, editor or administrator.

WordPress is free!

The core WordPress files are free! Most of the plugins are free! And there are tons of WordPress themes available for free!

The only thing you have to pay for (if hosting WordPress on your own domain) is the hosting and the domain name. If you already have a site and want to attach a blog to it, those costs are already covered, so you would be getting a whole next extension to your site for diddly squat.

Stephen Dutson has been writing about WordPress and other blogging tools for several years. His main interests are WordPress and developing blogs using WordPress. At the current time he is contributing to The Blogging Academy

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