Tag Archives | blogging

WordPress Websites All The Rage As SEO Strategies Evolve

WordPress Websites All The Rage As SEO Strategies Evolve

WordPress was once perceived as just another open source platform, created for a “”learner driver”” in the technology game. This has changed. WordPress is not just a platform for bloggers; WordPress is a platform with great potential and ROI for small and medium-sized business owners.

In recent times, due to the ongoing evolution of the web for push-button publishing and optimised user experience, WordPress websites have gained much favour in the small to medium business space. Why? WordPress blogs are becoming well-known as being superior content management systems that allow business owners to easily manage their site in order to meet the changing demands of their business as well as to optimise for organic search and integrate their site with the explosion of social media.

WordPress – Low Cost, High ROI

In a rapidly changing digital marketing landscape, many of the complex programming languages and high priced website services, with bespoke content management systems are facing large degrees of difficulty, and increased development costs to keep up with the fast paced changes being brought about by industry leaders such as Google and Facebook. Business owners don’t want to continually live in revision mode when they have to wait for developers to figure out how to make their website do what needs to be done. Because companies large or small nowadays have to justify every dollar spent, WordPress offers an excellent return on investment with minimal maintenance costs.

From its humble beginnings, WordPress has evolved with a robust and active global development community It’s superior features, and the ability to develop customised templates and useful plug-ins with easy-to-integrate functionality (which is proudly shared amongst developers at little to no cost) makes it an attractive prospect to many small to medium business owners and entrepreneurs.

WordPress Development There are expert WordPress website developers building websites for small to medium businesses all across and beyond. They will work with you to build an affordable, search engine friendly, fully customised WordPress website which will help you meet your online objectives. Whether you want them to set you up so you can run it on your own or are looking for full service website leasing services, touch base with us so they can help you put WordPress to work.

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Twitter is Cool

Twitter is Cool

Twitter is a new addition to the social networking society. Maybe it doesn’t have as many options for themes as some others. But is that all that social networking is about? Heck social networking has nothing to do with what kind of theme or background you have up on your profile.

With adding Twitter to your other social networking places, you can find even more people out there. Information on specific subjects too. All though there may not be anyone on any kind of social networks depending on the subject. Some things you will find are always hard to find.

To sign up on Twitter it’s a very easy and quick process. Make your screen name and finish the steps to sign up. Update your profile, putting what you’d like others to know about you. You can choose a different theme; however, there are not a ton of different choices. But you can change the background color to have a more unique page from others. Depends on what all you want others to see on your account.

You can put anything you want to up at Twitter; well don’t put up those obscene pictures. But maybe you just want to vent about something that happened to you. Or you love some Xbox or other games that you want everyone to know about. Almost anything can be posted on Twitter.

Maybe you have a new product that you’ve tried and it didn’t work the right way. Warn others out there to save the money you spent. Or just blog some nonsense it might actually be pretty entertaining to others. This is how a lot of the bloggers out there have been noticed. They just start writing and people pull up something and find this funny stuff that they might never have found before.

Twitter is just a great way for you get to know other people in other states, or countries. You can make some lifelong friends online. Or maybe even make a love connection finding someone who has the same interests as you. All kinds of things can happen on the internet. Maybe you’re a writer and you’re trying to get noticed, you never know who might spot your work and want to have you work for them. Perhaps you have a book that you’ve completed and someone sees the blurb that you put up on Twitter. Some people have connections and may help you to become published.

Really it’s a new way to socially network, and very easy to sign up. Research information through different links on Twitter too. Blog it up and tell others about your days. Do everything you can think of, and have fun meeting those people.

You may learn things that you never would have. Knowledge is out there to be found, and Twitter is a new way to go about that search. Don’t be left out of the loop, get your very own Twitter account and see what you can find out.

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Dress For Success To Work Online

Have you ever seen this slogan while looking for making money online?

“Would You Like To Work In Your Pyjamas”

This is one I’ve seen quite regularly with people promoting online business programs. ‘Join our program and you too can work in your pyjamas’ or similar statements.

The whole point being that you can work from home and wear whatever you want, even your pyjamas if that is what you want to do. You can sleep in and get out of bed at whatever time you wish as you don’t have a boss that requires you to start at a particular time. You can get out of bed and turn your computer straight on while still in your PJs.

This is the dream of many and the reality of many.

But how many of them actually do work all day in their pyjamas?

When first starting out online it can be very easy to stay in your pyjamas for half the day or even the whole day while you lose track of time. You may stay in your pyjamas all day just because you can. That’s the beauty of working from home after all; you can work in your pyjamas.

However, I’m a big believer in dressing for success. I believe that dressing in your pyjamas or even in your old daggy tracksuit can make you too relaxed and not put you in the right frame of mind to work well.

Your mind set and the way you think can play a huge part on how successful you are. This is true with online work or with anything in life.

So if you are to dress in your pyjamas, you are in a very relaxed mind set.

If you are dressed in a business suit or even just some nice casual clothes, but clothes suited more for going to work, you will be in the mind set of working.

If you look at photos of any online gurus or entrepreneurs, you won’t find any in their pyjamas. They will be wearing either business suits or nice casual clothes for their photos on their sales pages. This is because it looks professional.

Are you more likely to purchase a product if there is a picture of the product owner in a business suit, or a picture in his pyjamas?

The business suit is more professional and gives your customers the impression that you are a professional person and possibly an expert in your field.

I believe that by dressing this way when you are working from home will also make a big difference in the way you think, and therefore in the quality of work you produce and will more than likely make you more successful than if you are too relaxed in the way you dress each day while you work.

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Introduction to WordPress Themes

Introduction to WordPress Themes

Without a doubt, WordPress is one of the most popular blog and website creation tools. That is, WordPress.org which is the WordPress version that is hosted on the hosting company of your choice. WordPress.com is rather limited and is hosted on WordPress own servers. It is free, but you are limited to a small number of themes and the customizations options are limited. As long as you are willing to pay for your own hosting service, ie – Go Daddy, JustHost, MonsterGator, etc., WordPress.org is the way to go.

Most of the top blogs use the WordPress platform. By looking at these blogs, you can see a great variety in their design. In fact, many of them don’t look like blogs themselves, but look like traditional websites.

The reason for this is that WordPress allows users to create their own themes, and upload them to the WordPress website. Many people do this for fun or the good of the community. However, some create what is called a premium theme which is basically a paid version. Some of the themes offer a free starter theme, but a paid version gets you more features.

One of the strengths of WordPress is also a weakness. There are almost too many themes out there. It can get frustrating finding a theme that suits your purposes, especially after reviewing hundreds of similar themes.  To eliminate some of the frustration, consider the following:

What do you want in a theme. On one hand, there are people who are just interested in their blog writing, and they want it to look nice. Commercialization or ads do not interest them. On the other hand, there are other people who are interested in their blog, but would also like to make a little money.

This generally involves AdSense, banner ads, etc. However, the placing of these ads (or the HTML code that supports them) on a blog or website is of prime importance to the advertiser, and also to the website owner. You don’t want ads to distract from your website, but complement it.

WordPress accomplishes this by having areas of your blog where you can place widgets. Widgets are basically place holders where you can place a great variety of content. It could include a link page, a poll, a photo, text, or HTML code that generates an ad.  However, depending upon the theme, widgets will be in different places and different sizes.

The WordPress database allows you to search for specific elements of themes.

For example, when you search the WordPress database, you will find hundreds of themes that say “”ad sense ready.””  Many of these themes have only a few widget areas available for ads, and some have as many as 11 different widget areas.

Generally, the more widget areas the better in a theme, because no matter what your purpose, it gives you more flexibility. 

Another factor that comes into play is that many themes are highly customizable.  Don’t be deceived by the initial appearance, look at the option page before you move on.   Many themes have great features, you just need to choose the appropriate option.  Background image, color, placement of widget sidebars, etc. are all common things that can be customized.

Finding a theme you like is a trial and error process.  However, before you begin, have an idea on what you want to accomplish.  Do you want widget space for small rectangle ads?  Or do you want widget space that will accommodate skyscraper ads, leaderboard ads, and the other popular banner ad formats? Do you want a widget space that will accommodate a particular photo dimension format?

The process of looking for a theme you like is a daunting task, but if you have a general idea of what you want, it will make the process go faster.  With the thousands of WordPress themes out there, you are bound to find one you like.

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Boost Your Affiliate Commissions With WordPress

Boost Your Affiliate Commissions With WordPress

Any affiliate marketer would love to increase their earnings. If the increase in earnings can be made without additional work then that will be fantastic for you.

Now many marketers will promote affiliate programs through web 2.0 properties or article marketing, but that isn’t the only way. What if you could increase your commissions whilst building valuable virtual real estate?

Hosting a site on your own domain is a great way to build your virtual real estate empire. Throw WordPress in to the mix and it quickly becomes the affiliate marketers dream. WordPress is such a powerful piece of software you will soon wonder how you managed without it for so long.

WordPress has many benefits for the affiliate marketer. Firstly, it is loved by the search engines and is simple to set up. You can create an amazing looking site without any technical knowledge and in just a few clicks of a mouse.

WordPress also allows you to extend its functionality by using plugins. This means that with a couple of clicks you can enhance existing features or add new features to it. This allows you to create the website you want with advanced features without a technical background.

WordPress is very useful for the affiliate marketer. Out of the box it is already very search engine friendly, but add in one of the popular SEO plugins and it becomes a dream piece of software that the search engines will literally drool all over.

On top of that you can get free plugins which will not only cloak your affiliate links but also track clicks for you. Often affiliate marketers spend a lot of money on software like this, but here you can find it for nothing with advanced features.

Plus it is very easy to make very pretty looking sites that your visitors will really like. It doesn’t take a lot of work and you don’t have to know any HTML or other web design languages. So long as you can point and click you will be able to configure WordPress and make it look fantastic.

If you also monetize your website through AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network then plugins exist which will allow you to instantly add these contextual adverts to every page on your website. If you have pages on your website already then this is a massive time saver for you.

With additional plugins you can add ClickBank products, turn keywords into affiliate links and without any additional plugins put Amazon widgets anywhere in your site.

WordPress is a very powerful platform that if you are not using as an affiliate marketer then you are missing a trick. By building valuable virtual real estate built on the WordPress platform you are creating a long term sustainable business that will earn very well for you.

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The Different Types of Ebay Listings

The most popular type of ebay listing is the general ‘auction’, but there are also three other types of listings that can be used.

The four types of ebay listings are:

• Auction
• Buy It Now
• Dutch
• Store

Auction Listing: The auction listing is plain and simple. You have an item to sell so you set the listing up for auctioning a quantity of 1 item.

You may start the auction at the price of your choice and some auctions will allow you to have a reserve price.

Some sellers will start their auctions at the minimum price that they would like to receive for the item and many sellers will even start their auctions as low as .01 cent.

Buyers will then bid on the auction and the winner is the person with the highest bid when the auction finishes.

The buyer will then send you the money for the item and you will then send the item to the buyer.

Buy-it-now Listing: With Buy It Now listings you are leaving nothing to chance. You are asking a specific price that buyers can purchase at. With Buy It Now listings your buyers can purchase the item immediately instead of waiting for the auction to finish.

You can have a quantity of just one or a multiple quantity. This method is very good if you are selling information products as you can sell as many as you like all from the one listings.

When selling a multiple quantity using the Buy It Now listing, it is a good idea to have the items listed over a seven or ten day period. This gives your items longer exposure and will be seen by more potential customers. You will have a longer period and may possibly sell all the quantities advertised over that time.

Dutch auction: I have used this a couple of times and with the right products can actually be very profitable. With the Dutch auction you must start at a minimum price of 99cents, you can have a quantity of 2 or more. The Dutch auction works like this: we’ll have a quantity of 2 as the example, a bid is placed by one bidder say for $2.00 but their highest bid is actually $5.00. With a normal auction it will show $2.00 and when another person bids it will increase until it reaches that persons highest bid of $5.00. With the Dutch auction, when the second person bids it may go up to $2.50 so both of them have bids at $2.50. Every time that someone places a bid both bids increase by that amount. So if a third bidder joins and bids, they will need to bid more than at least one of the other bidders, which will then bring the second bidder up to that amount also. So if the third bidders bids $6.50 and outbids the first bidder whose highest bid was $5.00, both the third and second bidders’ bids move up to $6.50.

I hope that makes a bit of sense, I never read anything about Dutch auctions that made sense to me, it wasn’t until I tried one out that I really worked out what it was all about.

Store Listing: To have an ebay store there is a monthly fee of about $15. If you are selling a lot of items on ebay as a full time job, then it may be worth paying the fee and having an ebay store.

Store listings are at a fixed price similar to the buy it now listing. Store listings are listed for longer periods however, usually over a 30 day period with the option to automatically be relisted at the end of that period if there are still some quantities left for sale.

Store listings are a lot cheaper to list and the final valuation fees are also less than with the other three types of listings.

Store listings get less exposure as they do not show up first during customer’s searches. If you have an ebay store it is a good idea to also have normal buy it now or auction listings, and mention your ebay store in these listings.

These listings will get more exposure and be advertisements for your store stock.

What type of listing you use will depend on what you are selling and the quantities you are selling. Sometimes you may take some time to find out what works best for you.

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Top WordPress Gallery Plug-In

Top WordPress Gallery Plug-In

WordPress is known for it’s wonderfully easy to use blogging platform that basically anyone can get the hang of within a day or two. In the past year or two thousands of developers have been developing WordPress plug-ins which is used to make your blogging a more unique experience. Some of the plug-ins is for the blog owner’s enjoyment and some are for the blogs reader’s enjoyment, either way they are very fun and helpful tools that everyone should utilize. One of the hardest things to do, and also one of the most time consuming things to do on WordPress is create a picture gallery so that it appears nicely with proper thumbnails. Many people have given making a WordPress gallery plug-in a shot but not many have made a plug-in that works properly and efficiently. The NextGEN Gallery plug-in for WordPress is absolutely the number on WordPress gallery plug-in currently and it has many great features.

One of the best features of the NextGEN gallery is the ability to be able to create thumbnails automatically without having to do them yourself. The plug-in also has some nice usable effects that you can utilize if you’d like and best of all it has an easy to use
admin interface. Adding picture galleries onto WordPress posts or pages has never been easier with the NextGEN gallery and also has never looked nicer. As WordPress blogs become more well designed and over more content it’s important that you keep yourself in this top league and by using this plug-in you’ll ensure you’re competing with the best pictures on the web. The thumbnails created look very nice for the readers and the interface to manage the pictures is better then any other. Thousands of people have already been integrating picture galleries into their blogs and it’s been helping them all out with boosts in traffic due to higher interactivity then other blogs. People like to see that you’ve spent time on your blog and not just thrown it together in minutes and although it only takes minutes to set-up each gallery it ensures a very attractive looking blog that people will want to visit often. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/

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Internet Marketing Course – 4 Recommended Plugins for WordPress Blogs

Internet Marketing Course – 4 Recommended Plugins for WordPress Blogs

WordPress is probably the best interface for anyone who wants to setup a blog style website but has little or no HTML coding knowledge. I had to write HTML codes for websites generation when I was in college. When WordPress was born, it is heaven to many. I personally believe that WordPress was one of the key reasons to an explosion of websites launches over the past decade.

The following are essential WordPress Plugins for anyone who wants to monetize a website, especially one with a blog style.

1. Akismet

Most Blog style websites have a comment box at the bottom of every post that allows the readers to leave their feedback or comments. These comments are great for SEO traffic. However, the comment box is also a magnet for spam.

Akismet is a Plugin that checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam and allows you to review the comments before approving it. To activate Akismet you will need a WordPress.com API key which is free for personal websites use.

Although Akismet is a good tool, you will want to check your comments folder regularly because some good comments may actually get filtered out. This plugin works like a computer anti-spam software that automatically put junk mails into your junk box. If you know how it works, it is not perfect. But this is not to say that you don’t need an anti-spam software.

2. Social BookMarking Links Plugin

This plugin automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites! Furthermore, you can also send a link to your post via email, AIM, Facebook, Twitter and more. WordPress version 2.6 or above is required though.

When you integrate social bookmarking with your posts, visitors can bookmark your web page with their social bookmarking accounts and that creates great backlinks for you that are well-liked by Search Engines.

3. Google Sitemaps Plugin

Google sitemaps creates a compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom created ones. What’s cool about this plugin is that every time you create or edit a post, your sitemap gets updated automatically and all the major search engines that support the sitemap protocol such as ASK.com, Google, Bing and Yahoo are notified about the update.

This simply means your blog pages will be more SEO friendly.

4. Google Adsense

This plugin provides a very easy way to generate revenue from your blog using Google AdSense. It is a very simple and yet almost maintenance free way of generating passive income from your blog. After you install and activate the plugin, go to the widgets under appearance and then add the AdSense tool to the sidebar or any where you like on your blog.

Before you install this plugin, please ensure that you have an approved AdSense account from Google, which may be a painful process for some because Google mercilessly rejects your application if it thinks you are generating junk sites.

For more WordPress tutorial and SEO tools, check out Adam Short’s Niche Profit Programs which offers countless video tutorials for the serious Internet Marketers in mind.

Get Educated. Market Smart!

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