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What Are Tags and How To Use Them in WordPress

Tag is a very common word used in the blogosphere, but what does it really mean and how (or why) do you use it? My definition of tags:

Tags are descriptive keywords used to label something.

But here’s the “correct” definition according to Wikipedia: Read more

Google’s Paid Clicks Getting Flat?

ComScore recently released a report confirming that Google’s paid clicks for February were only 3% higher than the same period last year. If we then consider that this February had one extra day, the real growth is practically 0% year over year. There is also a 3% declined month over month (February had 515 million paid clicks, while January had 532 million). One point that is not clear is if those numbers are coming from Google’s search network alone or from a combination of the search and the content network. The latter case would probably be bad news for website owners and bloggers alike. Regardless, there is a clear flat trend on paid clicks. Could this be the delayed impact of Google’s latest changes on the ad formats and clickable areas? Or the casual Internet surfer is just getting used (and blind) to contextual advertising? Time will tell. Source: Silicon Alley Insider

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A Year Ago on DBT: March 28

Inspired by yesterday’s guest post I will write some “A Year Ago” posts once in a while. Most of our content is timeless, meaning that even the tips and advice that we published one year ago should still be valid and useful. Secondly, I am sure that we have thousands of readers that were not around one year ago, so they will have a chance to dig on our archives. Finally, it is also fun to see how our tips and writing evolved over the time. Below you will find some interesting posts from the week that ended on March 28, 2007.

• 7 Ways to Promote your Site with a Bit of Money: Some time ago I wrote an article titled “Are you marketing your blog?” where I argued that there is a myth around the Internet that bloggers and webmasters should not spend money on advertising. The myth comes in great extent from the success stories of people that managed to create popular websites without spending a dime on advertising or other paid promotion techniques.
• Always install Wordpress on the root directory: Unless your blog is a secondary part of an existing website you should always install Wordpress on the root directory. When I created my first blog I used an automatic Wordpress instalation that my web hosting company offered, but the standard installation was done on “www.domain.com/blog”.
• Speed Up Your Site: Use a slash on your links: When a server opens a link in the form of “http://www.domain.com/about” it will need to figure what kind of file or webpage is contained on that address, wasting time on the process. If instead of using that link you include a slash (”/”) at the end like “http://www.domain.com/about/” the web server will already know that the link points to a directory, reducing the time to load the page.
• Avoid tricks when placing ads: When placing ads on your site do not try to trick the reader. By trick I mean any technique that will deceive the reader into thinking that a link or image is not an advertising when it actually is.
• Post excerpts on the Homepage?: Lately some blogs are starting to display post excerpts instead of full posts on the Homepage (e.g. Pronet Advertising). There are both advantages and disadvantages with this method.
• Are you marketing your blog?: There is a myth around the blogosphere that bloggers should not spend money on advertising for their blogs. It is founded on the success stories where established bloggers affirm that they achieved thousands of dollars in monthly revenues without spending a dime on advertising or other marketing techniques.
• Customize the Feedburner Chicklet: This tip is easy to implement but it can be very useful if you are trying to customize the text on your Feedburner Feed Count Chicklet. Just look into the HTML code that Feedburner provided you for the Chicklet and locate the address of the image.

Read more

Content Overlay with CSS

Here's the problem: you have a container with some content in it like an image along with some initial descriptive text. Then, when users hover their mouse over the container, a hidden container is revealed to present additional information over top of the current information but in a way that retains content from the original container. This was essentially the problem presented to me by Anton Peck. He had originally asked for a way to do this with JavaScript. To which I provided the following solution that didn't need to use JavaScript at all. Check out the quick demo. When you hover over the container, a new container is displayed over the existing content. The trick here is the use of position:relative to allow the static content to appear over absolutely positioned content. Read more

Welcome to Firepow - Premium Sponsor

Over the last few weeks while I’ve been traveling you may have noticed a new sponsor on ProBlogger in the headline banner position. Where as previously we’d kept this position for internal advertising this month we’ve launched a premium sponsorship package which was quickly snapped up by new sponsor Firepow. Firepow is a new (well actually it’s soon to be released) software developed by a fellow Aussie Hansen that aims to help you make your blogging and niche site marketing a more profitable experience. Firepow will be launched on 30 April and Andrew is currently building a prelaunch notification list so that you can be informed of it’s developments over the coming weeks. I’m yet to use Firepow but have had Andrew walk me through some of it’s features and aims and from what I can see it is designed to help bloggers with three main challenges: Read more

Blog Promotion - Reader Submitted Tips

Last week I ran a series with five tactics for promoting a blog that I’d use if I were starting out again in blogging. To finish it off I asked readers to submit their own blog promotion tips of things that I didn’t include. The comments left were great and I wanted to highlight a few that particularly caught my attention (comments in italics are mine): 1. Frugal Dad writes - “Here are some lessons learned with Frugal Dad:

• Spent too much time trying to get attention from “big name” bloggers (link exchanges, etc.). Should have partnered with small-medium size blogs in my niche, or related niche earlier on.
• Invested too much time commenting, making attempts to network, etc. Should have been writing more, and focusing on good content.
• I completely ignored the power of social networking sites for the first 60 days, and it cost me in slow readership growth the first couple months.
• Spent too much time fooling around with advertising links, banners and Adsense before I had the traffic to justify it. I put the cart before the horse.”

From Darren - I agree with Frugal Dad that sometimes it’s better to aim a little ‘lower’ when networking and interact with other bloggers on a similar level than the so called ‘A-list’ who are constantly bombarded with attempts at networking. I also think that getting the balance between promotional activities and writing good content is key. Spend too much time doing non writing activities and your blog will suffer. A holistic approach to blogging is key. Read more

SEO Tip: Almost 7 Ways To Re-Optimize Your Posts

The following SEO Optimization post was submitted by Linda Bustos fromElastic Path. Smart bloggers often use keyword research tools to brainstorm “long tail” opportunities and keyword niches. These keywords are then worked into blog post titles, image attributes, headings and body copy as part of an SEO strategy, knowing that this “low hanging fruit” can drive some very valuable traffic. While this is a great strategy, it’s not without its downsides. Keyword research tools are often expensive, the data can be unreliable or too general to reflect your readership. If you use Google Analytics, you’re sitting on a very valuable keyword research tool that’s free, accurate and can tell you so much about your readers. I’d like to share a “hack” with you - how you can use Google Analytics to identify your most valuable keyword referrals, and how you can re-optimize your posts to raise your rank and drive more traffic for these keywords. Read more

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