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Archives for August 2010

Add Subheadings to Your Blog Posts with the SubHeading WordPress Plugin

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Is the title box always too small for your blog posts?  Do you find yourself wishing you could add more details or catchy copy to your blog post titles?  Are you tired of adding header tags to the subheadings you create for your blog posts?  Or perhaps you just want subheadings that appear directly beneath the title of your live blog posts rather than at the top of the body copy?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the above questions, then the SubHeading WordPress plugin is for you!

I tried this plugin for the first time recently, and I love it.  It’s useful for clarifying a catchy blog post title or adding some keywords for an SEO boost.  You can see it in action on a live blog post below:

And here it is on a blog home page:

Looks good, don’t you think?

The SubHeading plugin is available for free from the WordPress Plugin Directory (just search by “subheading” or by the plugin author’s name from your WordPress dashboard’s plugin installation page or download the SubHeading plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Once installed, you can follow the SubHeading plugin installation instructions and configure the settings so subheadings are allowed on posts and pages, display in your blog’s RSS feed, and more, as shown below in the SubHeadings Settings configuration page:

Once the plugin is installed and configured, a new area appears in your blog post editor where you can enter a subheading for that post beneath the title box, as shown below:

It’s that easy!  What do you think?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

How to Set Up a Blogger ‘Rainy Day Fund’

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This is a guest post by Timothy Ng, an experienced personal finance writer, specializing in credit card comparison. Check out his balance transfer for life guide

As a blogger one of the hardest parts of sharing your views and knowledge with the world is making a decent enough income to reward you for your time and energy. Most bloggers will likely give up after months of blogging, especially when they don’t see a fair ROI (Return on Investment) for the their time. Therefore you are best advised to save up for a rainy day, to avoid this disappointment in the first place. [Read more…] about How to Set Up a Blogger ‘Rainy Day Fund’

Is Your Blog’s About Page About the Right Stuff?

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When was the last time you read your blog’s About page?  It’s easy to forget that page when you’re busy writing fresh blog posts, but your About page is one of the most important destinations on your blog.  When visitors land on a post in your blog, they’re likely to read the content, possibly click through to read some more posts if they like what they found, and then what do you think they do?  They check out your About page to see who is behind all of this great content!

Therefore, you need to make sure your About page is always current and tells your story in the best way possible.  The About page is not the place where you should be modest.  Instead, use this page to truly promote yourself, your experience, your skills, and your expertise.  Sell yourself so anyone who reads your About page understands why you are the person to be writing about your blog topic and the vast value and knowledge you bring to the online conversation.

With those tips in mind, following are few elements your About page must have if you want people to believe you’re an authoritative source for information:

  • Your background and experience: Try to stay focused on experience related to your blog’s topic.  Lead with your strengths and your biggest accomplishments that prove why you’re capable of writing about your blog’s topic.  You can always include personal details at the end of your About page if you want.
  • Links to your online content other than your blog: Demonstrate the reach of your online presence and let people get to know you better by providing links to other websites and blogs that you own or write for.
  • Links to your social networking and twitter profiles: Invite people to get to know you better and communicate with you further by providing links to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking profiles.  Make it clear that you welcome new followers and connections.
  • A contact form and/or your contact information: Make it easy for people to get in touch with you by providing a way for them to communicate with you in a manner other than leaving a comment on one of your blog posts.
  • Your picture: Don’t be shy.  Including a picture of yourself on your blog’s About page makes you seem more ‘real’ and allows people to feel like they know you as a person not just as a bunch of words on their computer screens.

What do you have in your blog’s About page?  Are there any other elements that you think are essential to creating a great About page?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Bet You Didn’t Know that Site’s Built on WordPress – Network Solutions

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Time for another post in the “Bet You Didn’t Know that Site’s Built on WordPress” series where I highlight businesses and brands using WordPress that might surprise and inspire you.  If you thought WordPress and blogging was just for hobbyists and personal blogs, you’re wrong.

Today’s featured website using WordPress in cool ways is Network Solutions.  This is a company that has been around the world of domains, hosting, and more for years, and its most recent site redesign was intended to restore the brand’s position as a leader in the online space.  I’m on the Network Solutions Social Media Advisory Board, so it came as no surprise to me that WordPress would be the tool to bring the Network Solutions website into its new brand era.

Take a look at the clean, easy to read and visually appealing home page of the Network Solutions website built on WordPress:

The interior pages of the site use either a one-column or two-column layout as well as easy to read fonts, colors, and designs.  Take a look at one of the interior pages that is text-heavy but still easy to read below:

The site even includes a page that lists all of the Network Solutions blogs (also built on WordPress) in a single place, including graphics and links, as shown below.

Last time on “Bet You Didn’t Know that Site’s Built on WordPress” I featured a college, Tufts University, and today, you see a mid-size company using WordPress to run its primary web presence.  Stay tuned for another well-known brand using WordPress in the next post in this series, and prepare to be amazed!

What site built on WordPress really amazes you?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts!

Blogging Pitfalls: Why You Can’t Be Just a Blogger

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Everyone knows what being a blogger entails but fewer people know what creating a successful blog involves. Far too many bloggers have fallen for the false mantra of “If you write it, they will come” only to watch their traffic, readership and even profits lag behind their efforts.

There is much more to writing a blog than just simply putting out new blog entries. Even ignoring promotion, communication and other activities all bloggers do, there is a simple truth that, for the most part, a great blog can not be simply a great blog.

[Read more…] about Blogging Pitfalls: Why You Can’t Be Just a Blogger

The Secret to Boosting Search Traffic By Being Fast and Easy

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Did you know that sites which load quickly get higher search engine keyword rankings thereby getting more search traffic to their sites than slow-loading sites?  It’s true for your blog, too.  Even Google has admitted that fast load times equate to higher search rankings.  However, most bloggers haven’t taken the time to evaluate their blogs’ load times.

The more “stuff” you put on any given page on your blog, such as flash effects, ads, images, videos, and all the other stuff that clutters bloggers’ sidebars, the slower your blog posts and pages will load on a visitor’s web browser.  Fortunately, there are ways to both analyze your blog’s load time on an ongoing basis and there are ways to speed up page load time across your blog.

Out with the Old

First, take a look through the content on your blog.  Are there flash items, images, video or other content that slows down the page load time that you can remove entirely?  Common culprits for slow-loading pages are flash elements and third-party ads.  Each element on a page on your blog or website has to be “called up” and displayed on screen each time that page loads.  No one wants to hang out and wait for a page to load for more than a couple of seconds.  That’s simply the way that web browsing works in 2010.  People expect pages to load instantly.  If they have to wait more than a few seconds, they’ll click away never to return again.

In with the New

Second, use a tool like Google Webmaster Central to keep track of page load time on your blog.  Using the Site Performance option in Google Webmaster Central can give you all kinds of information about your blog page load time, so you can make changes to pages that are loading particularly slowly.

Add a Little Something Extra

Third, if you use WordPress, use a plugin like W3 Total Cache to speed up page load time on your blog.  You can follow the link to read more about WordPress plugins to reduce load time.  You also should read about 9 easy steps to speed up your WordPress blog.

Bottom-line

Page load time can help or hurt the organic traffic that comes to your blog from keyword searches.  What are you waiting for?  If you want to get more search traffic to your blog, then you should take some time to find ways to make sure your content loads quickly so Google gives it the highest ranking possible.

Image: stock.xchng

5 WordPress Plugins that Increase Traffic to Your Blog

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If you want to grow your blog’s audience and you use WordPress.org as your blogging application, then you need to try the five WordPress plugins listed below.  They’re easy to use, free, and can have a significant impact on the number of visitors to your blog.

1. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)

The more great content people are exposed to on your blog, the higher the chances are that they’ll find something they like causing them to return to your blog again, share your content with their own online connections, and ultimately, drive additional traffic to your blog.  YAARP is a great plugin for automatically including a list of related posts at the end of each of your blog posts.  The Link Within widget is another alternative.

2. Tweetmeme Retweet Button

The Retweet button is a must-have for all bloggers who want to increase traffic by making it easy for readers to share your blog posts with their own followers on Twitter.  You can add the Retweet button to your blog as a widget or as a WordPress plugin.  The TwitThis plugin offers similar functionality.

3. Share This

There are a number of WordPress plugins that make it easy for people to share links to your blog posts through their social web profiles like Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and more.  Share This is a popular choice.  Others include Sociable and Add to Any.

4. All-in-One SEO Pack

You can use the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin to give your blog posts an SEO boost and drive more traffic from keyword searches on popular search engines like Google.

5. Subscribe to Comments

When you allow people to subscribe to the comments published on a blog post, they receive an email when new comments are added.  This drives them back to your blog again to keep up with the conversation and continue participating.  The Subscribe to Comments plugin makes it easy for WordPress.org users to allow readers to stay involved in ongoing conversations on their blogs.

What are your favorite WordPress plugins for boosting traffic to your blog?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts!

Image: stock.xchng