Best Online Tools for Bloggers

Posted on February 17, 2016March 9, 2016 by sitemanager

There are dozens of online tools available that can help bloggers write better posts. Maybe you already use some of these tools, but others may surprise you. Word Counter We all know the importance of writing blog posts with X amount of words. Depending on your niche and intent, this might be 300 words or it might be 2,000. Regardless, you'll need some way to keep track of how many words you've written. Fortunately, WordPress and most other blogging platforms have built-in word counters. If your platform lacks this feature, you can use Word Counter to check the length of your posts. Google ...

Top 3 Security Plugins for WordPress

Posted on February 5, 2016March 9, 2016 by sitemanager

wordpress security plugins, security icon

Powering approximately 60 million websites -- or 25% of the entire Internet -- WordPress is by far the world's most popular content management system (CMS). It's free to download, loaded with features, and offers both a WYSIWYG "visual" editor as well as a code editor. But one of the drawbacks to WordPress is its lax security. According to W3Techs, 17.8% of all WordPress sites are running outdated versions of the CMS, which subsequently places them at risk for hacking. Even if you are running the latest version of WordPress, it's still a good idea to strengthen your site's security by using...

How to Make Your Blog Easier for Search Engines to Crawl

Posted on January 30, 2016March 25, 2016 by sitemanager

Are search engines able to crawl your blog's content with ease? If not, it could have a significant impact on both your search rankings and traffic. Google, Bing, Yahoo and even some of the lower-tiered search engines work by scanning, or crawling, websites to determine what they are about. If a blog site was designed in a manner that prevents proper crawling, however, it won't be able to rank it accordingly. Don't Use Images as Text It may seem harmless enough, but avoid using images in place of text on your blog. Some companies, for instance, will display their name, address and phone numb...

Top 5 Reasons to Choose WordPress

Posted on January 21, 2016January 29, 2016 by sitemanager

Powering nearly 1 in 4 websites, WordPress remains the world's most popular and widely used content management system (CMS). Of course, there's a good reason for its popularity: WordPress is fast, efficient, cleanly coded, and can be used for all types of websites and blogs. Today we're going to reveal just a few of the many awesome features included in the platform. Import Posts from Another Blog Do you currently have a blog hosted on LiveJournal, Movable Type, TypePad or Tumblr? Well, you can import the posts to WordPress using its convenient import feature. In just a few clicks of the ...

Best Practices for Choosing Blog Post Titles

Posted on January 18, 2016January 29, 2016 by sitemanager

Few elements in a blog post hold as much importance as the title. This is what visitors first see upon viewing your post, and it's also what search engines display in their listings. But how exactly do you craft good post titles? Here are some best practices to follow when choosing titles: Use Title Case When crafting titles for your blog posts, it's recommended that you use title case format. Basically, this involves capitalizing the first letter of the first word, as well as the first letter of all major words. Smaller words (e.g. articles and prepositions) should be left all lower case...

How to Increase Your Blog’s Subscribers

Posted on January 10, 2016January 11, 2016 by sitemanager

increase blog subscribers, follow my blog graphic

The number of subscribers a blog has is a direct indication of its success. The more people who follow your blog, the more traffic you'll receive and the more conversions you'll make. But how exactly do you entice visitors to follow your blog? Host a Sweepstakes There's no easier way to attract new subscribers to your blog than by giving away a free gift. If you run a website about dogs, for instance, perhaps you could host a sweepstakes where visitors subscribe to your blog for a chance to a win a free dog bed or leash and collar. The monetary value of this gift is minimal, but because i...

6 Things to Consider When Choosing WordPress Themes

Posted on January 10, 2016January 17, 2016 by sitemanager

If you use WordPress as your blogging platform, you have an almost limitless number of WordPress themes from which to choose. Many are free, and are fine, but you might want to consider these things before you decide which theme to use for your blog. Is It Responsive? Given the fact that more people now use mobile devices to access the Internet than traditional desktop PCs, it's essential that bloggers choose a mobile-friendly theme. Thankfully, there are hundreds of mobile-friendly "responsive" themes available for WordPress. Responsive themes use a combination of CSS3 media queries and p...

GoDaddy Announces Plugin Program for WordPress

Posted on January 8, 2016January 11, 2016 by sitemanager

GoDaddy has announced a new plugin program for the WordPress content management system (CMS). The new program is designed to improve visibility and enhance blogging among WordPress users. While the exact number remains unknown, some experts estimate there to be more than 40,000 WordPress plugins currently online. These plugins add a plethora of features to WordPress blogs and websites, such as the ability to define custom Meta tags, automatic sitemap generation, automatic insertion of relevant links, SEO keywords, and more. While most of these features can be hard-coded directly into ...

Microsoft’s ‘Live Writer’ Blogging Tool Now Open Source

Posted on January 2, 2016January 11, 2016 by sitemanager

Just in time for the new year, Microsoft's ten year-old blogging tool Windows Live Writer is now open source. The company announced earlier this month that it was releasing a variant of the what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) blogging tool under an MIT open-source license. Because it's been several years since Live Writer was last updated, developers agreed that making it open source will allow users to update it as needed. What is Windows Live Writer? Windows Live Writer was launched in 2006. After Microsoft had acquired Onfolio, it rebranded its blogging tool as Windows Live Write...

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