Thursday, July 16, 2009

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Tricks To Increase The Loading Speed Of Wordpress Blog

It's very hard to find a better roadmap for any new blogger to follow. For example, if you make a search on the keyword "blog tips", millions of pages will appear on Google or other search engines.

From all of these, which will be best for your? For any new blogger it will be very tough to find out some suitable, easy tips for him.

But all fellow bloggers writes about some basic criteria or needs which are common. So, it’s very important for any newbie to follow just one or two fellow bloggers blogs.

Start reading several blogs today, you will find that no one is writing anything wrong. There are lots of ways to create a better blog, you can choose any of those. Everybody is writing with their own experiences and views.

Dear readers,

Keep your main focus to build a strong basic in blogging field. In my previous post I gave some tips for beginner blogger, which was a little bit theoretical. After choosing a better and unique topic it’s time to do something practical.

In this post I am giving some tips you should keep in mind during create your first blog with blogger, wordpress or other blog hosting services.


Sign up with blogger.com


Signup with wordpress.com



1. Choose a Blogging Platform:


Since you are interested in blogging, probably you already hear about some well-known blogging platform. There are many like bogger.com, wordpress.org, today.com and so on. You can start with any of those. But for a novice blogger, the most easy and suitable platform is blogger.com, second wordpress.org.


Why blogger.com is first I will describe these in my later post. If you start blogging with this, you will find the answer.

If you want to build a nice looking blog, you can start with wordpress.org. You can give your blog a nice design; your readers will get really impressed with that.


There is another option, called self hosted blog. At the beginning it will be very tough for you to build a better and optimized self hosted blog. So start first with blogger.com, gather some experiences than you can jump to your own blog like a real professional blogger.

2. Creation of Blog:

After choosing your blogging platform it’s time to create your first blog. This process will 5 to 10 minutes to be done.

The basic requirement to open account is an email address. With blogger.com or wordpress.org it will take steps to complete the registration. Enter correct information in all the fields step by step. During registration give special attention to your domain name and blog title.

3. Domain Name:

Try to include one or two keywords in your domain name and that related to your blogging subject. It’s very important if you want to apply some search engine optimization techniques to your blog.

When a search engine start searching for any specific keyword, first it start looking searching in the domain name for that keyword and 2nd time it start searching in the title or description and others parts.

4. Blog Title and Description:

After choosing a suitable domain name, give an attractive title and description of your blog. Give a nice and easy understandable description of your blog below the title. Describe what is your blog about, your blogging purpose etc.

Don’t provide anything that is not related to your subject.

The title and description will appear on the opening page, so when your readers will not find something they are looking for, they will leave.


5. Choosing a Template:


For any beginner blogger I will recommend to work with the default template at first. The classic and other available templates in blogger.com are easy to optimize for any new blogger. There are lots of free wonderful templates for blogs on the internet. After gathering some well experiences it will be very easy to optimize blog with any template. Choose a template that always reflects your blogging theme. If your blogging topic is about motorbike than you must not use an airplane template!


6. Write Great Content for your Blog:


You have completed above 5 steps, which means you are half way done. Now start to creating post, its easy to create a post but hard to create a great post. Your blogging post must be related with your blog title. If your blog is about computer tips than you should not write anything about Hollywood!


Always write quality content. The quality of your posts is the main key of your blog traffic.

Give special attention for inside or outside links in your posts. Make sure there is no dead or error link in your blog.

7. Start posting regularly:

Great! You are done!
No, this is just the beginning. A lot of hard works you have to do, so prepare yourself for this.
Make posts regularly in your blog. Try to do it once or twice a day. After some successful great posting (5-10), start searching for how to increase your blog traffic. Success in blogging mainly depends on traffic; you need lots of traffic, traffic and traffic to achieve your goal.

Source: Hidden Secrets Online Money

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How to add gadgets to Blogger blog?

For many reasons we need to add gadgets to the blog. Here you will get step by step process to add gadgets . One think you should remember, it may differ from one template to another template.

Step 1: Login to Blogger and go to Layout Tab.


Step 2: Click on Add Gadgets or Add page element Tab.






Step 3: Search for HTML/Javascript . Then click on it.







Step 4: Now paste your code there. Then save it.

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Top 7 SEO Blogs

After seeing Adam’s list of blogs for creative writers and noticing an SEO blog, I couldn’t resist the temptation to put together my own list of must-read SEO blogs. Whether or not the industry has a bad reputation among bloggers, staying abreast of search engine news can give your blog a real edge over the competition. What can I say; I can’t help but defend my profession.

Here’s my rundown of the top seven SEO blogs (ordered alphabetically; it’s really hard to rank them against each other for such a broad category).

  • Bruce Clay, Inc. Blog - Bruce is an old name in the industry. His blog is a great resource for SEO news and tips in general. What keeps me coming back, though, are the hilarious in-post comment wars he has with Susan. Think we could do something like that, Daniel?
  • Marketing Pilgrim - Andy Beal’s got some great material on a variety of different marketing-related topics, including a lot of articles on SEO and blogging.
  • Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO - There’s nothing quite like getting news straight from the source. Matt works for Google. He’s a great read to begin with, but you just can’t beat his blog for authority when it comes to the internet’s #1 search engine.
  • Search Engine Land - Although the blog itself has only been around for a few months, Danny Sullivan has been an SEO bigwig for much longer.
  • Search Engine Roundtable - If you want to stay abreast of conversations on the hottest SEO discussion boards (e.g. Cre8asite, WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint, etc.) without, well, having to read them, this blog is your first stop.
  • Search Engine Watch - This blog is definitely one of the oldest and most respected sources for search engine news. It’s a bit drier than the others; good for information, bad for personality, but still useful if all you’re interested in are the facts.
  • SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog - Rand Fishkin and co. provide some great information. Be sure not to miss their whiteboard fridays.

The way I see it, as a blogger, you can hate SEO professionals for their methods or learn from their success. And since you can’t beat them (they rank too well for that), you might as well join them.

Update: This is Daniel writing. While the blogs that Stephen listed are certainly awesome, I think that there are 3 missing: PronetAdvertising, Search Engine Journal and SEO Blackhat. Make sure to check them out as well!

Source: Dailyblogtips.com

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Improve Search Rankings with Internal SEO

Earlier this year I wrote a post about the stimulus package that passed Congress in February. I titled the post Government Stimulus Package because I thought the only thing it was stimulating was government. I got lucky with this, because apparently a lot of people searched for the phrase “government stimulus package” to learn about what was in it.

The post did ok on Digg and Reddit, nothing spectacular but it brought in some traffic. It may have gotten a few other links, but not a ton. A few days after the post was published, I noticed that I was getting some traffic the search engines. The post was on the front page of Google, around 6 or so for the keyword phrase “government stimulus package.” This is the first step in improving your SERPs.

1. Look at Your Stats

Find out which pages you are getting traffic to from the search engines and what keywords are being used to get there. This is where we need to focus. Improving your ranking for a term from 7429 to 43 takes your traffic from 0 to 0. If you can improve from 9 to 1, you will see a huge increase in traffic if it is a phrase that people are searching for.

Now that we have a few pages that are getting some traffic and the keywords they are getting it from, we have to do a little keyword research.

2. Keyword Research

The first step is to find out which phrases we want to target. Look at the keywords that are getting the most traffic and find out where you currently rank. You could use your web analytics program for this, and then check the rankings on Google.

At this point, you can also use a keyword search tool to find out how much traffic each of these phrases gets.

Now we want to focus our efforts on the terms we rank the highest for that get the most search traffic.

3. Internal SEO

Have you ever written anything similar to this before? Go through your archives and find where you have mentioned this topic before. Update the old article with a link to the new one using the keywords you are trying to rank for.

If this is a topic that people want to know more about, consider writing another post or two expanding on the first one. In each new post, link to the original article with one of the keyword phrases you are targeting.

Next, go back to the post you are hoping to rank higher. Is the keyword already in the article? Consider making it bold. Is there a section where the phrase would make a good header? Consider adding it. Don’t stuff the article full of keywords as you still want the people that come to enjoy your writing. However, if these changes can be made without affecting the quality, they may help improve your ranking a little bit.

These things do two things. They show the search engines what your pages are about (hopefully the keywords you are targeting) and they show them that they are important pages. The more links you have pointing to the page, the more important you are making it in Google’s eyes.

4. Watch your Rankings and Traffic Surge

I went back to my post and made the keyword bold when I used it. Then I went through the archives and found another post that talked about the stimulus package and added a link to the new post. I also wrote a few more articles in the following weeks that talked about the stimulus package, so I linked back in each of those as well. The result? I moved up to #1 in Google for the phrase “government stimulus package” before it passed. It brought thousands of visitors to my blog, and the week that the bill passed is my highest traffic week ever.

The part of this that is really powerful is that all of this was done several days after the article was posted. The regular readers had read it already, and anyone who was going to link to it already had. I was then able to move from #6 to #1 in Google simply by telling Google what the page was about and that I thought it was important. Never underestimate the power of linking to yourself internally.

I have since dropped behind irs.gov and recovery.gov, but that post has been viewed more times than any other. It also gave me a valuable lesson in SEO that has helped increase my search traffic to many other posts as well.

Source: Dailyblogtips.com

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Guide to Meta Tags

Although off-site optimization is generally considered to be more important, ignoring on-site search engine ranking factors can be costly. Things like solid internal linking and keyword-rich titles can have a very significant impact (as I’ve said before). Meta tags, while they’ve fallen out of vogue as the on-site optimization method of choice, can also play an important role in your site’s search engine rankings.

What are meta tags?

For those who don’t know, a meta tag is an HTML tag that resides in the section of a web page. Unlike other HTML tags, meta tags do not appear anywhere on the page itself, so most visitors never see them. Different meta tags serve different purposes, but they are generally used to provide additional information about the page. The meta description tag, for example, provides a brief summary of the page’s content. How this information gets used varies from tag to tag.

Examples of meta tags:

Which meta tags are worthwhile?

There are a lot of meta tags out there, but very few of them are useful. In fact, chances are good that a site that doesn’t use any meta tags at all will function just as well as a site that does. Some have their uses, however, particularly when communicating with search engine spiders. Here’s the breakdown of every meta tag you’re likely to come across:

Abstract - Use the meta description tag instead.

Author - Sure, it’s nice to plaster your name all over your content. However, the best place to do that is somewhere in the content itself to avoid confusion.

Cache-Control - It’s historical use has been to keep users from seeing outdated versions of your website. Since this is rarely an issue nowadays, it’s no longer as useful. Note, also, that it will do next to nothing to prevent your site from being cached by search engines; you should use the robots meta tag for that purpose.

Classification - Considering how badly spammed the keywords meta tag has been, I can’t see such an arbitrary tag doing any better.

Content-Language - This one’s iffy. Ascertaining the language of the content on a site is rarely a big issue. Use it only if you need to clarify from one page to the next, such as if you have multiple translations of the same page.

Content-Type - This one’s actually important. You can assign the character set of a page using one of several methods, including the content-type meta tag. Make sure you do so in some way on every page.

Copyright - Like the author meta tag, you probably should add the copyright notice directly to the body of your website.

Description - Although its no longer useful for ranking purposes, the description tag is often still used in generating snippets (the text that appears beneath the title in the search engine result pages). It is, therefore, a very powerful tool for drawing in potential visitors. Never underestimate the power of controlling each page’s marketing message to the world.

Designer - The same as author and copyright tags, insert this on the website itself.

Distribution - If a page is meant for internal distribution only, it should be properly blocked using robots.txt or the robots meta tag (below). This tag is completely unnecessary.

Expires - If you have content that shouldn’t be crawled or indexed after a certain period of time, it might be useful. For bloggers, the occasion will probably never arise.

Generator - This one is only used by automated web authoring software, so there’s no point to input it by hand.

GoogleBot - If you have some dire need to instruct one search engine spider differently than another, go ahead.

Keywords - Once upon a time, this might have been useful. Since it was so frequently spammed, however, it no longer carries any ranking benefit. It’s still commonly used, however, and it might even be worthwhile in second-rate search engines, but it won’t get you anywhere with the big boys. If you choose to use it, do not, but do not stuff it!

MSNBot - See the note about the googlebot meta tag.

Owner - See the note about the author meta tag.

PICS-Label - See the note about the rating meta tag.

Pragma - Telling browsers whether or not to cache your page could be handy for usability depending on your site. However, I’ve heard that it doesn’t enjoy a lot of support.

Publisher - See the note about the generator meta tag.

Rating - Like so many web standards, it would be great if it were actually used. However, the sites that deserve a rating of “Mature” or “Restricted” rarely broadcast it. Don’t bother with it; let the rating of your content speak for itself.

Refresh - If you’re redirecting one page to another, use a 301 redirect. Meta refreshes are generally regarded as spam.

Reply-To - See the note about the author meta tag.

Revisit-After - Even if getting frequent visits from search engine spiders offered any competitive advantage (it doesn’t), they aren’t going to visit your site more frequently just because you ask them to. This one’s only useful for limiting the frequency of spidering, not increasing it.

Robots - Although you can use the robots.txt file to issue site-wide directives to search engines, the robots meta tag is very handy for controlling spidering on a page-by-page basis. You can tell search engines whether a page should be indexed, whether it should be archived, whether or not its links should be followed, and even how to generate its search result snippet.

Subject - Your title tag should communicate your subject; using a meta tag to do so is unnecessary.

Title
- Don’t bother with the meta title tag when your ordinary title tag does the job much better.

Unavailable-After - Believe it or not, this one’s brand new and supported by Google. Why they didn’t just go with the expires meta tag is anyone’s guess. At any rate, like it’s identical twin, it will rarely if ever be useful for bloggers.

There are literally dozens more meta tags out there, few of which enjoy any widespread use. When in doubt about whether a meta tag is worthwhile or not, it’s probably best to assume it isn’t. Otherwise, you’ll just end up cluttering your page headers with a lot of useless junk.

If anyone has any additional meta tags or insights to add, please share them in a comment and I’ll update the original post as needed.