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WordPress Plugins – Making the Most Out of Your Blog

By on May 24, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Wordpress Plugins – Making the Most Out of Your Blog

WordPress is a very successful piece of software that not only provides a platform to begin blogging it also has many addition features such as wordpress plugins. These wordpress plugins allow users and administrators to add additional functions to their blogs and will provide the tools to customise a blog or website to suit the theme and genre.

Anyone who is new to blogging may not be aware that they have free access to a variety of plug-in so it is worth having a look to see just what is on offer to you, you may just install that vital wordpress plugin that sends your blog to the top.

WordPress plugins are located in the admin area of your blog, you will need to log into your wordpress blog to be able to access them and once you have done so you will see a tab labelled ‘plugins’ when you click on the tab you will be taken to a list of wordpress plugins that are waiting to be activated. You will also be given a description of that the plugin does and what version of wordpress you will need to be running for it to work. Once you have decided which plugin you want to activate simply click activate and your done!

You can also visit the wordpress website and download a heap of new and updated plugins directly from there. You will also be able to see which plugins are downloaded most often as well as read more information on each individual wordpress plugin.

Some of the most popular wordpress plugins available to download right now are Akismet, All in one SEO pack, cformsII, WP Super Cache, Google XML sitemaps and WordPress Stats.

Google XML sitemaps is recommended as it creates compliant XML sitemaps of your wordpress blog. The plugin supports all of the wordpress generated pages so every time you create or edit a post the sitemap is updated and google and all other major search engines such as ASK and MSN are informed of any changes.

The plugin is simple to install, you simply upload the full directory to your wp-content/plugins directory using ftp. You will need to make sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz writable via CHMOD 666. You then activate the plugin from inside your blog (located under options) and begin to build a sitemap. You will not have to continuously rebuild the sitemap every time a change or update is made because this is all automatic.

WordPress plugins make search engine optimisation a lot easier, It seems that search engines are quite fond of blogs as they are constantly being updated. You can make the search engines take more notice of your blogs by installing the relevant plugins.

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5 Must Have WordPress Plugins – Are You Missing One

By on January 11, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

5 Must Have WordPress Plugins – Are You Missing One? WordPress is arguably the most used CMS (Content Management System) online. It is partly due to its flexibility as a blog platform, and partly due to the large number of plugins and themes made by its large community of users. However, this huge choice of plugins can easily confuse a new user. Therefore, for those of you who are unsure which plugins to use, here’s a list of the top 5 must use WordPress plugins: 1. Akismet – Akismet is pre-bundled when you install WordPress. It is made by the same company that makes WordPress. Akismet is a spam blocking plugin that works very efficiently to block out spam comments. If you run a large blog, you really need this plugin. The amount of spam doing the rounds online is tremendous. If you were to moderate these comments one by one, you would have to spend hours maintaining your blog. Akismet makes the whole process automatic and saves you countless hours of effort. 2. All in One SEO – What good is a blog if no one reads it? With All in One SEO plugin, all your in-site SEO needs will be taken care of automatically. It will create meta tags, meta descriptions, etc. on its own. If you want your blog to be found by Google or other search engines, this is a must-have plugin. 3. Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin automatically creates a sitemap of your blog to aid Google’s spiders in indexing it. Sitemaps are just what you think they mean: a map of your site. They can make it much easier for Google to find and index your site, so this plugin is a must have, regardless of the size of your blog. 4. One Click Plugin Updater – If you’re like me, you probably hate to update your plugins one-by-one. Most plugins have several updates a month, and updating them can be a real pain. One Click Plugin Updater simplifies the whole process by giving you the option to update all your plugins with a single click. A huge timesaver if you find yourself using too many plugins. 5. WordPress Database Backup – You never know when some unfortunate accident may befall your blog. Once, one very large blog of mine got hacked and consequently, I lost my entire database. I didn’t have a backup database, so I had to create everything from scratch (something that took me over 100 hours). With WordPress Database Backup, you can get it to make automatic backups and mail it to you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. So there you have it: 5 plugins that are essential to any WordPress installation!

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How to Use WordPress to Automate Your Business

By on December 18, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How to Use WordPress to Automate Your Business

If you haven’t heard of WordPress, listen. WordPress is an amazing blogging platform — but it’s so much more than that. In fact, this article will teach you some things as to how to use WordPress to automate your website and therefore your business, leaving you time to do the things you enjoy without having to keep your finger on every little “”nook and cranny”” job that needs to be done. Here are just some of the things WordPress can do.

AdSense

If you use AdSense to earn extra income on your site, the AdSense Integrator can both dad and then manage the AdSense ads you put on your blog, effortlessly following the last AdSense rules and updates without your having to keep on top of them. This is one way when it comes to how to use WordPress that you can really earn passive income without having to do anything except for adding the initial plug-in.

Google Analytics

When it comes to how to use WordPress to track your customers, Google Analytics will help you keep track of who’s visiting your page, where they’re from, and a lot more information that’s valuable when it comes to knowing your customers. The Google “”Analyticater”” offered by WordPress makes it very easy to add this to your website.

XML Sitemaps

The XML Sitemaps plug-in will make you much more visible to your customers — in fact, if your customers can’t find you, it’s not likely you will have any business at all to speak of. However, Sitemaps easily makes you visible to search engines as they crawl your site, which gets you seen on the web — and therefore gets you more customers.

AWeber

AWeber is a service that, although not free, can really help you explode your business. Used with WordPress, it’s another way you can really automate your business. With this service, you can basically turn autoresponder functions into guaranteed customer draws. You can create website sign-up forms, which will help you attract customers; instead of simply having visitors anonymously visit your site and then go away, you can simply include a sign-up form on your blog using AWeber’s simple “”point-and-click”” interactive functionality.

That’s not all, though. While most auto responders will send canned messages to subscribers after sign-up and other functions, AWeber actually provides you the ability to give personalized e-mails to subscribers or customers in an automated sequence that’s really going to give you the ability to connect with your customers — and your potential customers, too. What’s more, you can also schedule autoresponder functions so that they’ll go up when you know your customers are likely to be thinking about reordering, as applicable. Again, this is all automatic, and he will only rarely have to lift a finger after initial setup.

All of this and more is available if you know how to use WordPress and associated plug-ins and services to fully automate your business. Of course, your business is still going to need you to run it, but automating it as much as possible for the simple day-to-day mundane tasks such as those described above will to free you up to focus on the really important part of your business, which is to provide quality products and/or services.

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A Detailed Look at Some of the Most Popular WordPress Plugins

By on November 18, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

A Detailed Look at Some of the Most Popular WordPress Plugins

One of the most popular WordPress plugins being downloaded on a daily basis is WordPress.com Stats, in fact at the time of writing it has been downloaded more than 37,000 times. To be able to use this WordPress plugin you will need to be running WordPress version 2.1 or higher. It is also compatible up to 2.7 beta.

WordPress.com Stats offers you a really simple way of retrieving data. I sometimes find that the more complex stat systems such as Google analytics or mint provide far too much information which can be confusing especially if you are new to blogging.

Installation is extremely easy, and is done in 4 steps

1. First you will need to upload stats.php to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.2. Then activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.3. It will then ask you to enter your WordPress.com API key, you will need to do this to enable it to work.4. After a few minutes your stats will show.

Once installed you can view the stats in less than 20 minutes. It also has the added function of not including the hits of logged on users, which is especially handy if you are constantly updating and adding new posts.

This WordPress plugin will provide you with valuable information such as letting you know which pages and posts are the most popular, what people are clicking on and where your traffic is coming from. The way the information is viewed is very simple and easy to understand.

You can use the plugin on either a hosted or unhosted accounts and because all the data collection and processing is not done on your server it does not effect the load on your hosting account making it one of the fastest stats systems you can use.

Another of the most popular WordPress plugins is Google XML sitemaps. Over 1000 people per day are adding this plugin to their websites and blogs and the main advantage is because as you update or create a post the sitemap is automatically updated and the new information is passed to all major search engines such as Google, YAHOO, MSN and ASK.

You will need to be running WordPress 2.1 or higher to be able to install it and also have access to an ftp programme in order to create the files needed to install the software.

Adding WordPress plugins to your blog will not only give you access to a lot more information, these plugins are designed to make your website more pleasing to the eye and far more user friendly taking it to the next level.

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How to Install WordPress Plugins

By on September 17, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How to Install WordPress Plugins

When it comes to WordPress plugins, there are hundreds… if not thousands to choose from. Trying to decide what’s best for you and your site can be a bit tricky.

Before we get into a lot of the “”supplementary”” plugins there are a few “”core”” plugins that EVERY WordPress site should have. These plugins are critical to ensure the success of your site AND leveraging the power of WordPress with internet marketing.

I will briefly discuss each plugin and why they are so critical:

#1 –
All in One SEO Pack – WordPress itself isn’t very SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly. There are a LOT of improvements that could be made to each and every page and post that is created. All in One SEO Pack does a fantastic job of allowing you to update the title tags, meta description, and meta keyword to ensure your page/post is SEO friendly.

#2 –
Google Analytics for WordPress – It doesn’t matter how good you THINK your site is … without Google analytics you will never actually KNOW how visitors interact with your site AND how you can make it better. If you seriously want a site to succeed online and you do not have Google Analytics, or some kind of statistic tracking code installed on your site, you will NOT succeed. Simple as that.

#3 –
Google XML Sitemaps – This is a very powerful plugin for Search Engine Optimization. It ensures all your pages, even recent ones, can get indexed quickly and efficiently. Google themselves have stated that have a “”sitemap”” WILL help for indexing purposes.

#4 –
Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/eMail – This one may not be quite a critical as the above plugins but lends itself nicely to viral marketing. Giving your visitors the ability to “”share”” your website/page with others can tremendously help your SEO and traffic initiatives. This plugin will vary in importance depending on your site however I strongly recommend have this installed … just in case …

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of plugins. There are other plugins that could arguably make this list however I wanted to keep it fairly short and sweet and focus on two of the most important elements of a site TRAFFIC and TESTING.

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WordPress Plugins, Themes & Hosting Consideration Recommendations from Search Commander Inc., CEO

By on August 1, 2011 in Randy Roedl

PubCon video content producer Vanessa Zamora sat down with Scott Hendison, president at Search Commander Inc., to discuss content management systems, specifically WordPress, the blogging platform that is one of his specialties. Hendison shared a number of his top plugin picks for WordPress development in this PubCon Las Vegas 2010 interview, including SEO Automatic’s own Core Tweaks WordPress Setup plugin that minimizes the initial content management system set up time, All in One SEO Pack and HeadSpace2 SEO for search engine optimization needs, as well as Yoast, which includes a plugin for SEO, an XML Sitemaps plugin, and an RSS footer plugin. Hendison also shared his preferred WordPress themes, pointing out that although the most popular theme to his knowledge is Thesis, a premium theme, he prefers a free theme called Atahualpa, and recommends others browse through free themes before spending money on a premium theme that ultimately might not have all of the desired capabilities. Hendison continued by sharing his recommendations with regards to selecting a Web hosting server, suggesting against shared servers that stifle page load time, now a factor in Google’s ranking system. In addition, shared servers do not provide as much security as dedicated environments, Hendison added. If looking for shared hosting, Hendison suggested Search Commanders PDXTC shared hosting service, as well as Bluehost. For dedicated options Hendison suggested Rackspace or Dreamhost.

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5 Essential WordPress Plugins Every Blog Should Have

By on July 17, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

5 Essential WordPress Plugins Every Blog Should Have

WordPress is easily the best blogging platform on the internet. Its easy to use, yet powerful enough to run huge websites. Some of the top websites in the world run on WordPress, including sites like TechCrunch, WSJ Blogs, etc.

Its very easy to customize WordPress. There are a ton of themes from free to premium ones that can make your blog look like anything you desire. But more importantly, there are a host of free and paid plugins that you can use to customize your blog and make it easier to read.

Here are five WordPress plugins your blog shouldn’t exist without:

1. All in One SEO PluginThis is an essential plugin for all WordPress blogs. It automatically takes care of generating meta tags and keywords for your blog posts. Without this plugin, you would have a hard time ranking high in search engines.

2. Advertising ManagerIf you plan on monetizing your blog, then this plugin is a must have. You can insert your ads almost anywhere in your site’s template. Moreover, this plugin supports the Open X ad marketplace, which means that you can configure it to show only the highest CPM ads.

3. Add to AnySocial bookmarking is a great way to gain additonal eyeballs. With this plugin, your visitors can quickly add your blog post to the most popular social bookmarking directories in the world, or email it to friends.

4. AkismetThis is a plugin made by WordPress itself and is included in most installations automatically. It acts as a spam blocker for your blog. Akismet is highly effective at blocking and automatically deleting spam comments. An absolute essential, especially if you run a popular blog that might get a lot of spam comments.

5. Google XML SitemapsSitemaps make it easier for the Googlebot to go through your website. This plugin makes high quality sitemaps automatically that can be indexed by Google. A must have if you want to rank high in Google.

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Top 5 SEO Plugins for WordPress

By on August 13, 2010 in Randy Roedl

Top 5 SEO plugins for WordPress. If you have a WordPress blog/website download these SEO plugins to get your blog/website fully optimized for the search engines. Follow me Now on Twitter: twitter.com Learn more about SEO: www.freshtilledsoil.com The top 5 list of my favorite SEO wordpress plugins. If you currently have a blog or website built with wordpress, make sure you download these plugins to ensure your wordpress blog/website will be indexed correctly in the search engines. If you are interesting in downloading these wordpress plugin’s here are the links: All in One SEO Pack Plugin- wordpress.org Google XML Sitemap Plugin- wordpress.org SEO Friendly Images Plugin- wordpress.org Redirection Plugin- wordpress.org No-follow Plugin- wordpress.org

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