Getting Your WordPress Posts Into Google Using Sitemaps
Photo By macjewell
Using sitemaps you can speed up the process of getting your blog posts into Google’s index and hopefully you can begin to enjoy some benefits of Google Juice. This post will tell you how to do this using Google’s webmaster tools and a plugin or two.
What Is A Sitemap?
A sitemap is an xml file which contains details of the pages and posts from your blog, what the priority you think, each deserves and the frequency that page is updated. This sitemap is read by the Google bots and your posts and pages are added to the search engine’s index.
You can see what my sitemap looks like at http://wpdude.com/sitemap.xml.
You can manually create / update your sitemap with a text editor and then upload it to your blog or use one of the many sitemap plugins available.
Why Create A Sitemap?
It tells the search engines about your content, how often it is updated and most crucially you can prompt the search engines to index your new content as you add it.
Your site will eventually be spidered once it has some incoming links, but a sitemap will speed up that process by proactively telling the engines about your stuff.
Google WebMaster Tools
Google has a suit of Webmaster tools at google.com/webmasters, which allow site owners to check out how many links they have, tell Google how often to spider and update the content of their site and a host of other functions including sitemaps. This post will focus on sitemaps.
I think every blog owner should have a webmasters tools account if they are serious about getting their content into the search engine indexes and get organic traffic coming to their site.
The Verification Process
Once you have created an account with webmaster tools, you must verify your ownership of the site with Google. The verification process can come in one of two methods you can add a meta tag to your blog or upload a file with a specific name to your root directory.
meta tage method -using this method, you add a meta tag to the header of your blog. From the dashboard, click on appearance go to the editor. Click on the file called header and add the verification meta tag above the </head> tag. The meta tag will look something like this:
<meta name=”verify-v1″ content=” {verification string goes here }” >
file upload method – the second method is to upload a file with a particular name to the root of your site. Google will give you a file name such as abdcasdkjadsfkjhkdfssadf.html, create a blank file on the root of your site.
Once you have installed your chosen verify method, click on the verify button inside of google webmaster tools and a check will be done, if it is okay, you are good to go and add your sitemap.
Telling Google About Your Sitemap
Inside of the tool is a section imagenatively called sitemaps. Click on this link, and there is a section to submit the URL to where your sitemap will be stored, this will usuaully be in the root and be named sitemap.xml. Once this is added, Google heads off to check the site map and add any pages or posts it finds to the index.
Sitemap Plugins
You can manually create your sitemap as I have said, but this is arduous for a blog which is updated on a regular basis. The plugin fairies have magicked a solution for us WordPress blog owners. Here is a link to the xml sitemap section:
I use a plugin called Google XML Sitemap Generator. It allows me to automatically build a sitemap whenever I add a post or page, it lets me set priorities of pages and posts, but most importantly it automatically notifies the search engines when I add a new post.
What About The Search Engine Also-Rans
Sitemaps are also used by Yahoo and MSN, it was a standard developed by all three search engines so your work should gain you traffic from all three of the search giants.
Conclusion
Sitemaps are two years old (or so) and are the future of pushing content into the search engione indicise, I advise all WordPress blog owners to get their sitemap sorted now.
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Replying To WordPress Comments to Extend The Converstation
Photo by Orphanjones
In my post 7 reasons to leave blog comments I talked about leaving comments to build a conversation, in this post I would like to provide a how-to for WordPress 2.7.x blog owners to teach them how to reply to and engage with people who leave comments on their blogs.
Why Reply To Comments?
It’s all about engagement, a reader of your blog has added their input, it is only polite to acknowledge, or to discuss their point. You cannot operate a sucessful blog in a bubble, casting posts from on-high to your readers and then shutting the doors to your writing castle is not the recipe for success, you need to communicate with your readers and engage with them, one way to do this is by replying to comments.
Examples Of When I Reply
I reply to comments here at WP Dude under the following situations:
- Someone asks me a question.
- I feel I need to clarify the comment e.g. someone recently left a comment about nofollow, I explained what this meant just in case other readers did not understand this.
- Someone adds a point I missed in my post, I like to thank them and validate what they have said to my readers.
- Critics – get your point of view across to critics of your post.
When Not To Reply
I personally feel I don’t need to reply to comment trolls, spammers or the “nice post” brigade. They are either moderated, deleted or approved and left to themselves, I only reply to people who have joined the conversation.
That may sound a bit sniffy of people leaving a nice post comment, but I think they are giving me a thumbs up not asking for a chat.
There’s a Comment That Needs A Reply
Someone has left an insightful comment – check.
You have moderated it and published it on your site – check.
Now you want to add your voice to the conversation to reply to, or add to what has been said in the comment, how do you do that?
Inside of the comment section of your dashboard, scroll down to the comment you want to reply to and hover your mouse over the comment. Up pops a reply link, click on this add your text and voila, you have joined the conversation.
Threaded Levels of Comments
There is an option on WordPress blogs to enabled nested comments. This means you can allow people to see the threaded comments and to reply to other commentors.
To enable this function go to settings -> discussion and enable the following:
Enable threaded (nested) comments X levels deep
NB: Your theme needs to be configured to handle threaded comments for them to be displayed correctly. They are usually indented. There is a plugin to do this if your theme does not handle threaded comments.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-thread-comment/
Replying To Many Comments in One Reply
There is a increasing number of bloggers who reply to their commentors in one fell swoop (these are the swines who get many many comments) and they are adopting a twitter like syntax of using an @ sign before a users name i.e.
@commentor1 – nice point
@commentor2 – I disagree, get off my blog
They will create one new comment and reply to all of the commentors they feel need a reply.
E-Mail a Commentor
If you really want to engage with a commentor, I highly recommend you send them an email. As part of the commenting process, they will send you their email address, why not send them a short message thanking them for their
This is also a good place to reply to comments for individual requests which you do not wish to share with other readers of your blog.
There are plugins out there which will send an autoresponder message to new commentors, this is great, but I feel it looses the individual and personal touch of reaching out to a new reader.
Test Comments
I have left a test comment along with a reply at the bottom of this post so you can see how I have replied
That’s All Folks
If someone has gone to the trouble of leaving a comment on your blog, teh least you can do is engage with that reader, make them feel special and they may become on of your 1000 true fans.
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THEME REVIEW:Ice Cream Dreams
Photo By WordPrezzie
A number of people have asked me about the theme I use here at WPDude, so I thought I would write up a review of the theme and let you know how it works, where to get it from and how much it costs.
Ice Cream Dream The Premium Theme
Rhyme in a post sub-title cool, The name of the theme I use is Ice Cream Dream and it was developed by the very funny and lovely Nick Cernis over at WordPrezzie
Click here to view more details (damn right it’s an aff. link I love this theme)
Quanta Costa (as they say in Italy)
When this posts goes to press, Ice Cream Dream costs the very reasonable sum of $89.
When trying to decide if a premium theme is a good investment, I like to use the following equation.
- Can I do graphic design – no, buy a premium theme.
- Do I want a more unique theme than the run of the mill blog – yes, buy a premium theme.
What Configuration Options Do I Get
The theme comes in 5 colour combos of mint, raspberry, vanilla, chocolate and strawberry (thats green, pinky red, beige, brown, and red for those of us not into artsy-fartsy language). There is also a custom option so you can set your own colour scheme.
There is a neat logo and banner changing option to simply upload images. You can change the top logo, the dude on my site and the banner, the notebook.
Lastly there is a very good option to set a custom property pointing to a thumbnail image.
What Makes It So Cool
It was developed for one type of business blog, the blog wanting to sell a single service or product like my coaching service.
It has a highly visible call to action so you can direct visitors to your goal page or your offering. It is simple and unfussy, and it works, I write blog posts, people come to my site, see the hire me badge and bingo I get work.
None of This Developers License Shite
Sometimes when you buy a premium theme you buy per domain, Ice Cream Dream does not go in for this type of nonsense you buy once and get to reuse the theme as many times as you want.
Other theme developers are asking for multiple purchase or selling an inflated price developers edition.
Where’s The Downside?
If you want more than one prominent call to action on the front page you are going to have to code it up yourself. This theme is also shite for anyone wanting to sell ad space. This is for people selling their own services not “yet another” banner ad.
You will need to be able to resize or obtain images that are 240 pixels wide for the thumbnails shown on the front page. Do you have a graphics package that can scale images?
Nice After Sales Support
On a number of occasions, I have requested support from the team and it was very good, in particular when I asked for some new images. It was paid support, but the costs was very reasonable and the excellent Hayley got me my updated images in zero time flat.
The documentation that comes with the theme is very comprehensive and you should have no problems getting the theme up and running.
While I am Being an Ice Cream Dream FanBoy
WPDude and and WordPrezzie sitting in a tree kay-eye-ess-ess-eye-en-gee
Nick Cernis also has a couple of other excellent offerings, his excellent and very funny ebook Todoodlist and his not very often updated blog, but still very worthwhile read Put Things off, consider an RSS subscription, then wait for quite some time until his next excellent missie hits your reader app.
Go On Buy It You Know You Want To
You can see more about Ice Cream Dreams at WordPrezzie.com
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Beginners Guide To WordPress RSS
Photo by n0seblunt
I thought I would write a beginners guide to RSS for WordPress, this is designed for new comers to WordPress and RSS. The post will talk about what RSS is, it’s benefits and how to monitor your feed with services such as Feedburner.
What Is RSS
RSS stands for really simple syndication and it is a way to publish your blog posts as a syndicated feed. Your posts are translated into an XML file which can be pulled into other applications.
WTF is a Syndicated Feed
This is a cut down version of your posts without your theme, widgets and doo-dahs which can be syndicated from your site and republished elsewhere.
Your Not Selling This Very Well
It is a way to allow your true fans to subscribe to your site and pull your new posts to them on-demand to a feed reader (see below) without the need to visit your site, so they are always up to date on your latest content. Trust me when I say you want RSS, it’s going to replace news papers in the not too distant future, and you want your blog to have this function.
Why Do People Want to Syndicate Your Site
If you engage a reader with your content and they know about RSS, they do not want to bookmark and return to your site every few days to see your latest stuff. They want to subscribe to your RSS feed and aggregate your content to a central point from which they can read your work at their pleasure.
People using RSS ususually follow a numnber of blogs, and they pull all their feeds into one place to read at ta time convinient to them.
You’ve seen the Symbol
Nearly every blog will have symbol like this on it:
This is the generally recognised RSS feed symbol and I know if I click on this I can subscribe to a site and have all the past and upcoming posts added to my feed reader.
If you are serious about getting your writing out there, your blog should have an image like this somewhere. Mine is at the top right in a jolly green colour, feel free to click on it. You may need to edit your theme to add the logo, but get one on your front page and in a prominent position.
WordPress Does It By Default
You will be very glad to hear that WordPress provides an RSS feed by default, if you type one of the following URLs into your browser you will see what the XML file of your RSS looks like (NB don’t do this on my site, I have plugins in place and you will not see the raw RSS feed).
- http://example.com/?feed=rss
- http://example.com/?feed=rss2
- http://example.com/?feed=rdf
- http://example.com/?feed=atom
As you can see there four different flavours of feed going on by default, since this is a beginners guide to RSS I will not bore you with protocol details, I will simply tell you that these are four very similar methods to distribute your RSS feed.
Tweaking Your Feed Settings
There is one settings you need to conisder when setting up your feed over and above the default and that is how much of your post you will push out.
From the dashboard click on settings->reading . There is a settings marked For each article in a feed, the options for this are full text or summary, meaning send out the complete text of your post versus a summary with a link back to the original source. You may think that you want people running back to your site to click on your adsense or to view your banner ads, and a couple of high profile bloggers swear by this approach (I am thinking Aaron Wall’s seobook.com or Yaro Starak’s entrepreneurs-journey.com) but if you are reading this article it is unlikely that you are a AAA blogger to so I would go with a full feed to stop annoying people and preventing unsubscription. Full text is set by default.
RSS Syndication Services
So you have an RSS feed, there is a highly visible rss feed link on your site, now what? Well you will probably want some stats on how many subsribers you have, what content they are reading. Step forward the RSS Syndiation service.
These third party services take your feed and wrap them with statstics and other services to make monitoring the usage of your content away from your site easier. The majority of these services are free with some sort of for a fee additional advanced services.
I use the Feedburner, a company which was aquired by Google. I am going to stick my neck on the line and say it is the most widely used feed service. Feedburner recently made some big changes and there was a blip in their service with the ususal twitter (@wpdude) outcry. That aside I still think it is an excellent service. It tells me how many people have subscribed to my feed, what they are reading, and clicking through onto.
Alternatives to Feedburner are Feedblitz and Rapidfeeds.
A word or warning checking your RSS stats can become addictive don’t get hung up on your reader count.
Feed Readers
Many people use feed readers to get updates from their favourite blogs. Using a feed reader, you add their RSS link to your reader and as new content is added, it is pulled into your reader of choice.
A small list of RSS readers could include
- Google Reader
- Newsgator
- Feedreader
- Flock
- Netvibes
- Most Browsers also have RSS reader functionality
Some of the readers are clients you install on your machine, whilst others are internet servces you access from a website.
I use Google reader, it allows me to categogorises feeds into different interest sections, and to mark favourite articles.
RSS Plugins
As with any problem in WordPress there will be a multitude of plugins to solve the issue. Here is a link to the various RSS plugins from the Wordpress plugin directory
The ones I use are the Feedburner Feedsmith which pushes my feed into Feedburner without too much configuration, I also use RSS Footer which I use to put a link back to my site in case anyone is scraping my content.
Get Your RSS out There
Get your RSS feed sorted, place a link to subscrive about the fold on your front page. Belive me when I say it is the future of publishing. It allows reader to select the content they are really interested in and pull it into a personalised steam of content, a DIY newspaper.
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How To Control You WordPress Comments
Photo By Tim Morgan
As your blog begins to gain momentum and you receive more and more comments, you may want to impose some controls over what is written as a footnote to your post.
This how-to post shows the various comment controls available to a blogger using WordPress. All settings unless stated are under the settings-> discussion section in the dashboard. It is assumed that your blog is at version 2.7.x
Kill The Conversation
The quickest way to stop any comment control issues you are having is to close comments on your blog, in other words to stop all comments on your posts. Think long and hard before killing the conversation, feedback to bloggers via comments is incredibly useful to extend the converstation.
To close comments on your blog check the box marked Allow people to post comments on the article.
All Things In Moderation
WordPress comes with comment moderation settings, this means that all comments need to be approved before they are shown on your blog.
They are held in a moderation queue until the blog admin clicks on an approve, reject or spam link.
To enable moderation, click on the check box An administrator must always approve the comment.
Pre-Approved Commentors
You can pre-approve commentors so that anything they subsequently comment upon will automatically be approved and displayed as a valid comment.
This is great if commentors are legitimate, but sometimes comments are raised manually as a precursor to a spam attack. I personally do not like this setting, prefering manual moderation just in case they are bi-polar in their comments.
To enable comment preapproval click on Comment author must have a previously approved comment
Plugins
There are always a bag load of plugins to help control your comments, the one I rely upon to catch spam comments is Akismet, this excellent plugin analyses your comments against it’s database of offenders and marks anything it catches as spam and holds it for moderation.
There are many other comment plugins including ones which will show a captcha form before submission, ones asking questions to prove you are not a spam bot, others to make the conversation more advanced, please feel free to leave a comment with your favourities.
Here is a link to the comments section of the WordPress plugin directory
Keyword Moderation
You can send a comment directly to moderation if it contains certain keywords. An example of this could be spammsters leaving comments trying to link to their male enhancement site, if you add viagra or cialis to your list, any comments with these words in will be moderated.
To enable keyword moderation, type the keywords into the blacklist box at the bottom of the discussion screen.
Links Schminks
Most of the trouble you will have in comments will come from people trying to use your blog as a forum for their own products or services. There is an option to send comments for moderation if more than x links are spotted in a comment. I have this set to 2. If someone has a legitimate need for a link in a comment, my thinking is that there will only be one, multiple links spells spam in my book.
To enable link counting,set the number of links in the section entitled. Hold a comment in the queue if it contains
or more links.Your Going On The List!
If someone is repeadtely spamming or trolling your comments, you can add them to a blacklist which will automatically send their missive to the spam queue.
You can add someone to your blacklist via their email address, blog URL or the originating IP address
The blacklist is located towards the bottom of the settings-> discussion screen, add one rule per line e.g.
- wpdude,com
- 192.168.101.1
- @wpdude
You can put parts of]j,ge a string for example the above email rule will stop all emails from the wpdude.com domain.
If Your Names Not Down You Can’t Get In
There is a function withing WordPress which forces users to register and login to your blog before they can leave a post. This is a very powerful control process, but it is also a huge turnoff to commentors, many people will not comment on a blog, that said only people with a real urge to comment will register, click on the email verfiication link, login and then comment (I’m worn out writing it never mind doing it.
To enable this function click Users must be registered and logged in to comment
Comment Editing
You may have a comment that you want to publish, but some part of the comment is causing you concern, as the blog owner you have the right to edit anything on your blog, feel free to extend this to the comments.
An example of when I have done this was with a recent comment which had a link in it. Links are like a stamp of authority, and I was not 100% sure of the product in question, so I edited the comment and removed the link, leaving a human readable way to get to the product in question, but removing my sites validation.
A Parting Word
Commenting and the discussion it promotes is one of the best things about blogging. Try not to make people jump through hoops join the conversation, but be ruthless with Trolls, and low quality comments.
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Guest Posting Makes You Atractive To The Opposite Sex – Fact!!!!
Photo by Fienna
No of course it doesn’t, just drawing you in, sorry for the false advertising, feel free to leave if you are looking for sexual conquests through blogging (sheesh get a life!).
Guest posting is an excellent way to market your blog and personal brand, in this post I want to talk about the benefits, mechanics and purpose of guest posting.
What is A Guest Post
A guest post is a post you write for another blog in an effort to build awareness of your own blog or to market yourself within the niche of that blog.
The guest post is usually written for a blog within the same niche as your own, and probably for a blog which has a bigger readership, you are trying to ride on the tide of “other peoples traffic” in an effort to boost your own visitor stats.
One more thing, you do it for Free.
What Is The Benefit
For the guest blog, the benefit is a piece of quality content written for free by someone else, leaving the blog owner time to do one of the million other things they have in their life.
For you the guest poster the benefits are:
- Heightened Exposure
- Chance to build your authority
- Traffic
How To Get A Guest Posting Gig
Ask nicely, simple as that.
Well kind of, if your blogger is a AAA list blogger they will get thousands of guest posting requests for exactly the reasons stated above, so I recommend, getting to know the blog in questions, join the conversation by leaving comments (see 7 reasons to leave blog comments) and gaining the attention of the blogger then go in with a pitch.
The Pitch
Understand that your guest post is not the most important thing in the target blogger’s life, you need to sell your guest post to them. I try to do this with as much brevity as possible to take up as small amount of time of my target blogger as possible (target sounds a bit sinister by hey ho). Be polite and do not demand space on their site.
Dear Blogger
My name is Joe Blogger and I own and write for {myblog link} which is in the same niche as your site {target blog}
Do you accept guest posts, if so can I pitch you a guest post idea I would like to write for you blog.
Following up your post on xyz I would like to write a guest post of why w is always left out of the xyz conversation.
Thanks in advance for any time you spend on this unsolicited approach.
Regards
Potential Guest Blogger
Click send and wait. Remember you don’t automatically get that slot, if they say no, take it on the chin and find another place to guest, if you went right to the top of the blog food chain in your niche, it is likely you will fail, try a medium size blog first.
Write Your Best Post Ever!
You may settle for substandard on occasion on your home blog, but never on a guest posting slot. Research well, write well, double check your spelling and grammar before you send off the post. I like to write a guest post and sit on it for a day, double check it the next day with a clear head and then post it.
Go easy with the self promotion, a simple heading saying who you are and a link back to your site should be enough, if the post is up to scratch, people will want to know more about you and click on your link. Here is what I like to us:
In a guest post, Neil Matthews of WPDude.com discusses why guest posting can increase you attractiveness to the opposite sex.
Brace! Brace! Brace! Here Comes The Traffic
If you do guest posting correctly, there will likely be a large wave of traffic coming to your site, you need to be prepared to ride this wave:
Have quality posts visible on the front page of your blog to engage your new readers
Consider creating a specific landing page and link to that from the guest post with a welcome messagers
A warm welcome to readers from {insert guest post blog here}, thanks for visiting I hope your enjoyed my guest posts, here are a list of some of my favourite posts here on {enter your blog name} I hope your enjoy them, if you do please consider taking out a subscription to my RSS feed.
If it’s a really big blog consider installing a cache plugin so your cheap hosting account does not failunder the load. My preferred cache plugin is wp-cache.
Join The New Conversation
If your post is interesting enough you will generate comments on the guest blog, remember to engage in that converstation and leave your own comments in reply to the queries or suggestions. Little touches like this stay in people minds, all helping to reinfoce the benefits mentioned above. You also get a chance to whip the comment trolls into shape.
Other Benefits
If people see your writing there are other benefits than just a visit. Personally I have been offered paid blogging gigs and gained consulting clients from guest posting. It is one of my favourite marketing methods.
Following Up A Guest Slot
I like to thank the blogger for the opportunity, say how well it has served my own blog. The leaves the door open to future guest slots.
Wrap Up
Make guest posting a regular part of yoru blog marketing until you reach the crucial tipping point where the momentum of your blog begins to market itself.
Guest posters are always welcome here 
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