The Top WordPress Plugins for Your Blog

by Tricia on December 13, 2009

If you’re one of the millions of WordPress users today, you’re probably thankful for the existence of plugins, those little chunks of code that enhance the functionalities of your blog. These plugins, however, aren’t just there to help you manage your blog. Plugins can improve your visitors’ experience of your site, and some of them are even made specifically to help you make money blogging.

The only drawback about plugins is the fact that there’s so many of them lying around the blogosphere, and not all of them are necessary to the success of your site. But how will you know which plugins are worth installing and which ones are better off left on the shelf? Here’s a list of winning WordPress plugins that can breathe new life into your blog!

1. Akismet A perennial favorite, Akismet is every WordPress blogger’s first line of defense against nefarious comment spam. This plugin effectively blocks bogus comments from infiltrating your comment box and clogging it up, making comment management an easier job for you.

2. All in One SEO Pack This tool raises your capacity to make money blogging by providing you with a whole suite of features that optimize your blog for search engines. The All in One SEO Pack takes the most significant page-ranking factors that affect your site’s search engine rankings, and lets you tweak with them to make your blog shine in search engine results.

3. WordPress 2.3 Related Posts Plugin Definitely a must-have, the WP 2.3 Related Posts Plugin ensures that each of your blog posts comes with a list of links to related posts. This list also appears in your blog feed, so your feed subscribers don’t miss out.

4. Lucia’s Linky Luv This tool does a great job of managing your comments, and is best known for its “dofollow” function. Essentially, this means that people who comment on your blog are automatically rewarded with backlinks, so that their blogs can benefit from your own sites’ page rank. However, it also enforces a “nofollow” rule on comments that are likely to be spam. Brilliant!

5. cformsII Finally, a tool that gives your readers a secure way through which to contact you. cformsII is a neat plugin that lets your readers establish contact with you safely and securely. It boasts of an impressive set of features, and is even shielded against spam.

6. Tell a Friend The Tell a Friend plugin by Social Twist goes beyond the functionalities of your old “Bookmark/Email This!” button. It doesn’t just cover e-mail and social bookmarking services. With this tool, your readers can now share your blog posts through instant messaging, their own blogs, their social networks, and through their own content management systems.

7. Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress What’s great about this plugin is that it automatically makes an XML file of your blog’s site map, so that major search engines like Google can pick up on it quickly. So what’s the big deal about this? When provided with a sitemap that outlines each URL within the blog as well as their corresponding metatags, a search engine spider can crawl through your site better and come up with more relevant search results as far as your blog goes.

If you haven’t taken advantage of these plugins yet, don’t you think it’s time that you finally did? Keep in mind, however, that maintaining your blog’s quality is only half the story in professional blogging. You also have to pump up your site with tools — such as these WordPress plugins — that will eventually make a big difference in your blog revenue.

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Converting Every Visitor into Subscriber

by Tricia on December 13, 2009

If a person visits your website and leaves, chances are that he or she will not come back, especially if there are no compelling reasons to do so.. After all, we all behave rather impulsively on the Internet, so much so that we can easily forget where we were 10 web pages ago.

My point is that these visitors may never come back to your site ever again! If 1,000 visitors visit your website, leave and never come back again, you can imagine the amount of potential revenue lost, simply because they do not come back. You could already have gained a number of customers by converting your visitors.

Some may say that creating unique content can keep some of the visitors coming back,  but very often, unique content is not the solution. The real, long-term solution lies in converting your visitors into subscribers of your mailing list.

And in this case, we are referring “works” to written materials such as reports, articles and books..

Republishing and repackaging articles in order to have fresh content in your webpage is only a temporary solution for keeping visitors.

On top of that, you do not have to pay royalties or copyright fees on that work.If you really like having fresh content in your website, you can try this but like I said, this is only a temporary solution.

Before your visitor leaves your website you want to convert him or her into your subscriber via a simple opt-in to your mailing list. What you need to is to ask for your visitor’s name and email address through your opt-in form.

And if your visitor signs up to be on your mailing list, you can always follow up with him via email. You can get your subscriber to consider your offer, or endorse another offer to him or her.

All in all, you want to convert as many visitors into subscribers as possible and obtain the potential revenue you rightfully deserve – the easy, wise way.

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Many people think that all broadband providers are the same. This is simply not the case. Even people who have been online for years can fall for the marketing schemes of some of these providers. Many of the broadband providers use aggressive marketing tactics and people hurry to sign a contract for a service that will not meet their needs. Since there are differing levels of quality and service among providers it makes sense to compare them before signing up.
 
 There are a few important areas to consider when comparing various internet broadband providers. Most broadband customers need speed. Speed is particularly important to those who do online gaming services and music downloading. You want to get a clear idea of the actual speed you can expect. Always read the small print in the offer from the provider. While many will give you the top speed numbers, you are not guaranteed to get service at that speed. Often you will see the phrases like “up to” when investigating a services speed.
 
 You want a service that is reliable as well as fast. A service that is fast but frequently down can be incredibly frustrating. Not all internet broadband providers offer unlimited downloads. Some providers still place a limit on the amount you can download. If you like to download lots of materials be sure your provider will allow it. Some services offer unlimited downloading but still put a stop to downloading that they consider excessive.
 
 You can have problems with even the most reliable service. This is where customer service comes in. Go online and read customer service reviews for the providers you are considering. Read through several of them and select a provider with a good customer service reputation.

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I generally like to think that people in the world of SEO are quite creative, as what we do does see us get creative to achieve our results. With alot of the tools at our disposal, such as linkbait, ama and blog commenting we really have to think outside the box of conventional thinking to get people interested.

Successful linkbait will grab peoples imagination and have such good sticky content that they cant help but pass it along to their friends. The problem with linkbait is we’ve seen alot of it before- the more its viewed, the less its impact on people, so fresh ideas are needed to keep linkbait fresh.

AMA articles have to be eye catching if we want them to be read. An good title can be the thing that grabs people’s attention and causes them to look into the article. The blog comments that can generate insightful comments or offense will be the ones who get more of a reply.

We’ll need to start getting out of our box if we’re to get our sites that page one spot, as only recently companies have started realising the benefits of SEO, and with morme and more businesses calling for its gonna make things interesting to say the least. Which means theres alot of sites all going for the same spots, SEO against SEO, and i feel itll be the engineer who can think outside the box and bring in that little extra bit of traffic thats gonna take the top spot. ‘Unusual’ and new ideas are always going to get attention whether they are good or bad.

Need some SEO work done or an SEO review of your site? Visit these links.

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Building Google Adwords campaign is a dynamic process that involves fine tuning and polishing to get an optimal result, however, most people would rather turn to experimenting until they find out it’s too late, and their resources have already been drained.

Google Adwords pioneers such as Perry Marshall, the author of The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords discusses this aspect of Google Adwords campaign management in great detail. Specific techniques were shared by Marshall in relation to significantly building results for your campaign and recommended some essential tips to better refine it.

Learn and familiarize all the strategies used by Adwords experts and affiliate marketers and you’ll get your money’s worth; in fact, you can minimize your ad campaign’s cost and get ahead of your competitors just by being meticulous on your choice of keywords. Below are practical and easy-to-follow tips for getting results with Google Adwords and one that allows you to manage costs in the simplest possible way

First: As much as possible, avoid aiming for top spot placement. Unknown to many, the first spot on the Google Sponsored Search results doesn’t always provide the best conversions but the second and third spots. Choosing the 2nd or 3rd spot not only provides necessary exposure of your ad campaign to your market, it also is cost-savvy to do so. For example, it’s more likely that a visitor looking for information goes through the entire list in the search and as thus gives the same focus to all the ads.

Two, remove from your list all negative keywords. It’s common to find that you get hundreds of clicks from a particular keyword or keyphrase, but with very low conversion rates. This is usually the case when you have a ‘negative’ keyword in your ad, which means that people searching for that keyword and finding you are expecting something different.

Lastly, never bid on broad match keywords.  When you want to get some very targeted traffic to your website, don’t waste your money or time bidding on broad or general keywords. Before you start, consult those keywords under the ‘advertiser competition’ results; then observe if the bar gets colored more than halfway because this may be a sign that your chances of bidding the word at a lower price are slim. As you scroll the list down — keep in mind that keywords and keyphrases with low indicator may not be highly competitive but may be availed at a lower bidding price. You can use the ‘exact match’ feature on the Google Adwords Keyword Selector Tool to drill down your search.

Your Google Adwords ad campaign’s conversion rates can be enhanced in varied ways, at the same, ensuring you are dealing with your target market efficiently. Maximize your campaign with any of these strategies and start bidding on winning combination of keywords without spending too much.

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