WordPress for Absolute Beginners is brand new free PDF ebook that can be downloaded now and comes with full giveaway rights, allowing you to share it freely with others.

Unlike many WordPress basics type books, this 20 page PDF cuts through all the jargon and explains all the things that so perplex many who are completely new to WordPress.

It explains what WordPress is, how to use it, the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, the requirements for each and exactly how to get up and running.

It was written in light of the huge number of misguided, albeit often well meaning, comments that are regularly thrown around online telling people “Get WordPress, it’s easy” so casually thrown out as “advice”. Such advice often comes from such a wide variety of WordPress users that it soon becomes apparent that the value of such advice might often be somewhat questionable. Someone who uses WordPress.com for example, who has never even heard of WordPress.org is hardly in a position to remark on how simple the self hosted path might or might not be and are often completely unaware of the difference. An experienced hard core WordPress designer or coder is equally reckless if they tell a beginner how easy WordPress is to customize or manage without even considering the recipient’s knowledge level.  This is the problem – most people who post throwaway one liners on twitter and other social networks do so without considering either a). the knowledge and experience of the person to whom they give the advice or b). their own knowledge and experience in relation to the advice.

It is not uncommon to see pleas from people who have spent money on a premium theme or plugin only to discover that they can’t use them on WordPress.com. Others tell people they can host their own domain name on WordPress.com (true) but do not understand that this is completely different from hosting WordPress on your own domain with a hosting company. The list is endless and it is hardly surprising that so many people end up lost and confused. As the saying goes, free advice is so often worth what you pay for it.

In simple terms this book explains things such as getting a domain name, a hosting account, installing WordPress, and the basic first steps you should take as a brand new user with your first WordPress installation.

It is aimed squarely at the complete novice although a few nuggets will also be enlightening for more seasoned users – most people can learn something from this ebook. It’s free to download and you can give it away to others, the only proviso being that the content remains unaltered in any way.

If you have an audience you think might benefit please feel free to offer it as a gift to them – blog readers, newsletter subscribers – you can even add the book to giveaway events and similar.

Download Your Copy Of An Introduction To WordPress For Absolute Beginners Here

QR Codes are gradually becoming more and more familiar both online and off and they can be extremely useful and profitable. Now that they are mor

e widely recognized, they are becoming even more so.

If you are not familiar with QR Codes yet, they are basically a simple bar code that can be scanned using modern smart phones and you can embed within those codes all kinds of messages, web addresses, phone numbers etc. They are commonly used to provide exclusive offers and many big name companies are now utilizing them on offline advertising materials. You can use them online, add them to signatures, use

them as profile images, print them and distribute them offline, use them on business cards, posters, flyers etc.

Sample QR Code

For the non technical it might seem like wizardry and seemingly complex but if you know how to create codes you can often sell them to local businesses anxious to mimic the big boys or simply to widen their audience.

There are plenty of online generators now but what we have here are two QR Code generators that you can install on your computer enabling you to create unlimited codes containing whatever you choose. One is a WordPress plugin and will work right from you WP dashboard allowing you to quickly create multiple QR codes of various types which will then be easily accessible from within your WordPress admin area.

I hope you will find them useful – with a bit of imagination, QR Codes can be extremely good tools to have in your marketing arsenal. I’ve also thrown in some great little niche marketing bonuses within each download which you’ll have access to when you download either software.

Download QR Code Easy – Click Here

The following video is a quick demo of the WPTagz plugin. This version is not rebrandable but is fully functional and works exactly as shown in the video.

Download WPTagz QR Code Generator For WordPress

Related articles

• Codee Software Launches Business Edition QR Code Product (prweb.com)

Free PDF niche marketing reports and ebooks for bloggers and affiliate marketers are extremely useful in a variety of ways and as it’s been a while since I gave anything away I thought it might be nice to share a collection of niche reports that you can download immediately and use to promote your own site, opt-in list or whatever.

There’s no catch here, you can use any of these free reports as your own giveaways and rewards, you can even add them to free giveaway events if you choose.

No opt-in is required. The link below is a direct download.

The free reports cover a variety of niches so hopefully there is something useful for everyone. They are all contained in one zip folder that can be downloaded from the link below:

 Click To Download Your Free PDF Ebooks Here

Inside you will find the following free reports, all of which you may give away or even sell if you wish. You may use them in free marketing giveaway events, use them to build your list, offer them to your own website visitors and social networks. I hope you will find some of them useful and as you can see, some of the most popular niche markets are catered for.

Below is a sample of just one of the titles to give you an idea of the type of content you can expect – this is the Membership To The Bank report and is best viewed by clicking on the full screen mode:

The other included titles are listed below:
twitter Marketing Mastery
JV Fast Profits
Membership To The Bank
Domain Flipping Treasure Map
Work At Home Maximum Profit
Facebook Marketing Profits
Hand Over Fist Moneymakers
Work  At Home Maximum Profit
PLR Godfather
Building The Business Brain
Offline Super Cash
Fitness Resolution Fortress
The Basics Of Bodybuilding
The Beginners Guide To Golf
The Basics Of Forex
Energy Efficient Home Ideas
Super Speed Dating Secrets
Authority Anthem
Courage and Confidence
How To Make Her Fall For You On The First Date
10 Sure Shot Ways To Get Your Ex Back Within One Week

Catalyst WordPress Marketplace

Catalyst WordPress theme framework has been thoroughly reviewed by me already (Catalyst WordPress Theme Review) but the company recently introduced the Catalyst Marketplace and with that comes some exciting news.

Firstly, to celebrate the launch, you can get all editions of Catalyst, including the developer licence for a massive 25% discount until the end of October 2011. If that’s enough to spur you into action click here to download Catalyst now.

The marketplace is available only to Catalyst members and users and will contain an ever growing collection of themes, plugins etc. and many of these will be free for all users. As time goes by, the marketplace will be populated with more and more official content in addition to user generated content.

If you build your sites with WordPress and are not using Catalyst already, now is the time to get your licence. You will never need another WordPress theme again and once you discover the power of this framework, you will never look back. The addition of the marketplace is just going to make you, as a Catalyst user, even happier if that’s possible!

If you want to build great sites fast, I highly recommend Catalyst to every level of WordPress user and the Marketplace is just more icing on an already accomplished WordPress cake.

The following videos give a taste of what the Marketplace offers and some examples of what you can expect as a Catalyst user. For a more thorough run through visit the Catalyst website where you can watch a number of demo videos and look at the entire range of features.

The first video shows one of the newest Child themes recently added to the Marketplace.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Marketplace will be user driven to a large extent and if you are interested in becoming a contributor, the following video gives a basic introduction to how it works and how you can get involved.

Click here to view the embedded video.

WordPress Custom Widgets Plugin

A WordPress custom widgets plugin may not sound very exciting but if you are using a free or premium theme that does not include custom widget area functionality, this WordPress plugin could be just what you need.

So what are custom widget areas?

Most WordPress users are familiar with widgets and using them to add content to their sidebars but many people don’t know that widgets can also be used within the content of their blog or website too.

If you use a theme framework such as the excellent Catalyst you will have very flexible custom widget options already available to you within your WP-admin dashboard, and a good number of premium themes may also include some sort of custom widget options but if you don’t have them, this is where this plugin comes in.

Until you have used custom widget areas you probably won’t miss them much, but, like so many things, once you’ve used them it’s hard to do without them. You can use custom widgets just the same as you use your regular sidebar widgets to display all manner of things including javascript, banners, advertisements, sign up and opt-in forms etc. This ability becomes extremely useful when writing posts, building pages and tweaking the overall design and functionality of your site.

The plugin is simple to install and use. Once you have uploaded to your site you will see a new menu item under “Settings” titled “Custom Widget Area” where you can create your new custom widgets. You can then visit your widgets page where you can add widgets within those new custom widget area – let’s say you want to place an adblock or banner withing your post content as an example – you create a text widget containing the relevant code and then drag it into your newly created custom widget area and you’re set to go.

As you create your content, using the visual editor, you will see a new icon in the menu bar at the top. Place your cursor where you want to embed the custom widget area, click the icon, choose the desired custom widget and preferred layout and click add. The plugin will create and insert a shortcode to generate the desired content.

Once you are familiar with this simple process, creating and adding custom widget areas is fast and easy and you can use them anywhere on new and existing posts.

Full Details of This Plugin can be found at WordPress Custom Widget Areas Plugin

More Related WordPress Plugins

Widget Ninja

WordPress Widget Bundle

WP Pro Advertising System

Google Plus Widgets Collection

WordPress speed and load times have become increasingly important, particularly since Google decided that the speed of a website would be included in their search ranking algorithm. If your site is very slow to load, not only will this now put off a percentage of your visitors, it might conceivably affect your ability to achieve certain ranking levels in the SERPS for your chosen keywords. It’s just one more thing to consider if you run WordPress powered sites.

WordPress is a great dynamic platform but it is easy to forget that as time goes by, the more content and features you add, edit and remove, the more you need to keep on top of your sites’ performance. Housekeeping is a boring and tedious task but we’ve put together some resources designed to make the chores a little easier.

So, how do you know if your sites are running too slowly in the first place? The first thing we recommend you do is open a Google Webmastertools account if you don’t have one already.  This is something that everyone running any kind of website should have for the wealth of important information and diagnostics it provides you with.

Next, add both the Firebug and Page Speed extensions to your Firefox. (Also available for Chrome if you prefer Google’s browser).

You can now go ahead and load your page and test it with the extensions you have just added. If the results are horrible and don’t mean a thing to you, never fear, read on to discover a number of ways to bring your website up to speed.

WordPress Plugins for Performance

The following WordPress plugins can all be useful in your quest for greater performance and are listed in no particular order aside from the first one which we highly recommend all WordPress users should install on all sites.

W3 Total Cache Plugin – download and install W3 Total Cache and follow the instructions carefully. It is probably the most complete and stable caching plugin currently available but, it needs to be set up carefully because some settings may actually make your site perform worse in certain areas. This will depend on several factors including your hosting arrangements and everything that is running on your site, themes plugins etc.

The good news is that there is plenty of help available if you need it. As you tweak the settings, check the effects it has on your page speed performance using Firebug or the Google Page Speed option that W3 Total Cache can install on your WP-admin dashboard if you select that option. W3TC can be tweaked for shared hosting, VPS users and dedicated servers. It places a new set of options in the left hand menu of your WP-admin panel.

Also check to make sure that all the features of your page are still displaying correctly and if you are using any kind of pop ups check that they are working – often the minify settings can mess with such things.

It is a great cache plugin but the options available also make it easy to end up with conflicts or even slowing down your site – there is a great guide already published on Zemalf.com and we highly recommend you read it and follow the set up instructions provided at their site – W3 Total Cache WordPress Plugin Setup Guide

IF things go wrong the important thing is not to panic! We have had a situation where all we got after configuring the plugin was the dreaded white screen = no admin dashboard and no site. If this happens the simple fix can be found at HackTrix – How To Fix The Blank Page Or Blank Screen In WordPress

If you find yourself having major problems with the plugin – and some sites do seem to have them, so be warned, there are alternatives. We installed and configured W3TC on one site and it seemed to be performing fine until we saw the error logs on cpanel which had grown to over 2GB!We can’t tell you what happened but the site was throwing up 500 internal server errors and that was enough for us to uninstall the plugin. We did try messing with the settings but all was to no avail, so it had to go. After deleting the plugin there were several display problems and only after much frustration and head scratching did we get things working normally again. If you have this problem it might be worth waiting a while to see if your site returns to normal after uninstalling W3TC because in our case it seemed to fix itself  after a couple of hours so maybe there was some residual caching going on – we really don’t know.

If you do have issues we would recommend you give  Hyper Cache for WordPress a try instead. This is a far less intimidating plugin to install and works straight out of the box in our experience. When we installed it on the aforementioned site the page speed ratings were within one or two points of those achieved with W3TC  and we didn’t have to spend ages carefully configuring it. We will monitor it carefully but so far it’s looking very capable indeed and isn’t causing any obvious problems at all. Top marks for Hyper Cache. This is the plugin that we use on this site and although it is not as effective as W3 Total Cache, it gave us far less issues. With W3TC, if you are using manual settings to minify javascript and CSS, you will have to keep those settings up to date each time you add/remove plugins etc. and to be honest, the speed advantage over Hypercache wasn’t worth the hassle but that is just a personal preference, and, as the saying goes, your mileage may vary!

In addition to W3 Total Cache, or Hyper Cache or even in isolation the following plugins can also be helpful in speeding up your WordPress page speed.

Clean Options WordPress Plugin – If your blog has been around for some time you’ve probably added and removed all kinds of plugins, themes etc. This plugin Finds orphaned options and allows for their removal from the wp_options table. You could have hundreds of orphaned options and this will help you clean house in that area. Be careful and make sure you are definitely only removing genuinely orphaned items though. You might be well advised to back up before you make any changes just as a precaution but on the whole the plugin is reliable and does a good job.

Better Delete Revisions WordPress Plugin – use this plugin to delete the revisions that WordPress automatically creates and stores every time you create ot alter posts and pages. These files can build up over time and take up space and impact on performance. This plugin makes it simple to find a delete all the revisions clogging up your WordPress. If you want to prevent revisions being stored in future you could install the Revision Control plugin to make the job easy. If you do this, you can remove the Better Delete plugin once you have set Revision Control to not save revisions in future.

If you have access to PHPMyAdmin through your hosting account you can then optimize your MySQL database. It’s easy to do – just click on the db name (WDRP1 or similar) highlight all the tables and select optimize from the drop down box at the bottom. That’s it, done. This can make a surprising difference to your site’s performance all by itself.

If you prefer not to mess with your databases in this way, try installing the TentBlogger Optimize WordPress Database plugin and do it from your WordPress admin with one click. The plugin will always tell you when your database is optimized and if not how much space you can shave off by optimizing. Couldn’t be simpler. It works on most sites although we did have a poblem with it on one WP site but to be fair, it’s an old site and the theme conflicts with a fair number of plugins so that was probably the culprit as opposed to the plugin itself.

Another useful plugin is WP Smush.it, basically an image compression plugin that will reduce the size of all the images in your WordPress media library and consequently improve load times. The quality of the images is not adversely affected and once installed it will automatically compress any images you add to your pages and posts. You can also apply it to all existing images in your library. Worth looking at if you have an image intensive site.

As you implement these things you should find your performance rating in Page Speed / Firebug starting to improve after each step. Take note too of the other recommendations that Firebug offers in respect of optimization. You may not be able to achieve a green check mark against every item, but the more you can get, the better.

There are various online services that will test the load time of any webpage although the disparity in the results that you will get prove that in reality they can only give a vague indication of how quickly your visitors will see your page load. This is because there are so many factors that affect that load time – their physical location, their equipment, their connection to the web, their browser type and version etc. etc. If you want to try some of them however there is a list available at PCDrome.com – 10+ Best Web Tools to Check Website Loading Time

While you’re doing all this housekeeping and tweaking, it is also a good idea to check for broken links on your site, particularly if you’ve never done so or haven’t had a clean up in a long time. We use Xenu’s Link Sleuth  for this (which can be downloaded for free) but there is also a WordPress plugin (isn’t there always?) that can check your WordPress sites for links that are  no longer functioning. It may not be compatible with the latest version of WordPress yet you can give it a try and see if it works for you. WordPress Plugin Broken Link Checker.

If you those results spend a lot of time tweaking your on page SEO, don’t let the results of your hard work be negatively impacted by ignoring the performance factors of your site(s)

If you are seeking an easy way to incorporate attractive and effective links to all your social networking and bookmarking sites in your email signature, this Firefox extension is going to be right up your alley.

Wisestamp is a free add on for your Firefox browser which enables you to easily create a professional looking email signature that features links and icons to not only your twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts but will also let you display links to your latest blog posts and sites you have recently bookmarked on a wide range of social bookmarking services.

As you can see from the screen shot to your left, (click it for a larger view) once you install and configure the add on, all your social networking and bookmarking links will be automatically displayed in your signature whenever you compose a new email. In this case it is a Yahoo mail account but the extension will do exactly the same for Gmail, Hotmail and AOL mail.

If that wasn’t enough it will also allow you to add your signature to just about any webpage (as long as it supports HTML), such as Google Docs, Zoho Docs and similar.

Setting up the service is as easy as 1-2-3 and once you’ve spent a couple of minutes configuring the options you can forget about it. If you want different signatures for personal and business emails, no problem, it can do that too.

Once again Firefox gives us another great way to improve the browsing experience and a surefire method of spreading the word about your social networking activity, be it business related or not.

To get the extension and start socializing your email signatures just head over to WiseStamp and get started.

For some people it is and if you are one of those people, the aim of this hub is to give you a very quick and bare bones guide on the subject along with the tools you’ll need to get the job done.

Keyword research is important if you are involved in niche marketing or article marketing, pay per click advertising, search engine optimization, or even if you are an Adsense publisher.

The problem with the whole keyword research topic is that although quite a bit has been written about it and how important it is, there are not many really good explanations about what you should actually be doing. Sure there are plenty of links to keyword tools and software, but very little on how to use them to your advantage.

I’m going to try and give you a concise explanation that was given to me by someone who has a lot of experience in niche marketing and Adsense. Don’t worry, you are not going to need to be an SEO expert to follow these methods and neither will you need any expensive tools.

Photo Credit : Practicalowl

When doing your keyword research you are basically looking for two things:

1) Search Volume

2) Competition

This is vitally important and what a lot of people misunderstand and unless you research both properly, your results are likely to be mediocre a lot of the time. So, here is the quick down and dirty way to find your keywords and rank well for them.

Keyword Tools & Keyword Software

Go to SpyFu.com and type in a broad keyword covering your chosen topic and it will give you an idea of how much advertisers are paying for clicks in that given market. If you are an Adsense publisher for example, it’s a good way to see roughly what you might expect to earn for clicks on your ads. It’s a rough guide, but it will sort out the wheat from the chaff and help you avoid those five cent clicks and help you find the bigger green

Firstly you are going to need a keyword research tool. Google’s Keyword Tool is about as good as anything else, although I sometimes use the SEO Book Keyword Tool too. Both are free.

(No keyword research tool is 100% accurate by the way, they are guides that work on past data and that data is an ever shifting sea, but they are the best you’ve got).

Now you need to type in some keywords that broadly match the subject you are researching. Google will find you all the keywords it feels are relevant and make additional suggestions too. What you are looking for are those with good search volume – “good” will depend on how narrow and focused your niche is. For niche sites and articles, anything with a daily search volume of a hundred or more is worth looking at. For less long tail phrases you will probably raise that number. It’s something that you will learn with experience, but it’s not hard to pick out keywords that are getting high volume searches.

Add every one of your selected phrases to a text or csv file – you can do this easily in Google’s tool by clicking on the download links at the right hand side of the page.

Next comes the fun part. This method is not claimed to be laser targeted in terms of accuracy, it’s a bit rough really, but it works reasonably well most of the time.

Go to Google and search for each keyword you have saved to your text file. Look at the top ten results and work out the average page rank. If it is below three, keep the phrase but if it’s above four, don’t pay it any more attention. (Hint, use Firefox and download the SEOQuake add on which will then display PR and a lot more besides for each search result in Google, otherwise your research will take forever and a day).

I told you it was rough, but this competition analysis works well enough a lot of the time although there will be misses as well as hits. After you’ve narrowed down your keyword list in this way you will be working with terms that have high search volume and less competition.

By taking these steps, you will stand more chance of good SERPS results for your niche sites or articles, you will probably enjoy better Adsense revenue, and at this point you will be smiling!

That, in a nutshell, is all you need. However I’ve added some further resources that may be of interest to those who want to get even more serious with the whole keyword and SEO aspects of their site building and marketing efforts. I will probably add to these as I think of them.

Before you go there though, here are a couple of final thoughts on the whole keyword circus.

Keywords are important, that is accepted wisdom. However, there is a lot of misunderstanding about how to use them and this results in a lot of problems. Most people online are not SEO focused and therefore, you see a lot of uninformed, although sometimes justified, complaints about the whole subject of keywords. This usually arises because equally uninformed people completely misuse keywords by producing writing that they believe is aimed at search engine robots but is basically awful to read for humans.

Constructing an article or web page around keywords can often result in a mangled mess. It’s usually a result of mixing a little knowledge of basic SEO with someone who can’t write very well, with or without keywords.

Don’t overdo or “stuff” any piece of writing with so many targeted phrases that the work becomes unreadable. Repeating the same term over and over would have got you an English language fail in high school and it will return the same result from your online audience.

Oh and don’t ever write about one subject and try and keyword optimize it for something completely different. Just because you find that your proposed article generates low paying PPC ads for example. It won’t work. If someone comes looking for tips on recipes, that’s what they hope to find. Even if you could persuade Adsense that ads from ambulance chasing lawyers were relevant to your content about making the perfect rock cake, your visitors are hardly likely to click on them.

All you have to do is write a well constructed piece with a few targeted keywords thrown in, and you will get more targeted Adsense ads on your pages, better search engine ranking, and hopefully more targeted visitors.

Keyword Tools & Resources

Keyword Elite Software | Commercial Keyword Research Tool

MSN Commercial Intent Tool

Free Search Based Keyword Tool From Google

Free GTrends Tool From Wordtracker

NicheBOT | Keywords | Keyword Phrases From Wordtracker

SEMRush FREE SEO Tool For Adwords & Keyword Research

Free Report For Niche Marketers & Adsense Publishers

Image via Wikipedia

The announcement of Google’s latest algorithm changes designed to weed out poor quality content from what have commonly become known as “content farms” poses some interesting questions.

Early figures suggest that a number of well known and long established sites have been hit quite hard in the SERPS.  Some early indications of sites affected by Google’s content farm algorithm changes have already been published.

Certainly, the knock on effects of the change will take some time to become apparent but certainly, those who use article marketing are going to have to up their game when it comes to producing content.

Over two years ago I wrote a post entitled “article directories must raise standards” because it was only ever going to be a matter of time before the chickens came home to roost over the absolute garbage that was being passed off as content by authors, publishers, and the article directories and their editors.

It would seem that this is exactly what the latest algorithm updates are targeting – not by domain per se, but by individual pages on  those domains. With Ezinearticles marked as one of the heavy losers in the SERPS, my complaints about the decline in editorial quality control at what was once the  market leader in its field and loved by the search engines, is getting a slap for falling asleep at the wheel.

Based on early results though, if you are using article marketing as an SEO tool, there isn’t any reason to panic as long as you are submitting quality, well written articles. If on the other hand you spin crap into more crap, use rehashed PLR drivel that thousands of others have mangled before you, well, don’t expect your results to be much to write home about any longer. The abuse of what was once a wonderful system for all concerned, has, as predicted not only by me but many others, finally been tackled by Google.

It’s probably going to upset a lot of people. It will mean a lot of changes for some and hopefully it will allow article directories who publish only solid content a fair chance to rank well against the big boys who have been so dominant in the past. Good editorial practice should be rewarded, good content writing should be rewarded, and the tons of spammy, useless, marketing driven nonsense will be consigned to irrelevancy as it should have been a long time ago.

Article directory owners will need to get their act together, marketers will need to totally re-evaluate their content writing and syndication. The message is nothing new from Google – write good content for human readers and you will have no problems – we (Google) are all about producing the best, most relevant search results for our users.

I had a quick look at a couple of recent articles I had published at a few article directories, particularly those mentioned as big losers in the article linked to above. I’m pleased to say that they still appear to be ranking in the top three results for my chosen keywords which seems to endorse the view and the intention not to penalize domains in a blanket slap, only to penalize poor content published on those domains to improve the search experience.

Update: March 1st 2011

I carried out a small experiment over the last few days which seems to indicate that although most article directories are likely to be affected, some do seem to have been hit much harder than others, and although some people are claiming to understand the reasons and to predict the long term impact, things like this serve to prove that none of them are doing any more than guessing – probably a fruitless exercise,

Anyway, I wrote an article a few days ago, just before the algorithm changes hit, and submitted it to a handful of some of the top directories. The first of these was GoArticles and, as is often the case, it was published there first, literally within a few minutes. The next to approve it were ArticlesBase and Amazines, on the same day but several hours after GoArticles. Most of the others have not yet approved it.

That same day, the article was appearing high on the page one results for the targeted keyword from both ArticlesBase and GoArticles (this keyword was not particularly long tail, but was in a very particular niche with little competition or real search volume).

Today however, the GoArticles version had disappeared completely. The article was completely original and unique, and was written by myself, it was over 1000 words and, if I say so myself, very well written in terms of spelling, grammar and punctuation and not stuffed with keywords but written very much with human readers in mind.

The ArticlesBase copy is holding at number four on page one of the Google SERPS.  There are absolutely no differences from the article that was published first at GoArticles – they were identical throughout.

The Amazines version has also slipped out of the first 100 results having originally been indexed on page three.

The screen shots from Alexa’s data on GoArticles are inconclusive this early after the Google changes, but although they show some notable percentage losses a day or so in in terms of reach and page views they indicate an increase in terms of their percentage of visitors from search engines since the algorithm was implemented. Looking over the longer term though, the ups and downs don’t appear to be drastically abnormal.

Fig1 -

Fig 2

Fig 3

To add even more interest to the experiment, I bookmarked the articles in a few places too and republished the article at a limited number of third party sites (content farms if you wish).

At Thoughts.com, only submitted today (several days after the article directory submissions) the post is being ranked fifth, right below the ArticlesBase item.

The Goarticles URL, bookmarked at Faves is showing up at the top of the third page of results i.e 21st position.

I didn’t post the article on the WordPress site to which the article was linking – this site already performs extremely strongly in all three major search engines and I’m sure, if I did republish it on that site it would outperform the content farms, and, if I intended to post it on the main site prior to syndicating and bookmarking it would still do so. I’m hoping that this is really what Google is trying to ensure happens going forward so that original authors and their domains rank first for their content.

So, the algorithm is definitely making its mark but is it really rather a case of  over exuberance or clumsy heavy handedness? This particular article was in the fine art niche and was a fairly in depth look at the intricacies of the fine art market in a specific country and region. I’m all for getting rid of the crappy, spun a million times dross that is the staple of many article directories and distribution services but in this case, a good and very relevant piece has been lost to Google’s visitors. To add insult to injury, the bulk of the results now showing on page after page are for sites selling posters – literally hundreds of them. This is not really a balanced search result and probably not at all what searchers would be looking for if they used the keywords/keyphrase targeted in my article.

Overall, it does seem apparent that those involved in article marketing will have to make some adjustments. My guess is that article marketing does have a future, but not for those who are not prepared to write their own quality content and restrain themselves from submitting to hundreds of directories. The article directories themselves will almost certainly have to undergo some serious quality control changes too, and doubtless, a good many will go the way of the dodo if they do not adapt. As for the countless marketers who have spent time building backlinks and traffic via rubbish articles whether or not they are about to see their efforts come unraveled only time will tell.

Do I agree with Google’s stance? In part yes, if it genuinely improves the search results and enables decently written useful content from individual bloggers as well as the big boys to beat out the shotgun approach of some of the directories and associated spammers but to be honest I’m reserving judgment until a little more time has allowed the dust to settle.

Related articles

• Google Kills eHow Competitors, eHow Rankings Up (seobook.com)
• Google Aims To Take Out Content Farms (technologyreview.com)
• Google Rolls Out Search Algorithm, Targets Content Farms (ghacks.net)
• What Google’s Crackdown on Content Farms Means for Bloggers (blogworld.com)

Blogging For Beginners is another free ebook for my visitors and, as the title suggests, covers the basics of starting out as a blogger.

The book covers both the free Blogger platform and the WordPress option, giving the newcomer a good idea of the differences, advantages and pitfalls of either choice. The book is a short and to the point read of 26 pages that does a good job of explaining many of the things that many of us simply take for granted, but for those just starting out, it will be a helpful read.

There are no outlandish claims or rhetoric and the book is clearly laid out and isn’t consistently selling to the reader. There are actually very few links inside.

The only thing that is a little laborious is the section on installing WordPress on a hosting account – not incorrect, but it goes the manual route and doesn’t mention that there are simpler ways to do it, particularly if you choose a host who offers Fantastico which most decent providers using cpanel do nowadays.

That aside it’s a reasonable book for the beginner and it’s free to boot.

Remember, you can use the book as a giveaway on your own sites too either on its own or as part of a package of goodies etc. I have even provided a complete editable sales page with all the graphics so you can easily sell or give away the book using your own dedicated site or page. Unzip the file and everything can be found inside.

Download The Book and Sales Page Graphics – Click Here

SEO Elite reviews can be found all over the web nowadays and this alone means that you may have considered using it yourself at some point. SEO Elite from Brad Callen has been around for several years now and in its latest incarnation, SEO Elite 4, is still performing well for many webmasters, even though it has had and continues to have its critics. All webmasters know that search engine optimization and keyword research are vitally important aspects of running a website or blog; at least if you want traffic to your sites.

Never an exact science, SEO has spawned a huge industry and not a little controversy over the years. The only thing that most people agree on is that the whole business is an ever changing sea of methodology and that what is a great SEO technique today, may be next to useless tomorrow. With search engines forever tweaking their algorithms and ranking factors, it is almost impossible for anyone other than those working on those factors, to know what exactly needs to be done to get a decent position in the search engine results pages and keep it.

Naturally, developers have come up with numerous software tools and packages to try and crack the business of achieving a top ranking, with varying degrees of success.

SEO Elite has been around for several years and has somehow continued to prove its effectiveness and worth, despite all the changes that are seemingly constantly being brought to the attention of webmasters. Whilst it is not cheap, if you have the budget and want to improve your results in the organic search listings of the major search engines, SEO Elite is one tool you should definitely consider.

Even though there are many alternatives out there, a great deal of them are not worth the purchase price and some are, sad to say, a complete waste of time and money. With SEO Elite you know that you are getting a regularly updated and powerful SEO optimization tool with reliable help and support. The features are comprehensive and we have posted three videos below so that you can see the sort of thing SEO Elite can help you with.

This only really scratches the surface but gives you a good idea of the interface and how quickly the software can help you with the detailed tasks involved in optimizing your website. To achieve manually what SEO Elite can provide in terms of research and suggested improvements would patently take a totally unrealistic amount of time.

You can find out more about SEO Elite or buy the software at the company’s website www.seoelite.com

If you are seriously considering working on your own on site optimization a tool like SEO Elite will do most of the heavy lifting for you and when used correctly will certainly see your sites improve in the SERPS.

The company also produces the excellent Keyword Elite and Affiliate Elite products and have established themselves as a trusted source of reliable and effective tools for webmasters, marketers and affiliates alike.

We hope you found the videos a useful insight into at least some of the the workings of SEO Elite.

If you prefer the idea of free SEO software there are plenty of options too and I’ve discussed several of the best collections elsewhere. For WordPress SEO advice our WordPress SEO Secrets videos are a very good place to start.

1) This site may well still be listed as a “dofollow” blog, but, alas, the spammers caused that to change some months ago now and our decision was posted here at Goodbye To DoFollow

Now, my reason for restating this is that it is blatantly obvious that some of the comments are being posted by services who advertise their comment spam as SEO  and link building services on the sites they link back to. These are smart people without a doubt.

Most of these comments are flagged by Akismet as spam already, so, they are charging people for something they cannot hope to deliver, having secured themselves a warm seat in the spammer hall of  shame. The point is, if you see someone advertising a service to post links for you, for a fee, on dofollow blogs, don’t be a sucker. You are wasting your money. This is not SEO or legitimate link building and in my experience, the comments are usually so poorly written &/or completely generic or irrelevant that even if the perpetrators haven’t yet been flagged it sure won’t be long until they are.

2) Hosting providers – I think it is fairly obvious what kind of website this is. It is also fairly obvious that an area entitled “Customer Reviews” exists for customers to post their feedback. Somehow, more and more hosting sites seem to interpret this forum as “place your free ads here” or similar.

I’m not going to name any names, but invariably these companies are operating out of the Indian sub-continent or the far east. So, let’s help clear things up for you – the area of the site you are looking for is titled “Advertisers” and can be found easily in the top menu bar of every page. Yes, this site owner has bills to pay too and the rates are extremely fair as some of my existing customers will tell you.

Again, a great deal of these kinds of free ad seeking comments are finding their way into Akismet’s sin bin too and if they haven’t, you can be sure I’ll be one more webmaster/blogger doing my bit to help Akismet’s filters for the future.

To make things even easier and more convenient, if all you really want is a link, once again, it’s right there at the top of the page. I realize that reciprocal linking has lost a lot of juice in recent times but if you have a related site, I have made exchanging links as painless as possible.

3) On the subject of advertising and spam – unsolicited emails are not the way to do business online, however, I recognize that sometimes, an email to a webmaster with some kind of proposal is not always a bad thing.

Having said that, I would like to make it very clear that you cannot buy a listing at this site, nor can you buy a favorable review or similar shenanigans. I am well aware that this is common practice in the industry and is also why hosting review sites often have little credibility – see the article and video on Honest Hosting Reviews for more.

Again, I am not going to name names, but there have been several occasions where an unsolicited mail has arrived, offering me what I consider pretty substantial consideration in return for a “top listing and review”. To my mind, if you have to buy good feedback for your service, whatever industry you are in, you have some serious problems, both business and ethical.

Whilst it hurts to turn down such offers (at least in the pocket) there is little hope for any kind of  impartial hosting information should every site owner be lured by the promise of easy (dirty) money.

If you want to pay for advertising on these pages there are convenient an easy channels for doing so, but bent reviews are not part of the service provided and, I’ll say it yet again,  there is no such thing as a “Top Ten” or “Top Twenty” list of hosting providers unless the criteria are very strictly defined, and, even then, it’s hardly objective.

4) Affiliate programs – the majority of web hosts here on TCH run affiliate programs (it’s all in the disclaimer) and therefore I am paid a commission should I send customers their way. I hope that if my visitors find the reviews and articles helpful, they consider this fair exchange for the site’s features and any assistance it provides for them.

Such affiliation does not guarantee either party any favors or special treatment. Well, aside from a couple of cases where affiliate status has been withdrawn because of a refusal to remove/edit negative but fair feedback. (yes, sadly it has happened). Reasonable criticism and complaint is part and parcel of a place on our real estate.

5) To those who would genuinely like to be featured on TCH, please feel free to use my contact form and submit your proposals or requests. Whilst I can’t and don’t guarantee anything, I will always consider them. Lack of an affiliate program does not exclude you either.  As I’ve always stated on these pages, I try to offer a site where visitors can give and get some honest information and also to feature hosts who have a proven track record for reliability and fair practices. That’s not to say I never get it wrong, but if  serious problems with a company are becoming the norm,  I try to keep people informed and do remove companies who perform really badly, regardless of my personal affiliate status.

I hope this clears things up for everyone. To those who have been guilty of comment spam I urge you to rethink your tactics because it really does you nothing but harm. To those who have ever considered paying for any kind of “blog commenting” service, please save your money and put it towards some legitimate marketing and advertising. Comments are about interaction and sharing, not a shortcut to high SERPS rankings.

TCH

Parasite software is a program installed on a user’s computer that can do some very underhand things. Basically, if the software recognizes an affiliate link, it can insert its own cookie in replace of yours, effectively stealing your commissions from right under your nose and neither you, or your visitor/referral will know a thing about it.

That is pretty serious and perhaps far more of a real threat than someone manually altering or stripping out your affiliate link. The problem is, that even if you use redirects, such parasite software can still do its dirty work.

I am currently evaluating some software that claims to overcome this problem using a whole new way of cloaking links.

The other thing I wanted to mention is Internet Explorer. I’ve never been a fan of this browser; it gives webmasters more headaches than any other browser out there – it messes up the appearance of websites and I recently discovered, by chance, that if you redirect a link using a frame, which is a very common way of handling affiliate links, IE will potentially block cookies, (supposedly ony third party cookies that do not have a compact privacy policy) robbing you of your referrals and commissions! This sucks big time as the vast majority of internet users who don’t know any better still use this crappy piece of software because it came installed on their computer.

Having said that, Clickbank and CJ links should be OK…..however, when testing in IE8, results are inconclusive – some cookies were set when using a frame and some were not. Why? I have no solid explanation but whatever, if you are using frames to cloak your links, it would pay you to check them in various browsers to ensure your cookie is being set correctly.

If you are using masked frames to redirect your links, go and check them in IE now. Once your page loads, look in the bottom of your browser for a small eye shaped icon – if it’s there, double click it and you will probably see that your affiliate cookie has been completely stripped out. If it has, you may need to change all those masked frame links to a simple PHP redirect – the least secure redirect there is, just so that IE users will be credited as your affiliate referrals. Alternatively, try the stealth cloaking option in Samurai Stealth which seems to solve the issue most of the time.

UPDATE: As of September 2011 SSC seems to have gone offline. We don’t know if this is permanent or not but if the links do not work for you and you are looking for a WordPress solution the Eclipse Advanced Link Cloaker may be a good alternative and comes in the form of a plugin or you can try the very effective Ninja Affiliate which is still the one to beat in terms of redirect plugins and comes highly recommended. There is also a good video demo of Ninja Affiliate in action here

If you would prefer a non WordPress alternative at a very low cost, take a look here at Affiliate Link Defender which you can pick up for less than six bucks.

Can you imagine how many sales you may have lost because of Microsoft and their decision to implement such a feature in their browser? When I found out I was more than a little mad – thanks a bunch Microsoft for screwing affiliates the world over.

The problem of parasite software is made even worse when using simple PHP redirects because your cookie does not get processed until your visitor actually lands on the page – the parasite does its work before this happens meaning you have no chance whatsoever!!

Now, the product I am currently evaluating claims to have all the answers to these problems but I’m not ready to share it yet because in early tests, I’m not convinced and IE8 still seems to be blocking cookies on my redirects, whether HTML or PHP. Having said that, the testing process is a bit of a complicated one and I’m hoping that after some dialogue with the program owner, these difficulties can be resolved. If or when they are, I will publish my findings here.

In the meantime, the best advice for all affiliates would be not to use masked frames as a form of redirect, certainly not without testing them fully in the major browsers,  and to check all your existing framed links and redirects very carefully, in particular in Internet Explorer, because you could be cutting your own throat and losing commissions as a result of trying to do the exact opposite! Thanks Microsoft.

TCH

IMPORTANT UPDATE: As of September 2011 SSC seems to have gone offline. We don’t know if this is permanent or not but it is certainly a shame and we have no idea what the reasons for the site’s disappearance may be. The script is still working just fine for us. However, if the links to the program do not work for you when you visit and you are looking for a WordPress solution we’ve added a couple of options for you. Fairly new is the Eclipse Advanced Link Cloaker which may be a good alternative and comes in the form of a plugin.

The other noteworthy WordPress plugin that comes to mind is Ninja Affiliate from Max Blog Press so we’ve added a video below to help you decide if this one is for you or not. We give it a highly recommended because we know it works very well indeed and has some features you won’t find anywhere else, combining not only effective link cloaking abilities but also keyword inlinks and other nifty options.

If you would prefer a non WordPress alternative at a very low cost, take a look here at Affiliate Link Defender which you can pick up for less than six bucks.

I wrote a review of Samurai Stealth Cloaker some time ago and hailed it as the best link cloaking script on the market at the time. To date, I have still not seen anything better and I finally got around to doing a demo video which shows the script in action.

There are many good reasons to cloak affiliate links – more professional looking URL’s from your own domain, shorter URL’s, disguising your affiliate status and to a degree, helping you avoid the stripping of your affiliate ID by visitors who don’t want  you to get paid for their own unfathomable reasons.

Up to a point, the claims of commission theft are true and they also make for sensational ad copy but let’s be realistic. Average internet users wouldn’t know an affiliate link if it bit them on the a**, so if your selling something not related to internet marketing or SEO for example, it’s doubtful they are going to bypass your link. On the other hand, particularly with Clickbank products, no matter what you do, once a savvy Clickbank affiliate lands on the payment page they can easily clear their cookies and return to buy through their own link, so cloaking does not protect you from those folks at all.

One of the most valid reasons for using redirects is the management aspect of your links. Let’s say you promote a product related to WordPress – you may link to that product in a huge number of blog posts and articles, perhaps using an automatic linking plugin for instance, meaning that you could have hundreds of links on countless web pages. If that product becomes outdated, or is withdrawn from the market, or goes away for any of a variety of reasons, you either have a load of broken links to fix by trying to find and amend each one, or you just leave the broken links littering your content – not a great option.

If you use redirects, all you ever have to do is change one link and all the instances of that redirect will automatically be updated. Using a script like Samurai Stealth Cloaker enables you to login to your admin panel and with a couple of mouse clicks all your redirects are changed in seconds. That is a very worthwhile plus point, and the more affiliate links you generate over time, the more important it becomes.

SSC is very easy to install on your server and once it’s done, you can see from the video how easy it is to use. We’ve chosen a complicated scenario in the video, basically to show the power of “stealth” redirects and the fact that once you have placed your affiliate cookie, you can send a visitor to absolutely any page you like – great if the sales page is crap, or you’ve maybe done all the preselling in a review on your own site for example. In our example we show how you, the affiliate, can send someone to your own opt-in page, capture the lead, and then send the visitor straight to the sales page as opposed to the merchant’s lead capture page, or even straight to the order page.

The script can also handle simple PHP redirects or mask your link in a frame (we would not recommend using frames however – see this post on cloaking links and Internet Explorer which explains why) but the stealth option is what makes the script most powerful. In rare cases however, the stealth link may break an affiliate link so it’s always wise to double check your redirect before publishing it to the world. In my experience with SSC it has handled various networks with no problems at all and I’ve only ever had a couple of affiliate links where it broke something along the way. Just be aware that it can happen.

Here’s the video demo of Samurai Stealth Cloaker

I’d also like to mention another redirect script that I use in certain circumstances, particularly when I’m sending customers or visitors to a download – you’ll see how you can add one time offers and instead of just seeing a click to download box pop up, your visitor views another offer or offers while they wait for their product delivery. It seems to work pretty well if you keep the offers relevant. (Sorry but I have withdrawn the sales page for this tool as interest tailed off considerably in the past couple of years)

Register For A Free Author Account Here

If you have a review or an article dealing with any aspect of web hosting or want to promote your websites to the world you can register for free and post away – there are only a couple of rules and provided they are followed this will be a great way for you to earn backlinks and syndicate your content to a wider audience.

As article directories go, there are none of the usual restrictions – you may include video in your posts as well as hyperlinks in the body of your articles as well as the resource box at the foot of your posts.

The site runs on WordPress, and it has been set up to be search engine friendly using a range of plugins to ensure your content gets spidered and indexed quickly. If you already blog on WordPress the members area will be very familiar to you.

As it is a brand new site, now is the time to register and start posting your content and links – we are accepting articles on all web hosting and domain name topics as well as internet marketing articles, SEO, WordPress, general blogging and website design and promotion. If you write about any of these things you can sign up as an author and start spreading your message.

As an author you may post as often as you wish. All we ask is that you refrain from using affiliate links (including redirects) and stick to the topics allowed. This is not a general article directory but one aimed at those looking for information on specific subjects.

After registration make sure you fill in your profile details to gain as much advantage as possible as when people click on your profile they will see your website links etc.

When posting be sure to include your relevant targeted keywords and tag your posts so that they can be more easily found.

If you are a publisher looking for content you may use any of the articles in the database for your own sites provided that they remain unchanged in any way, including all live hyperlinks which must be left intact – the content is free so please respect the author’s and their right to exposure if you are using their work.

Other than that, all we ask is that you enjoy the new site and help us make it a success

TCH

First off, we are going to be moving to a new home on the web as we have outgrown our present hosting plan – more of that in a separate post. We have suffered a lot of downtime in recent months and it as done a fair bit of damage to our rankings which is another reason why we are making the move.

I have been considering the future of this blog for sometime and although the new hosting arrangements will allow it to remain without eating up too many resources, the fact that it is a non WordPress blog is one of the reasons its future is uncertain. Moving it to WordPress is so convoluted that I doubt I will try it for this site so I’m considering all options carefully before making a final decision.

If you haven’t visited our main site recently, please drop by and see what we have been up to – a new series of video tutorials on things like WordPress, cpanel and other blogging and web hosting related subjects are to become a regular feature and are proving very popular. My blogging focus will probably shift to this site far more as the year progresses – if you are reading this post here, you can see that I am slowly moving selected content over already.

I have been busy elsewhere this past few months both online and off and my wife and I are about to open a physical offline business having launched a new website last year and the move into a retail premises is the focus of our efforts at present. We used WordPress for the site and you can visit Arteccentrix for another example of what can be done with the software and associated plugins, it really is a versatile platform – it’s not internet marketing related.

So, 2010 is going to be an exciting and busy year! I hope that all my loyal readers will stick around and enjoy it with me.

To kick off this new year I’m starting with a few tips that will help your marketing efforts online this year.

URL Redirection and Affiliate Marketing – if you are still using the TinyURL service to shorten your links you may want to rethink the idea. Why? Well, it has been a much abused service and as a result you could be losing a lot of traffic and visitors if you continue to use it. Browsers like Google Chrome now include a feature for users to preview every TinyURL as so many links led to undesirable or spammy sites. This means that instead of redirecting to your page, users will see something like the image below. This is plainly not a good thing!

So, if you’re looking for a better alternative there are plenty out there nowadays – ViralURL is one option and can help you with more than just redirection, as can the excellent and new service from Skadoogle.

However, I recently discovered that ViralURL also has problems associated with it – having been unfairly flagged (imo) by the Spybot Search and Destroy software, anyone running Spybot and Internet Explorer is unlikely to see any of your links at all. I’m not sure how many users Spybot S&D has, but it’s a pretty well known tool and it’s free. CNET alone cites the number of downloads from its sitealone at 111,925,794 so it has to be borne in mind. ViralURL id certainly going to be crippled on a lot of machines out there. Rightly or wrongly SpybotS&D have decided to “protect” their users from ViralURL links and have refused to remove the flag, despite the best efforts of ViralURL to state their case. I think the people at Spybot are morons judging by the comments they made on their forum and simply do not understand viral marketing or any form of affiliate marketing at all. Needless to say I choose to use alternative software for parasite detection.

If you want a professional link cloaking script for your own domain we still say that Samurai Stealth Cloaker is the best out there. You can visit my hub on link cloaking and redirection for more tips too.

When it comes to marketing online, your list is going to be one of the most important aspects of those efforts and if you are still baulking at the thought of getting started with your own list, make 2010 the year you get to grips with building your own list of subscribers. You can choose from countless list building programs but the bottom line is that most of them are a waste of time – sorry to say that but it’s true.

For some great listbuilding tips try Josh Spaulding’s report on email marketing, it’s a steal and contains some great information.

I’m often asked what programs and services I would recommend for beginners to the world of internet or affiliate marketing but it is such a huge subject that without a clear idea of exactly what model you are intending to use it’s very difficult to answer.

If you are just starting out, there is a very good 120 video course available called IM For Newbies that covers all kinds of topics and explains how to do a whole range of things – it’s not the most advanced stuff but if you’re wanting to accelerate your learning curve it’s very worthwhile and good value for money at only $7. For anyone wanting to learn how to set up affiliate marketing sites or niche sites, the free training videos at the Clone Cash System are well worth a look too.

If you are planning to use WordPress in your online marketing there are a huge number of free and paid resources available – take a look at my main site’s WordPress tools section and check out some of the WordPress Training videos too. You can even get a free membership site software for WordPress at Memberfire, so if you are looking to set up your first membership site for free or paying members, it’s a great place to start.

As far as free services go there are a million and one that claim to be the answers to your prayers, but they can’t all possibly be telling the truth. That’s not to say that some will work better than others for different people and their online ventures. There are literally thousands of options, tools and sites out there, so many that it can be difficult to know what to do and where to begin but my advice would be to try as much as you can cope with – test and discard anything that does not bring results. Do not just take someone else’s word all the time – if you like the look of a free service try it – there can often be some nice surprises when you do so.

You will have noticed  several buttons in the sidebar for free advertising sites – if you have no advertising budget to speak of these can be quite effective – I know because I’ve seen some good results with them in recent months so give some a try and see if they can help you too. In my experience if you have the right product/service they can be good for list building and even sales. I’m also currently trying some banner advertising with an exchange that seems to be performing reasonably well although I’ve never been a fan of such things before – it all depends on what you’re advertising but it’s a no cost way of getting your sites seen in more places and there is a WordPress plugin available too.

If you stick with me on this blog or subscribe to my list, I will post results and ideas of my own to help you further your online goals at the start of this new decade!

I’ll report back on the hosting move once it’s underway – if the new service is as good as people claim, you can be sure I’ll be giving a full and detailed review of my experiences and the services provided so look out for that in the weeks ahead.

TCH

One example of this would be the person who doesn’t want a website, because they are content with a free third party service that fills most of their needs already – for example, blogging services, photo sharing services, social networking sites etc.

However, sometimes, there are things that these services just won’t help you with. Let’s take an example of a fledgling marketer who has seen the potential of viral marketing and found some good viral ebooks that he or she would like to promote. Unfortunately, the ability to give these away is vital if they are to work as intended, and here is where the person without hosting comes unstuck. After rebranding the viral ebook, how are they going to give it away?

Rebrandable reports are great to give away, but if you only have a free blog, posting about it won’t do you much good if you can’t send your readers to a download page. Yes, there are several sites offering a library of old PDF books that you can rebrand on their sites, and some that will host your rebranded items, but what about the thousands of PDF files you don’t or can’t get from such sites?

This has been the one thorn in the side of viral PDF ebooks and reports for a long time and has been tackled by people like Harvey Segal, the owner of the CBGuide and author of several great free viral ebooks by using a clever system that eliminates the need for people to host a viral book in order to distribute it. See his Clickbank For Newbies guide to see it in action.

However, the fact is that most viral and rebrandable reports and ebooks come in PDF format, for example, our recent report entitled Viral Clickbank Footprints.

Thanks to a recent conversation with someone who downloaded this report, there is now an answer for everyone and it’s free to use.  Sign up at FreePDFHosting.com and you will be able to upload your viral reports and ebooks, providing you follow their guidelines and as long as said files are in PDF format. Once done, you will have a URL where you can send your visitors and customers to download their copy. It’s a neat service and will solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.

Need More PDF Tools Or Ideas? Click Here For Solutions To All Your PDF Requirements

TCH

If you are using Twitter already, you will appreciate the integration of your WordPress Blog which will enable you to automatically send a Tweet each time you make a new post without the need to do it manually.

I’ve just installed the plugin which is a simple task and should take less than a couple of minutes for most users.

To get your copy of the plugin, just click on the cover image below.

Remember – You can FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER Here

This plugin has a variety of uses, but, in short will add some excellent interactivity to almost any blog, regardless of subject matter. For those operating review based sites it will be even more attractive as a must have add on.

You’ve probably seen many WordPress blogs with ratings on their individual posts and or comments, and Rating Dominator enables you to add this functionality quickly and easily. People like to offer feedback and feel more involved, particularly with blogs they are fond of reading on a regular basis, and enabling them to give you feedback and ratings on what you write, in addition to the regular comments field is a nice little extra.

Installation of the plugin is as easy as downloading and extracting the zip file, uploading it to your plugins folder, activating it in your admin panel and setting the options you prefer.

Great plugin and highly recommended for the additional visitor satisfaction and interaction it offers. Check it out here:-

UPDATE : It would seem that this plugin has since died an inglorious death and it seems doubtful that it is supported any longer. If you still want to try it you might still be able to get it from the following page but the official web page no longer exists. Rating Dominator WordPress Plugin

The beauty of these is that if you are a webmaster you can use them yourself and also display them on your website or blog for the convenience of your readers. The first is the Keyword Research Tool and the second a Link Analysis Tool, and we have shown both of them below so that you can see just how they will look if you decide to add them to your site.

Thanks are due to both Andy Beard for his recent post highlighting these new tools and explaining how to display them on your chosen sites and to the author, Aaron at SEO Book for making them available. They have a lot more free SEO tools for your use, so pay them a visit too and enjoy.

Making regular backups of files really is essential and this chore should certainly be a matter of routine for all webmasters.

A backup refers to a copy of existing files on a separate storage device to preserve data in case the original has been damaged or deleted. Don’t rely on your hosting company to backup your data, they may well do so but you must have a duplicate of all your files stored safely in another place, independent of your host. No matter how reliable your hosting company has always been, they can suffer server failures just like anyone else, so, for your own peace of mind backup everything and store it either on your own PC’s hard drive, or an external drive, preferably both if you can.

Never underestimate the importance of having a backup. There is no excuse nowadays as the task really is a simple one and there are a variety of options.

1. Back Up With cpanel
Every time you log in to your hosting account, you are usually greeted by your control panel, the place that contains all the tools you need to manage your website. C-Panel is one of the most commonly used control panels for Linux based hosting and if you are a cpanel user, backups could not be easier.

To perform a full backup using cpanel, you just have to find and click the Backup icon on the main interface. (sample below)

This offers you options to generate various backups including your databases. Backup everything, including those vital database files. It’s simple. Then download the generated files to your PC, or other storage medium.

Below is an excellent video courtesy of TechBasedMarketing.com showing the exact steps to follow in cpanel to make complete backups of your websites and databases. Where you store your backups is your choice of course and I recommend at least two separate locations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsJBIBs-V1c

Additional Resources: Mohamed Bhimji has also provided an ebook in PDF format covering the full process. You can download a free copy below.

cPanel Backup Guide PDF

2. Backing Up Using Online Storage
Your server is already an online storage medium of course, but if you want more security for your files, you could get another. You may already have another hosting plan where you could store data or you could just sign up to a free online storage service instead. Some of these may not offer enough space for larger backups however.

3. Backing Up Databases Using phpMyAdmin
Databases are the most common repository of important records. If you are running MySQL, but don’t have cpanel, you can back up your databases using phpMyAdmin, a common database management tool. It is very simple – log in to your phpMyAdmin account and click the Export option which will take you to a list of your databases. Select them all and save – you will be prompted to provide a name for the backup file and the desired location. Click OK and your backup database(s) will be created.

Wherever you decide to backup and save your data remember to do it on a regular basis – the more often you update your website or blog the more frequently you should backup. I prefer to store backups in two separate locations which gives double the security and peace of mind.

If you haven’t backed up in a while, make time to do it today.

Technorati Tags: CPanel Backups , Website Backups , Database backup , Backup tools , Backup methods , Making a backup of your website , Blog backups

Advertisement – Buy WordPress Cloner Here

All WordPress users are aware that there is a veritable gaggle of plugins available to enhance your WordPress blogging experience. I decided that I’d publish the ones currently in use on this blog, along with links to the dedicated authors of WordPress plugins everywhere who make so much available to the community for free. If you find one you like, say thank you to the person who made it, and, if you can and they accept donations, help them out.

Of course, these are not necessarily THE best WP plugins, just the ones we use and think are great. I’m sure you all have your own favorites and if you think there is one we just shouldn’t be without, do please tell us.

WordPress Automated Upgrade Plugin – this one is new and promises to save a lot of people a lot of worry and heartache when it comes time to perform an upgrade to the latest version of WordPress. If you start biting your nails at the thought of performing an upgrade, this could be your salvation! Thanks to BloggingTips.com for the low down.

aLinks WordPress Plugin – another great idea that allows users to turn any word or phrase of your content into hyperlinks, they can be Amazon links, Clickbank, E-Bay, Wikipedia, links to other areas of your blog. A very cool plugin indeed, simple, effective and gives users total control. Author: Sean Hickey

All In One SEO WordPress Plugin – A Plugin that allows you to tweak your WordPress blog’s SEO friendliness. Now, who doesn’t want that? Author : Uberdose

Amazon Context Link Ads WordPress Plugin – Another Amazon plugin. This one will find phrases and keywords within your text that are relevant to Amazon products, and will insert a hyperlink for you. Just install the plugin, tell it your Amazon Associates ID and you’re done. Author : Patrick Chia

CAPCC WordPress Plugin – Installs Captcha for comment and registration forms. Excellent spam protection. Author : Coice

Do Follow WordPress Plugin - Join the movement of bloggers against the rel=nofollow tag. Removes the nofollow attribute from your comments. Author : Denis de Bernardy

Feedburner Feedsmith Plugin – Forward all WordPress feed traffic to your Feedburner feed. Original author : Steve Smith

Feed Footer Plugin – Allows the insertion of custom footer fields to your RSS Feed. Author : Sherief Mursyidi

First RSS Plugin – A Good Choice for easy insertion of RSS Feeds. Author : Chris Hatcher (website no longer online)

Google Sitemaps Plugin – Add a Google sitemap to your WordPress blog and help that Googlebot! Author : Arne Brachhold

Gregarious Plugin – Add Social Bookmarks To Your Blog. Author : Ankur Kothari

InlineRSS Plugin – Another option for those wishing to use syndicated feeds. Author : Cal Demaine

KB Advanced RSS Widget – Widget that gives much greater control over how feeds are displayed. Author : Adam R Brown

My Page Order Plugin – Gives you complete control over page order. Author : Froman118

Kontera ContentLinks MIVA Plugin – The simple way to get your ads working. Author : Rodney Shupe

Share This Plugin – Neat tidy social bookmarking function. Author : Alex King

Simple Trackback Validation – Additional simple spam defence. Works well. Author : Michael Woehrer

Subscribe Me Plugin – The neatest solution for your RSS subscription offers. Author : Denis de Bernardy

Footnote – The CAPCC plugin mentioned above may conflict with WP’s forced moderation options if you are using latest version of WP (2.2) resulting in all comments bypassing moderation. You may want to consider an alternative captcha plugin in this case.

It’s quite a list and there are several more plugins not currently in use. These are all simple to install/configure and use for bloggers of all abilities. Do you think we’ve missed any good ones? By all means let us know your own plugin preferences and why you like them so much.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Web Design, WordPress Plugins, Best WordPress Plugins, RSS Plugins, Anti Spam Plugins, Social Bookmarking Plugins, Useful WordPress Plugins

In order to give a little more assistance to anyone considering moving their Blogger blog to WordPress, you will find some well written and useful information at this post from Computer Tips From A Computer Guy which expands the information a little further and explains exactly what the consequences will be for certain methods. This is a very good post on the subject and recommended reading, particularly for those concerned about loss of page rank and search engine results.

If you want the official line from WordPress Codex there is an explanation of the steps you need to take when importing content from not only Blogger but many other blogging platforms.

Further reading can be found at the following locations. Some may be a little outdated, but still contain some relevance and will hopefully add to the overall knowledge and enable you to make a decision based on things such as your personal requirements, importance of pros and cons and your technical ability.

Moving From Blogger To WordPress – Best Practices

Importing Blogger Posts & Comments

Please feel free to leave comments and your own links to related help/resources on the subject.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Blogger To WordPress, Importing Blogger Posts To WordPress, Blogger, WordPress, Changing From Blogger, Blogger or WordPress

As you can see, the IPhone is already spawning books, manuals and accessories and if like me you’re a bit of a dummy when it comes to all these PDA’s, handhelds and the like, I think we will be seeing a lot more innovations, so maybe it’s time to make a start by optimizing your blogs for an onslaught of Iphone browsers – or not.

Technorati Tags: IPhone , WordPress Iphone Plugin , WordPress Plugins , Blog Tools , WordPress Tools , Books About Iphone

The fact is, blogs are no longer just online diaries of people’s personal lives. Both online and offline businesses can use blogs to take their products and services to a wider audience, increasing their traffic, leads and sales.

Let’s look more closely at a few of the extremely powerful ways your business can benefit from a blog. With an effective business blog, you can:

· Humanize your business. Because a blog is much more informal than other websites, you can write posts in your own voice and give your business more of a human face. This helps reassure prospective customers that there’s a “real person” behind the website who’ll take care of their needs. It also allows you to inject much more of your own personality into your online business than your main sales site could do.

· Improve your customer service. Your blog can act as a kind of interactive FAQ, allowing your customers to submit questions and you to answer them. You can also provide product updates, how-to articles, and other information of relevance to your customers. Prospective customers who see your blog will be encouraged by your commitment to good customer service.

· Give your target market the information they’re looking for. With its automatic archiving feature–by date and category–a blog is a fantastic content-management system. It’s easy for you to post new information on a regular basis, and it’s easy for your visitors to find the information they want. With a well-written, regularly updated blog, you can become a reliable resource in your industry and build a following of loyal readers who depend on your content. These people will be your best potential customers.

· Drive traffic to your sales website. If you already have a website, a blog can give your traffic levels a real boost. For starters, your blog will attract new visitors that you can then redirect to your main sales website through links and special offers. But an even more effective technique is to use strategic keywords and links to specific sales pages to dramatically improve the search engine rankings of both your blog and your main website.

· Build your credibility and establish yourself as an industry expert. You can give your credibility a real boost by regularly posting valuable and relevant information on your blog. It’s a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your subject area, and allow your visitors to feel much more comfortable buying from you.

· Promote your products or services. You can actually sell products directly from a blog, or you can use your blog to mention new products and direct visitors to your sales website.

· Generate extra income. There are now several advertising programs available, such as Google AdSense, that allow you to monetize your blog and generate an extra revenue stream.

Learn More Click Here Blogging For Business Offline Resources

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Tags: blogs, business blogging, blogging for profit, professional blogging