Work At Home Business Blog

I got this technique in an ad from Brad Callen of SEO Elite. His marketing approach is a perfect example of helping others first providing useful information, building trust, and then offer them a quality product.

Anyway the techinque is pretty simple to use you blog to get your website indexed quickly. This form of website promotion is very easy to do and even though the example shows a Blogger blog it can be used for a WordPress blog or any web page for that matter.

I hope you can see how you could use this on other popular sites like Google and MSN. Check it out here Blog And Ping at the end he will pitch his product to you. And just so you know I am not an affiliate of his so I am not sending you there to make any money! Heck I am doing that right here (see below)! I just think it is another great way to use your WordPress blog.

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Technorati Tags: website promotion, WordPress blog, WordPress blog

Copyright © Jeff Houdyschell
http://www.eSmartJob.com

With the growing popularity of blogs and the ease to obtain links through comments on blogs, it didn’t take long for programmers to come up with automated tools to blast link packed spam comments to unsuspecting blogs.

Some just turn comments off for their blog but to me that eliminates one of the great features of making your blog interactive for your visitors. Comments can open discussion between the reader and the blogger. Your blog’s visitors can even subscribe to a post’s comments, getting notified of any new comments, keeping your readers coming back.

The WordPress plugin, Akismet checks comments posted on your blog posts against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.

To activate Akismet from your WordPress blog dashboard, click Plugins, scroll down and click Activate next to the WordPress Akismet plugin. After you do that you will see a box near the top of the dashboard that looks like this:

Akismet is not active. You must enter your WordPress.com API key for it to work.

Click the link in the message, and then the Akismet Configuration panel will open. You should then see this in the middle of the screen:

Please enter an API key. (Get your key.)

On the top of that page click the Sign Up tab, fill in your information and if you have a self-hosted blog choose the Just a username, please option.

Be sure to use a good email address in here to get your login information and WordPress API key, click the box to agree to legal junk and click next.

Check your email and click the confirmation link from WordPress to activate your account. You should then see a page that reads, “Your account is now active!” Click the login link within the text of that page and login.

You should now be at the WordPress.com site, if so click the dropdown box on the very top right of the page and choose “Edit Profile”, now you are in the Global Dashboard.

Within the WordPress Global Dashboard, click Profile, you can now see your WordPress API key on the right side of the page. Oh, and by now you should have also got the API key in an email from WordPress also! But you should still edit your profile while you are in the Global Dashboard.

Now its time to place the API key in the Akismet WordPress plugin; go back into your WordPress blog dashboard, click the link on the Akismet WordPress plugin warning box near the top of the dashboard. Paste the WordPress API key in the box and click update options.

If the warning box is not visible check to see if Akismet is activated, click Plugins and look for the status of the plugin on the right. You will notice that all activated plugins are highlighted green. When Akismet is activated you can configure it by clicking Plugins, and look for the Akismet subpanel (white text in the dark blue bar) directly below and to the right of then main panel menu.

Keeping comment spam out while allowing your blog visitors to comment, will not only keep your blog clean but more interactive and help generate more traffic.

About the Author:
—————————————————————–
Jeff Houdyschell provides proven income opportunities, ideas and information for the best work at home jobs, visit: http://www.eSmartJob.com

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Writing a WordPress Blog post is pretty straight forward. Tagging a WordPress blog post is the extra step to get more traffic, higher search engine listings and page rank.

To get started click Write on the main panel and the Write Post screen opens. Then follow these steps to write your post and tag it using the Ultimate Tag Warrior and Tagalize It WordPress plugins.

• Fill in the title box of the new post.
• Choose or create a category for your post on the right side under Categories.
• You should have check marks in both boxes in the Discussion options panel.
• Do not put a password in the Post Password panel! That will keep your post from displaying on your blog. Only those with the password will be able to read it!
• Under Post Slug (optional) you can create a smaller URL address for your post in here. If you don’t create a Post Slug your post title will be the URL address. Without a Post Slug your post’s URL will look something like this: www.yourdomain.com/category-name/your-post-title/ Using a Post Slug will shorten the last part of the URL to what you create in the Post Slug box. Try to make it shorter but still relevent to the title of your post
• Choose the Visual or Code tab to write your post. Clicking the Visual tab (default) will allow you to type in a “what you see is what you get” editor. The Code tab is for writing in code, you can use this to write or paste HTML or other code into your post.

The WordPress plugins Ultimate Tag Warrior and Tagalize It will play a big role in optimizing your posts and blog.

A tag is simply the term used for keywords in blogging and the above plugins help create and manage your tags as you write your posts.

If you are writing a post about work at home you would want to create a category for the tag work at home and tag it throughout your post. Shown below:

[code]work at home [/code]

The plugins used in this instance do several things.

• An optional feature will create a tag for all new categories added, if I set up your blog this will be activated.
• The tag will become a hyperlink to the category tagged, optimizing your internal linking structure helping search engine ranking.
• They will display your tags on the bottom of your post and can be easily carried into some social bookmarking sites.
• They will embed keywords in the code of the post’s page helping SEO.

More tagging options can be used by the Tagalize It WordPress plugin to tag words that pings two popular blog directories Technorati and Ice Rocket. This will alert those sites that you have content about the tagged words. A pretty easy way to get the word out about your blog. Be sure to add your blog to the those two directories also.

To tag Technorati and Ice Rocket use the followin:

[code] Word or phrase for Technorati

[Tag-Ice]Word or phrase for Ice Rocket[Tag-Ice] [/code]

Once you are done writing and tagging your post click Save and Continue Editing, scroll down to look over your post in the Post Preview box, make sure all your tags are properly formatted and closed and scroll back up to make any changes.

Update for version 2.2 – The preview box is not shown on the bottom of the write post screen but a view link is available on the top right side of the write post box, clicking it will preview your post in a new window.

You can add more tags as a comma seperated list directly below the post editor if you wish. Or look up more tag suggestions with the tags (keyword) suggestions tool.

Once you are happy with your post click Publish, if you have the WordPress Plugin Smart Update Pinger installed and activated it may take a few extra seconds for your post to publish while it pings your blog.

After your post is published click (View site) at the very top of the Dashboard. This next step is very important so be sure to click the title of your post to bring it up in its own page.

Using the WordPress plugins Gregarious and or Share This you should now start social bookmarking your post. Scroll down to the bottom of your post and click the green Share This icon. Click on as many of the sites this shows and start joining them.

If you have just the Gregarious plugin you will see a group of icons below your post. The same goes here, join as many as you can.

Now everytime you make a post be sure to click the post’s title to show it on its own page and click on the Gregarious and or Share This social bookmarking icons and start bookmarking your post.

This post was inspired by the Authority Black Book written by Jack Humphrey. If you are serious about your blog then you need to check out the Friday Traffic Report for free blog marketing and Web 2.0 promotion tactics.

About the Author:
—————————————————————–
Jeff Houdyschell provides proven income opportunities, ideas and information for the best work at home jobs, visit: http://www.eSmartJob.com

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Technorati Tags: WordPress Blog, WordPress plugin, WordPress plugin, work at home, work at home, search engine ranking, social bookmarking, WordPress plugin, WordPress Plugin, WordPress plugin, social bookmarking

This WordPress blog guide is based on version 2.0 and above with the following WordPress Plugins installed.

• All in One SEO Pack
• Feedburner Feed Replacement
• Share This
• Tagalize It
• Ultimate Tag Warrior
• Smart Update Pinger

1. Log in and click Options on the far right. Check your settings in here and change what you want. The Tagline should be a catchy phrase relevant to your blog, Click Update options when you are done.
2. Click Options then All in One SEO, if you want write a description in here about your blog, Click Update Options.
3. Click Options then Sitemap, if a Sitemap was not created already you will be prompted to do so.
4. Click Options then FeedBurner, click the create a FeedBurner feed for (your Blog) Follow the directions on FeedBurner.com and once you have a new feed address (URL) place in into the box on line 2. Don’t worry about line 3. Read more about it here: FeedBurner
5. Click Plugins, and scroll down to the Akismet plugin, if it is not activated on the right side click activate, you will then see a box appear like this:

   Akismet is not active. You must enter your WordPress.com API key for it to work

   Click the link to get an API key and follow the directions to add it to your blog. Akismet keeps spammers from adding nasty comments on your blog. You should really use it.
   

6. Click Presentation; change the look of your blog’s theme by clicking on any theme in this area. You can click (View site) at the top of the page see what it looks like.
7. Click Manage, then Categories. Here is where you create categories to file your blog post. The category should be relatively short and generally related to what you are going to be writing about.
8. Click Write and a new post screen will open; this is where you write your posts. Put the title of your post in the top and write your post. Choose one or more categories on the right side for the post, or create a new category.
9. Under the write post box is a Tags box, this will eventually grow as you create categories. Click the drop down box to choose the tags that are related to your new post. For more about writing and tagging a post read this: Writing And Tagging A WordPress Blog Post
10. If you want to see what your post looks like before you publish it click “Save and Continue Editing” under the write post box then scroll down and look at the preview box. Update for version 2.2 – The preview box is not shown on the bottom of the write post screen but a view link is available on the top right side of the write post box, clicking it will preview your post in a new window.
11. When you are satisfied with your post click Publish under the write post box and your post will take a minute to post because it is send pings out to a bunch of different sites telling them that you have made a new post.
12. Optional but will help get traffic to your blog. Click (View site) at the top of the page, then click on the title of your new post to bring it up in its own page. Scroll down to the bottom and click on the little green “Share this” icon. Click on the sites in there and start joining them. This is social book marking. It saves links to your site on all these sites and helps get traffic to your blog. You should do this after every post. But remember to click the title of your new posts to bring them up in their own page.
13. Claim your blog at Technorati.com. As a member you can claim your blogs, and create a personal Technorati profile, and readers from around the web will be able to find what you’ve written. Membership is free!

If you are new to blogging and Internet marketing I suggest for now you get comfortable just writing posts, or finding information you think is worth reading from other sites and write about that. There are videos and more information here:

Configure A New WordPress Blog

Wordpress Blog

WordPress Videos

General WordPress Information can be found here. What Is WordPress?

Want your own WordPress Blog ?
I can help, find out more here: Blog Builder

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AdSense-Deluxe is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin for WordPress 1.5+ (including WP 2.0) for quickly inserting Google or Yahoo! ads into your blog posts, and managing when and where those ads are displayed.

If I installed your blog then Adsense-Deluxe should already be installed and would just need activated and configured. If it is not already installed you can follow these instructions watch the WordPress videos below or contact me to do it for you.

Installing the Adsense-Deluxe For WordPress plugin is very easy, just copy the adsense-deluxe.php file to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory. So if your blog were installed in the root directory of your site login to your hosting accounts file manager, go to the “wp-contents” folder then the “plugins” folder and place the file in there.

Now login to your WordPress admin panel, go to “plugins” and activate the Adsense-Deluxe For WordPress plugin on the right. Clicking the main “Options” panel should now present you with a new “AdSenseDeluxe” subpanel click that and let’s get started.

In the options for AdSense-Deluxe plugin page on the right click “(Add New)”, under “New AdSense Block” put a name for your new block, if this is your first one it will revert to the default name so it really doesn’t matter what you call the first block. Now just paste your AdSense code in the “AdSense Code” box and click “Add AdSense Block”

Adding additional blocks will now add the name of each new block, for example if you create a new block called “new” will return a name that looks like this: <!–adsense–>

Placing the ad blocks into posts is as simple as pasting in the name of the block where you want the ads to appear, but you must paste them into the “code” box and not the “Visual” box in the “Write Post” screen. You could write your post in “Visual” mode and then switch it “Code” and paste the AdSense block wherever you want.

There is an Adsense-Deluxe drop-down box that can be used from the Write Post panel but only if you chose not to use the visual editor when writing. To turn this option off go to Users, then the Your Profile subpanel and uncheck the box next to “Use the visual editor when writing”. Now the AdSense Deluxe drop-down box will only appear after you click the “Save and Continue Editing” box when writing or editing a post. Simply place your curser where you want your AdSense ads to appear in the post and select what code you want from the drop-down box.

I suggest creating a post template filled with all your AdSense codes (and anything else you may want), just start a new post called “Post Template” and save it without publishing it. Then when you write a new post open the post template in “Code” copy the code and paste it into your new post. Now delete what you don’t want in your new post, add the new content and publish.

This WordPress plugin is very versatile and you can use it for more than ads, you can put anything you want into the “AdSense Code” block and display just about anything you wish. There are also some advanced options for using it in templates in the read me file.

A lot of people have contacted me regarding wrapping the post text around the AdSense. You can use some inline CSS styles to wrap the post text around the AdSense in your post. For an example on this visit the plugins page here and look for the code under the Usage heading on that page.

Grab the AdSense-Deluxe WordPress Plugin over at the Acme Technologies Zeitgeist blog.

About the Author:
—————————————————————–
Jeff Houdyschell provides proven income opportunities, ideas and information for the best work at home jobs, visit: http://www.eSmartJob.com

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Copyright © Jeff Houdyschell
http://www.eSmartJob.com

Adding your WordPress Blog feed to FeedBurner is the next thing you need to do to make the most of your WordPress blog.

Why FeedBurner? Well it’s easier to use FeedBurner’s words than my own:

If you publish a blog, you publish a feed. A feed is the format that allows your content to be delivered (and subscribed to) on the Web.

Why a Burned Feed is Better than a Not-Burned Feed

You blog because [your reason here] and FeedBurner can help you do that better.

1. Publicize your content and make it easy for people to subscribe.
2. Optimize distribution so that your content is properly formatted for all of the major directories and can be consumed by subscribers wherever they are.
3. Analyze your traffic to learn how many subscribers you have, where they’re coming from and what they like best.
4. Make Moneyitize by participating in the FeedBurner Ad Network. Why not reward yourself for your effort?

After you setup your feed you will need to configure several other WordPress widgets and WordPress plugins with your new feed.

Watch the next in the WordPress videos series to learn how.

The video may not show in the screen until it is completly loaded.

Be patient please…

Learn how to add an RSS Feed Email Notification on Your WordPress Blog

Update! Sidebar widgets are now part of WordPress and now just called Widgets under the Presentation menu. The sidebar widgets plugin is no longer needed.

Video Too Small? Click here to watch in a bigger window.

About the Author:
—————————————————————–
Jeff Houdyschell provides proven income opportunities, ideas and information for the best work at home jobs, visit: http://www.eSmartJob.com

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Technorati Tags: WordPress Blog, FeedBurner, FeedBurner, widgets, WordPress plugin, WordPress videos

Copyright © Jeff Houdyschell
http://www.eSmartJob.com

When you first login to your new blog these are the first things you will want to do.

1. Check and or change the name and tagline of your blog.
2. Change the theme or the default themes header color.
3. Download and install different themes.

Click on the video below to watch how it’s done.

The video may not show in the screen until it is completly loaded.

Video too small? Click here to watch it in a bigger window.

Be patient while the video loads…

About the Author:
—————————————————————–
Jeff Houdyschell provides proven income opportunities, ideas and information for the best work at home jobs, visit: http://www.eSmartJob.com

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Copyright © Jeff Houdyschell
http://www.eSmartJob.com

Within the WordPress Reading subpanel under the main Options panel is where you start seeing the versatility of a WordPress blog. You can specify a static page or the normal blog of the latest posts. Posts and pages are different; when you write a post it goes into the blog “loop”. Writing a page is static and doesn’t appear in the loop but is shown as a link somewhere on the WordPress sidebar.

If you choose the static page option be warned that some themes will not show the WordPress sidebar on pages. If this is the case you can add the sidebar to WordPress static pages very easily.

Click on Presentation from the main panel and then Theme Editor. On the right side you will see a list of the current theme’s templates. If you see a “Page Template” click that and the code will appear in the editor box. Copy all the code in the editor and paste it into Notepad for backup. Now at the very bottom of the editor box you should see this bit of code:

</div>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

That is telling the page template to get the themes footer, what we are going to do is tell the page template to also get the sidebar. Replace the above code with the following code and click “Update File”

</div>

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

If you don’t see a “Page Template” then try the same steps above with the “Main Index Template” but be sure to copy the unedited code first into WordPad so you can put things back if they don’t work. Keep in mind that all WordPress themes are a little different and made by many different people so the files in them will vary.

If you managed to corrupt your theme’s templates files and it’s not displaying properly or worse you can’t even see your blog; go back and paste in the unedited text you saved in Notepad and click “Update File” to put things back. What? You didn’t save a backup? Well then you will need to delete the corrupt file in your hosting account and upload an unedited version of it. Not sure what file you messed up? Man, you are a butcher! Then upload a complete unedited version of the entire template to your hosting account.

Knowing how to add the WordPress sidebar to a static page is a great way to use a specific landing page that doesn’t change yet still looks like the rest of your WordPress blog.

The final step in this WordPress guide can be found on my other blog here: Add Background Color To Single Page Sidebar On Default WordPress Theme

About the Author:
—————————————————————–
Jeff Houdyschell provides proven income opportunities, ideas and information for the best work at home jobs, visit: http://www.eSmartJob.com

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Copyright © Jeff Houdyschell
http://www.eSmartJob.com

Be patient, the video will appear correctly when it is completely loaded… I know, I know I am working on it!

As the title states this should be the first WordPress plugin you should install. The Installer plugin then automates all other plugin and theme installations right from within the WordPress blog dashboard.

Anyone just starting out with Wordpress is aware of the pain it is to upload themes and plugins via FTP or uploading a few files at a time in your hosting account. This is where the Installer comes in; this WordPress plugin will be the last one you need to upload to your hosting account.

Installing The Installer WordPress Plugin.

The publisher of Installer plugin no longer supports it and in fact he has taken down all links to it on his site as of this post. It is still available online including here.

Using the WordPress Installer Plugin

To install a new WordPress plugin from the dashboard go to Plugins, now you will see a new submenu “Install Plugin”, simply browse to any plugin residing on your computers hard drive to install it. You can also choose to check the “Activate Plugin After Install” box or activate manually from the manage plugins menu.

Another new “Manage Plugins” submenu is now available under the main Plugins menu. Here you can also activate and deactivate plugins with an added option to uninstall any plugin that was installed by the Installer.

The Installer also places two new submenus under the main Presentation menu; “Install Theme” allows you to install new WordPress themes, and with “Manage Themes” you can uninstall any theme installed by the Installer.

The Installer is great little WordPress plugin it eliminates multiple steps installing new plugins and themes and you will find it indispensable if you are frequently experimenting with new plugins and themes for your WordPress blog.

About the Author:
—————————————————————–
Jeff Houdyschell provides proven income opportunities, ideas and information for the best work at home jobs, visit: http://www.eSmartJob.com

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Technorati Tags: WordPress plugin, WordPress blog, WordPress plugin, WordPress blog

Optimal Title by Aaron Schaefer is a WordPress plugin that changes the title of your Wordpress blog posts to show the title of the post or page first. By default, a WordPress blog will show the blog title before the post title, Optimal Title switches that around for better search engine optimization.

The post or page title appearing first will return more relevant information for the search engines and display results from a search, in turn giving your page a higher probability of targeted traffic.

Installing the Optimal Title plugin is a little different than most plugins and requires a few extra steps. Aaron Schaefer wrote the instructions on his site and can be found at: http://elasticdog.com/2004/09/optimal-title/. However for those who are not familiar with, or comfortable working with WordPress template code, this will walk you through the few extra steps of configuring this excellent WordPress plugin.

Installation

1. Download here Optimal Title

3. Unzip, and upload the file called optimal-title.php to your wp-content/plugins/ directory.

3. Activate the plugin on your WP Admin » Plugin Management page by clicking the corresponding “Activate” link under the Action column.

*Update Note* The additional instructions below will explain how to change or download a text file as a php file, these are based on Aaron’s original instructions and are only applicable if you download the Optimal Title plugin as a text (.txt) file. These steps are outlined in the video but are not necessary if you download the zip file that should already have the correct .php file extension.

Change the extension of the downloaded file from .txt to .php (if you can’t change the extension before you upload it simply upload the .txt file and then login to your web host’s file manager and change the extension there).

Another, and easier option is to right click the download link and chose “Save link as”, or “Save as”, then in the “Save as type” drop down box choose “All Files”. Then in the “file name” box add the .php extension and save the file as a .php file.

Changing your WordPress blog templates file permissions

After you upload the Optimal Title WordPress Plugin you will need to add some code to your header.php template. In order to do this you must change the file permissions (CHMOD) of the header.php file in your web hosting accounts file manager.

In your web hosting accounts file manager browse to the location where your main Wordpress files are installed, then go to /wp-content /themes and open the folder of the current theme you are using. Find the header.php file and change the file permission to 777.

Now you are ready to add the code to make the Optimal Title WordPress Plugin work its magic.

Usage

Warning! Before making any changes to your Wordpress templates, copy the entire contents of the file to notepad or another text editor and save an unedited copy of the file on your computers hard drive. If things go bad simply paste the unedited code back. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

In your header.php file replace the function call wp_title() with a call to optimal_title(). You’ll also want to position your blog name after your usage of Optimal Title in order for this to work as intended. You should end up with a line that looks something like this:

New code to place in header.php file

<title><?php optimal_title(); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

I suggest as Aaron does, to use the more complicated version below all you need to do is look for the code in your header.php template that looks something like this:

Sample of original title code in header.php file

<title><?php bloginfo(’name’); ?> <?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> » Blog Archive <?php } ?> <?php wp_title(); ?></title>

And replace it with either line of code. All you are doing is replacing the code between the title tags <title> new code here </title>

For a more complicated version that checks to make sure the plugin is installed and also includes support for a tagline on the home page, this is actual code I use on this site:

Suggested code to place in header.php file

<title><?php if ( function_exists('optimal_title') ) { optimal_title('|'); bloginfo('name'); } else { bloginfo('name'); wp_title('|'); } ?><?php if ( is_home() ) { ?> | <?php bloginfo('description'); } ?></title>

*Special Note – Since the header.php file is specific to each theme, you will need to replace the code in each themes header.php file if you change themes.

Parameters

Optimal Title uses the same syntax as wp_title, from the default WP installation, and thus functions in the exact same way…

<?php optimal_title(’separator’, display); ?>

* ’separator’ – string – The text to place between portions of the page title, such as the blog name and the category. Defaults to ‘»’.

* display – boolean – Should the title be displayed (TRUE) or returned for use in PHP (FALSE). Defaults to TRUE.

Special thaks to Aaron Schaefer for this great Wordpress plugin, Visit his blog the ElasticDog

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Technorati Tags: Wordpress blog, WordPress plugin, WordPress blog, WordPress Plugin