Wordpress Plugins – My top 9 plugins revealed

February 8th, 2010 by markus | No Comments | Filed in Business, Corporate Blogging, Weblogs

One of the advantages of blogging with WordPress blogging software is the option of using WordPress plugins.

These plugins give us additional functionality within the Wordpress software – giving us the ability to put our blogging on autopilot.

Here's my recommended… must-have list of nine WordPress plugins I use myself to enhance my WordPress blog (listed in order of importance):

All in One SEO Pack – This is my all-time favorite WordPress plugin.

It adds automatic search engine optimization options into each WordPress post… ultimately attracting visitors to your blog almost automatically.

I say almost automatically because there are three empty fields to fill out for each post you make:

- Webpage title

- Meta description

- Meta keywords

When you fill out these the right way, you're going to get a lot more clicks from search engine results to your blog post.

WP Auto Tagger – -This plugin automatically scans your blog post and looks for popular keyword phrases. It takes these phrases and creates a backup search engine friendly duplicate page.

Don't fret about the technical details of this plugin. All I can say is that after checking my blog stats, a large majority of my search engine referrals come as a result of WP Auto Tagger creating these tags.

Google XML Sitemaps – This amazing WordPress plugin generates a special Google-friendly sitemap every night helping you get your blog post noticed by search engine spiders and bots.

Google XML Sitemaps creates a file called "sitemap.xml" — an A to Z index listing the details of each blog post. For example, mine is found at:

http://www.marketing-ideas.org/sitemap.xml

Submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo! and Bing and watch your blog content show up faster in these popular search engines.

AdSense Now! – If you're not making money with your blog, you should.

And Google AdSense is the fastest and easiest way to make money I've ever tested (when you put my AdSense secrets into action, that is).

The AdSense Now! plugin makes it a breeze to add Google AdSense revenue sharing into your blog… just install the plugin, copy and paste your AdSense code and configure the positioning settings to display your ads between your blog post's headline and content:

Top: Center

Middle: Suppress

Bottom: Suppress

WordPress Mobile Pack – Let's face it, you're missing out on a HUGE audience if you don't tweak your WordPress blog to fit on a mobile device.

It's estimated that 34 million people can't read your blog — and that's just the number of iPhones sold in the fourth quarter of 2009.

It's nearly impossible to see your blog on any mobile phone… forcing your mobile visitors to scroll left to right… squinting to read your super-small fonts. Most mobile users are going to flee your blog if it's hard to see.

It doesn't have to be this way…

… The WordPress Mobile Pack plugin "mobilizes" your WordPress blog… automatically. The plugin senses a mobile device and automatically switches to a leaner mobile display.

Even better, there's a free option to have your blog listed on mpexo, a directory of mobile-friendly blogs — opening up a new audience to view your new easy-on-the-eyes site.

W3 Total Cache – WordPress is great, but it's notoriously slow loading. It takes many many seconds just to start to see your blog content display.

In today's world, speed is everything. If your site doesn't display in a second or so, your visitor clicks to your competitor.

The good news is this WordPress plugin DRAMATICALLY improves the speed of your blog by adding page and database caching which displays your blog faster.

wpuntexturize – By default, most WordPress themes add "graphic embellishments" to your blog posts… that includes those sometimes fancy curly quotes.

You've probably seen the problem frequently… you go to read a blog post and it's riddled with question marks and other weird characters. This happens when a blogger copies and pastes content from another blogger with curly quotes.

This simple plugin prevents WordPress from making HTML entity code substitutions of single and double quotation marks with their curly alternatives.

TweetMeme Retweet Button – This WordPress plugin displays the popular TweetMeme badge next to each blog post you submit… making it easy for your visitors to post your content to their Twitter account.

But the best part is a snippet of your blog posts gets automatically submitted to TweetMeme's followers — giving you an instant and automatic SEO benefit at the same time.

Broken Link Checker – Search engine robots and spiders don't like it when your hyperlinks to recommended sources are outdated and don't work.

This WordPress plugin checks your posts (while you're sleeping) for broken links and missing images. If there's an issue, you're notified in your WordPress dashboard just after logging in.

Final tip - There's no reason to struggle on your own and figure out the best WordPress plugins to use. If you're ready to put the power of blogging into action, you might want to grab these additional corporate blogging tips, techniques and methods.

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Benefits of Blogging – The truth about blogging for business

January 11th, 2010 by markus | No Comments | Filed in Business, Corporate Blogging, Weblogs

The benefits of corporate blogging are numerous.

Blogging has been around since 1993, but really became mainstream in 1999. And the benefits of blogging have remained virtually unchanged since then.

I LOVE blogging and know you will too. Here's why:

FREE lead generation

For me, putting my lead generation efforts on autopilot is the single biggest benefit of blogging.

Every word I write on my blog has the ability to show up in a search result at the most popular search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing…. in just days (maybe even in a few hours). And when a Google customer searches for words that also appear on my blog, I have an excellent chance to have that same visitor swing by my site FREE.

While my competitors are paying 50 cents… a dollar… or even up to $50.00 for each lead, getting the same precisely-qualified visitor to my blog at no charge is quite exciting.

That's an amazing concept worth repeating…

… Every word you display on your blog is likely to show up in a Google search in hours (or even mere minutes). And when a Google search matches the words on your blog, there's an excellent chance to have that same searcher click to read your entire blog post.

That means every time you write on your blog, you're almost instantly scaling out your lead generation efforts. How awesome is that?

Gain international fame

Blogging positions yourself as the expert on the topic you choose to write about. It's true. The fact that you've put your thoughts in writing is much more powerful than saying it out loud. And the more you blog, the more your "fans" (i.e. repeat visitors) are going to adore you.

Become an instant free agent

Another one of the many benefits of corporate blogging is it gives you instant "free agent" status. Just like a star football player.

When you name your blog with your actual name in the blog title, you retain ownership no matter where you blog from (or for whom you work for).

In today's economic climate, odds are you're not going to retire at the same company you're currently employed with. But the good news is blogging vritually bulletproofs your job security. If your boss threatens to fire you or let you go, just remind him/her that the competition would LOVE to have you continue blogging for the away team.

Blogging is easy

And blogging today is easier than ever. The latest version of WordPress sets you back about 30 minutes to install. After that, you're done. Time to blog. Internet marketing couldn't be easier.

WordPress' blogging software offers us hundreds (maybe even thousands) of "plugins"… almost always free software enhancements that adds additional features to your blog.

I currently use 8 plugins. These plugins help speed up the load time of my blog pages… display the best-matching corporate sponsors next to each blog post… and even handle the SEO work automatically.

The bottom line is no aspect of internet marketing delivers as many benefits as corporate blogging… and the best part is it's all entirely FREE.

And believe it or not, adding content is the easy part. Really. There's no reason for you to struggle with writing your blog. If you're ready to become a corporate blogger right now, you might want to grab these corporate blogging tips, techniques and methods.

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Webpage Title – How to Title Your Web Page To Attract Visits

December 22nd, 2009 by Markus Allen | No Comments | Filed in Website Search Engine Optimization

The webpage title (also known as "Page Titles") offers many important functions. It's one of the most overlooked aspect of website design and internet marketing.

Creating a great webpage title is a surefire way to attract precisely qualified visitors to any of your webpages. It's for this reason I always invest more time on my title tag than any other aspect of my webpage (and suggest you do the same).

Here are my best-kept tips and techniques to create the perfect title tags:

Turn your title tag into a new-visitor magnet

The title tag has always been (and will probably always be) one of the most important factors in gaining high search-engine rankings.

The keyword phrase used in your webpage title draws visitors to your website from search engines.

When the words placed in your page title matches a search query, you have a chance of getting that visitor to your site. No other phrase on your webpage carries this weight. Search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing rely heavily on your webpage title to determine the rank of your featured listing in their search results. They reward you with higher rank when the webpage title matches the overall theme of your content.

The actual text you use in your title is one of the most important factors in how search engines decide to rank your web page. And all major web crawlers use the text of your title tag as the text they feature in their SERPs (Search Engine Result's Pages).

I HIGHLY recommend using popular keyword phrases in your webpage title… especially at the beginning. This is known as prominence. Search engines put more weight in ranking words that show up at the beginning of your title tag.

The most common mistake I see is placing a company name as the title. This is a waste of crucial space as you only have 66 characters to work with (any more are cut off from most search engine results' listings). Make every character count.

Use call-to-action wording

Just because you rank #1 doesn't necessarily guarantee clicks to your website. This is a very common problem, and the good news is it's easy to fix.

Remember, Google (and most other search engines) clone your title tag and display it as a clickable link to your site. What you want to do is encourage these searchers to not only see your link, but to visit your website. You do this by writing additional teaser copy.

For example, this link might get some clicks:

German Chocolate Cake

But I KNOW this link is going to gain a lot of clicks:

German Chocolate Cake – Best Chocolate Recipe You've Ever Tasted

Avoid long-tail keywords

You might think twice about using long-tail keyword phrases in your title.

Long-tail keywords (as the name suggests) are search queries that are longer than average… typically 5 or more words.

For example, a long-tail keyword is something like ‘German Chocolate Cake Recipe’ while a short-tail keyword is something like ‘Cake Recipe’.

Spammers typically try to game Google and other search engines by adding long-tail keywords to their webpage title… and this might work against you if you try the same.

My testing shows 4-word keyword phrases seem to be just the perfect length.

The perfect length

Most search engines only display the first 66 characters of the title of your webpage. Suggestion: Keep your web page titles no more than 66 characters so they show up in the SERPs without being truncated.

A waste of precious time

A lot of internet marketing gurus give us bad information about titles for webpages… instead referring to it as the title meta tag. The title meta tag is not the same as your webpage title. In fact in my testing, I find filling out the title meta tag is a complete waste of time. Instead of generating a meta title tag, just focus on a webpage title.

A before Z always wins

The title of your webpage also doubles as the default entry in your visitor's Favorites when they bookmark your webpage… and most web browsers sort Favorites in alphabetical order — so you might have your first word in your title tag start with the letter "A".

History

Just like Bookmarks and Favorites, browsers use page titles to label pages in the browser’s web surfing history. Having a descriptive webpage title makes it easier for your visitors to return to your webpage.

Final tip

There's no reason for you to struggle with writing a webpage title. If you're ready to write better title tags to get you more leads from search engines, you might want to grab these webpage title tips, techniques and methods.

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