Archive for the ‘Misc’ Category

By default, the URLs that are generated by WordPress are not that great. When you first install WordPress, the main types of URLs will look as follows:

Posts: www.yourdomain.com/?p=1

Pages: www.yourdomain.com/?page_id=2

Categories: www.yourdomain.com/?cat=1

While these URLs may not look that bad to you, there are a couple of reasons why these URLs are far from being optimal. To begin with, they do not provide much information to users. Not only can this cause confusion when a user mouses over one of these links, but it can also make them less likely to link to a post or page on your blog (or at the very least, it will be more difficult for them).

The other problem with these URLs is that they are not search engine friendly. Having properly optimized URLs can help you rank higher in Google and other search engines for specific terms related to your blog, but having URLs in this default form is not going to provide you with any benefits.

Although it provides you with ugly default URLs, WordPress does do a good job of making it easy to change these URLs to a more friendly form. In order to do this (these instructions will be based off of WordPress 2.7, but the process should be nearly identical for older versions of WordPress), you will first need to log into your WordPress Dashboard. Next, click Settings (which can be found on the left side of the page), and then choose Permalinks from the drop-down menu that appears.

As you will see, WordPress provides you with an easy to use interface that allows you to change your Permalink structure. In addition to the Default option, WordPress provides you with three other options. Although Day and name, Month and name, and Numeric are the first three options provided, I actually recommend using the fourth option, which is Custom Structure.

If you visit the WordPress Codex, you can find all of the tags that can be used for the Custom Structure option. While I recommend taking a look at the Codex, here are the two Custom Structure options I recommend:

The structure I personally use is /%postname% , which creates URLs that look like www.yourdomain.com/my-first-blog-post.

Although I don’t personally use this structure, another popular option is /%category%/postname, which creates URLs that look like www.yourdomain.com/ramblings/my-first-blog-post.

While it’s best to make these changes before you start publishing any content on your WordPress blog, even if you have a blog in existence, it’s not too late to convert your URLs. Since you want to avoid breaking any of your existing URLs (which could cause a headache for users and make search engines unable to index your content), you will want to use a plugin that not only updates your URL structure, but properly redirects URLs for users and search engines. The best plugin to achieve this task is the Permalinks Migration Plugin, which allows you to pick a new URL structure and then uses a 301 redirect to properly handle all of the old URLs.

Popularity: 18% [?]

(photo by Swiv)

Although you can have a blog that looks really great, if it doesn’t have any substance, people are not going to return to your blog or subscribe to your RSS feed. Therefore, since the posts that you publish are the substance of your blog, it makes sense that you would want to make them as good as possible. There are a lot of different ways to accomplish this, and we are going to discuss a handful of them right now:

Create a List:
If you are having a hard time thinking of what kind of post you want to create next, list posts are always a great choice. There are several reasons why I recommend this type of post:

Appeals to Social Media Users
If you look at the popular pages of websites like Digg and Reddit, you will see that lists comprise a significant percentage of the content that people like to vote on. Since you already know that these are the kinds of websites that can send you a lot of traffic, it makes sense to write content that’s going to appeal directly to the people who are using these websites.

Attracts Links
When someone links to you, they are basically casting a vote and saying that they think you have something worthwhile to offer to others. Not only can attracting links help your search engine rankings, but it can also send visitors directly to your blog from another blog or website. Because lists are viewed as resources, they are quite likely to attract links.

Easy
Regardless of how passionate you are about the subject of your blog, I know that there are times when you simply don’t have the energy to sit down and write a 1000 word post. Fortunately, lists are quite easy to create; you just need to invest some time in surfing around and putting together a collection of resources.

Install WP-PostRatings:
By installing this plugin on your blog, you are accomplishing two things. First, you are encouraging your visitors to participate with your blog. Second, you can find out what people really want to read about. You may think that a post you wrote is great, but if it gets a lot of low votes, you will know that you should probably avoid that specific topic in future posts.

Use Images:
Images can be a very powerful way to get people’s attention. If someone is surfing around and an image suddenly catches their attention, there is a very good chance that they are going to stick around long enough to read what the content associated with that image has to say.

Proofread and Spellcheck:
While I realize that bloggers aren’t expected to have perfect grammar, it is useful to read over your posts and correct any errors before publishing. Additionally, given the fact that WordPress has a built-in spellcheck function, correcting any misspellings requires less than a minute of extra work.

Popularity: 24% [?]

As search engines continue to evolve, so does the field of search engine optimization. Although a technique may work extremely well for awhile, there are manySEO techniques that eventually become obsolete. For example, there was a point in time when a site could rank well if it was submitted to enough web directories. While there are still some quality web directories out there (which we will discuss in a future post), the major search engines have devalued the links from a large percentage of web directories.

Although many techniques do become obsolete, there are other SEO techniques that still work as well today as they did five years ago. One of the best examples of a technique that is still very effective is the link request. If you can get other bloggers and webmasters to provide a one-way link to your blog or website, you are gaining a very powerful boost to yourSEO efforts.

However, the problem is that most people don’t know how to properly ask for a link, and instead of getting a great one-way link from a trusted source, their request gets deleted or marked as spam by the recipient.

In order to maximize the effectiveness of your future link requests, here a handful of guidelines that you should always strive to follow:

Establish a Relationship: If possible, before you ask for a link, establish a relationship with the person you are planning to ask. While this may not work for a static website, it is usually quite easy with blogs (since the authors are much more active online). In addition to leaving interesting comments on their blog, you can also chat with a blogger through email or instant messaging. When you are communicating, really focus on a building a genuine online friendship with this person.

Remember that the Title Matters: I can’t count how many times I have received an email with a subject along the lines of “Link to Me” or “Go to My Website.” I receive these emails on a regular basis, and all of them are sent directly to my trash folder.

When you sit down to write your link request, remember that you need to come up with an interesting title. If you haven’t had previous contact with the person you are sending the request to, this step is especially important. What you come up with will depend on your specific situation, but titles that have worked for me in the past include “I was wondering about [insert the title of one of their blog posts or articles]” or “I have a question about [the name of their blog or website].”

Be Personal: Whether you have had previous contact with the recipient or not, you need to make your email personalized. In addition to using their name (instead of Dear Blogger or Webmaster), you should be open with your identity. This includes introducing yourself (if you haven’t had previous contact) and providing multiple contact details (website URL, phone number, etc).

Remember to Give and Take: When you send a link request, you are simply asking a blogger or webmaster to give you a free link. Therefore, to avoid being rude, you need to let them know what you are offering in return. Just like the second guideline in this list, what you have to offer will depend on the specific situation. However, one of the easiest ways to have something to offer is to write a piece of content that will benefit their audience, and then ask for them to link to that specific piece of content.

As an example, if you read a blog post that has a question at the end of it, you may want to do the necessary research to answer that question and then send a link request to the blogger letting them know that you published the answer to their question.

Popularity: 18% [?]