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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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Best WordPress Plugins

Best WordPress Plugins

Before getting into the best WordPress plugins out there, let’s cover a couple of definitions for the uninitiated among us.

WordPress is the world’s most widely-used open source Content Management System (CMS). While it is often employed as a blog, WordPress is strong enough to run entire websites. So it isn’t just a blogging platform. WordPress is powered by PHP and MySQL, and has exciting features such as templates and plugins that make building fantastic websites relatively effortless. WordPress is used by 13% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites in the world, no small feat considering the breadth of options available.

Plugins are simply applications that augment the capabilities of WordPress and make it better to work with. Most plugins are free.

Here are the best WordPress plugins out there. My opinions are highly subjective, but these are plugins I want you to know about.

#1: All-in-One SEO Pack

The All-in-One SEO Pack makes on-page search engine optimization simple. For this reason, it’s my top pick. With this plugin, adding Meta tags such as title tags, meta descriptions, and keywords has never been easier. This is a good thing, as too many websites are missing these crucial elements (and missing out on online lead generation and/or online sales as a result).

#2: Askimet

Askimet allows you to quit moderating comments. It automatically checks comments left on your website against the Askimet web service to see if they look like spam or not. If it’s spam, they toss the comment out. To keep the service honest, you can analyze the spam it catches to make sure the plugin is doing its job accurately. There are two things that make using this plugin vital. One, your readers will never have to type in a CAPTCHA again. Two, your readers will never have to wait for their comment to be moderated again (this drives me nuts when we visit other blogs).

#3: Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps will produce a special XML sitemap which will allow search engines to index your blog. If that sentence makes your head hurt, just know this: it makes it easier for Google to read your website. That’s a good thing. If Google can’t or doesn’t read your website, that’s bad. You want them to read it so they can share your website with people that use the Internet. Consider this a crucial WordPress plugin if you enjoy trading your labor and/or skills for money.

#4 Subscribe to Comments Reloaded

Consider this one a cherry on the top of your delicious WordPress sundae. Subscribe to Comments Reloaded will change the way people use your blog. Without it, people just stop in, leave a comment, and never return. With this plugin, your readers can click a box saying they wish to be notified of follow-up comments via email. This email notification will (in some cases) cause the reader to return and leave a comment. This will give you more Web traffic, more comments, and it will make your blog more conversational.

#5: TweetMeme

Guy Kawasaki once called this the most important button on the Internet. It probably isn’t at that level today, but it is certainly still highly useful when it comes to getting your message to the masses. Twitter has proven to be a highly beneficial viral marketing tool. If you have something important or interesting to say, odds are Twitter will go a long way in getting your voice heard. Within the Twitter-sphere, there is nothing more valuable than a ReTweet. A ReTweet occurs when someone that reads your content re-broadcasts it to all of their followers. When this happens, viral marketing magic happens. TweetMeme makes it convenient for your blogs’ readers to ReTweet your content, which will bring you more traffic, more comments, and (hopefully) more business.

So there you have it. Those are, in my estimation, the five best WordPress plugins out there.

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9 Great WordPress Plugins For Your WordPress Blog

9 Great WordPress Plugins For Your WordPress Blog

WordPress itself is a great platform to run your own blogs but WordPress plugins make it a lot easier to control spam comments, SEO, check for broken links, place revenue generating ads and to back up your WordPress database to name a few. Without these plugins you would require technical expertise way beyond the average blogger, not to mention the time plugins save in doing things like creating a “”Contact Us”” page and sorting out all those spam blog comments.

Here are the 9 plugins that I now use on all my blogs.

Akismet is a popular plugin that checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You can review the spam it catches under “”Comments.”” Without such a plugin your blog could easily become full of undesirable comments that you certainly do not want your readers to read.

All in One SEO Pack is Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. You can use this plugin to tweak the default options for title, description, keywords and duplicate content.

Broken Link Checker checks your posts for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found. There is nothing worse getting traffic to your blog and then sending them to a web page that no longer exists. Without this plugin it would takes quite some time to regularly check all the links on all your blog posts and pages.

Google AdSense, Chitika and Kontera plugins allow you to monetize your blog and make an income from an information blog.

Contact Form 7 allows you to create a “”Contact Us”” page with a form people can fill in for further information or questions about your products.

Google XML Site maps plugin will generate a special XML site map which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog. Another time saving plugin.

Pretty Link will shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet from your WordPress website. No more ugly affiliate links that you have to hide under hyper-linked text.

StatPress gives real time stats for your WordPress blog. This is my preference for displaying my blog stats.

WP-DBManager manages your WordPress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database, drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of the database. This is probably one of the most overlooked plugins for WordPress as a backup is only needed when your blog has been hacked or has failed due to technical issues. Relying on your hosting account for backups may not be a good as you think because blogs need to be backed up regularly as they are constantly changing with new posts being added regularly.

These are only a few of the many plugins available to use on your blogs. You need to consider the nature of your blog,the niche you are blogging in and other things like are you using you WordPress blog as a blog, a sales page or just a website?

You must also be aware that some plugins for WordPress can conflict with one another and cause problems with your blog. From my experience I have had I am yet to have a problem using the above combination of plugins but one must remember that plugins are always being updated and conflicts may arise with future updates.

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How To Get A WordPress API Key For The Akismet WordPress Plugin

How To Get A WordPress API Key For The Akismet WordPress Plugin

With the growing popularity of blogs and the ease to obtain links through comments on blogs, it didn’t take long for programmers to come up with automated tools to blast link packed spam comments to unsuspecting blogs.

Some just turn comments off for their blog but to me that eliminates one of the great features of making your blog interactive for your visitors. Comments can open discussion between the reader and the blogger. Your blog’s visitors can even subscribe to a post’s comments, getting notified of any new comments, keeping your readers coming back.

The WordPress plugin, Akismet checks comments posted on your blog posts against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.

To activate Akismet from your WordPress blog dashboard, click Plugins, scroll down and click Activate next to the WordPress Akismet plugin. After you do that you will see a box near the top of the dashboard that reads:

Akismet is not active. You must enter your WordPress.com API key for it to work.

Click the link in the message, and then the Akismet Configuration panel will open. You should then see this in the middle of the screen:

Please enter an API key. (Get your key.)

On the top of that page click the Sign Up tab, fill in your information and if you have a self-hosted blog choose the Just a username, please option.

Be sure to use a good email address in here to get your login information and WordPress API key, click the box to agree to legal junk and click next.

Check your email and click the confirmation link from WordPress to activate your account. You should then see a page that reads, “”Your account is now active!”” Click the login link within the text of that page and login.

You should now be at the WordPress.com site, if so click the dropdown box on the very top right of the page and choose “”Edit Profile””, now you are in the Global Dashboard.

Within the WordPress Global Dashboard you can now see your WordPress API key on the right side of the page. Oh, and by now you should have also got the API key in an email from WordPress also! But you should still edit your profile while you are in the Global Dashboard.

Now its time to place the API key in the Akismet WordPress plugin; go back into your WordPress blog dashboard, click the link on the Akismet WordPress plugin warning box near the top of the dashboard. Paste the WordPress API key in the box and click update options.

If the warning box is not visible check to see if Akismet is activated, click Plugins and look for the status of the plugin on the right. You will notice that all activated plugins are highlighted green. When Akismet is activated you can configure it by clicking Plugins, and look for the Akismet subpanel (white text in the dark blue bar) directly below and to the right of then main panel menu.

Keeping comment spam out while allowing your blog visitors to comment, will not only keep your blog clean but more interactive and help generate more traffic.

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Anyone can be a publisher an editor a writer

online blogging makes it all possible. There are ample of blogging software in the cyberspace and they all offer the same service, which is a portal for us to express our ideas. Well, in a tough market, one would have to find his way to surpass his competitions. This is where plugins come in! Plugins are usually used to further enhance and extend the functionality of your blog. As one of the leading blog service, WordPress offers more than hundreds plugins, with some really brilliant function and some not-so-useful features. Eventually, it is still up to the blogger to decide which plugins are useful and which are not.
 
    Extra protection is always welcomed. Akismet is one of the popular plugins offered by WordPress, where it filters all the spam comments against the Akismet web service, ensuring that this is no junk in your blog. Very useful and effective against those dreadful bots!
  
    While with Get Recent Comment, you will see a sidebar featuring all your latest or tradeback comments. You will have complete access to the appearance, whether to show the comments by corresponding post or simply by date. The plugin also allows you to filter unwanted pingbacks, ignore unwanted comments and etc. Plus, it works as a widget too.
  
    Then, there is Google sitemaps which allows blogger to complaint XML-Sitemap of their WordPress blog with Google sitemaps. Google sitemaps supports all pages generated by WordPress, including the custom ones. All major search engines that carry sitemap protocol such as Google, YAHOO, MSN Search will be notified of every update you make to your WordPress blog. Doesn’t it sound really high-tech?
 
    Flexible Upload, a WordPress plugin that intend to enhance basic upload functionality. Blogger can resize their pictures to a specify the size and also affix a watermark signature in all the pictures. And then we have WP Super Cache, a plugin that will help in speeding up your WordPress blog efficiently. This plugin works by generating html files, which are served by Apache without having to go through relatively troublesome PHP scripts.
 
    Advertisement on blog is nothing but a common norm. Easy Adsenser intends to provide an effortless method to insert Goggle AdSense code into your WordPress blog. You will have a widget displaying all the ads in your sidebar, along with a Google Search box. Easy Adsenser is most definitely the first plugin that allows you complete control over everything related to Adsense.
  
    twitME, an absolutely convenient plugin that lets blogger automatically post their new posts on twitter website. Besides, WP-GravatarWOrdpress Popular Posts will show the most popular posts in your blog by listing it out on a sidebar. Blogger is free to customize the widget according to his liking.  
    The lists go on and on. At the end of the day, it is still up to the blogger, whether to enhance their WordPress blog with Goggle Sitemap or WP Super Cache, or perhaps both. We all know how cool it is to have a blog that have more than just words.
 

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