My good friend Jack Spirko wrote an awesome blog post today about how to do search engine optimization for wordpress blogs.  He talks about plugins to use. He gives you some tips on how to get links, and also some tips on how to turn your blog posts into cash.
If you are a blogger or podcaster or are thinking about setting up a home business you’ll want to read Jack’s post. Â He gives a lot of solid advice on why you need a blog and how to make money from that blog.
I’d also like to recommend another article on SEO for WordPress by Yoast (Joost de Valk). Yoast is a WordPress plugin developer who has a lot of expertise in SEO.
Do I practice what I preach? I wrote my book Nichework Marketing  about the importance of blogging for your business. I also recently converted my Custom Greeting Card Guy web site from a traditional web site to a WordPress powered site. I’m using many of the same plugins Jack and Yoast talk about in their articles on WordPress SEO and my site ranks very well (top 3) for a bunch of keywords on Google.
Check out the articles above on Search Engine Optimization for WordPress (SEO) and let me know if you have any questions. I’m happy to help!
This site is a traditional web site, right?  It has content about my business and a call to action to get people to opt in and request a trial of my service.
This web site is actually powered by WordPress, the popular blogging software!
BTW this site ranks well in Google for several key word phrases.
In my Nichework Marketing webinars I’ll be revealing more about how you can do the same… and why this is so powerful to your online marketing…
I wrote last week about a wordpress SEO plugin. I heard a good bit of positive feedback so I thought I’d share another WordPress blogging tip for you.
If you do SEO (search engine optimization) you might want to check out cbnet Ping Optimizer. This wordpress plugin does a couple of key things.
#1 it includes a list of popular ping services
#2 it prevents you from ping spamming
What does that mean?
Ping services are provided by blog directories and search engines. When you update your blog you send a “ping” to these services to let them know that they need to check your site for a new entry. This can be a very powerful tool for SEO because it gets links to your site and can help you get indexed quickly. This is one reason why you can get a blog into the search engines within days. You don’t have to wait weeks or months to get a blog listed.
Cbnet ping optimizer has a list of ping directories included in it. You don’t even need to know what to do You just need to activate the plugin. They’ll update your list of ping services for you!
The problem is Ping Spam
Typically when your blog pings one of these services it pings it every time you update your blog. If you’re like me and you edit your posts, change the text, correct spelling, etc. Every time you do this it pings those blog directories. However if you ping them too often, they may consider you to be spamming them and may block updates from your site. Let’s say for example you post a new blog entry, then you read it and find some spelling errors. You correct the error and save your changes. That is 2 pings. Then what if you decided you want to add another note or a PS to your entry. That is a 3rd and 4th ping. If you do that within 10 or 15 minutes it might appear as if you are trying to spam the blog directory to get more links to your site or keep your site at the top of their “updates”.
Cbnet Ping Optimizer to the Rescue!
Another feature of this plugin is that it can help prevent you from accidentally ping spamming!
When you install the plugin click on the settings link. Then you’ll notice the list of ping services. Right under that will be two checkboxes.
1. enable pinging
2. limit excessive pinging in a short time
I have my blog set to not ping unless I have gone 30 minutes without a ping. That way if I go and edit my blog entry several times it won’t ping again. This protects me from being a blog “ping” spammer.
Pretty cool right?
Perhaps you don’t understand all this… and that’s ok. However if you run a wordpress blog you should install this cbnet Ping Optimizer. Then activate it, view the settings, and check off the two checkboxes. You’ll be glad you did.
Are you a blogger? Do you want do SEO? Do you want to get better search engine rankings?
There is a new plugin for WordPress blogs which takes a lot of the SEO burden off your shoulders. This plugin replaces a half dozen other plugins.  The plugin is simply enough called WordPress SEO. It is written by Joost De Valk who is a well known plugin writer as well as the host of a popular WordPress podcast.
WordPress SEO is a great new plugin. It replaces the need for separate plugins. Before you’d need plugins for:
Titles
XML sitemaps
Breadcrumbs
Google Analytics
Meta Headers
robots.txt
RSS footers
WordPress SEO attempts to put all these tasks into one plugin. It can even look at your configuration and popup some basic warning messages for SEO optimization.
Congrats Joost. You did a great job with this plugin!
I just added a new plugin to the blog which will help all of you who leave comments. You can now “quote” and “reply” to previous commenters! That way it makes it a little bit easier to follow discussions on the blog!
We’ll also be able to keep track of who our top commenters are.
Play around with the new features and let me know if you run into any problems.
Dear readers,
You just need to activate the plugin. They’ll update your list of ping services for you!
