Use Google Analytics to understand more about your visitors

One of the most powerful Google Analytics tools is search analysis. It provides data on the keywords people enter into search engines to find your blog and the actions they take after they arrive.

This information includes the number of visits, the number of pages visited and the bounce rate for any particular keyword. Knowing the bounce rate for a particular keyword (rather than the overall figure) gives you a better indication of how sticky your blog is. If your blog ranks well for a keyword phrase you haven’t deliberately targeted and your blog gets traffic for that keyword phrase, people are more likely to leave your site without visiting any other page. Thus increasing the bounce rate.

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Facebook Like plugin for WordPress

There are a couple of ways to add a Facebook Like button to your WordPress blog. You can use a plugin, or you can use the code available on the Facebook Like Button developer page.

With the second option you will have to know how to edit the single.php file to get it to work. Editing that file can be a bit tricky if you don’t know your way around it.

I have tried both methods and preferred the plugin option. It is much easier to implement.

There are a number of Facebook Like plugins around that will do the job. If you search the WordPress plugin database you will find at least 20 to choose from. I tried two of them. The second one I tried does the job perfectly.

1 Facebook iLike WordPress plugin by Tierra Innovation

I installed this one a while ago but never got round to setting it up. I tested it again and although it works well, it left a large white space under the button and before the post content. This is due to the size of the iframe it uses. The default setting is 80px, and although there is an option to change this, it didn’t work on all pages and I don’t know why. On some pages the white space appeared, and on other pages it didn’t. As it was too unpredictable, I decided to remove it and look for an alternative.

2 FaceBook Like Button Plugin for WordPress by Dean Peters

When I am looking for a plugin I will nearly always go with the crowd. A high star rating and numerous personal ratings will always win me over.

Most of the other Facebook plugins have only three stars (which is quite low for a WordPress plugin). This one has four.

Facebook Like plugin for WordPress

The great thing about this plugin is it will work straight out of the box. All you have to do is set the options that apply to the way you want to use it. The button can be used on posts and pages and it can go before or after the content. It can also be used on your home page.

In the Facebook Like Button Display Parameters box you alter the settings to change the way the button looks. Any changes made are immediately visible, but not live until you hit the save button. You can see in the screen-shot below that I have set the default font to Verdana (rather than Arial). I have left everything else in the default state as people are familiar with the look of the button.

Facebook Like Plugin

If you are going to use a Facebook like button on your blog I highly recommend this plugin.

Plugin HomePage | WordPress.org Download Page

Posted in Blogging Tips, Social Media | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Twitter Karma – easily find out who doesn’t follow you back on Twitter

Twitter has changed the way the world communicates, but it still lacks some basic functionality users need to effectively manage their accounts. One such function is being able to easily see which of the people you follow are following you back.

Twitter could include a little icon or change the background colour to differentiate between the people following you and the people who do not follow you when you look at your following list. But it doesn’t. There is no way to easily found out this information from within the Twitter site.

I don’t expect everyone I follow to follow me back. That would be stupid. People like Matt Cutts or Neil Patel just aren’t going to do that. And that’s obvious when you look at their following and followers numbers. But there are plenty of Twitter users out there who follow people hoping the follow is reciprocated, and once reciprocated they remove you from their follow list so their numbers look more impressive.

That’s not exactly cricket, but it’s the way the world works.

Enter Twitter Karma

I have looked for a tool that allows me to see which of the people I follow do not follow me back. Yesterday Dave, from Dave’s DIY Tips (who didn’t know I was looking), gave me the heads up on a tool that does just that and I thought it would be good to share it with you as I am sure you will also find it useful.

The tool is Twitter Karma. You enter your Twitter username and password and TK displays all the people you follow and tells you if they follow you back. Perfect. If you want to unfollow/follow anyone you can do so by clicking the unfollow/follow link.

Twitter Karma

Like all the great tools it is simple, functional and gets the job done without any fuss.

I removed 34 Twitter users from my following list to bring down the gap between following and followers. Some of those were big names in the world of Twitter, others were people who started to follow me then removed me from their list a few days later (usually when I reciprocated the follow, which I generally do). I have kept a list of all the Twitter users I removed, I might follow them again at some point in the future.

If you have something to say about Twitter Karma or Twitter please feel free to do so by commenting below.

This is my username on Twitter if you feel the urge to follow me – @BloggingAcademy.

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GoDaddy, SlowDaddy, ByeDaddy – a bloggers experience

Bloggers will always have issues with hosting companies. It’s part of the game. Perhaps even more so if one of the many shared hosting companies out there is not providing the level of service you expect.

Shared hosting is not for everyone, but it is almost certainly where everyone starts. When you buy your first car you generally avoid the Porsche showroom and choose a second hander from a car sales magazine instead. This allows to you to learn to drive better without losing too much money if the car ends up in a ditch. It’s the same with web hosting. Learn the ropes first, then move on to bigger and better.

Peter at Blog Tips has published a post outlining his experience of shared hosting with GoDaddy. In it he explains the problems he’s encountered during his time with GoDaddy and the lack of help received from the GoDaddy support team. What started out as a wonderful relationship has turned sour, and is on the brink of breaking.

Due to the nature of shared hosting Peter’s post touches on the experiences of many, but there are lessons to learn. One of those lessons may be to avoid bigger companies such as GoDaddy and work with smaller competitors such as Arvixe or KnownHost. Often you find smaller companies provide a better service for the same cost as they try to build a decent customer base.

Article – Shared Hosting: Pay Peanuts, Get Monkeys

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VaultPress blog backup service by Automattic

VaultPress logo

Automattic, the company behind the best blogging platform in the world, WordPress, is generating some buzz for its new blog back-up service, VaultPress. The announcement about the service came in March this year (2010). Matt Mullenweg also published a blog post about it.

After the initial hubbub died down things went a bit quiet. That changed a couple of day ago when VaultPress started issuing Golden Tickets (invites) to people on the mailing list. If you are not yet on the list you can sign up here.

The system works through the VaultPress plugin which you install and manage the same way as all WordPress plugins. Users can login to the VaultPress Dashboard to verify their backups.

VaultPress is in the very early stages of development at this time and it doesn’t look like the service will be free. The initial costs are $15 per month per blog/site for the Basic service and $40 per month per blog/site for the Premium service.

When you complete the sign up form (to get on the mailing list) you can specify how much you would pay for the service. The default amount is $10. This indicates that VaultPress will eventually be priced based upon the feedback gathered during the beta period.

I am sure people who value their blogs and dread the thought of losing everything to the hands of a hacker or an unrecoverable server crash would be prepared to say a small monthly fee to know their hours of work is in safe hands, but is $15/$40 per month per blog/site too much for you? Are you happy to use one of the free backup plugins instead?

Posted in Blogging Tips, WordPress | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

SEOPressor WordPress plugin review

I bought the SEOPressor WordPress plugin a few weeks ago when it was in the pre-launch stage and available as a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) on the Warrior Forum. Since that time there has been several updates to the plugin and I have used it on many of my old posts. So it seems like a good time to do a full-scale review.

Just to let you know that I am an SEOPressor affiliate. If you decide to buy the plugin and do so by following one of the links in this article, I will earn a commission. That said, I intend to write an honest review of my experience with SEOPressor, and if I think it’s crap, I will tell you.

SEOPressor WordPress plugin review

The first thing to mention is what the SEOPressor plugin does. It analyses posts and pages on your blog for the main keyword or keyword phrase you want to target and it gives that post/page a score. The higher the score the better optimised the post/page is. Having a post with a high score doesn’t guarantee high search rankings, but it goes a long way toward reaching that goal.

SEOPressor calculates a post score by using a complicated algorithm that looks at many of the factors considered important for effective search engine optimisation – header tags, title tag, keyword density, text formatting (bold, italic, underline), alt tags etc.

Setting up SEOPressor

The plugin comes in a zip file so you have to install it using a FTP program such as Filezilla. Once installed and activated a menu tab will appear in the left sidebar.

SEOPressor WordPress plugin review

When you click Settings to configure the plugin you will see the following screen:

SEOPressor WordPress plugin review settings

The options are self-explanatory. I have left mine in the default state.

The next step is to get down to the nitty-gritty and optimise a post.

There are two ways of doing this.

1) Open up any post you want to look at. Underneath the main writing area is the SEOPressor Keyword box. Enter the keyword phrase you want to target and click save.

SEOPressor WordPress plugin review

(The red line on this image is my spellchecker).

Now click on POSTs SCORE (in the menu on the left hand side) and look for the post you have just edited. Any post that does not have a keyword entered in the SEOPressor Keyword field or has a low optimisation score can easily be recognised due to red highlighting.

SEOPressor WordPress plugin review list

2) Click on the POSTs SCORE link to view multiple posts, enter the keywords you want to target in the box provided for each post and hit the Update Keywords button in the bottom left hand corner of the page.

Once the benchmark has been established it’s time to get down to some tweaking.

In the latest version of the plugin many of my posts which were previously considered well optimized are now highlighted red. Which I guess indicates that the scoring algorithm has changed. As far as I can tell, 50% is the new threshold. Previously it was around the 35% mark. I think this is good. It makes me work harder on optimizing each post.

In order to improve the score for a post there are several things to do. The recommendations are available by clicking on the Suggestions link in the right hand column. These are fairly straight forward and include bold text, header tags (h1, h2 etc) and more instances of the keywords.

In earlier versions of the plugin there was no suggestions tool.

As you tweak each post check the score to make sure you are on the right track. When the red highlight disappears, you have a well optimized blog post.

Once you have one post optimized, you can start the lengthy process of going through your entire archive.

How much does it cost?

To use on a single domain it costs $37 (which I believe is an early bird offer and the price will soon rise), to use it on unlimited domains it costs an extra $47. This is a one time fee and there is a 60 day money back guarantee. No questions asked.

Is it worth it?

In a word. Yes. It really helps you focus on the optimization level of each post you write and publish. This in turn will almost certainly guarantee an increase in traffic. Over the long-term the plugin should easily pay for itself, perhaps many times over.

Are there any bad points?

I have one or two little niggles.

1) I would like to filter drafts from published posts to enable quicker editing.

2) The automatic upgrade never works.

3) It has only just been released!

I said at the start of the post that I would tell you if it was crap. I meant that, I wouldn’t recommend a product that doesn’t deliver just so I can earn a bit of commission. That doesn’t do it for me.

I have used this plugin daily since I bought it. I have gone through my older posts and tweaked them in accordance with the recommendations of SEOPressor. I am now starting to see an increase in traffic on the posts I have further optimized.

There is nothing blackhat going on, just a straightforward assistant to help you get more traffic to your blog.

The money back guarantee is genuine too. I know there are sceptics who have doubts, but SEOPressor uses Clickbank for sales, and I understand that any merchant selling through Clickbank must give refunds (within a set period) to anyone who asks. It is part of the TOS.

You have nothing to lose! Give it a go and let me know what you think.

What does SEOPressor think of this post?

This is the score given by SEOPressor to the first draft of this post for the phrase SEOPressor WordPress plugin review.

SEOPressor WordPress plugin review

After a couple of minor tweaks I managed to increase the score:
SEOPressor WordPress plugin review

If I remove the word ‘review’ from the targeted phrase the score increases to 70%.

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BrowserShots relaunched with swanky new design

BrowserShots - test website design in multiple=In the not too distant past I used to create my own WordPress themes, or rather, modify existing themes until they looked exactly how I wanted them to look.

As time went by I found browser compatibility became more of an issue. Especially when testing designs in Internet Explorer 6. I would spend hours trying to fix styling problems that often meant reading and testing many snippets of code.

I got frustrated with all the CSS hacks required to make things work across the various browsers and operating systems, so I stopped wasting my time and bought Thesis, intending to using that as the framework for all future projects. This has been a good choice, but even Thesis can sometimes be a pain in the ass.

One of the best, and most eye-opening free tools to use when developing themes is BrowserShots. It shows you what a web page looks like in multiple browsers and across many operating systems. I wrote a review of it a while ago (link below), but it’s worth mentioning again as it’s so useful. And it’s just been relaunched with a swanky new design.

BrowserShots is for theme developers and designers, but it can be used by anyone who wants to test their site for cross browser compatibility.

If you want to read the original review you can do so here: How to test your website design or blog theme in multiple browsers. If you just want to get straight down to business and do some testing, go visit BrowsherShots.

BrowserShots full screen

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Tips for bloggers looking to use YouTube

Video blogging is not for everyone. The main reason for that is many bloggers feel uncomfortable talking to a camera or providing a voiceover for a set of slides or screencast. I can appreciate that feeling of anxiety.

However, there is no denying that creating tutorial videos that offer great advice and offer solutions to everyday problems, and uploading them to YouTube, can do wonders for blog traffic. YouTube is the first place people go to if they are looking for a video tutorial on almost any subject under the sun. If you create the content that people find most useful and promote your blog in the video, you are sure to gain some readers (and perhaps even make some affiliate sales).

Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income has put together a very interesting blog post about his experience of creating and developing a YouTube channel for his blog. It seems the experiment has been very successful for him. In 276 days Pat created 15 videos. 60,000 viewings and 720 subscribers later, the channel is growing from strength to strength.

Not bad for just a few minutes work every few weeks.

To find what Pat recommends when creating your own YouTube channel, read the full post.

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How to use an effective internal linking strategy

Getting traffic to your blog is difficult. Keeping that traffic (people) on your blog is also difficult, but there are a few things you can do to help make that happen. The first is to write engaging content that people find useful. That will always be a winner. Another is to adopt an effective internal linking strategy.

Some of the benefits of internal linking are:

  • Better search engine rankings
  • More user-friendly site
  • A reduction in bounce rate

What is an internal linking strategy?

It’s a way of making the most use of your own content by interlinking your posts using appropriate keywords and keyword phrases. This helps your readers find related content and it helps boost the chances of the destination pages being found in search engines for the keywords and phrases contained within the links.

This type of linking is often overlooked by bloggers and webmasters. And while the links may not have the same power as a link from an online newspaper or a popular blog such as Mashable, they do pass some link juice. Quite how much is another matter. No one really knows. Google (and other search engines) keep this kind of information top secret.

Increase usability and reduce bounce rate with internal linking

A blog can very quickly amass a huge amount of material. Say you publish two posts a day and your blog is two months old. That is at least 120 posts. Take it up to the six months stage and you are talking well over 300 posts.

Readers of your blog will find it difficult to track down all of that material. In fact, they probably won’t even look for most of it.

This is where an effective internal linking strategy comes into its own. You can lead your readers to the content that is relevant (or you want them to read) by creating direct links from within your posts. The trick is not to overdo it. Don’t feel obliged to have a link every paragraph, use the method sporadically and when it adds value to the post you are writing.

It’s all about balance.

If you create a post with 300 words it would be a bit over the top to have 10 hyperlinks among such few paragraphs. Two or three links however, is perfectly acceptable.

A couple of examples of internal linking

Here are a couple of examples of the same sentence and the approach I would take for adding an internal link to the sentence:

1) I have recently signed up to the Google AdSense program in the hope of making some money from my blog.
2) I have recently signed up to the Google AdSense program in the hope of making some money from my blog.

In example number one I have turned the three word keyword phrase I want to target, Google AdSense program, into a hyperlink. In the second example I have just used the word AdSense. Both examples should boost the destination page for the word AdSense, but I am more likely to get rankings for the first phrase as it is less competitive.

When I write a blog post I write it with one keyword phrase in mind. I write the post naturally, I don’t think about linking to related posts during the writing process.

Once the post is complete I re-read it to see if any phrases are suitable for internal linking. If there are, I create the link. If I can get away with making a slight alteration to the text to squeeze in a link, I will do so.

When creating an internal link I always use the absolute URL:

http://thebloggingacademy.com/what-is-the-google-adsense-program/

Older posts are more likely to have PageRank and will pass some of this authority onto the post(s) you link to. It is worth revisiting some of these posts to see if there are opportunities for linking to newer content, especially if you have never linked to your own posts very often, or at all. You may be pleasantly surprised at the links you can create and the amount of work (or lack of it) required to do so.

Posted in Blogging Tips, Search Engine Optimisation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

WordPress 3.0 is here!

WordPress logoThe WordPress community has waited for this day for a long time – WordPress 3.0 (Thelonious) is now available for download.

Perhaps the most significant part of this update is the new default theme, Twenty Ten. It’s cleaner, wider and perfectly acceptable to use straight out of the box. The same cannot be said for the theme it replaces, Kubrick, which is now five years old, and although it has served its purpose well, it is past its sell by date.

Twenty Ten comes bundled with easily changeable header images and a colour picker so you can change the page background colour anytime you want to. Making changes like this in earlier versions of WordPress required some knowledge of CSS and HTML.

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