Category: Wordpress Articles

I can not guarantee success for your WordPress website. I can not guarantee traffic. I can not guarantee you will make any money with your WordPress site. However, I can guarantee you will get spam comments. Not long after you start adding content, and even before you add content sometimes, you will begin to receive spam comments.

There is software out there that does nothing but search out blogs to comment on. Once you have been discovered the spam will begin rolling in. How can you spot a spam comment?

1. Brand names and Medications – Anytime you get a comment that mentions popular medications (think Viagra) or brand names in either the Name field or the actual post – most times it is spam. If there is a link that is titled by a med or brand name then you can be assured it is Spam.

2. Foreign Language – Foreign language doesn’t always mean Spam but it is a warning sign. Again this is especially true if you notice a foreign word (not name) in the name field. If you are writing a completely English blog but you are getting Polish comments it doesn’t add up. A real life example is I was getting badly written comments with what I thoguht was a Polish name. When I checked out the “name” in Google Translate it was roughly the Polish term for Search Engine Optimization. A popular keyword no doubt, when i realized that I knew I was being duped.

3. Lousy Comments – Again this isn’t a definite sign, but it can be a good warning. If you are getting comments that are irrelevant and poorly written..check the URL that the commenter added. If it is something to do with ecommerce, medication etc.. then it is probably a spam comment. Lousy comments includes ones like “Great article” “Good post” etc… Sometimes the comment won’t make sense at all – like it was meant for another post. This is definite SPAM.

Even if you can spot SPAM though how do you fight back? Well I suggest 2 ways:

One, you better activate Askimet. It comes with the WordPress installation and does a great job blocking spam comments. It has a huge database and it will run checks against your comments to figure out if it is SPAM or not. It isn’t 100% effective but it does help a ton. It is also kind of intelligent. It will learn when you correct it (ie. it marks a message SPAM that isn’t.)

Secondly you can look at some of the other comment plugins available. DISQUS is a popular one and it will add a lot of flexibility to your comment moderation. It won’t put an end to spam but it will cut it down a significant amount.

The more you use WordPress the better you will be at spotting SPAM comments. Plugins can help you in the battle, but most important will be your savy-ness is spotting SPAM comments. Good luck and I hope all your comments are positive!

Adding video to your WordPress blog post or page is a pretty simple affair. All you have to do is copy the embed code of the video and drop it into WordPress’s HTML editor. Pretty simple.

What if you want to add it to your sidebar though? You could probably use the text widget but then you would have to change the code yourself to change it’s size. This is fairly straight forward, but it might be something that people are not interested in doing. This is especially true if they have no coding knowledge.

Like usual though, WordPress has a plugin to help you out. Doesn’t it always? There are a couple plugins that can address this issue, but my favourite is simply called the Video Widget. All you have to do is download this plugin and activate it. Once that is done you will be able to add videos to your sidebar.

When the plugin is activated, you will notice you have a new Video Widget in the widget section of your WordPress back office. A little reminder; the widget menu can be found under the appearance heading. You simply grab the widget and drag it where you want it to appear in your sidebar.

This video widget will give you a few options. It will allow you to title the Widget so you can call it something like “Check This Out” or “latest video”.

It will also allow you to specify the width and height of the videos. This is extremely important because the average video won’t naturally fit in the sidebar.

Another cool feature is right underneath the width and height values. There is a box that will let you put in multiple video IDs. You don’t need the embed code for this plugin, just the video ID. The plugin works with 25 of the most popular video sharing sites so no matter where your video is you should be able to use this plugin. If you have multiple videos, your videos will be chosen randomly for your web visitor.

Underneath that you will see an area to use if you just want a single video. You will also be able to add some text either before the video or after it.

This plugin is no longer updated, but it still works as of WordPress 3.0. If you want to put a video in your sidebar the Video Widget is one of the easiest and most flexible choices you can make.

Your WordPress SEO Checklist, Dominate The Google Rankings

If you are getting frustrated watching your site stagnate in the Google rankings, then you will want to make sure you follow these tips. You need to make sure you research properly and the proper plugins installed. You also have to make sure your page is setup properly and you are creating content. Lastly you need to build backlinks to your content. Once you have read about these steps below, you will be able to skyrocket your site to the top of Google.

1. Research – You have to research your keywords. A lot of people, and I mean a lot, are going to tell you to look for low competition long tail keywords. I disagree. I say you go for the big guys first. Do your research of course though. If you want to rank for a spanish course then “Learn Spanish” is a great place to start. Using programs like Google’s free keyword tool you can find out an estimate of how many people search for a term. The higher the better. Do a Google search yourself and see if people are buying Paid Google ads – if so that means there is money to be made. Don’t be scared of very competitive terms either – that is where the money is.

2. Plugins – Make sure you install all applicable SEO related plugins. At the very least you should be installing All-IN-One Seo and XML Google Sitemaps. The first plugin will help with on page optimization, while the latter one will build a XML sitemap and submit it to Google. Do some research and see if any other SEO related plugins could fit on your site.

3. On Page Optimization – Although not as important as it once was you should still make sure your website is optimized. You want all your title tags to be keyword rich. That is the first thing Google sees. You also want to make sure you have no broken links on your site. The keyword appearing in your body as well as in H1 tags will also help. I would also make sure my permalinks were keyword rich. To do this set your custom permalink structure to something like /%postname%/. That way whatever you title your posts will become part of your URL.

4. Constant Content – Start adding content and don’t stop ever. Google loves fresh content and so do your visitors. Try to post everyday, if not really aim for five times a week. If you need to get guest bloggers to help you do that, but make sure you have a steady flow of content.

5. Build Links – Build links, everyone knows Google loves backlinks. Get them wherever you can. Online directories, blog comments, forum signatures, forum profiles, social bookmarking and social media all have opportunities to place backlinks. You can research proper backlinking and find tons of great ideas.

These five steps are very simple, but they are the key to getting your WordPress blog to the top of Google. If you research, plugin, optimize, create and build, you will blast to the top of Google.

If you have children you probably encourage them to be the best they can be. You want them to learn and grow and be happy. Helping your child create their very own blog could be a great learning experience. Your child will develop their writing and social skills with a blog. If you are wary of allowing your child to blog, here are some great reasons that might change your mind…

1. Develop Their Writing Skills – Some children don’t like to read and write. This might change if you help them set up their own blog. Kids seem to gravitate towards technology at an early age these days. If they don’t find traditional writing enjoyable, the added touch of technology inherent in a blog might excite them. You can help them develop their writing skills by encouraging them to post regularly to their blog.

2. Develop Technological Skills – The world we live in is becoming more and more technological everyday. Many parents feel overwhelmed themselves. You do not want your child failing behind. Having them regularly using a blog will introduce them to the internet, computers, typing and email. All of these skills are pretty much essential, especially for the next generation. There are a lot of pitfalls and dangers incorporated with these technologies so teaching your child how to avoid these early will be tremendously helpful.

3. Develop Social Skills – Having a blog will allow your child to get more comfortable expressing his/her feelings. Responding to comments can also help them develop their social skills. Some kids are shy and might be able to express themselves more fully online. Eventually those skills can translate to the real world.

These three reasons alone should be good enough for any parent who has thought about allowing their children to blog. You need to help them navigate the internet pitfalls, but it will all be a learning experience. Make sure you monitor your children’s online activities and blog. You also need to talk to your child and explain the dangers. Once you have done that, and considering the vast benefits, I think your child having a blog is a wonderful idea.

Do you have a blog? Are you looking for new content? Are you having a hard time posting everyday? If you answered yes to any of those questions then this article will show you one method that will ensure you have consistent content. There is no doubt about it, interviewing people is one of the easiest and smartest ways to generate content for you blog. These four points are sure to convince you.

1. It Is Easy: You don’t have to worry about writing a funny or thoughtful post. You just have to interview someone, and listen to their story. It couldn’t be simpler. All you have to think about are your questions. Once you have a set of questions you can use that as a template for every other interview.

It is also pretty easy to book people. You can start with bloggers who are in your niche, they are usually open to doing an interviews, especially for a backlink. You can even contact independent musicians and artists for interviews. They can be very interesting and are usually looking for outlets to market themselves. You can also interview local businesses in your neighbourhood. They want exposure and this is a great way to network with people.

Once you have your interview you just post it – simple.

2. Many Different Styles: You can choose a couple different ways to display your interviews. For long distance interviews you can post text or audio versions. You can also do video interviews in person. Or webcam interviews over a free platform like Skype. This is great because it adds variety to your blog.

3. Networking: This is a big bonus. Every person you meet with and interview has the potential to become part of your network. So at the same time you are creating content for your blog, you are also creating a website visitor and possibly a potential lead.

When you connect with someone in this fashion they are put at ease. There is no sell or anything, you simply want to interview them for your blog. Now next time you call them you have a great opening “Hey, this is Ted, I interviewed you for my blog last month…”

4. Word of Mouth: One of the most effective ways to market yourself is through word of mouth. every person you interview is going to check out your blog. More importantly they are going to tell their friends to check out their interview. They might even tweet it or Facebook it to thousands of their social contacts. Then every one of those people might tell their friends…you get the idea. Interviewing people is a great way to get people talking.

This is only one content creation idea but look how many benefits you get. Now that you have read this article you will be able to consistently create content by using interviews on your blog. The benefits are clear, it is up to you to act!

I have strongly urged parents to allow their children to blog. I believe it can help develop their technological, social and writing skills. In a world that is becoming smaller everyday due to technology like the internet, it is important our children have a strong basis in it. That said, you have to be careful because blogging by children can be dangerous. Follow these four tips and you will make blogging a safe and fun activity for your children.

Make Rules: You need to sit down with your child and set up some rules. Whatever rules you decide on you should explain them clearly to your child and explain why they are important. Set some consequences as well, let them know what will happen if they break any of the rules. You don’t want to be lackadaisical when it comes to online rules. Stay firm and your children will understand.

Strong Passwords: Make sure that your children’s accounts are all protected by good passwords. “12345” is not a good password. You should use number, letters and symbols. It might be impossible for them to remember, but if it means you have to log on for them – even better.

Screen The Content: Encourage your child to create their blog posts on the computer before they go live. This way you can check them out and ensure they don’t give away any sensitive information, or have any objectionable content. Another bonus with this method is you can help your child get used to word processing software. You can also teach them about grammar and spelling with this method.

Monitor Blog: Check your child’s blog everyday and make sure they haven’t snuck any objectionable content on to it. Also make sure no one has been leaving weird comments. Even some spam comments can have dangerous links so make sure you have access to delete these. Install Akismet if you use WordPress and most of them should be caught. Also check out any links your child puts up, who knows where they could be linking to.

If you follow these four tips you will ensure that your child’s blog will be a great learning experience and not a potential danger. Commit to strong passwords, screening and monitoring and your child can benefit from blog ownership!

If you are a blog owner and you are not tracking your traffic then you are not doing the best job you can. Tracking your traffic allows you to find out where your visitors come from, which content they are enjoying and which content is making them leave. If you are concerned about traffic then all three of those facts are required knowledge. If you are a blog owner who isn’t tracking traffic then here are three methods that are effective and FREE.

1. Google Analytics – This is one of the most popular traffic tracking solutions available. Google tracks just about everything you would need. You can find out how many people were on your site, where they came from and the keywords they used to find you in search. Unlike the other options I will discuss later you can also integrate your Google Adsense if you use it. The only downside is the stats are not real time and the dashboard can be a bit confusing.

2. StatCounter – StatCounter can tell you just about the same information as Google can. The type of information you can view is slightly less with StatCounter Free. To get to Google’s level of statistics you would have to pay. That said, the free version still tells you just about everything you need to know. As an added bonus you can also get real times traffic stats, so when someone hits your site you will know it.

3. Woopra – Woopra is the new face on the block. They do bring a couple unique twits to the table. First the downside, Woopra’s free option is only good for a certain number of page views, after which you must upgrade to get full stats. The free version will be good enough for most basic blogs though. The good side is Woopra includes a desktop client. This helps harness the power of your computer, as opposed to relying just on the internet. What that means is your flash menus and charts will load quicker and run more smoothly on the desktop client. Like StatCounter Woopra also keeps real time stats. One added function is that the desktop client will allow you to initiate a chat with your web visitors. I haven’t found a reason for using this yet but it is intriguing.

I am not making a case for any of the three above providers. I just want to let you know there are free options out there to track your traffic. You will be able to get great results with any of the above three, so what do you have to lose? Start tracking your traffic now.

If your website is powered by WordPress, then you know the adminstrators panel is full of different options. I know people who run their blog and barely touch their settings at all. WordPress is pretty much good to go out of the box, but there are a couple settings you should think about tweaking.

1. Privacy – You definitely want to check out this setting. I have heard rumours of people installing a fresh WordPress and their privacy settings are set to block search engines. It is worth a shot just to go into this setting really quickly and making sure that search engines can crawl your site. This is the only option to tweak in this particular settings menu so it is easy stuff. Most people will want to allow search engines because that is where most of your traffic will be coming from.

2. Discussion Settings – You can leave these settings alone if you want but there are a couple things I like to tweak. FIrst off I make sure the top option “Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article. ” is clicked. This means when you have a link to another blog you will send a trackback to that blog. If the person allows trackbacks that could count as a back link for you. Back links are good things!

I also like to change my gravatar picture. This is a small step but it can add a lot to the aesthetics of your site. A lot of people who comment on your site will not have a gravatar, so the default will show up. The “mystery man” might be good enough for most, but if it looks bad on my blog I will want to change it. Sometimes I will go with blank and sometimes I will just pick the one that matches my site colors and theme.

3. Writing Settings – In here I like to set my own Default Categories and Link Categories. You can easily run your blog or website without doing this, but I feel it saves me time and effort. I hate having “Ungategorized” show up in my list of categories. If I change my default category to something else, it means I will probably never have to see uncategorized again. Sometimes I forget to categorize my posts and when that happens I won’t have to worry about Uncategorized showing up all of a sudden. Same goes with Link Categories. I only have one category of links that I use in my sidebar, so it makes sense to make that category the default.

This is truly just the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of settings you can tweak for your WordPress site. The above three are just a couple I make sure to do right away when I set up a site. These simple settings save me some time and I hope they can do the same for you.

Lie Cheat And Steal Your Way….

Yes you read the title right – if you have been blogging with no results, then it is time to turn to the dark side. No more Mr. Nice Guy blogging for you. You have tried your best at being honest – now it is time to embrace the darkness. You need traffic? Then you need to lie, cheat and steal your way to blogging supremacy. Let me guide you down this dire path. If your pure and innocent mind is telling you to stop reading, you might want to continue just to see what I mean.

1. Lie! It is time to forget the ten commandments, lying can help you devise some catchy blog posts that will get talked about. I have to admit that my idea of lying might not be as evil as you were expecting. I am actually talking about satire. You can use satire to craft funny posts that people may feel more inclined to spread. This might be hard to explain so I will give you an example. I pretended to get a sneak peak at some upcoming software. I picked a software release that won’t be happening for years and I gave ten “secret” facts about it. Of course I was “lying”, I just made up new comedic features that were so over the top no one could take it seriously. It ended up getting some twitter love and was one of my more successful posts. The creator of the software even retweeted it and thanked me for giving him a good laugh.

2. Cheat! We covered lies, so now lets move on to cheating. What evil ideas will I come up with here? Well once again, it is a little ,vanilla. I think for us bloggers consistency is key. If you release posts everyday you will get Google love and more traffic. Sometime this is impossible though. I have had days so busy I can’t possibly get a blog post out. That said, my RSS subscribers still got a notification in their email about a new post…because I cheated!

WordPress and most other blog platforms allow you to schedule posts. When you are “feeling it” and ready to crank out content — crank out as much as possible and then like the infomercial says: “set it and forget it!”. You can even keep a couple blog posts in a text file so you just have to copy and paste on your busy days.

3. Steal! Alright this is clear cut, I obviously meant you should go to someone else’s blog and steal their content. This is simple! It is also plagiarism and I’m joking, I do not support that.

What you can steal are ideas! Browse your favorite blogs and get inspiration from them. You can easily and honestly get a topic or general themes from them. You can also go one step further and use a part of their post in your post. You can review their blog, you could review a video they made or you can take a single quote from their blog post (with attribution of course) and discuss your feelings about it. Stealing is usually frowned upon but I think in this case blog owners will be happy to receive exposure from your site.

We grew up learning not to lie, cheat or steal. I think the majority of people would agree they are wrong but even the most prudent person would agree my methods are pretty tame. If you are in a rut then don’t forget; you can lie, cheat and steal your way to creating constant content! This should give your blog a much needed boost, and hey sometimes it feels good to be bad.

All WordPress installations come with 2 plugins already installed (though not activated). They are Akismet and Hello Dolly. I always delete the latter one. Hello Dolly is just a novelty for your admin area. I am sure it is very small, but I don’t use it so I delete it. The other one is Akismet – I suggest you definitely use this. It’s main job is blocking spam comments and although it doesn’t catch them all, it does a great job.

Set up is simple:

Navigate to your plugin menu and activate Akismet. You will get a warning saying you need a WordPress API key to use it. This is also simple to get. You have to start an account at WordPress.Com (free). You don’t have to set up a free blog or anything, just an account. Since I was creating an account I made a quick free blog to drop some backlinks to my site, but that is a story for another article. Anyways, once you have a WordPress.com account, you can find the API key in your profile. You can also request a free API key from Akismet.com if you don’t want to start a WordPress account. Once you have the key you can use it on multiple sites.

After a fairly simple set up process Akismet will instantly go to work. Using a huge database, Akismet will check all incoming comments and automatically mark the comments that match the database as spam. This will save you a lot of time, because you will be receiving spam not long after your site is up and running. I have sites that haven’t even been completed before they were spammed.

Another great feature of Akismet is that it learns, if it is missing spam and you routinely mark those comments as spam it will learn to mark those comments as well. Conversely if it is marking comments as spam, that aren’t you can teach it by marking those comments approved. Although I trust Akismet on my blog, I do check the spam comment area to see if it caught anything it shouldn’t have. If you are wondering about it’s effectiveness – here are the actual numbers from my site since the end of January: 870 Spams caught at an accuracy rating of 99.686%. I am not saying everyone will see those kind of numbers, but that’s how well it is working for me. Quite impressive.

Spam comments are going to aggravate you eventually. If you don’t have this plugin it will happen sooner than you can imagine. WordPress packages this plugin for a reason – it works. Don’t waste your time pouring through spam comments in your email or on your site. Activate Akismet now and thank me later.