Making a decision about your blog link structure is in the top 5 things you should do before publishing your first blog post. Your link structure is what you see in your browser address bar when you’re looking at a website, blog or blog post page and it’s one of the most important parts of getting traffic to your post.
One of the best ways to rank higher for your keyword phrase is to have them in your domain name. A blog that is about photography would rank higher and come up in more searches if the domain name was something like www.herviewphotography.com rather than www.herview.ca for example. “Her View” is catchy yes, and of course good branding, but for organic search engine traffic from people looking for fine art photography, www.herview.ca would have to rely on a lot of “on page” optimization.
Having the keyword phrase in the actual url of the website page or blog post is a very important and often overlooked aspect of blog design.
In the example below, you see the URL of another post in this blog
Here you see the domain name Blog Building Basics, followed by the category name of the post in question, “blogging tips” and then the actual post title. The post title is followed by .html which indicates that it is to be viewed in a web browser.
This format is but one way set up your permalink structure and is why I wrote earlier about the importance of a good post title. Aaron Wall, the author of SEOBook, describes how to create search engine friendly page titles in his free search engine optimization video I recently posted and this is where it all applies, the custom permalink structure.
Permalink stands for Permanant Link and is used to describe the full link to the blog post or website page.
When you first go to a blog, you might see a couple of posts on the front page but each post has it’s own page all by itself as well. The link to that single post is called the Permanant Link or Permalink.
A Wordpress blog handles all this through the Custom Permalink Structure setup on the Permalink sub tab of the Wordpress Options Tab.
When you first create a blog with Wordpress, the default setting is chosen. You see in the screen shot that the default setting uses the post id number rather than the title.
If your post is about “Fine Art Photography From Peru” and your post number is 24, the link to your post would be www.herviewphotography.com/?p=24 . As described above, www.herviewphotography.com/fine-art/fine-art-photography-from-peru.html would be much more descriptive and get your keyword phrases in the url.
Using the post id number as your url descriptor is called “ugly permalink”
The Date and Name based setting inserts the year, the month and the day, then the post name without the .html but instead a trailing slash. Much better than the default and used for very busy blogs, ones with many posts and when post titles might duplicate.
If you use the custom one like I suggest, you’d have to do well not to duplicate a post title as your blog ages because Wordpress would gag on it, not knowing which post to show “fine art photography” from March 21st 2004 or “fine art photography” from Dec 22nd, 2006. Same title, two different posts, …hiccup… crash.
If you think your page titles are going to be unique all the time, with no duplication, the best choice for a new blogger in my opinion is to use the custom setting and then specify the custom structure. These url’s that use the full post title instead of numeric descriptor are called “pretty permalinks”
Insert your custom structure into the field provided. In my example, I used two Wordpress Permalink variables %category% and %postname% with the slashes to separate them and followed with “.html” to complete it.
If you use a lot of the same post titles but want to create some sort of uniqueness, I would opt for one of these two custom structures
/%year%/%month%/%day%/%postname%.html
Or
/%category%/%post_id%/%postname%.html
This last option gives you a keyword phrase from the category, inserts the post id to make it unique, then finishes with the post title and then .html
What you’re looking at in the example above are variables that Wordpress uses. A percent sign is wrapped around a word and is then used internally to pull the data from the database based on the variable. The variable %category% is replaced with the actual category. In the case of two categories being used, Wordpress uses the one with the lower id number.
Look here for a complete list of permalink structure tags, and more information about this as not all combinations of structure tags work together.
It’s important if not critical to get this done right before you even write your first post because if you’ve got any inbound links to your blog or blog pages and then change your permalink structure, all those links will now be dead (404 not found). When you first create a blog, choosing a custom permalink structure should be on the top of your list. Besides, it’s easy, the entire Options tab setup takes about 5 minutes or less.
A search engine optimized (seo friendly) page title or blog title is one of the most important aspects of your post. In a previous post, I wrote about how to write a good post title and why it must be written in a way to capture the readers attention. In this video, Search Engine Optimization expert Aaron Wall, author of SEOBook, shows where the title is used, why it’s important and how to write a good title to capture attention
YouTube Direct Link To Videovideo link
After configuring the wordpress dashboard general tab, the next one is the writing tab. The writing tab sets the parameters for your “write a post” page where you enter the actual blog post information.
The options for this tab include the size of the post box ,convert emoticons to graphics for display, setting the default post category, post via email and update services.
This tutorial will focus on the size of the post box and update services
Note: throughout this article and this website, the term “Wordpress Tab” or “Tab” refers to the tabs within the wordpress architecture and not to be confused with the tabs within your Firefox browser.
You’ll see that I have “size of the post box” circled. The number you set here has an impact on how much room you have to write your blog post. By default, the number is 10 which refers to 10 rows of space for writing in.
Go have a look at this right now. Login to your wordpress blog, then click the “write a post” link from your dashboard (or click the “write” tab next to “dashboard”).
Make a note of the size of the “post” box under “title”. Not too big is it? If you haven’t already change this setting, it’s exactly 10 rows tall. Personally, I prefer it twice that size just so I can see more of my post without having to scroll through it while I’m editing it.
Now, go back to the “writing” tab by clicking on Options -> Writing and change this value to 20 so that it doubles the writing space available.
Once you’ve done that, we’ll skip over the blog by email part and straight down to the bottom, the “Update Services”
You may or may not have heard about ping or pinging, but essentially it’s a way for to tell someone or a service that something has happened. Pinging can be used in various ways, but in this case it’s to tell some blog announcement services that “hey, I’ve got some new content, please update your catalog”.
A ping is just a little nudge saying, I’m here, and I’ve got something new. This is an over simplification, but you get the idea.
The “Update Services” is a list of places that accept pings from you so that they can alert their readers or update their lists and put a link to your new post on their website.
What happens is that you ping them, then they come to your website and see what’s new. Then they take the new title of your blog post and usually the first paragraph and update their websites with the new info. This then displays your latest work on their sites so that interested parties can come back to your site and read.
Pinging is a good thing.
Too much pinging can be a bad thing.
By default, this box has one entry in it.
Here are a few more entries that I use myself.
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
Copy and paste these items into your Update Services text field.
Keep in mind that whenever you publish a new post, part of what your web host is doing is then pinging these places. That takes time and server resources. It can slow things down just slightly, so you may notice a slight hesitation in response time. I know of places that give you huge lists of places to ping and then your website just times out when you hit publish. This is a stripped down version of that huge list that I find works.
You get to ping a bunch of places to announce your work, your blog post publishes in a timely manor, you get more traffic and everyone is happy.
Once you’ve configured this “writing” tab on your wordpress dashboard, press the update button. Then go have a look at your “write a post” page and see how the change looks.
When you first create a blog, one of your first steps to complete before beginning any posting is to configure the various subtabs found under the Options tab in the Dashboard. This post focus’ on the “General tab” which shows up first in the list from left to right.
The general tab is where you configure your blog title, tagline, add the www to the domain name and set the blog timzone offset.
Note: throughout this article and this website, the term “Wordpress Tab” or “Tab” refers to the tabs within the wordpress architecture and not to be confused with the tabs within your Firefox browser.
The first two fields, Weblog title and Tagline are just that, the title and tagline. Both are great places to get your keywords into your website and be descriptive at the same time. Depending on your theme, these two fields are used in different ways. The Weblog Title though is always used in the title field of your blog. It shows up in the top part of your browser window, in links shown in search engines and when people bookmark your site (more often than not). Keep them professional using your keywords and being as descriptive as possible.
I want to draw your attention to the next two fields, Wordpress Address (URL) and Blog Address (URL) (you’ll see them circled in red)
By default, your blog is installed without the www. In my case, the default was http://blogbuildingbasics.com. You can leave this if you like, however, when you link to your website, be aware that http://domainname.com and http://www.domainname.com are two different domains in the eyes of the search engines.
It is my opinion that you should always add the www in front of your domain name in these two fields before you do any posting or marketing of your blog.
To update them, simply put your curser in that field and add the www. in front of your domain name.
The last thing of note here is the “Times In The Weblog Should Differ By” field. This is so that when you’re looking at anything that is time stamped in your blog (ie: future posting), you will know when the post is really coming out. You may find that you use this more often than you think in your upcoming blogging experience, so best to just enter your GMT offset here. I’m in mountain time which is GMT -7, so that’s what I put in the box.
Press the update button to complete this portion of the General Tab configuration.
When you first create a blog with Wordpress, I highly suggest that the first thing you do after customizing your Wordpress Dashboard Options is to install these 3 Plugins.
A plugin is like a utility for your blog that does something.
There are programmers all over the world who build these plugins to do little jobs for them and then they share them. Most of them are given away free of charge, so feel free to experiment with them if you like.
When I first create a blog for myself or clients, these are the first three I install and activate.
Wordpress Database Backup Plugin - All your posts, links and any other data you input into Wordpress is stored in a database. If anything should happen to your blog or the web hosting server that it’s on, having a recent backup is pretty critical wouldn’t you think? The first plugin allows you to schedule a backup of your database tables hourly, daily, weekly or on demand. There are few options so that keeps it simple. Set it to email the zipped up database content file to you once a day or once a week depending on how often you blog.
Google XML Sitemap Generator - You have probably seen a sitemap but what the hell is XML? Not to worry, this one you don’t even have to understand, except for the fact that it tells Google, Yahoo and ASK.com about your new posts in a format that they can understand easily and effectively. Think “Marketing”. This plugin generates a search engine readable sitemap and then actually goes out and tells them about it (It pings the search engines and says “come look, I have a new post - here’s where it is!” ). This little plugin is extremely well built by Arne Brachold and I even gave a donation to him I was so impressed and appreciative of his efforts.
Again, with this plugin, simply download it, ftp it to your server using a free ftp client like FireFTP and then activate it. Once activated, go to options -> XML-Sitemap page and check off the fields that apply. Simple. There’s a lot of things the plugin asks on the options page, but most of the default options are fine.
Blog Stats - This one does just what it says, it gives you a nice little interface (within your free wordpress.com account) showing you your visitors, where they came from, what they’re viewing, how many came on which days, what they had searched for to find you and much much more. It’s not really critical at all, but it’s pretty good to know if you’re getting any traffic from your link building and especially knowing what your readers had searched for to find you. This little plugin was created by the Wordpress team at Automattic.
In order to use Blog Stats, you will have to have to have a username with wordpress. They show you your stats via an interface on wordpress. In order to see it, you have to login to your account AND you have to have an API code (Application Programming Interface code - like a unique id for your account). You’ll need this same API code for an anti-spam plugin as well, so if you already have it, you’re good to go.
To get the Wordpress Username and API code, go to www.wordpress.com (dot com, not dot org) and click on “signup”. You’ll see a page where you enter a username and a password for your account.
Below the fields where you enter your username and password you will see this question
Choose the second option as you see here. All you really need is the username so that you can get your API key.
To get your API Key, Follow the “where is my api key” instructions at Wordpress
Where do you store your themes, plugins and files on your web host and how should you store your files on your own client computer? When you install your wordpress blog using either fantastico or by doing it yourself, the file and folder structure is very specific, you can’t really change it, nor do you want to. There is no room for changing the built in structure, leaving you simply having to understand it so you can FTP your files to the proper places.
It’s actually quite easy and there’s really only two places you ever need to be aware of. Having a system of storing files on your own computer is, in my opinion, actually more important than understanding where they go on the server.
Before I even answer the question about where to store the themes on your blog, I would first want to show you how to store them on your own computer. You may either be building multiple blogs to blog about your multiple passions and interests, or you will be creating a blog about one subject. Either way, when you see a theme that you like, you’ll be downloading it to your computer first, then uploading it to your web host. As you see more themes that you like, you’ll probably want to download them as well. This may go on for a great number of themes, so organization is critical.
This principle is the same for themes and plugins
On your computer, you should have a separate folder for each of these items
The idea is to download any themes you like to your themes folder, then copy them to your local blog folder when you want to use one, then upload it to your web host server from there.
The same goes for plugins. If you have multiple blogs, you will want to store your plugins in one general “plugin” folder, then copy them to your blog plugin folder, then upload them to your web host server when you want to use them.
In the image below, you see a sample of how you could set up the folder structure on your computer for organizing your blog files.
When you want to save a file, Windows defaults to your “My Documents” folder so this is a good place to store all your data. It also makes it easy for doing backups as you only have to ever back up one “main” folder, your “My Documents” folder to get all your critical data.
A very easy way to make your blog documents come to the top of the list is to add a number in front of them. Windows sorts the folders alphabetically but puts precedence on numerals, so adding in the numbers 1, 2 , 3 or more will sort them in that order, numberically THEN alphabetically.
Create these three folders
Using the number, a period, a space, then the title of the folder
My Webs could as easily be My Blogs or My Websites or Blogs. I have used the term “My Webs” since the time of websites, so that’s what I’ve stuck with.
Inside you’re 1. My Webs folder, create as many folders as required for your domains. If you only have one domain right now, create the folder and title it with your domain name. This is where you will be storing your blog themes and plugins for that domain.
Inside that new folder now, your domain name folder, create two more folders called “themes” and “plugins”
In the example above, I have a folder inside 1. My Webs called “Blog Building Basics” and another called “Former Fat Guy Blog”. The Blog Building Basics folder has been expanded to show you the contents, the folders “themes” and “plugins”. This is for the themes and plugins that you are using for this blog.
When storing your plugins, it’s a good idea to include the version number of the plugin so that if there’s ever an update to the plugin, you know what version you have on your computer
Now that you’ve got a system in place for storing your files, themes and plugins for each domain you have, I’ll explain where to store these files on your web host server.
Wordpress uses a very simple folder structure and you really only need to know one folder and two subfolders
This is the actual screenshot of my Blog Building Basics folder structure that I took using the FireFTP free ftp client for Firefox. I’ve only included the right hand side pane of the FireFTP view to save space. The left hand side would have shown the files on my computer, but are not required for this tutorial. A few folders I created myself, but Wordpress created the WP-Admin, WP-Content and WP-Includes. As you can probably guess WP stands for WordPress.
It’s the WP-Content folder where you will be putting your attention. Inside the WP-Content folder are three more folders, two of which you will be using, namely the Themes and Plugins folders. I’ll let you guess which one is for which.
When you’ve first started to create a blog, having a system of storing your files is critical. Store them all in My Documents for easy backup, use the number naming system to have the files sort themselves to the top of the structure and keep your files sorted by domain names. Wordpress creates a very easy structure for storing files and the only one you really have to know about is the WP-Content folder. It’s really that easy.
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What is web hosting and why the hell do I need it anyway? Great question that deserves a decent answer. One of the first things I taught to my students was this concept of where their website was physically located. In order to view a website or a blog, it has to have a home. The files, images and content have to be on a server somewhere in the world so that when your domain name is typed in, it displays what you want it to display.
Your Wordpress blog has a home on a web server. The web server is a computer located somewhere in the world and may be shared by many other blogs.
The server that stores all your files and serves them out when requested is called a Web Host. Web Hosting is the first thing you will require after purchasing your desired website name (or domain name).
In the picture above we see a simple diagram showing how your computer is connected to your Web Host across the internet. In the old days (1990’s and early 2000’s), people would work on their web pages using Frontpage or Dream Weaver, Microsoft Visual Dev, or in my case Notepad and then once they had them looking like they wanted, would transfer the files to the Web Host where they would then be available for viewing to people around the world.
Files are transferred to your Web Host using a free ftp program like FireFTP.
These days, blogging platforms like Wordpress make it easy to add content to your website right from within your web browser and the days of manually editing, tweaking and formatting your website are gone. With Wordpress, it’s easily done with the click of a button.
Web Hosts charge a yearly fee for various services that they offer.
Basic packages are around $100 a year but some Web Hosting companies offer much better rates for more than one year. Prices actually vary depending on your contract such as $8.95 per month if you pay by the month, but then lowers to $6.95 per month if you pay for a year in advance. The price may drop to as little as $4.95 a month if you pay for 3 years in advance. I use and recommend both Hostgator and Host Monster as very good places to get your web hosting.
If you want to have a blog or a website, you pretty much need to rent some space from a Web Hosting company in some form or another. There are free places to host your blog, but they’re not as robust or allow you to customize the things you need. They’re a fine place to get started if you need to, but most outgrow their free hosting quickly.
The easiest way to answer the question “what is Web Hosting” is to simply realize that someone, somewhere, has to store your files so that they can be viewed by others on the internet. A Web Host is the computer that manages all the parts of storing your data, managing your traffic as well as the other benefits listed above.
This is a short video tutorial on how to FTP your files from your local computer to your webhost. You’ve got your new webhost account and you’ve used Fantastico to install Wordpress for the first time but you have no idea how to move files from your computer to your webhost. You may have been told about Cute FTP or WS FTP, but neither are free or as easy as they could be. The solution is FireFTP. FireFTP is a free FTP client for Firefox which allows you to transfer files, Wordpress themes, plugins, images or any other files from your laptop or desktop machine to your webhost server account.
When you first install your wordpress blog using Fantastico, from within cpanel, a default theme is put in place. Once you’ve found another theme you want to use to spice up how your blog looks, you will have to first download the theme, and then transfer those files to your webhost to be used. This is called transferring the files and it’s done through a process of FTPing.
FTP simply stands for File Transfer Protocol and it’s just a fancy name for a method of moving files across the internet.
FireFTP is an easy method to do so because it’s an add-on for Firefox and opens within a tab of your browser allowing access to your local files and your remote files.
Local files are those stored on your own computer and remote files are those stored on your webhost server.
Your first order of business is to install FireFTP into your firefox browser. If you have not yet made the switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox, now is the time to do so. Fire fox is much more robust, more secure and easily configurable web browser. Even the US govt warn about the dangers of using Internet Explorer. Switch to Firefox now and you wont ever look back.
Firstly:
Secondly:
Install FireFTP
Third:
Watch this 4m30s video on using FireFTP
I completely understand the confusion about how to ftp, what it means and how to do it when you first begin blogging. Most of us take it for granted as a way to move files across the internet to our webhosts, but for the person new to blogging, I’d like to make ftping as easy to understand as possible. I’ve used both CuteFTP and WS FTP, the latter for years and I’m not only much more happy with FireFTP, I now recommend it as the free ftp client of choice.
When you create a blog, your time should be spent almost equally on the building of the blog, creating the content for the blog and the marketing of the blog. Getting inbound links to your website should be just as important as creating the content. I would explain to clients that even the most expensive, creative and best looking website would mean nothing if it was not seen by anyone. The whole purpose of you investing your time and energy into creating your blog is to have it seen, market your product or services or recommend others product or service.
As you spend your time getting inbound links, you want to be able to measure your results in some format so you know how well your marketing efforts are performing.
One great little tool for the first time blog builder is Link Popularity Check. It allows you to enter your domain name (or multiple domain names) and track how many individual links are pointing at your site as well as total link volume.
Link Popularity Check is free because they use a small advertising system built into their software that upsells another product. The other product is very good as well, but does require a significant investment. If you’re just starting out, Link Popularity Check is a simple and effective tool for tracking your link building strategies.
You can clearly see how easy this free program is to use. Simply enter your domain name, click the update button, and then wait a moment while the software goes out and looks up your inbound link status on the various search engines. The first column is the total number of links while the remaining columns show your link popularity in the individual engines.
Create a folder on your computer called “Link Popularity Reports” and then run the program once a week, say on Monday morning, and export the results to the folder with a date in front of the file name ie: “august 06 2007 Link Popularity List”. This way you can refer back to your reports for last week, last quarter, last year etc and watch your links increase.
Time should be spent on a link building campaign at least each month, and for better results, each week. Link Popularity Check is an easy way to track your inbound linking strategy and results. For more information about the free product, visit Link Popularity Check.
Timothy Ferriss, author of the 4 hour work week recently posted 5 Uncommon Timesavers for bloggers on problogger. These two caught my eye because they’re both very common for me to do, so I thought I would pass it along.
2. Post less to be read more.
No matter how good your material is, too much of it can cause feed-overwhelm and unsubscribes. Based on input from close to a dozen top bloggers I’ve interviewed, it takes an average of three days for a new post to propagate well in the blogosphere. If you write too often, pushing down the previous post and its visibility, you decrease the reach of each post, run the risk of increasing unsubscribes, and create more work for yourself. Test posting 2-4 times per week—my preference is two—and don’t feel compelled to keep up with the frequency “you have to post three times before lunch” Joneses. Quality, not quantity, is what spreads.
3. Define the lead and close, then fill it in.
This is a habit I picked up from John McPhee, a master of writing structure and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. Decide on your first or last sentence/question/scene, then fill in the rest. If you can’t decide on the lead, start with the close and work backwards.
A good formula for the lead, which I learned from a Wired writer, is: first sentence or paragraph is a question or situation involving a specific person, potentially including a quote; second paragraph is the “nutgraph,” where you explain the trend or topic of the post, perhaps including a statistic, then close the paragraph explaining what you’ll teach (the “nut”) the reader if they finish the post.
#2, Posting Less To Be Read More is a concept I got a long time ago. There’s even a Sticky Post Wordpress Plugin that’s available that allows you to post your new posts past the one you want to highlight or bring attention to. Leaving your post on the front page, at the top gets it a lot of exposure so if it’s something you are encouraging comments on, or are marketing something, leave it there for a few days and take your off day from blogging to promote it. Spend your time marketing the post, generating links, use stumbleupon.com, Digg, Reddit.com etc and really hammer home the attention to it. The other option of course is the plugin I mentioned, Lester Chan’s Wp-Sticky (here’s a demo of wp-sticky)The plugin allows you to specify which post number you want to leave at the top and for how long. It’s like a “sticky post”. I haven’t used it yet, but it’s certainly in my bookmarks and ready to be pulled out, uploaded and installed when I do. Lester had two other Wordpress Plugins that I use, namely Wp-Polls and Wp-Print on my Former Fat Guy Blog and I love them both. Thanks Lester!
Timothy Ferriss is author of the #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business week bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek., Visit Timothy’s blog at http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/
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I don’t think Chris McNeeney requires an introduction in the field of Affiliate Marketing. He’s the author of four famous internet marketing guides that changed the entire scenario of Affiliate Marketing namely Adwords Miracle, Affiliate Project X, Day Job Killer and Affiliate Commandments.
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Sometimes lawyers can forget what they’re clients are really looking for. Take a step back and remember what a personal injury attorney really is and what they are expected to do.
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If you are not familiar with Google Adsense you should consider looking into the many features that it offers. Google Adsense is relatively new to the internet world, but it has proven to be a very effective tool that may even be able to make you some money.
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