Blogging

How To Manage Spam Comments In WordPress

Posted on by sitemanager
One of the perks of choosing WordPress as your blogging platform is the ability to engage directly with your visitors. WordPress has a built-in commenting feature which allows visitors to share their thoughts on posts/articles. While you can always disable this feature, it's usually best to keep it turned on. Each time a visitor leaves a comment, it creates unique content for your blog -- and search engines love fresh, unique content. Unfortunately, though, WordPress also attracts comment spam. You may notice generic comments like "Great blog, I'll grab your RSS" or "This was a wonderful bl...
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Who Owns Your Domain Name? Hopefully You Do

Posted on by sitemanager
The domain name is arguably the single most important element of a website, which is why it's important to have complete ownership over it. Unfortunately, however, it's not uncommon for inexperienced bloggers and webmasters to allow their web designer to register the domain name for them. This may not cause any immediate problems, but it can lead to some severe heartache later down the road. Third-Party Domains The biggest problem associated with third-party domain registrations is the potential for losing control of the domain. Even if you are the rightful owner of the domain, the Internet ...
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Why Self-Hosted Blogs Are Better

Posted on by sitemanager
One of the decisions you'll have to make when starting a blog is whether to use a hosted or self-hosted platform. Two of the most popular blogging content management systems (CMS) -- WordPress and Blogger -- offer both of these options. While many beginners automatically assume hosted is the best option, spending the extra time and resources to set up a self-hosted blog will prove far more beneficial in the long run. Custom Domain You can always tell if a blog is hosted or self-hosted by looking at its domain name. Hosted blogs are restricted to subdomains, such as yoursite.wordpress.com...
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Can You Really Make Money Blogging?

Posted on by sitemanager
The short answer to this question is yes, you can make money blogging. But it takes more than just throwing up a WordPress site and a couple of short articles to produce any sizable income. Blogging is highly competitive industry, with millions of active blogs currently online. If you want to succeed, you must differentiate yourself from the rest while providing something of real value to your readers. So, how can you make money blogging? Dozens of different opportunities exist, one of which is writing blog posts for high-traffic blogs in exchange for a flat per-post fee. It's not uncommon ...
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Google Publishes SEO Advice For April 21 Deadline

Posted on by sitemanager
Google is expected to roll out a major change to its search ranking algorithm on April 21, 2015. The update, dubbed "Mobilegeddon" by some, will focus on improving the quality of Google's index by raising the rankings for mobile-friendly websites (hence the name). Google has taken a keen interest in mobile compatibility lately, encouraging websites to update their websites and blogs so they are compatible for smartphone users. To better prepare webmasters for the upcoming Mobilegeddon, Google has published a guide on common mobile mistakes. The Mountain View company first tweeted the guide ...
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Creating a Mobile-Friendly Blog

Posted on by sitemanager
In case you didn't get the memo, mobile Internet traffic surpassed desktop traffic for the first time ever last year. This means more people use their smartphones, tablets and wearable devices to access the Internet than traditional desktops and laptops. Bloggers who fail to cater to the ever-growing demographic of mobile Internet users are placing themselves at a serious disadvantage. So, how do you create a mobile-friendly blog? There are three different configurations for creating mobile-friendly blogs. The first uses a separate mobile domain. Ever visit a website on your smartphone and ...
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Why Small Business Owners Should Blog

Posted on by sitemanager
Many people assume blogging is only useful for personal purposes, sharing with world your political views or movie critiques. While there are literally thousands of blogs that fall under these categories, blogging can also be used to promote and grow a small business. To learn more about the benefits of blogging for small businesses, keep reading. Builds Authority Arguably, one of the greatest benefits of blogging for small businesses is the simple fact that it helps to build authority and credibility. Your target audience will read your blog's content, at which point they will view you ...
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Common Blogging Pitfalls and How To Avoid Them

Posted on by sitemanager
Thinking about starting a blog? Thousands of people make the decision to launch their first blog every month, but only a small fraction succeed. This week we're going to take a look at some of the common pitfalls of blogging and how to avoid them. Generic Cookie-Cutter Template If you're serious about blogging, you should invest in a custom template (or theme for WordPress sites). Using the same web design as hundreds of other blogs sends the wrong message to your target audience. Readers will view your blog as being unprofessional and generic, and they may even mistake it for another bl...
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5 Simple SEO Tips For Blogs

Posted on by sitemanager
#1) Beware of Duplicate Content While small amounts of duplicate content shouldn't have a negative impact on your blog's search ranking, large amounts can knock it several pages back. Blogs are particularly susceptible to duplicate content since they often publish the same content in multiple areas. In WordPress, for instance, content is published in categories, archives, tags, author, and the actual post URL. The bottom line is that you need to implement some type of measure (e.g. canonical URLs, plugins, noindex, etc.) to prevent duplicate content issues. #2) Publish New Content Regula...
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Security Vulnerability Spotted In Yoast SEO Plugin

Posted on by sitemanager
A critical security vulnerability has been identified on one of the most popular and widely used SEO plugins for the WordPress content management system (CMS). Yoast SEO suffers from an exploit which allows hackers to modify the server's database using a method called blind SQL injection. And failure to fix this vulnerability could have disastrous consequences. Yoast SEO features a wide range of tools designed to help webmasters and bloggers optimize their sites, including an XML sitemap generator, RSS enhancements, on-page content analysis, custom titles and meta tags, breadcrumbs, canonic...
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