Google Released The Most Searched Terms in 2010

Every year Google’s releases the so called Google Zeitgeist, which is the compilation of the most searched queries of the year. The 2010 edition is out already, with some interesting points.

For example, here are the 10 search queries that grew faster in 2010:

1. chatroulette
2. ipad
3. justin bieber
4. nicki minaj
5. friv
6. myxer
7. katy perry
8. twitter
9. gamezer
10. facebook

And here the 10 search queries that fell faster in 2010:

1. swine flu
2. wamu
3. new moon
4. mininova
5. susan boyle
6. slumdog millionaire
7. circuit city
8. myspace layouts
9. michael jackson
10. national city bank

In the official page you’ll also find lists for specific niches (e.g., health, entertainment, sports), so check it out.

The Blog Post Checklist: Use Before Hitting “Publish”

How many times have you published a post, only to find out you forgot to proofread and that many typos slipped through? What about when the links you included are broken, when you used the wrong keywords, or when you forgot to optimize the post title?

As you can see, there are many things one should check before hitting the “Publish” button, and most of us forget about them. That is why I decided to create “The Blog Post Checklist,” with a list of things you should check before publishing your post. You’ll find it useful especially for those long, linkbait type articles you publish once in a while (what I call “killer articles“).

Below you’ll find a description of all the checks, but you can also download a PDF version to print and fix above your computer.

1. Did I read the post after writing it?

Common sense as it sounds, most people don’t read what they just wrote before publishing it. This is a mistake, because unless you read your article as an integral piece you won’t be able to tell if the whole thing makes sense, if the paragraphs and sentences are in the right order, if the arguments are solid and so on.

Before anything else, therefore, read what you just wrote from top to bottom.

2. Is the post as complete as it could be?

If you want to generate as much traffic as possible and to get as many backlinks as possible, you need to make sure that your post is as complete as it could be. If you completed the previous check you should also be able to evaluate whether or not you could add more sections and explanations.

For example, you might be writing a software review, and your post is focused on the features of the software. What about the installation process? What about the compatibility of the software with other programs? These are all aspects you could include, making the post more valuable to potential readers. If you want to read more on this topic check these 10 tips to write popular posts.

3. Did I research the related keywords?

Keywords rule search engines (and the web, as a consequence). If you want to maximize your traffic you need to use the same keywords that most people use. First of all because this will make your post easier to understand. Second because it will help with the search engine optimization.

For instance, you might be writing a post about gaming notebooks. But should you call it “gaming notebooks” or “game laptops”? After using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool you would discover that the term “game notebooks” is searched by 8,000 people every month, while “gaming laptops” is searched by over 60,000 people. This means that the latter is much more widespread, and you probably should go with it.

4. Did I craft the title carefully?

The title of your post is the most important part. Even more important than the body of the post itself, because unless the title grabs the attention of visitors, they won’t read the post.

First of all make sure your title has an emotional hook. For example, you could get the reader excited by offering something of great value (e.g., “100 Photoshop Tutorials to Become a PSD Ninja”), or you could get the reader curious by making an unusual statement (e.g., “5 Things Chuck Norris Can Teach You About Marketing”).

Second, remember to use the main keywords of your post in the title, as this will help with the search engine optimization.

5. Did I proofread it?

I know you have already read your post once to make sure the ideas make sense and the paragraphs are in the right order. However, you’ll need to read it once more, to proofread it.

This time focus on spotting grammar and spelling mistakes. Here are a couple of tricks you can use for this purpose: read your article backwards or read it out loud. Both of these methods will allow you to focus on the single words, making it easier to spot the mistakes.

6. Did I link to one or more of my older posts?

Linking to older posts inside your blog is a practice that helps both human visitors and search bots. It helps human visitors because it lets them explore your archives, possibly complementing or expanding on the information they have just read. It helps search bots because it lets them crawl your site more efficiently, and it also helps them to understand your content (through the link anchor text).

Before publishing the post, take some time to find older posts you can link to.

7. Did I link to external resources when appropriate?

Do not be afraid of linking to external websites. You’ll not lose PageRank, and you’ll not lose readers.

If your content is solid, you’ll only be enriching it by linking to relevant external resources. If you mention a particular tool in your post, for instance, link to it. If you mention a term that readers might not be familiar with, link to the respective Wikipedia entry.

8. Did I make sure all links are working?

All it takes to break a link is to omit a letter, a dot, or to add an extra http:// heading. For example, if you write http://www.siteyouwannalinkto.co the link is not going to work. Similarly, if you write http://http://www.siteyouwannalinkto.com the link is not going to work either. The impact on the user experience, however, is quite significant. If your visitors can’t click on a link you mentioned and find the website they’ll get frustrated.

Before publishing the post use the “Preview” feature of your blogging software and click on all the links to make sure they are working and pointing to the correct URL.

9. Did I credit any sources I might have used?

If your post was inspired by something you read somewhere else, credit it. Similarly, if you used information that came from a particular website or blog, make sure to mention and link to it. This will be fair with the original author, and it will also be useful to your readers, as they will be able to track where everything is coming from.

One post that inspired me to write this one was 13 Questions to Ask Before Publishing a Post On Your Blog, by Darren Rowse. Even though I had read it back in 2008, the idea probably kept wandering in my head, until I finally decided to write my own take on the issue.

10. Did I include an enticing image?

If an image is worth a thousands words, why not use one in your post? Images are a great way to entice people to read the rest of your post. They can also help with the search engine optimization, and bring some traffic from Google image search.

Check out the post Where to Find Images for Your Blog to discover the image sources I use.

11. Did I optimize the permalink?

Most publishing platforms and software allow you to edit the permalink of each post you publish. You should use this feature to make sure your permalinks are concise, and that they contain your main keywords.

Apart from making the permalink look cleaner, this will also help with your search engine optimization and possibly increase the amount of traffic you’ll get from Google and company.

12. Did I add one or more elements to engage readers?

Every blog owner should be trying to build a community around his blog, and engaging readers with your content is one of the best strategies to achieve this.

Practically speaking you could ask them a question at the end of the post, include a poll, make a call to action, use their feedback directly in your post and so on.

13. Is this a good day for traffic?

Even if you have written a masterpiece, you’ll not get the best possible result if you publish it on a Sunday. The best days for traffic are usually Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. But make sure to track your traffic numbers, so you can be sure of the best day for your blog.

Second, keep an eye on international holidays. If you live in the UK, for example, you should check the list of US federal holidays and avoid publishing your killer article on any of these dates.

Inject Custom Ad Blocks Between Paragraphs in WordPress

It’s common nowadays for bloggers to monetize their blogs through the use of strategically-placed ad blocks. BuySellAds ad blocks are the most popular in the web design community. You’ll sometimes also see AdSense ads placed at the top of articles or in other spots.

It becomes a bit of a challenge, however, to include ads in older posts. Nobody wants to go through and edit each post, adding customized code manually, which could be quite time consuming.

The best way to do this is to put the ad code in your single.php page, outside of the function that displays the post. Unfortunately, with this method, the ads are limited in location to either the top or bottom of the article. In this tutorial, I’m going to describe some JavaScript that I wrote that will dynamically embed a custom ad block between paragraphs in a chosen set of WordPress posts.

The JavaScript/jQuery Code

Here is the code that accomplishes this:

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1. $(document).ready(function() {   
2.   
3.     myDivCollection = document.getElementsByTagName(“div”);   
4.   
5.     for (i=0;i<myDivCollection.length;i++) {   
6.         if (myDivCollection[i].id.indexOf(“post-“)!= -1) {   
7.             var myChildren = myDivCollection[i].childNodes;   
8.         }   
9.     }   
10.   
11.     var counter = 0;   
12.   
13.     for (i=0;i<myChildren.length;i++) {   
14.         if (myChildren[i].nodeType != 3) {   
15.             counter += 1;   
16.             if (counter == 5) {   
17.                 var newDiv = document.createElement(“div”);   
18.                 newDiv.innerHTML = “<p id=\”adblock\”></p>”;   
19.                 var myTarget = myChildren[i];   
20.                 myTarget.parentNode.insertBefore(newDiv, myChildren[i]);   
21.                 $(“#adblock”).load(‘../adblock.html’);   
22.                 break;   
23.             }   
24.         }   
25.     }   
26.   
27. });  

$(document).ready(function() {

	myDivCollection = document.getElementsByTagName("div");

	for (i=0;i<myDivCollection.length;i++) {
		if (myDivCollection[i].id.indexOf("post-")!= -1) {
			var myChildren = myDivCollection[i].childNodes;
		}
	}

	var counter = 0;

	for (i=0;i<myChildren.length;i++) {
		if (myChildren[i].nodeType != 3) {
			counter += 1;
			if (counter == 5) {
				var newDiv = document.createElement("div");
				newDiv.innerHTML = "<p id=\"adblock\"></p>";
				var myTarget = myChildren[i];
				myTarget.parentNode.insertBefore(newDiv, myChildren[i]);
				$("#adblock").load('../adblock.html');
				break;
			}
		}
	}

});

Here is a description of the code shown above (I realize it could be simplified with jQuery, but I just feel more comfortable coding most of it raw):

• The entire code is wrapped in the usual “document ready” handler, thus you need the jQuery library included before this code block
• Lines 3-9 collect all <div> elements, and loop through them, looking for the one that has an id that contains the string “post-“. This identifies that element as the one that contains the post content. When that’s found, its child nodes are added to another collection.
• Line 11 defines a “counter” that will be used in the subsequent loop.
• In the next loop, we iterate through the “children” of the previously identified post container. Line 14 ensures that the elements we loop through are not text nodes, which some browsers count as part of the DOM tree. With each non-text node found, the counter is incremented (line 15).
• Lines 16-22 are run when the 5th element is found. The first five child elements (not counting grandchildren) in my WordPress posts will normally be the <h2>, followed by the paragraph with post info (date, author, etc.), then three content paragraphs. This might be different for your blog, so you can adjust the number accordingly. You could also write some code to target the first subheading, and inject the code before that element.
• Line 17 creates a <div> element, and line 18 adds content to it, which inludes a new ID’d element, so we can target it later.
• After line 20 adds the element to the DOM tree using the insertBefore method, we use an Ajax call (using jQuery syntax) to inject our code block into the previously created ID’d element.
• Finally, to prevent the loop from continuing past child #5, we use the break command.

If you change the number 5 in line 16, that will allow you to customize where you want the ad block to appear. Of course, you can’t go too high with that number, because if there are only 3 or 4 paragraphs in the post, then the loop would never include the code (which isn’t bad, I suppose).

To make sure it works, you have to confirm the location of your ad block file. In my case, since my post URLs don’t include categories, I would just include my code in the root directory of my website, and the “../” appended before the file location ensures that it’s found.

Only Run the Code on “Single Post” Pages

You only want this code to run on when a single post is shown. So, you would use the following in your header.php file:

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1. <?php if ( is_single() ) { ?>   
2. <script type=”text/javascript” src=”/js/ad-block.js”></script>   
3. <?php } ?>  

<?php if ( is_single() ) { ?>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/ad-block.js"></script>
<?php } ?>

Doesn’t Work with AdSense or BuySellAds

It would be great if this code worked with AdSense or BuySellAds, but unfortunately it seems that AdSense and BSA ads cannot be injected into the page in this manner via Ajax (or in iframes). At least I couldn’t get it to work, but maybe I’m doing something wrong. I’ll have to investigate further. I’m awaiting a reply from BSA to see what they have to say about it.

UPDATE: I’ve received a response from Todd at BSA, and he says that there is no current support for dynamically injecting ad blocks via Ajax, but it’s something that will be supported in the future.

So while this solution has some merit, it might only be practical for a custom ad block or other “feature” box that you want to include between paragraphs in certain posts.

Restrict it to Older Posts

You can use the following value in your header.php file, to run the code only on posts that are older than (for example) 7 days, or some other amount of time:

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1. $current_post_date = $wp_query->post->post_date;  

$current_post_date = $wp_query->post->post_date;

The line of code above obtains the value of the publication date of the currently viewed single post page. You can then use that value to create a function that compares that date to the current date, then you can run the JavaScript only when the post date matches the qualifications you set.

Another way you can identify only older posts (and probably the easiest way) is to look for the ID of the post, using this value:

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1. $current_post_id = $wp_query->post->ID;  

$current_post_id = $wp_query->post->ID;

Then you can do something like this:

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1. <?php if ( is_single() && $wp_query->post->ID < 300) { ?>   
2. <script type=”text/javascript” src=”/js/ad-block.js”></script>   
3. <?php } ?>  

<?php if ( is_single() && $wp_query->post->ID < 300) { ?>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/ad-block.js"></script>
<?php } ?>

If the “older” posts begin at number 300 (going backwards), then that would ensure that the code only runs on those, so this seems to be much easier than comparing the dates.

Any Suggestions?

I would love to hear some suggestions to how this code can be improved in order to allow for AdSense or BuySellAds to be used, and there may be some drawbacks that I haven’t mentioned here.

Also, I know there are many WordPress plugins that allow for ad management, but from the research I did, I couldn’t find one that allows you to include the ad block in older posts, and in the middle of a post (as opposed to at the top or bottom, which is easy to do manually anyhow). So, if anyone knows of a good ad manager that offers these options, then that would be a bonus. (Although I do like the simplicity of a simple JavaScript file that accomplishes this task, instead of a bloated plugin.)

Is WordPress Screwing Up Your SEO?

Ever since WordPress burst on the scene and gained huge popularity among designers, developers and Joe Blow bloggers, it has become shockingly easy to create SEO-friendly content. WordPress handles everything for you: Pretty spider-friendly URLs, semantic content, accessibility, and structurally accurate heading tags.

Wait — scratch that last one. I’ve always been suspicious that WordPress’s HTML heading structure was slightly off, and recently my suspicions have been (evidently) confirmed. Two articles have provided some important info to help front-end developers, content strategists, and SEO experts structure their content in a more accessible, semantic, and SEO-friendly manner.

SitePoint and 456 Berea Street

The two articles in question are:

• Heading Headaches: Balancing Semantics and SEO on SitePoint; and
• Headings and Document Structure Conclusions on Roger Johansson’s 456 Berea Street.

Here are two pertinent quotes from those articles:

“[S]earch engines like Google seem to reward pages that use a single <h1> tag for the title of the unique content on the page… In short, until such time as standards like WAI-ARIA enable us to label page elements like navigation without headings, we must use heading structures that begin with <h2> (instead of <h1>) for “boilerplate” content like navigation menus, headers, footers, and sidebars.”

– Kevin Yank, SitePoint

“Use only one h1 heading per document, and use it for the document’s main heading, not the site name or company logo… If a document needs a heading before the main heading in the source order, for instance to identify navigational sections, start with an h2 heading.”

– Roger Johansson, 456 Berea Street

How Does WordPress Screw it Up?

WordPress, by default, structures the headings as follows:

• The <h1> tag is set on the website’s title on EVERY page
• The <h2> tags are set for post titles, sidebar headings, and other sub-sections

So, if what SitePoint and Roger Johansson are saying is true, then WordPress’s document structure is not giving developers and bloggers the best shot at having their content rank well.

I did a cursory check of source codes on various popular blogs, as well as a few popular WordPress themes, and nearly all of them keep the default structure intact, or have some other poor structure in place. The only ones that adjusted the heading structure to match what SitePoint and Johansson are advising are, well, (no surprise) SitePoint and Roger Johansson’s blogs. Oh, and you can add my blog to that list too, as of today.

It was amazing, too, how many sites failed miserably in this regard. Some sites had no <h1> headings, while one even had dozens of <h1> headings on a single page!

You Can Correct It, But There’s a Drawback

To correct the problem, just edit the default structure to conform to that outlined in the two articles mentioned above. That is, use the <h1> tag on your home page for the website’s title, then use <h2> tags for article titles on the home page. On inner pages like single post pages, archives pages, and regular content pages (about, contact, etc), use <h1> for the main title of the page (not your blog’s title), then descend from there where necessary. On those inner pages, it’s perfectly acceptable to make the website’s title a simple anchor tag, or even an <h2>.

The drawback to doing this is that not only will you have to edit your CSS to correct the styling of the headings, you’ll also end up having gaps in your headings in articles where the <h3> tags were added manually. So, after correcting the problem, your post title will be <h1>, and your post headings will be <h3>, <h4>, etc., with no <h2> headings.

If you have hundreds of articles archived, it’s obviously not an option to go back and manually change these. I don’t have an insane amount of content on this site, so I went ahead and made the change, and I’m planning to slowly go back and change the <h3> headings to <h2>. Or I might just get lazy and leave them be, figuring the benefits will outweigh any potential problems with the “gaps” in the structure.

Should WordPress Change its Default Structure?

I have no idea if it’s possible or even feasible for the WordPress team to change the structure of the headings in its default state, or what effect it might have on WordPress development. At the very least, this gives individual developers and bloggers a slight advantage in SEO and accessibility that could prove fruitful in the long run. Since most WordPress-driven sites will have the wrong heading structure, those of us who customize our code to match these apparent “best practices” will likely reap the benefits.

Of course, this type of SEO analysis is not the determining factor in high Google rankings. Good content with poor semantics and structure will always surpass poor content with good semantics and structure. But for those cases where content is on equal footing, these suggestions may give some bloggers the edge.

Update: In the comments, Ipstenu pointed out that WordPress 3.0 implements the improvements that I’m discussing in this article. I downloaded WP 3 Beta to confirm this, and he’s correct. The single.php file now uses <h1> for the content title, while header.php will display the title of the website as <h1> on the home page, but then switch to a <div> when not on the home page

10 WordPress Tips to Make Your Blog Look Like a Website (for Beginners)

Whatever industry you happen to be in, you want to stand out from the crowd and be unique, and not give the impression that your online presence is just a slightly modified cut and paste job. Of course, if you’re depending on a pre-built content management framework like WordPress for the core of your blog or website, then that could prevent your online presence from truly standing out.

So, in this article I’ll run through 10 fairly straightforward ways that a beginning developer or blogger can customize their WordPress theme to ensure it doesn’t “look like a blog” — at least to a certain degree. Keep in mind that the goal here is not to hide the fact that a website is using WordPress — that’s quite difficult, if not impossible. The ultimate goal here is to help your website have a seamless, consistent, look and feel that does not necessarily scream “WordPress-driven” from the instant the home page loads up.

NOTE: These tips are for beginning WP developers who are coding themes for their own site, or experimenting with theme development. Most likely, these tips would not apply to custom downloaded themes that are pre-built and probably already have many of these customizations.

1. Customize Your Sidebar and Keep it Consistent

The sidebar in WordPress is a dead “giveaway” when a user visits your site. The sidebar will have default titles like “Blogroll”, “Categories” and “Archives”. You can easily change the text of these titles, and which sections are displayed, by editing the sidebar.php file in the theme directory. Also, WordPress displays a different sidebar depending on what page of the site you’re on, which can also be changed. I personally prefer to display virtually the same sidebar on all pages, to keep the site consistent.

Even if you’re not familiar with PHP, WordPress code is very developer-friendly, and easy to work with. A simple knowledge of how functions are called and how to open and close if statements is often more than enough to help you customize some of the sidebar code.

Also, you can easily duplicate and customize certain sidebar sections. Look at the sidebar here on Impressive Webs: You’ll notice there’s a list for “Articles” and “Tutorials”. This is done by duplicating the “categories” section and controlling what categories are displayed using parameters inside the function call for that particular section.

Check out the WordPress Codex for further information on customizing category listings.

2. Use “Decategorizer” Plugin for Cleaner URLs

One of the most obvious ways to customize the look of your blog’s urls is to use clean permalinks, rather than the default querystring driven url structure. But that’s an obvious one. No self-respecting blogger would fail to enable custom urls, which can be done easily through the WP dashboard.

But one thing you cannot do through the dashboard is remove the word “category” from links that point to specific categories on your site. That’s where Decategorizer comes in handy. This excellent plugin, which I’m using here on Impressive Webs, will strip the word “category” out of your WordPress urls, leaving a much cleaner experience, taking away the “blog” look and contributing to a more customized, branded feel for your website. Decategorizer will also automatically create 301 redirection for all your old category links, and works with subcategories.

The Decategorizer plugin had a few bugs, which have recently been corrected, and also requires that you install the Redirection plugin, for Decategorizer to work properly.

Be sure to read carefully the documentation and installation instructions for these plugins to ensure they are installed and functioning as expected.

3. Customize Metadata for Individual Posts

Every post has “metadata” contained inside of paragraph tags at the bottom of each blog post. This data is generated dynamically through the loop that pulls your content out of the database. You can easily edit, delete, or modify any of these pieces of data that are displayed with each entry, which can be found inside of the index.php file in your theme directory. The default look for the metadata section looks like this in WordPress 2.7.1:

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1. <p class=”postmetadata”><?php the_tags(‘Tags: ‘, ‘, ‘, ‘<br />’); ?> Posted in <?php the_category(‘, ‘) ?> | <?php edit_post_link(‘Edit’, ”, ‘ | ‘); ?>  <?php comments_popup_link(‘No Comments »’, ‘1 Comment »’, ‘% Comments »’); ?></p>  

<p><?php the_tags('Tags: ', ', ', '<br />'); ?> Posted in <?php the_category(', ') ?> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?>  <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?></p>

By editing the above section of code, you can choose to display only comments and categories, and even alter the characters that are displayed. For example the » will display ». You have the option to remove those characters and use something more appropriate for your site’s look.

4. Disable Comments (Not Recommended)

This is not necessarily something I would recommend, since user-contributed comments are a huge part of the blogging world, however, it should definitely be pointed out that removing the “Post a Comment” section at the bottom of every post would be a sure-fire way to adjust your blog to ensure a more customized look and feel.

While this would contribute to a “non-blog” atmosphere on your website, it is highly recommended that you keep user comments open and instead customize the look of the comment area. Of course, if you’re using WordPress purely as a content management system for developing pages instead of “blog posts” then this would be an obvious choice, and would make more sense.

5. Don’t Use “Tags” or a “Tag Cloud” (Not Recommended)

Again, while this customization option is not necessarily recommended, it is certainly an effective way to customize your blog so that it does not resemble every other WordPress installation on the World Wide Web. “Tags” are keywords that you can add to individual posts in your WordPress dashboard. They are similar to categories, but provide a wider interrelationship between posts.

Tags associated with a particular post allow users to click on certain keywords to view more entries related to that keyword, similar to clicking on a specific category. Tags also provide SEO benefits, as they help Google and blog directories properly categorize your blog’s pages. So, while you do have the option to avoid using tags on your posts, thereby ensuring a cleaner look to your website, be aware of the drawbacks of doing so.

For simplicity, I personally do not use tags on Impressive Webs. I like each post to be associated with 1-3 categories, and nothing more. That’s just a personal preference to keep the content the primary focus. I prefer to attract users who will actually read the content, as opposed to the ones that are click-happy and bookmark everything.

6. Change the Default Display of the Title Bar Content

The header.php file in WordPress’s default theme has a title bar that is coded like this:

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1. <title><?php wp_title(‘&laquo;’, true, ‘right’); ?> <?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?></title>  

<title><?php wp_title('&laquo;', true, 'right'); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

Once again, you can see the « character that is highly overused in the web development industry. (Not to mention that it’s actually a left quotation mark for french text!) You can replace that character with a different one, and even change the way the page titles are displayed.

You’ll notice there’s a function called wp_title that holds 3 parameters (including the « character). The third parameter tells WordPress where to display the post title — to the left or to the right of your blog name.

You also have the option to remove the function that displays your blog’s name, and instead just manually enter a more keyword-friendly title. The blog name that displays in your Dashboard under “settings” will still display your official blog name on RSS readers.

7. Use the “Pages” Sidebar Section as Your Main Navigation

While I’ve already discussed a little bit about the sidebar, it’s worth mentioning separately that the “pages” section of the sidebar can easily serve as your main navigation bar. At first glance, nobody will even notice that this has been done.

In the default WP theme, here’s the code that generates the “pages” section of the sidebar, found in sidebar.php:

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1. <?php wp_list_pages(‘title_li=<h2>Pages</h2>’ ); ?>  

<?php wp_list_pages('title_li=<h2>Pages</h2>' ); ?>

Simply take that piece of code and place it wherever you want your main navigation to display. Of course, you’ll have to style it to your liking, in line with your theme’s look. And most likely you’ll want to remove the title of that section. You can do that by simply removing everything after the equals sign in the single parameter, so it will look like this:

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1. <?php wp_list_pages(‘title_li=’ ); ?>  

<?php wp_list_pages('title_li=' ); ?>

Use the WordPress Codex to see other ways to customize the look of the page list in the default wordpress theme.

8. Don’t Call Your Website a “Blog”

Okay, this is not really a WordPress tip, per se. It’s more of a marketing recommendation for the purpose of more effective branding in conjunction with a site that just happens to use WordPress as its engine. Serious websites that provide significant content are viewed as “communities” or “resources”, instead of “blogs”. The word “blog” nowadays is probably more appropriate for individuals who post thoughts and musings on various personal and professional topics.

If you have long-term plans for your website, and would like to expand it into a thriving online community that is respected and recognized in your industry, then you need to view it that way from the start, and communicate that atmosphere to your users — even if you are starting out small and really are just a single “blogger” posting thoughts and musings on relevant industry matters.

9. Remove or Customize Default Text and Title Attributes

While I’ve already touched on the customization of a few text elements of the default WordPress theme, there are other little text snippets that can be edited, removed, or appended to. An obvious example is the “Powered by WordPress” section in the footer. Your website’s footer seems simple, but it is potentially a significant part of your site’s look, feel, and overall image.

There are also title attributes that are embedded in anchor tags throughout the site. Here is one example, found in the index.php file:

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1. <h2><a href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>”><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>  

<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

The code above is the section that will display the title of each post listed on your home page. The title attribute in the anchor tag has the super-obvious text of “Permanent link to …” and then the PHP function that spits out the title. You can modify this and other default text that appears throughout your WP theme.

10. Use “Nice Search” Plugin for Clean Search URLs

Nice Search is a very simple plugin that makes searches performed on your website look less “WordPress-y” and more like a custom search engine installed on your website. According to the author’s website:

“This is a really simple plugin that redirects your WordPress searches (?s=search-term) to the pretty-looking URI version: /search/search-term, and also converts spaces (%20) to plus symbols.”

Although this plugin has not been updated in some time, I do have it successfully running on WordPress 2.6.3 on another website, so it seems to be compatible with some of the more recent versions of WordPress.

Conclusion

I hope beginning WP theme developers, and possibly some intermediates, found these tips helpful. Most of this is compiled from my own personal, and somewhat limited experience with WordPress and PHP, so I’m sure there’s lots I’ve missed, and lots where I’ve simply stated the obvious.

I hope some of these tips will encourage “bloggers” to develop a more customized and branded look and feel to their site, allowing them to break free from blogging conformity.

What is Conversion Rate and How to Optimize it?

 

When it comes to starting an SEO campaign, the ultimate purpose of any campaign is to bring customers to your site, and entice them to purchase the product or service that you are offering. This may seem like an easy idea in theory, but in reality, there can be several factors that affect this process from taking place. Your conversion rate is the relationship between the number of visitors that have found your site, and then have proceeded to purchase a product or service through your site.

The conversion rate of a website is affected by several things, and part of your SEO campaign involves ensuring that your site is performing to its optimum.

The look and feel of the site

Appearance is everything when it comes to inspiring potential customers to buy something from your site. An attractive, eye catching or appealing site will grab initial attention. If an appealing site design is then coupled with clear, concise content, this will help potential customers to quickly determine where the product or service they are looking for is located, and purchase it from your site.

Make it easy for customers to buy your products or services

One of the best things that can be done for any SEO campaign is having a neat and well organised design, and one that has a clear, easy to follow, and intuitive navigational structure. Don’t make your visitors guess where they should be going within your site to find what they are looking for. These days, the average person spends about five seconds searching on a website for what they are after before giving up and trying another site. This makes it even more important to have a clearly labelled and easy to follow navigation structure.

Have clear and easy ‘call to actions’, but don’t have too many

Having customers find your site is only half the battle. A ‘call to action’ is a step you want the customer to take, be it filling out a contact form on your site, to xxx. By having these clearly displayed, a customer will generally know what will happen when they complete the ‘call to action’. However, as has been said, the trick lies in getting the potential customer to the ‘call for action’.

On the other hand, there is the possibility that too many ‘call to actions’ will frustrate the customer, as too much choice tends to do when it comes to websites. If it’s not written out clearly and simply, then chances are the customer will leave your site and go to another, in order to find a site that can deliver.

Consider the price of the product or service offered

If potential customers are looking to buy a particular product, they will have an idea of the price in mind when purchasing. If your site is well designed, easy to use, and most importantly is reasonably priced, then there’s very little reason why they shouldn’t go with a product from your site.

Logo Designing – A Great Opportunity to Make Money

These days I can see a Lots of Logo Designing Requests in my Bro’s Inbox. Of course, he is a Graphic Designer. Yeah.. Expert in Adobe Photoshop, Corel Draw and all.

Oh.. Forgot to introduce him… His name is Simjo Sunny, doing coding and designing stuffs for some of our websites and weblogs. I usually seeks his help in the blog customization.

Back to the Topic.. Logo Designers has got a plenty of Revenue Making opportunities All over the web. Wherever I go, I can see Webmasters Searching for Logo Designers. From Simjo’s Experience, I think that Logo Designers has got a Great Future in the Online Multimedia World. He is not ready to Give out his Exact Income (from Logo Designing) out here. but I’m sure that he is making at least 400$ Per Month. I bet!

How It’ll be if you could earn 200$ Per Logo? LOL… I’m not Kidding. But this is the case of Professional High Reputation Designers. Rest of the guys will only make a few bucks until he/she becomes professional in this field. Hey.. It’s not tooo Difficult I think.

I will Explain How Simjo makes Such a Good Earnings Per Month just from Logo Designing….

It was few years back When he saw the Need of Graphic Designers on the Digitalpoint Forums. At that time, he was just a beginner in Photoshop. Though he made a try by Making a Contract between a Webmaster for 10 Professional Logo’s for His Company. Company offered 150$ for doing in Professionally. He accepted the Offer and started his work. Work was done in just 10 Days..(My Bro was so amazed to get those 150 Bucks for the First time). The Webmaster (of Company) was very pleased with his work as he Invited Simjo for Long Term Online Designign Works. There starts his Journey….He designed for Many Webmasters… Made 1000s of Dollars… and started buying Big Blogs (He really loves to buy and sell blogs.. That’s his another Business). After all, He is not getting requests Via Email as he don’t want to waste time visiting Digitalpoint or Similar Sites.

His Experience itself Shows how easy is Online Money Making if you have got some Talents in Graphic Designing. Do you think that you are eligible for this Kinda Jobs? If yes, Look whether the following factors meets your Qualifications.

Minimum Requirements

1. Innovative design ideas and creativity.
2. Average Knowledge in Graphic Editing Software Like Adobe Photshop and Corel Draw.
3. Must be Professional In Designing. I mean, Webmasters Hates Nasty Set-ups.
4. You must look Professional in Talk and Work.
5. First Impression is the Best Impression. You must catch the mind of the Webmaster at the First talk itself. Otherwise, Leave this Business.

If your Qualifications Meets the Above Requirements, Why not giving a Try?

Show your Talents Out here..

• Design Forums– DigitalPoint.com
• Logo Design Jobs – Freelancer.com

Which Blogging Platform to Choose?

Blogging nowadays is just not a way to connect yourself globally but also an exceptional way of business, publicity, and monetization. With hundreds and thousands of blogs in the internet created every single day, they are one of the most appropriate advertising platforms across the globe. And benefits just don’t end there; the make money blogging opportunities is countless and we could make a living online; if we know how to make everything go perfect.

One of the most popular questions asked by the novice bloggers is which Blogging service to choose. There are a lot of online blogging services available, where you can go for publishing your own blog.  The two most famous platforms obviously are WordPress and Blogger.  These two are the biggest costless blogging platforms in the Internet today and their following are also huge.  Although, both of these blogging services are incredible – you should go for one which suits your purpose, needs and skills as a computer savvy and blogger.

Now the most important question – How to make money online via blogging? Well, the answer is very simple. You would require more and more visitors on your blog. The more traffic your blog has, the more would be its popularity, and the more it is popular, the better would be the chances of making money via pay per click programs and advertisements. But what are the main factors that should be in your mind when you step into blogging in order to earn money? Well, here are the important ones:

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Paid service versus Free Service

If you are a beginner blogger, and want a free platform to for blogging and earn money, then the Google’s Blogger service is the best place. But if you do have good experience with Blogging and SEO, WordPress Platform would be the best option, which is both highly flexible and is regularly updated by a lot of independent developers.

Level of Expertise

Another very important decisive factor for choosing a blogging platform would be your expertise, knowledge and comfort level in the field of blogging, content designing, and Template and of course SEO and link building. Wondering how to determine what your level of expertise is? It is simple, if SEO or link building are new words for you, you should opt for an easier interface, for instance, the Blogger – which makes job of Labeling and linking easier.

There are many other things that you may like to consider before opting for a blogging platform. But once you start from somewhere, and become more and more expert, then you can even go for a professionally hosted premium blog.

 

 

Do you think Thesis is the Finest WordPress Framework Ever?

Thesis is the finest wordpress theme which is designed to be specifically SEO optimized, easily customizable and clean-coded. It is well-accepted by the expert web developers and possesses a remarkable framework of HTML + CSS + PHP. It is an extremely customizable theme as far as WordPress is concerned and even possesses outstanding added functionality. The days when you just used to worry about in-site SEO have come to an end, with Thesis, you just need to update killer content and the rest will happen itself. The added functionality of this framework is beyond comparison.

What makes Thesis the best framework ever?

A framework is just like the outline for a WordPress theme. Without it, there is just nothing beneath. Pre-designed templates can highlight the excellent content behind a fabulous backdrop. However, the biggest challenge is to lookout for the unique framework and that unique framework is Thesis on which you can hang your images, advertisements, as well as blog posts. Thesis takes away all your time and offers customization facility to the users. With Thesis, you can change a lot of things like color scheme, column width, font size, number of columns, as well as font style.

Running professional websites with blogs are offered by Thesis. It allows you to edit specific alternatives like title text that too for each post modified by you. Even the additional advantage of enhanced Search Engine Optimization is given to the users. Thesis is quite effective and it offers a rock-solid base to any website. The simple to use framework lets you fine-tune each and every page that is present within your website.

When you will install Thesis, you will find out that there are two fresh configuration pages that allow you to tailor each and everything in the theme. It also eliminates the requirement of writing any line of HTML/PHP. Also, for the ones seeking deeper customizations, plenty of information is available at the back office. Two custom files can be modified. One is CSS. The other is PHP.

Some of the features that make Thesis, a better framework is that it offers a professional look that is clean, easily readable layout, as well as SEO friendly design. This framework has got that all which makes it the best framework ever. Those things include:

• Smart code
• Hermetic optimization
• Lively layout
• Active multimedia
• Best support
• Flexibility and much more

With Thesis, you just don’t need to compromise on the key elements that make your website great. It offers you great accessibility, SEO, support, as well as usability. When you choose Thesis, you just don’t buy a framework, you also join an extraordinary community which lets you improve WordPress theme. On an affordable pricing, you get upgraded framework with a responsive support. Whatsoever may happen in the unstable online publishing world, this great framework always stays intact and robust. Hence, Thesis is definitely the best WordPress framework ever.

 

6 Reasons Why You Should Blog Even If It Is Not Profitable

 

This is a guest post by Debashrita Panda, a 15 year old girl from the state of Orissa in India.. You can write for us as well.

Since 2010, I’ve been blogging with wordpress.com. It took me less than a year to understand that this place is great for expressing our views and ideas with other fellow bloggers with the same thinking: “Live to write, and write to live”. I feel that it’s better than social networking sites. Sorry, Facebook and Twitter lovers, I didn’t want to hurt you all, but these sites have shortcuts for everything. Nowadays, people have forgotten to write letters and instead send “‘scraps’ to each other, “like” the “tweets” and don’t feel like writing sentences. But here, we bloggers can write on almost all topics and seek comments for it. Take me, for example. I like to read books and magazines, so I’m learning how to write like you all. Frankly to speak the truth, my blog gets the least traffic. So you might be thinking, my writings are a waste? Not at all! That’s the main advantage of blogging. We learn writing ourselves. Here are my 6 points why blogging is the best thing to do once you are online.

Improving Writing Skills

Blogging is a great way to express yourself. If you are a prolific writer, you can use the same QWERTY keyboard that others use for chit chat, but still, you’ll be ahead of them. Writing is the best thing you can do when you get bored. If someone’s birthday’s round the corner, why don’t you send a poem written by yourself? Remember, originality is the most important thing that we have to maintain while blogging.

Saving Memories

Often people write their experiences in their old faithful diaries. But once you get them on the web, people get to read them. Diaries get moth eaten and torn, but your webpages don’t.

Making New Friends

Who said that only Facebook and Twitter get friends? While blogging, if you are really a cool writer, then compliments will pour in, making you more able to write. And with so many people coming online everyday, you’ll surely find yourself a friend. No scams at all. I guarantee.

A New Way To Look At The World

When you blog, you create an identity of your own self, without any makeovers. A little place is made for you in this world of Internet, so you no longer remain Sam185 of Twitter, where we don’t get to know the original identities.

Understand Yourself

When you write, try writing about your daily experiences so that you can relieve all your pressures out of your mind and get relaxed. The thoughts should come out of your heart, not forcibly written, just for the sake of writing. Haste makes waste. So take your own time to get away with your write ups.

Striving Through Competition

Competition, as we know, follows our life. So it is not astonishing that here also you’d have to compete with millions of bloggers around the world, to make a special place for yourself. This is a good thing, because your writing improves once you start competiting. Remember, billions use internet, but millions provide the writings to them. So whatever you write, take it up proudly.

Good luck noobs!