WYSI-WordPress

August 8, 2006 by Leave a Comment

Last few really big posts on my Personal Development blog were an absolute struggle to publish. The built-in WYSIWYG editor WordPress 2.0+ is a nightmare to work with. While it handles simple texts more or less correctly, it’s helpless when it comes to anything as complex as a post with some numbered lists or lots of paragraphs with different font styles.

I must have edited and reviewed one of my posts at least 50 times before I gave up. I’ve started looking for an alternative plugin to replace this editor, and voila – I’ve found the WYSI-Wordpress!

WYSI-Wordpress is an incredibly useful plugin whch works correctly in both IE and Mozilla-based browsers. There are versions for both WP 1.5 and WP 2.0+ branches, and – most importantly of all! – this plugin actually IS WYSIWYG. So practically everything you see in your edit window is going to look the same in the preview area. I’m telling you, it’s been quite a relief for me to finally finish the formatting and enjoy seeing the entry text exactly the way I pictured it in my mind!

So if you’re sick of the built-in editor, disable it right away and try out the WYSI-Wordpress! You will never regret!

Filed Under: blog, wordpress

8 Best WordPress Plugins

August 6, 2006 by Leave a Comment

If you're serious about blogging with WordPress, you will definitely like the 8 Invaluable WordPress Plugins article on PingMag website.

I've started using WordPress just a few months ago (before it was another blog engine – Serendipity), so I have personally used only a few of the plugins listed, and I haven't even heard about some others. Still, the 3 plugins I use already I can highly recommend:

Filed Under: blog, wordpress

Simple Ways To Get Out of Google Sandbox

August 5, 2006 by 1 Comment

Everyone faces this problem when starting a new website: how to get your website indexed by search engines as quickly as possible? This post will show you a quick way to get out of Google Sandbox with minimum efforts on your part.

 

Two Months To Fully Index Your Content

My access logs show that it took Google just about 2 months to fully reveal the contents of one of my newly created blogs. This obviously takes the usual lag of a few days  it takes Google bots to index the most recent content.

Impressively enough, Google bots start indexing your new website in a matter of just few days. My blog was indexed for the first time when it was only 3 days old! Bear in mind though, I've pointed Google to it using its website submission form.

 

Easy Tips For The Best Results 

Below are just a few really easy tips for your website optimization which will help Google index your content as quickly as possible:

  • Use Permalinks
    Permalinks     are definitely the first thing to do. There's been a lot of talking about it on various SEO sites, and the general knowledge I've gained is that Google is likely to pay attention at how people would access your pages.

    Important: make sure your permalinks structure is well-thought beforehand, as it will be hard to change it at a later time.

    If you're using a recent enough content management system or blog engine, you probably have no real directories with your articles and blog entries, but instead all the content is stored in a database, and nice URLs are made using permalinks. It's a simple enough concept: do some planning and make sure your URLs look the best.

    No dynamic URLs – it's really important that you have as less variables in your URLs as possible (none ideally). Again, because it is important that your URLs are simple and easy to read and follow.

  • Google Sitemaps
    Google Sitemaps are the easiest and quickest way to let Google know what pages your website has. Not only can you provide the list of all the pages you want indexed, but you can also specify the importance of each page so that Google bots pay more attention to it.

    Google Sitemaps is quite a flexible service, and since it's fairly popular too, there are already tons of freely available tools out there to suit all your needs. I really liked the SiteMap XML script in PHP – you specify a link to it in your Google Sitemaps account, and every time Google accesses this script, it automatically scans your website and provides a ready SiteMap in XML form. Very convenient and pretty easy to configure.

  • Have As Many Pages Of Real Content As Possible
    All I had was 10 articles to start with, because I didn't want to put too much content online just yet. I wanted to see if it's possible to get out of Google sandbox with such a small number of pages. And here's the answer: yes, it is quite possible!.

    What make your content real? Here are just a few things to keep in mind:

    • Write your articles yourself: DON'T grab texts from any online resources – this will not give you much weight in terms of Google search engine, as Google bots will be more interested in a fresh, original content
    • Be unique: you need to be as original as possible – because only really unique articles and ideas will get the most interest. This is mostly to do with human readers of your blog and not Google bots, but I still think it's a good advice.

  • Put Google AdSense ads on every page with the content
    Luckily I've had AdSense account activated beforehand using a rather popular project of mine, so it was not a problem at all for me to stick a square block of AdSense ads onto every page with useful content.

    There is an opinion that having AdSense on your pages urges Google bots to come and index your pages more quickly simply because Google really has to have your pages indexed before it can provide meaningful content-targeted ads.

    While it's not 100% accurate, because AdSense also is capable of scanning your pages on-the-fly and provide meaningful ads for the most obvious keywords in your content, I certainly see no harm in placing ads.

    My ads became meaningful in just a couple of days, but I had to wait for another 2 months before my pages got visible in Google search results.

  • Trackback to popular sites
    I've only trackbacked to one site again because I wanted to see if it would be enough. It sure was enough! I got only 10 visitors or so from that website, but the point was made – I've been visited through an external link. A trackback is a great and simple way to let others know about your content.

  • Link to other projects of yours
    There is definitely no harm in linking to other projects of yours, especially to the long-established and popular ones. If you have only a handful of projects (not hundreds), then it's also okay to link back to your project – it will not add much of a weight to your new project from the search engine point of view, but it would not look like you're trying to earn a better PageRank by linking from tons of your own projects neither.

 

As you can see, it's all been about letting Google know your site is out there and really has to be indexed fully at some stage. Sitemaps help Google find its way around your website, and AdSense could also be a useful hint to get your site indexed as Google cannot serve content-targeted ads without having indexed the content first.

But the best advice is to never stop experimenting! Some things might work for my projects, but will not for yours. Similarly, you can as easily come up with the most brilliant solutions to getting your site indexed in the least time possible. Just don't forget to share the knowledge! ;) 

Filed Under: adsense, blog, google, SEO, traffic

Perfect Blogger Gets A New Design

August 5, 2006 by Leave a Comment

Having used only standard themes on all my blogs so far, I've finally decided to be a bit more creative and quickly created this new theme for Perfect Blogger.

As many of you can probably notice, it's not a new theme, but a slightly changed 3K2 one. Hopefully, it will seem more attractive to all the new visitors and readers.

Filed Under: blog, design, perfectblogger

ProBlogger: A Very Useful Blog

August 2, 2006 by 2 Comments

The more time I spend reading Darren Rowse's ProBlogger blog, the more I realize there's so much learning to be done!

I like ProBlogger a lot. It's one of these resources you know you'll find something useful on, so I sometimes just start reading through a series or a category of posts, and it's incredible how much stuff I've been thinking or worrying about is already explained and covered on ProBlogger's pages!

I can hardly find a blogging-related topic which isn't covered there (although this probably means I'm very new to the blogging and simply have tons of stuff to learn): general blogging tips, SEO, WordPress customization, AdSense – you name it! It's like a book (hey, that's an idea! It'll be a bestseller for sure!).

For some blogs, you enjoy the reading so much that you feel almost scared as you dig deeper and deeper into archives, because you know that someday you're going to reach the bottom of the posts archive, and that will the end. But with Darren's resource it's much better – not only it is a very comprehensive guide, but it's also a very dynamic one, so there is lots of useful and relevant information added daily.

I think I'm a fan of ProBlogger. After all, it is such a pleasure to learn from someone who grew knowledgeable in the field simply by trying all the steps you've already taken plus hunders more which you're only planning to take.

Filed Under: blog, promotion, SEO, traffic, wordpress

AdSense Optimization Month

August 2, 2006 by Leave a Comment

Inside AdSense blog is going to post even more optimization secrets on its pages this month, as they deem August to be their AdSense Optimization Month!

In case you missed it, they've updated their Optimization Tips Page  recently, although nothing really new had been added. Darren Rowse has a good post on ProBlogger about these changes: AdSense Updates Help Pages. 

Filed Under: adsense, blog, google

Ever More Videos from Matt Cutts

August 2, 2006 by Leave a Comment

Apparently, Matt Cutts has just posted 2 more videos with his answers to readers' questions about Google.

So here they are:

Filed Under: blog, google, promotion, SEO

SEO answers from Matt Cutts

August 2, 2006 by 2 Comments

Matt Cutts has just posted 3 more videos with all kinds of useful information on SEO. 

I strongly suggest you watch them, as it always helps when someone with internal knowledge of a company (Matt works for Google) speaks confidently about things you've always been wondering about.

Video sessions are made in a form of giving answers to questions asked by Matt's readers, and they make a perfect learning material for a blogger of any level.

 

SEO answers Matt has so far: 

Filed Under: blog, google, promotion, SEO

Great Post on Headline Formulas from CopyBlogger

July 31, 2006 by Leave a Comment

I'm a regular reader of CopyBlogger, and one day I'll definitely write a proper introduction of this resource there on my pages, but right now I just wanted to point you to a great post there: 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work.

 

As with many posts on this blog, the article is most useful and informational, giving you ready-to-use formulas for writing incredibly successful headlines and make sure your content gets the attention it deserves.

 

Some of the formulas I particularly liked are these:

  • Who Else Wants [blank]?
  • The Secret of [blank]
  • Little Known Ways to [blank]
  • What Everybody Ought to Know About [blank]

 

If you're not familiar with CopyBlogger just yet, please take some time to explore the blog, and while you're at it, make sure to download and read the fantastic Viral Copy: Trading Words for Traffic guide.

Filed Under: blog, promotion, traffic

Increase Your Search Engine Traffic

July 27, 2006 by Leave a Comment

Nick Wilson  has just posted a great article on the Performancing blog: 3 Ways to Immediately Increase Search Engine Traffic. 

According to Nick, the most important things to concentrate are:

  1. Copywriting
  2. Links
  3. Networking

This is a great article which points to the most trusted authorities in various fields of SEO, so you will greatly benefit from reading it and also following all the external links it has.

 

Filed Under: blog, promotion, traffic
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