All Blogging Tips

3+1 Ways to Optimize and Speed Up WordPress Blog

By Rahul Kuntala / WordPress, WordPress Plugins

All right. Let’s gear up some questions about your blog performance now.. Have you ever thought about your blog’s loading time?

No.. than It’s time to think about it now..

Speed up WordPress

Why?

Because it’s not only essential to maintain a friendly SEO blog but also for your readers engagement. If you want to increase your readership or to decrease your bounce rate, you need to focus on decreasing your blog loading time. The faster it loads the better it is. Following are the few best ways to Speed Up WordPress.

1. Use WP Cache Plugin:

This is by far the best WP plugin many blogs are using to clear the cache to speed up the blog. You can clean up your cache memory all the time whenever you loading new plugins or deactivating them.

W3 Total Cache Plugin

Installation guide:

Download the plugin here
Unzip the file
Upload the plugin to your Plugins folder via FTP or Admin area
Inside the Plugins section of your WordPress control panel activate the plugin
Under the Dashboard click on W3 Total Cache and use it..

2. Optimize Image Size:

Decrease the image size by tools like image optimizer, shrink pictures, picresize etc.

Or you can simply use this WP plugin WP Smush.it (This reduces image file sizes and improves your blog’s performance)

And try to use the images in the following 3 formats.

.PNG
.JPG or
.GIF

These are the best extensions to save your images and decreasing your images size means you are decreasing your blog’s loading time.

3. Clean Up Your WP Database:

Use this plugin called WP Database Optimizer (This plugin allows you to make automated scheduled database optimization. You can specify how long in between automated optimization).

Installation guide:

Download the plugin here
Unzip the file
Upload the plugin to your Plugins folder via FTP or Admin area
Inside the Plugins section of your WordPress control panel activate the plugin
Under the Dashboard click on WP Database Optimizer and use it..

4. Avoid Too Many Plugins:

Last but not least, don’t use unwanted plugins which effects your blog loading time relatively high. Try to use the top plugins which suits your requirements and needs.

You can check your blog loading time using the following tools.

Pingdom
whichloadsfaster or
searchmetricsrapid

And there are several more ways you can speed up your blog loading time by:

Using free CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Using the better web hosting provider like HostGator
By reducing the widgets in your sidebar

Advantages of having a faster loading blog:

You can have the following benefits if you use the above methods to speed up your blog.

It essentially improves your blog’s credibility

Your visitors or readers will be happy with your blog performance

Low bounce rate (it effects certainly)

Good PR and Alexa Rank (yeah, of course)

and many more…

Your Turn:

If you know extra tools more than the above to check a blog’s loading time or any more ideas/tips on speeding up a blog in your mind – do share them below.

This is a guest post by Rahul Kuntala who blogs at LearnBlogTips

Image Credit:

5 Reasons How Blog Comments can Increase Your Blog Ranking

By Rajkumar Jonnala / Blogging Tips

When we are writing blogs as a regular feature, we find a special bonding with the readers. The comments must be good and heartfelt to bring the readers back to the page to read them. Few ways can be discussed to find out how to increase the ranking of the page.

blog comments

Blog comments and reading the posts:

There are reviews and comments that are posted by just getting a glimpse of the reviews. This is not a good practice and if you keep working in this way then the readers will find the thinning interest level and then they will stop commenting and coming back to read your blogs and comments. The best way is to read the points thoroughly and then thing about it and then find a few good points to discuss. Then write them down in a few crisp lines so that they are short but to the point and this crispness will bring in more readers, increasing the ranking.

Be a friend to the community, know their choice:

When you are commenting, you will find there will be small information regarding the choices and likings and disliking of the readers. They may like to drink coffee or may feel good in a blue cardigan and all these small things become important to them. When you can comment on these or refer to the likings of the readers, you get the readers closer to the group. They feel the bonding and then come back to the site at least once to check if there is any comment for them to go through.

Be a teaser for your readers:

You can tease the readers to make them feel good and come closer to the community. The reader base is from different age group and some small jokes and few questions on the comments that can have different meaning will make the blog comments interesting read. The readers will crave for more such session where they can laugh a little and pull each other’s legs and feel the warmth of the bonding. This bonding can make the readers come closer and also increase the ranking with their regular visit. The different types of people from different background can be in this community and they will all find something funny to say at times and thus make the session interesting and attractive and less boring.

Use technicalities to Make popular comments:

You can use different links in the comments so that they will pull up the page ranking. You can use keywords that will bring the comments for the blog and users following keyword search will get these comments by those word. You can use do follow and anchor text links for the commenting page so that the search engines offer the comments to the user of the engine. You can also find out other posts that are there in the popular sites and then comment on them and then point your site from there. Copy the link is the address bar after you have posted the comments and for this purpose you can use Pingomatic or Pingler etc. These links in the popular sites will help you to increase your PageRank for the comments pasted in your website.

A new angle and interesting comment:

You can find the comments that have been there on the page and then try to post your own views about the subject. You must try to find the note of the previous comments and then try to bring in a new line or a new angle of the topic. Do not make it boring and repetitive. Keep it short and interesting so that it is good to go through and then other might agree or disagree and the topic discussion can turn to a new zone of the old subject. This can be done regularly and can make your topics and blogs and comments more interesting. This attraction can bring in the regular readers and even the readers of blog comments as the angle is unique.

The blog comments are short lines and they need to be to the point for the readers to find interest in them. These regular changes in topic and comment angle attract readers and they feel the urge to comment on your site regularly too, increasing the ranking of the page.

Author Bio:

Rajkumar Jonnala Full time SEO Consultant and Currently Working for bookgator.com which Provides wide range of online textbooks, school textbooks and many more.

5 Things to Confirm You Are Still A New Blogger

By Rahul Kuntala / Blogging, Blogging Tips

Oho
Do you know what it makes a blogger professional blogger or newbie blogger? Professional blogger learns from his/her mistakes while the other one who never learns from their blogging mistakes is called a NEWBIE blogger.

Are you blogging from so many days or just started? Let’s check out whether you are newbie blogger or not…

#1. Looking At Stats All The Time:

This sounds to be crazy but its common for the newbie bloggers who check their traffic stats all the time. Stop checking it, or disable the plugin if you are using WP stats plugin. And don’t check your stats even in Google analytics!!

I agree that stats reveal your blogging success and progress but what’s the use if you stare at them always? Instead of checking all the time, set a proper time for checking your stats once in a day or at the weekends.

#2. Updating The Themes Thrice A Week:

Shocked? You will do this if you are a absolute beginner. You always like to change your theme at least once a week.

How to overcome: Stop chasing after updating the themes, concentrate on the quality content creation. My advice is use simple and minimal theme like this blog.

#3. Looking At Alexa Rank So Often:

Keep your head on the content creation, building network and getting traffic to your blog rather than looking at the alexa ranking system. What’s the use if you just sit and look at that widget or rank?? Will it change?

Otherwise try to increase your alexa by updating more often. The more you update, the chances of increasing your rank will be more. Install alexa rank widget and toolbar in your browser to increase your rank.

#4. You Feel Lazy to Write Regularly:

You should be consistent in writing/updating your blog. It’s not necessary to write one post/day though. But, you should always update your blog often. It’s needed if you want to succeed in blogging.

Keep one thing in mind that “Perfection is an illusion”. We all are humans, so strive not for the perfection, strive for the consistency. Don’t feel lazy to update your blog content.

#5. Not Proof Reading Your Posts Before Publishing:

You never check your blog posts before hitting the publish button. You are just so lazy to do that. After all who will read your blog, huh? Your mom, pet and you – isn’t it?

How to overcome: Make it a habit of re-checking your posts before you publish them to the world. If possible double check them and re-craft it until you feel satisfied. This makes your writing better and adds value to posts.

Conclusion:

No one is more than you – think yourself as a professional blogger even if you are a newbie blogger and start doing the things. Learn from the successful bloggers in your niche and try to list out the top blogs in your niche and start commenting on them. You will notice the changes within few weeks.

Your Turn:

If you found this post funny or useful – drop your comments below. I would love to hear them from you.

This is a guest post by Rahul Kuntala, author of LearnBlogTips

Directory Submissions – Still a Viable SEO Strategy?

By Aditya Venkatesh / SEO

Directory submissions used to be a viable search engine optimization strategy a few years back. However, with changes made to search engines and the way they rank web pages, the importance of web directory submissions has diminished to some extent. In a few years more, I’m very certain that it will no longer be considered a good search engine optimization strategy just like free-for-all websites and stuffing keywords which used to provide results in the years before.

Quality of backlinks

Search engines such as Google rank webpages on the basis of the number of backlinks. For this reason, it is very important to build quality backlinks to your website on a regular basis. Theoretically, web directories can be a good source of backlinks. Because they have content that is relevant to your website, these backlinks can have some search engine benefits. However, in actual practice, most web directories have thousands of links pointing outwards. They also do not have good link popularity and many of them have low-quality spammy links. For this reason, getting links from web directories may not have any benefits at all. It should also be noted that submitting your links to a large number of low-quality directories all at once can adversely affect your search engine rankings. Thus it is a good idea to submit only to high quality web directories that have high page rank.

Time and effort

Directory submissions can take time and effort on your part. For example, if you want to submit your links to the top 500 directories, it can take several hours or days. You can use directory submission software or tools such as Roboform to make this job faster and easier. However, it still has to be done manually and is a time-consuming process. Considering the as SEO benefits, is it really worth the time and effort to submit to directories?

Approval rates

Let us say, you submit your link to 500 web directories. Probably, some hundred of these will approve your link within the next few weeks. Several of them will reject your link outright. And the remaining will approve it months later because they have plenty of links in the backlog. Many directories will simply disappear. Because of this, you will not see any search engine benefits within limited time frame.

Scope of promotion

Most directories do not accept inner pages, no matter how informative or professional they may be. Thus, you can only promote your homepage using directory submissions. Thus it is not a good option to promote your blog posts. It is better to go other better options.

To conclude, it is not worth the time and effort to do web directory submissions anymore. It is better to invest in other promotion strategies such as article marketing, guest blog writing and direct advertisements. Web directories had their golden days, but right now their days are over.

About the author: Aditya Venkatesh is a technology-enthusiast and blogs on www.adiwebs.com. In the past, he worked as a technical writer for a well-known web development company in Hyderabad, India. He has a Master’s degree in Engineering.

7 Easy Tips To Increase Your Search Traffic

By Jawed / SEO

Internet marketing has turned into a million dollar market and a favorite resort to people who want to generate money in a short period of time. There are many search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing etc. Some sites and blogs become popular in these search engines and others no one even knows which is more than likely to take place once you don’t have a reasonable marketing approach inviting absolutely free search engine traffic. So many are convinced this is an unyielding project. On contrary to previous thoughts there are highly effective methods of stimulating targeted free search engine traffic to your website.

In fact from article marketing to link baiting, blog commenting, forum marketing and so on there is more than one way to promote your blogs. Only consistent work and a little bit of patience will definitely help you to reach your target. With time the domain increases, blogs are frequently read and considered more valuable, if updated timely. Another thing to keep in mind is that traffic from organic search grows gradually. As you target more keywords within your content and gain more authority through backlinks, you will only grow your traffic. The blogosphere is a big and busy world with over 100 million blogs and growing. How do you attract visitors to your blog? Follow these simple tips to drive traffic to your blog.

Article Marketing

The easiest method to achieve totally free search engine traffic to your site is via article marketing. The success lies as it hyperlinks a majority of key words from the article to your website. Thus the more back links you get from article marketing the more traffic your site will enjoy. The articles are written keeping in mind the target market it is going to address. You have to identify the keyword which has to be back linked and build your article around that word. The content must not be vague or just for the sake of being posted. It should have meaningful message and leave the person with a good impression. Once you are done writing an article, post it to any of the top article directories. Then spin it and post it to lower PR directories. So for one article, you can get hundreds of dofollow links pointing towards your site. It will help you boost your website ranking thus resulting in more search engine traffic.

Search Engine Friendly Design

It is surprising to know that many bloggers claim their blog themes or templates as search engine friendly because the themes were advertised as such. It is always advised to spend some time to check the template to make sure it has the right title tag, order of content, heading tags and so on. Your invested time will be on-time task.

Theming Through Silos

Siloing is a smart way to write your blog content though many SEO experts identify it as simple tiered content writing. Theming with silos is a great way to structure and divide your blog content into subtopics. There are ways in presenting your work in smart paragraphs or points which would make your content topic mush more obvious to search engines. Good and smart packaging of the content is what others appreciate compared to a tired, long boring blogs. The link should be directly to the silo instead of another cross silo or via another link. Thus do not blog keeping in mind the subtopics or long key words as that leaves a bad impression.

Focus on quality content creation

One of the key to success is write well and write often. The content you write is what readers appreciate and look for. Make sure you have a meaningful content to say and eventually you will be able to develop a group of loyal visitors.

Search Engine Submission

You can also submit your blogs to search engines time to time. Most search engines provide a ‘Submit’ link (or something similar) to notify the search engine of your new blog, so submit your blog’s URL in popular search engine site like Google, Yahoo etc. Though, if you are a wordpress users, you can simply install sitemap plugin which will automatically notify search engines whenever your blog’s content changes. For more info about SEO. Check out our SEO articles

Also add links of your choice in your blogroll, the owners of those blogs might find your blog interesting and put them in their blogroll. Thus it gives you a chance to link to your blog through maximum possible blogs. Blogroll links are one of the best ways to boost your blog ranking as well as get some referral traffic from other blogs.

Blog Commenting

Commenting on other related blogs is an easy and effecting method to guide the traffic to your blog. Prompt response to comments should be given as that is the only way to show your loyalty to your readers and draw their attention to an interactive session. This gradually increases the number of loyal members/readers.

Jawed is a freelance writer and blogger from India. He blogs about how to earn money online and offers his article writing services at ArticleWriting.in