SEO Plugins For Your Blog
December 5, 2008 by admin
Filed under New Bloggers
If you have been trying to make your blog search engine friendly, you will want to install some of the better plugins focused on making your blog more user friendly as well as ranking higher within search engines like Google or Yahoo.
Here is a list of handy plugins that will help you with blog based SEO:
Title tags are arguably the most important of the on-page factors for search engine optimization (”SEO”). It blows my mind how post titles are also used as title tags by WordPress, considering that post titles should be catchy, pithy, and short-and-sweet; whereas title tags should incorporate synonyms and alternate phrases to capture additional search visibility. This plugin provides a simple solution.
2) Related Posts Plugin
Features a listing of related posts at the bottom of each page or post, keeping visitors on your site longer.
3) Ultimate Tag Warrior
You can easily use categories and the tag system within one blog making it easier to search through specific tags you have created for previous posts and pages.
Ultimate Tag Warrior is a multi-headed hydra of a plugin. It allows you to add tags either through the Write Post page in wordpress in a tag box, on posts using an AJAXy box, and in posts using special syntax from external editors (or internally, if you’d like).
From the write post page, you can also get suggestions for tags using the Yahoo! keyword suggestion service.Once you’ve got your tags entered; you enter a realm of interesting ways of doing things with your tags. At the complicated end, AJAXy search is included with the download (it may need some customisation to match your theme). At the simpler end, you can automagically have tags included at the top and bottom of your posts without making changes to themes.
4) Head META Description Plugin
This plugin offers an automatic meta description tag for your blog by attaching a description depending on the request (query)
Head META Description provides four user-configurable variables.
These are:
$default_blog_desc
Setting this overrides the use of the tagline (Options > General in WordPress) for the default description on your blog. If you don’t use the tagline, edit this line. Default value is ” (empty).
$post_desc_length
Length of the description in words for post and Page descriptions (the first # words of the excerpt, or post content). Default value is 20.
$post_use_excerpt
This tells the plugin to use the excerpt for description on posts, if one exists. Set this to 0 (zero) to force post content as description. Default is 1.
$custom_desc_key
Name of the custom field key used to override post or Page excerpts for descriptions. Default is description.
You can change these variables by editing the plugin file online through the plugin editor (Plugins > Plugin Editor, then select the plugin file), or offline in a text editor.
5) Google Sitemaps
This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.
Top Blog Plugins
December 5, 2008 by admin
Filed under General Blogging
In order to make your blog more interactive and dynamic, not to mention rank better in the search engines and gain additional exposure from within social groups and communities, there are a handful of blog plugins and modules that will improve your blog, and encourage visitors to return.
Here are a few of the top WordPress plugins available:
Akismet
http://akismet.com/
A spam filter that checks comments posted to your blog against the Akismet database to endusre that they are not spam related. Will also check trackbacks for spam as well.
Google Sitemaps
This plugin will generate a Google compliant site map for your blog which helps in search engine optimization and ranking.
Ultimate Tag Warrior
A plugin designed to offer the ability to add keyword tags to pages, posts and categories. Great for SEO.
WP Contact Form
Provides a support form for your blog visitors to be able to contact you directly without displaying your email address.
Related Posts Plugin
Keep your visitors on your site longer by showcasing relevant topics relating to the original content they were reviewing. You can customize this plugin to display a specific number of related posts, however you can not choose specific posts to show within this plugin, at this time.
WP Cache
Helps speed up your WordPress based blog by caching pages and storing them in a static file.
You can browse through a wide variety of additional plugins from the WordPress website itself, by visiting:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
Taxes for the Self-Employed
If you live in the United States and you’re self-employed, you’re really going to feel the pinch when tax time comes around. When you’re employed in a traditional job, your taxes are taken out a little each week. This makes it seem a little easier. When you’re self-employed, you have to pay personal taxes as well as business taxes, and you have to pay it in larger chunks. This is pretty difficult to stomach!
Of course, self-employed people can take a lot of deductions, too. You can deduct things like part of your rent and utilities if you work at home, business expenses like equipment and supplies, and things like domain names and hosting.
The self-employment tax applies to anyone who makes more than $400 per year. When you are employed traditionally, your employer pays part of your taxes, and you pay the rest. This is typically 7.65% of your income paid by your employer and 7.65% by you. If you are self-employed, you have to pay the entire 15.3%. 12.4% goes to Social Security, and 2.9% goes to medicare. These numbers may vary depending on how much you make, but most self-employed people will fall into this bracket.
You’ll have to pay estimated tax payments quarterly. This is due in April, June, September, and January. If you don’t pay these on time, you’ll have to pay some pretty stiff penalties.
I highly advise that you handle a qualified accountant to help you keep your books and records in order and to help you with your taxes.
Many accounts are relatively inexpensive, and they will save you an unbelievable amount of time and money. They will make sure you pay the amount of taxes you really owe and not a penny more, and they will make sure you pay on time. They’ll also make sure you keep your records in order so you’ll have that information available if you’re audited later.
Ways to Make Money Online
There are literally hundreds of ways to make money online, perhaps thousands. If you want to have the best chance of being successful, you need to choose the method that suits your talents and desires. If you hate writing, you’re probably not going to be the best blogger. If you aren’t the least bit artistic, you may have a very tough time being a website designer.
We’re going to look at several of the most popular ways to make money online. You’ll learn a little about each one, the basics of getting started, and who might be best suited for each method.
Niche Blogging
Blogging is a great way to make money. You’re probably not going to make much money blogging about your kids or your dog. You have to blog about something many people actually want to read about. This is called “niche blogging”.
You might choose to blog about wine tasting, model cars, coaching Little League Baseball, restoring classic cars, or just about anything else you’re interested in. In fact, you don’t even have to be interested in a topic as long as you believe you can write enough good material about it and you believe there is enough interest in it.
I would advise using WordPress on your own hosting with your own domain. There are free blogs that you can use, but these can be deleted at any time by an admin from their site. You don’t want to lose all of your hard work, so you should stick to your own domain if possible.
Blogging is great for people who have the patience and dedication to update the blog daily, or at minimum once per week. It requires a certain level of writing skill, but you certainly don’t have to be perfect. As long as you can write well enough for people to understand you and you know how to write in a way that is fun or interesting, you’ll do fine.
Blogging isn’t a good idea if you don’t like to stick to one thing very long or you get bored easily. If you hate writing it’s also probably not for you.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing can be done in many ways, from running an email list, to blogging, to creating niche content websites and more. Basically, you promote other peoples’ products for commission.
Because there are so many ways to do this, it can be suited to almost anyone. You can outsource the writing if you want, and even the creation of websites. There are millions of products out there to promote, so you can choose something you really enjoy or something that you feel will make you the most money.
Freelance Writing
If you really enjoy writing but would rather not run your own sites, you can write for others. Freelance writing can pay quite well, especially if you can write rather quickly.
You do need to have very good spelling and grammar skills if you want to write for others at a good price. If you’re willing to work very cheaply, you will be able to get work even if your writing skills are fairly poor, but only those with excellent skills are paid well.
You need to be sure you can stick to deadlines and work well under pressure. If you continually miss deadlines you won’t have a lot of repeat customers and you could ruin your reputation.
Graphics or Website Design
If you’re good at making graphics or websites, you could do this on a freelance basis. Design pays fairly well, and there is never a shortage of work for talented designers who are reliable.
As with freelance writing, you must be able to meet deadlines consistently. By working quickly and producing quality work by the time you say you will, you will build up a client list that will buy from you over and over.
Article Marketing
If you don’t have any money to invest to get started, you can try article marketing. Sites called article directories will let you submit articles to them and they will place the articles on their site. In exchange, you get to have a couple of links in your “bio box” or “resource box” at the end of the article.
Many article directories will let you place an affiliate link here. Those that won’t will usually let you link to a free web page or blog like Blogger.com, Squidoo.com, or Hubpages.com. You can write and submit articles and promote affiliate products, and it won’t cost you anything to get started.
Many people use this as a springboard for further pursuits. You can start with article marketing, and once you have built some money up with it you can invest some of that money into other moneymaking methods.
Since article marketing requires a lot of writing, you should enjoy and be good at it. Also, you need to be persistent at writing. Article marketing requires you to write a lot of articles to make good money.
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