Use Header tags

Structure your page with different sections. For example use the h1, h2, h3 tags. This tells search engines a little bit more about your page and what are the important aspects of your page. So, add these before different sections.

Use descriptive links

Whenever you’re creating a link somewhere, don’t have the hyperlink text say “Click here”. Instead, make it state what the link is about. It may seem hard at first. At least it is for me, so I’ll make 2. In the sentence I’m writing, I’ll describe where the link will take them (make that a hyperlink) and then make a click here hyperlink. For example, If you want to know more about part time webmasters, click here.

Get the point across in the first 2 sentences

Most people won’t read beyond the first 2 sentences. So, get the point across and capture their attention. If the person is interested, they’ll read on or click somewhere else. As a matter of fact, that’s a pretty good concept. If someone isn’t interested immediately, give them something else to click on… hmm that should drum up some ideas.

Keep the minimum word count to at least 250

A lot of people say to keep it even longer. But, sometimes, I just don’t feel like writing an entire document and just want to send out a tip. But, the more text you have the better off you are.

So, why would someone want to do it other than to make the link look pretty. Well, if you are using affiliate links on your site, others can somehow overwrite your links and add their own affiliate information. So, if someone clicks on your link, you won’t get credit for it. How they do it I have no idea, but, I figured I’d rather be safe than sorry.

If you’re link cloaking with WordPress, I would highly recommend using the Pretty Link plugin. This plugin was extremely easy to use and install. I was able to get links going in a matter of minutes.

Recently, I ran across affiliate marketing. For those of you that don’t know, affiliate marketing can work similar to Adsense, except instead of making money from someone clicking on a banner, you will make money from someone clicking on a banner, then buying something.

So, the first question you may think is, “With Adsense, I always make money, with an affiliate link I won’t.” This is true. But, I’ve looked at the money I’ve made through adsense and it doesn’t amount to more than $5 over a period of several months.

So, I thought wow, that’s pennies. Then it dawned on me. If just one person bought something (from links or images that look identical to Adsense ads) I would make that amount of money or even more with one sale.

So, today, I made the leap. I removed all Adsense ads from this site. Ok, I may be crazy. But, I figured it’s worth the chance.

So, the first thing I did before proceeding was figure out how I could do this easily with WordPress. And, to my smiling eyes, I found the Advertising Manager plugin.

So, how does the Advertising Manager plugin help? Well, I’ve added several of my affiliate links and banners to the plugin. It was an extremely easy process. And, I’ve set it up so they will rotate! So, they will function similar to Adsense. And the BIG bonus. I can customize which affiliate ads display with each post I write. Wow, focused ads on my own articles. Also, I had difficulty figuring out what to do. After I did it one time, everything was easy. Here are the instructions for Advertising Manager just in case

So, if you’re not doing this yet, consider it. I’ll keep you posted on how it works.

If you liked this article, please forward it to a friend by using the Share/Save button!

Well, this post is just to see who’s out there, and if this is even a need. So, if you would like us to install Wordpress for you, let us know. You can respond to this thread or use the “Ask the Webmaster” option.

Initially, the package I was thinking about creating consists of the following:
1. Domain name
2. Hosting
3. Set up an email address with the potential to have more.
4. FTP Access
5. Wordpress installation
6. 5 standard plugins to be determined. Maybe the idea is we could let you choose from a list.

Requirements:
1. It would have to be on our hosting
2. You would have had to choose a domain name already.
3. You would have to pay up front, because the cost of domains and hosting are real costs.
4. We would need 24 hours to set it up.
5. Hosting questions would be directed through JoesWebshack.com.
6. WordPress questions would have to be posted on this site or elsewhere. This way, we could build a shared list of questions and help for everyone. In addition, there is so much to do with WordPress, we would be overwhelmed with the questions and would have to charge to answer questions.

We’re not sure how long we’ll keep this open as we’re relatively new. But, if you register your website, we’ll accept it as long as it’s not spam.

Here’s a growing list:
http://searchengineforums.net
http://websitereviewforum.com
http://linkexchangeforum.net
http://webdevelopmentforum.net
http://dofollowforums.net
http://dofollowblogs.org
http://purchasewebsite.net
http://freeadvertisingforums.net
http://freewebsitemarketing.net
http://freeclassifiedadvertising.net

http://randomforums.net
http://generaldiscussionforums.com
http://offtopicforum.net
http://workathomeforum.net
http://searchengineoptimizationforum.net

http://blog.turnthescrew.com

http://www.blackzedd.com

http://linusearch.com/

http://www.digital-dreamspace.com

http://www.ecommtips.com/

http://www.antiguawebsolutions.com/myblog/
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When you are coding, you add a link, simple right. Well, you can add a parameter to your link to state whether or not you want search engines to follow the link and crawl the page on the other end. In order to do so, you would add rel=nofollow. If this parameter is at the end of the link, then the search engine would not follow the link. If you want the search engine to crawl the page referenced in the link, you would just leave it alone.

So, what’s the problem. Well, it became an issue a while ago due to sites taking advantage of this linking. So, applications such as WordPress started automatically adding the rel=nofollow to the dynamic links such as comments. Who would know this right?

So, how does it affect you? Well, if you’re using WordPress, your links may have the nofollow attribute on it’s links. So, if someone adds a reference to another site, Google won’t crawl it. This might not be so bad considering the amount of spam that’s out there. But, what if someone posted a link or comment on your site that is valid. Wouldn’t you want to reward them? Of course you would want to reward them. And, as it turns out, people pay attention to this. It’s a matter of time and efficiency. If you want to post a comment to a site, you want some perks. So, those that are knowledgeable will look at your site to see if you “dofollow” exists. If they see this exists, they’ll post to your site. Therefore, you’ll get more links.

In order to make this a dofollow site, we installed the plugin DoFollow.

• Place an add
• Edit an existing ad
• Browse ads
• Search ads

Or, you are just trying to click on a category and nothing happens. All you have to do is go into The WordPress | Settings | Perma-Links and click “Save Changes” This will refresh the links and everything will work well. Apparently, you have to do this when you install a new version. On the save side, it’s not a bad idea to check this once you add a new plugin. It’s not a good feeling when you find out it hasn’t been working for a while.

We integrated the following things to maximize the configuration of this WordPress site.

Installed the XML-Sitemap: This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.

Installed the Google Integration Toolkit: This allowed us to do the following:

• Configure Google Webmaster Tools by placing our verification code in a meta tag.
• Configure Google Analytics with our ID
• Allowed us to set our RSS/Atom Feeds
• Allowed us to configure Adsense Section targeting
• Allowed us to track 404 errors with Google as well.

Configured our Permalink settings. We set ours to /%postname%/ To change this setting, go to Settings/Permalinks.

Installed Global Translator 1.2.6: This allows us to activate Google Translation Services. Not sure if this will help us, but figured it couldn’t hurt.

Made sure our blog post titles are H1’s and not H2’s

Set our privacy settings to public. You can do this by going to Settings/Privacy. Ours was already set to public. I’m assuming this is the norm now.

Installed Full Text feed: This allows the feeds to display our entire link therefore giving users links back to our site.

Installed Yet Another Related Posts Plugin to give references to related plugins.

Installed Meta SEO Pack: This allows us to add meta tags to our site page.

Enjoy! Let us know how this changed your site!

IMPORTANT: When you sign up, sign up for Linux hosting.

In addition, there is a service we used to have the hosting company install it. Essentially, you go into your admin to install, here are the instructions on how to install WordPress.

1. Log into your account
2. In the top navigation, choose Web Hosting then My Hosting accounts
3. Click on the Manage Account link next to your hosting listed.
4. Click on the big box stating “My Applications”
5. In the left hand navigation, click on “Blogs” this will open up a list of applications.
6. Click on WordPress
7. Look for the red button titled “Install Now”
8. Follow the instructions and your site will be running within the hour!

So, what I’ll do, is block out an hour or two for the posts. I’ll write one, then publish it immediately. On the next post, I’ll use Wordpress’s publish option to choose another time. In order to do this, I look down to the bottom right where it states “Publish Immediately Edit” I’ll click on the edit button and schedule a time in the future. I typically try to have at least 2 blog posts a day, so, I just add 12 hours to the current time. Once that’s complete, hit ok, then hit the schedule button, and voila! Wordpress will publish your article when you want.

What does this do for me? Well, right now, I’m still experimenting. But, it does allow me to show users that this blog is updated often, and it makes me look like I’m working all of the time. My favorite thing about this is that if I’m blog happy, I can write blog posts for several days out. Heck, maybe I’ll take a break.