11 Ways To Boost Your Blog Readership

Starting a blog is an exciting venture. Whether you’re doing it to help promote your business or just as a personal enrichment activity, it’s your chance to broadcast your ideas to the world. But, as excited as you are about your posts, it will take some time before you build up a significant reader base that is also excited about your posts.

Here are eleven easy tips you can utilize to help boost your blog readership from the beginning of your online writing adventure. Follow these tactics and you’re likely to see a boost in stats in the days and weeks that follow.

1. Network

Get involved in the blogging community and network with other bloggers. If they start to mention your blog in their posts, their readers will be intrigued and will check out your blog. There are forums and special events that you can participate in to meet with the other bloggers. You can also network by reaching out to other bloggers whose blogs you respect.

2. Promote it in your email signature

Think of your email signature as a digital business card. This is where you can provide your contacts with your pertinent contact information. By including your blog URL in your signature, those who you communicate with will have easy, instant access to your site.

3. Add to forum signatures

Online forums are another fantastic place to promote your blog. There are forums about every subject, so it will be easy for you to find one or more with people who have similar interests to what are discussed in your blog. By adding it to your forum signature, your blog URL will appear in every thread in which you post. It’s a subtle way to gain readers and will look less self-promoting than just adding posts that are asking people to read your blog.

4. Give something valuable for free

No, you are not going to loose money in the process. Something valuable could be in the form of an eBook, a report, audio file, screencast etc that you made. You can offer this as a bonus to users who subscribe to your blog. This technique is usually used with an email signup tied to an autoresponder.

5. Build a landing page for subscribers

This option can go really well with the “giving something away for free” option. You can build a squeeze page whose soul purpose is to convert the visitor into a reader by giving them something valuable for free then you drive traffic to this landing page.

6. Engage your readers by encouraging commenting

It’s not only important to gain new readers but also to ensure that they will keep visiting your blog. That’s why it’s important to get them engaged.One way to engage your readers is to pose questions to them; ask them for their opinions, advice and experiences as they relate to your blog post. After all, who doesn’t love to provide others with their advice and opinions?!

7. Put it on business cards

Business cards are inexpensive and easy to have made. Business people have been publishing their website information on their business cards for years, so why not include information about a blog? Even if your blog isn’t connected directly to a business, you can have business cards made with your blog information.

8. Submit your URL to search engines

Search engines don’t automatically detect every single website that is ever created. Sometimes you need to speed up the cataloging process by submitting your URL to the search engines. The popular engines often will have a “submit” link that you can utilize to add your blog. Keep in mind, just because you submit your URL doesn’t mean it’s going to appear on the first page of results. Nonetheless, getting your blog listed with Google, Yahoo, and the likes, is a great first step.

9. Utilize tags

Once you have your blog listed with the search engines, tags will help ensure that it appears more frequently in search results. With each posting, pick three to five main subjects to tag. The tags that are often most searched are people’s names.

10. Set up an RSS feed

Readers who utilize your feed will easily be able to access your new posts as they are published. This is a great tool to retain your current readership! If you use WordPress as your blogging platform then you get this by default.

11. Make it easy to subscribe

Offer an email subscription option as well as the RSS subscription. Some readers just like the good old email subscription method. Make sure the subscription option is easily visible to your site’s visitors (some people have a tendency to go out of their way to make it hard to find).

I am sure I haven’t covered all the easy ways to boost your blog readership techniques so please feel free to share your tips in the comment area below.

Split Testing on Your WordPress Site Using Google Website Optimizer

ince we published the Maximize Revenue 101: Should You Lower or Increase the Product Price to Increase Revenue article, a few readers have asked us to provide a step by step guide on how to setup split testing on a WordPress powered site. Google website optimizer is probably the best tool out there for setting up split testing.

In this article we have included a PDF file with step by step guide on how to setup split testing using Google Website Optimizer and a WordPress plugin.

Click on the following link to open the PDF file:

• How to Do Split Testing on Your WordPress Site Using Google Website Optimizer

I hope this helps you easily setup split testing for your products on your WordPress powered site.

5 Tips On How To Make Your Blog Visitors Stay Longer

The length of time that you can keep your visitors on your website can be a crucial factor in determining how successful your blog will be.

Simply getting traffic in the form of thousands of unique visitors daily is meaningless if the time they spend on your site is less than a few seconds or your bounce rate is more than 95%.

There are certain things you can do in the way you present your pages and posts which will maximize the chances of your visitors sticking around for a longer period on your site.

The longer people stay the greater your opportunity to monetize their visit or convince them to take your desired call to action.

A call to action is an Internet marketing term which refers to the primary action that you want your visitors to take when they land on your page or website. One example of a call to action  is where you want someone to click your “buy now” button and purchase your product. Another might be that you want to get people to download your free ebook after signing up as members.

Below are some tips which will help you to keep the attention of your visitors or at the very least keep them interested long enough to stay and explore your site and ultimately perform the call to action you want them to.

1. Remove unnecessary external links from your landing pages and use internal links
   Trying to increase the average visitor time on your site is one of the ways that you can decrease your bounce rate and increase your rankings.If you use Google Analytics you’ve probably already heard of the term “bounce rate”.Bounce rate (as defined by Google) is:“..the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page”. Therefore plastering your affiliate banners and links all over your pages can work against you if your visitors leave your site immediately from the page they entered from.
   Try to entice your visitors to read more by offering them some relevant links to another internal page or post where you provide a useful review and which ultimately contains your affiliate banner. This way you are not pushing people straight out of the same door they entered.
   There are some useful WP plugins you can use to add relevant internal post links to your blog such as Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
2. Use emotion to present your message
   People most often buy from emotion whether they admit it or not. This is because the actions which emanate from emotion are quite often subconscious.
   Hence, an emotional response is much more likely to achieve a call to action than a logical one.For instance if you are trying to convince someone to buy your product by using logic, then the chances are that they will also look at your argument from a rational point of view and they will weigh up the pros and cons of buying versus not buying.If you introduce an emotional element to your message such as presenting a benefit or selling a solution to a problem or highlighting how people can get closer to achieving their dream, then you will appeal to the emotional decision making areas of the brain.
   This will maximize the chances of gaining a customer because it will create an emotional connection between your message and the reader.Therefore once you have successfully forged a positive emotional relationship with your readers, they will happily want to come back to your site to explore further or even become regular customers.
3. Include video content on your posts and pages
   Video is one of the most effective ways to communicate a message to people. Even short videos of just a few minutes can often deliver more value to your readers than multiple pages of writing can.
   Therefore in the cases where you would usually get people browsing through an article in 10 to 20 seconds before leaving, the added benefit of using a short video is that it increases the likely-hood that people will stay on your site for longer because they are watching your video.
   Video on the Internet is really just a modern extension of TV but the great thing is that you get to be the producer of the content.
4. Use captivating images in conjunction with your copy or content
   Quite often the right image coupled with the relevant content can induce an emotional response and it can help lay the foundations for the right mindset you want to create before somebody reads your sales pitch or post.
   Humans are quite easily visually stimulated and you can exploit this by using effective images and colors with your message.
5. Focus on providing value and informative content rather than blatant advertising
   Your content and the value which it provides is the sticking point which helps to build a relationship with your readers. A relationship needs some measure of trust by both parties but when you successfully gain this trust from your readers or clients then you are also creating a longer term investment where current customers also become future customers.There are many ways you can provide value for people who will in turn be very happy to return the favor by becoming a customer. For instance you could offer free online courses or a series of tutorials which people can access after they sign up as free members.
   You could also set up your own forum or support system which provides help to people but also an opportunity for people to interact with each other.

Advanced WordPress Security Tips

This is a follow-up from the Essential WordPress Security Tips article.

In general WordPress is pretty secure as long as you apply common sense and follow standard security practices. The tips mentioned in this article are for added security (you don’t need to apply them all).

However, if you are in the mood for some advanced tweaking then the following security tips should come in handy

NOTE and DISCLAIMER

Most of these techniques require you to understand what you are doing.

It is strongly recommended that you first test these techniques on a test or development site before applying them to your live site. Doing some of the tips suggested here can break your site if not performed correctly.

We take no responsibility for any mishaps as a result of your efforts in applying the techniques discussed in this article.

Also note that these techniques assume that your WordPress installation is running Apache and you have mod_alias and mod_rewrite installed.

1. Disable HTTP Trace Method

There is a security attack technique called Cross Site Tracing (XST) which can be used together with another attack mechanism called Cross Site Scripting (XSS) which exploits systems which have HTTP TRACE functionality. HTTP TRACE is a default functional feature on most webservers and is used for things like debugging. Hackers who use XST will usually steal cookie and other sensitive server information via header requests.

You can disable the trace functionality either via your Apache configuration file or by putting the following in your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^TRACE
RewriteRule .* - [F]


2. Remove header outputs from your WordPress installation

WordPress can often add quite a lot of output in your header pertaining to various services. The following code shows how you can remove a lot of this output.

Warning: This can break some functionality if you are not careful. Eg, if you’re using RSS feeds then you may want to comment that line out.

Add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file:

remove_action('wp_head', 'index_rel_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'feed_links', 2);
remove_action('wp_head', 'feed_links_extra', 3);
remove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'parent_post_rel_link', 10, 0);
remove_action('wp_head', 'start_post_rel_link', 10, 0);
remove_action('wp_head', 'adjacent_posts_rel_link_wp_head', 10, 0);
remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');
remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_shortlink_wp_head', 10, 0);
remove_action('wp_head', 'noindex', 1);


3. Deny comment posting via proxy server

You can reduce spam and general proxy requests by attempting to prevent comments which are posted via a proxy server. Use the code below (compliments of perishablepress.com) in your .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} =POST
RewriteCond %{HTTP:VIA}%{HTTP:FORWARDED}%{HTTP:USERAGENT_VIA}%{HTTP:X_FORWARDED_FOR}%{HTTP:PROXY_CONNECTION} !^$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:XPROXY_CONNECTION}%{HTTP:HTTP_PC_REMOTE_ADDR}%{HTTP:HTTP_CLIENT_IP} !^$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(wp-login.php|wp-admin/|wp-content/plugins/|wp-includes/).* [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,NS,L]


4. Change your default WordPress DB prefix

You may already be aware that WP uses a default prefix value of “wp_” for the DB tables. This can in turn be used by malicious bots and hackers to guess your DB table names.

In general, changing your WP DB prefix value is much easier to do at installation time because you can set it in your wp-config.php file.

Conversely if you already have a live WP site and you wish to change your DB prefix, then the procedure is a little more complicated.

A basic guide for changing the DB prefix after an install for those who are curious is briefly outlined below:

1) Do a full DB backup and save the backup somewhere offboard. Using something like BackupBuddy can useful.
2) Do a complete dump of your WP DB using PHPMyAdmin into a text file and save 2 copies – one for editing and the other as an original just in case.
3) Using a good code editor, replace all instances of “wp_” with your own prefix.
4) From your WP admin panel, deactivate all plugins
5) Using PHPMyAdmin, drop your old DB and import your new one using the file you edited in step 3.
6) Edit your wp-config.php file with the new DB prefix value.
7) Re-activate your WP plugins
8) Perform another save on your permalink settings by going to Settings->Permalinks in order to refresh your permalink structure.

Caution:

Sometimes plugins add their own prefix after the wordpress prefix where both are identical.

example, you might have a table name from a certain plugin has a name like the following: wp_wp_abc_table_name.

Be sure when replacing the “wp_” instances in step 2 above that you only replace the first “wp_” prefix and not the one following it.
For instance if we take the example we just mentioned we would replace the first prefix with our new prefix which for this example might be called “trx_”.

The new name would look like:

trx_wp_abc_tablename

Note that there are also WP plugins out there which can achieve the above steps for those who are not prepared to get their hands dirty.

5. Deny Potentially Dangerous Query Strings

You can put the following code in your .htacces file to help prevent XSS attacks.

BEWARE: Functionality of some plugins or themes could break if you are not careful to exclude strings which are used by them.

# QUERY STRING EXPLOITS
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ../   [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} boot.ini [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} tag= [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ftp: [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} http: [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} https:   [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} mosConfig [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^.*([|]|(|)|<|>|'|"|;|?|*).* [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^.*(%22|%27|%3C|%3E|%5C|%7B|%7C).* [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^.*(%0|%A|%B|%C|%D|%E|%F|127.0).* [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^.*(globals|encode|config|localhost|loopback).* [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^.*(request|select|insert|union|declare|drop).* [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [F,L]
</IfModule>


6. Apply PHP hardening to your system

You can install and enable Suhosin which is a PHP hardening system on your server. This can further increase the security of your system by protecting against various vulnerabilities.

Suhosin typically installs on most PHP installations and is sometimes included by webhosting companies by default. (Check with your hosting provider)

If you can read more about Suhosin here.

Make sure to read the Essential WordPress Security Tips article if you haven’t done so already.

Top 3 Common Reasons for a Slow WordPress Site (in my experience)

If you own and run a WordPress site which is currently slow then there are usually some common factors which are most probably contributing to the lack of load speed of your site.

The power and flexibility of WordPress lies under the hood, where as a blogging and CMS platform, it easily caters for customizations to be made in a programmatic way via themes and plugins.

However, this flexibility can also ironically be a cause for some of the reasons why your site might be running slow or has progressively become slower as time has gone on.

There are also numerous other factors which also play a role in your site’s speed (or lack thereof), so let’s take a look at them.

After doing troubleshooting work on hundreds of customer sites over the years, I have found that the following 3 common factors contribute to a WordPress site being too slow:

1. Using lots of poorly coded plugins
2. Using poorly coded and bloated theme
3. Using a not so good hosting provider/solution

1. Using Lots of Poorly Coded Plugins

Due to the open-source nature of WordPress (which is a big positive in my opinion), the variety of plugin functionality available is immense but so is the variety of plugin coding quality.

The fact that you can quite often obtain a free plugin which will perform a crucial task for your website is immensely exciting, but this also requires the need to beware of which plugins you choose to use on your site.

How a plugin is coded can mean the difference in whether your pages load in a fraction of a second versus 5 seconds or more. WordPress generally has a best coding practices criteria for plugin developers but quite often these are ignored by a lot of programmers; in some cases because these programmers are new to the technology or simply not skilled enough to know better.

Therefore you will often find plugins which have been coded in such a way where the programmer has either not been cognizant of performance impacts or not taken into account possible conflicts which their code might have on other core functionality of WordPress in general or the functionality of other plugins or themes. For example, how and when a plugin developer chooses to load their javascript/jquery scripts and libraries can greatly impact the chance of conflicts.

There are many factors which determine the quality of a plugin’s coding and this topic can fill another series of articles, but for our intensive purposes as website owners we should be discerning with which plugins we choose to use.

There are a couple of easy checks you can make when choosing either a free or paid plugin.

For instance if you are searching in wordpress.org for plugins, you can check things such as the number of downloads for the plugin and also how well it is supported.

You will find with the more quality plugins that the developer quite often stands behind their work and they demonstrate this by providing some support and regular updates.

The same thing also applies for paid plugins.

Side Note and Example

You may find various articles recommending that you limit the number of plugins you use on your WordPress site because they claim that having a large number of active plugins is one of the reasons for a site’s slowness. This advice can be misleading if not explained correctly. The whole principle of WordPress is based on its modularized nature and it is designed to accept various specialized functionality via things such as plugins. So in general rather than being too focused on the number of plugins, focus on limiting the use of poorly coded and bloated plugins.

I will give you a very simple example to demonstrate my point. Lets say you have one one site (Site A) that has one plugin which loads 20 JavaScript files. Another site (Site B) has 10 plugins which altogether loads 10 JavaScript files. Now, if you purely go by the number of active plugins then you would think that Site A has better page load time than Site B which would be totally wrong.

You should in theory be able to have as many active plugins on your site as you wish provided that they are all working harmoniously with each other, your theme and the WordPress core in general.

What really matters is which plugins you are choosing to use, because the greater the number of lower quality and bloated plugins you’ve installed, the greater the chance this will affect your site speed.

2. Using Poorly Coded Themes

A similar argument to the one we made above applies for themes too. Always be mindful of which theme you choose to install on your site. The fact that you may have paid a premium price for your theme in themeforest doesn’t necessarily mean that the theme has been properly constructed by the developer. Try not to buy themes that uses a lot of JavaScript files.

The benchmark which you should often use about how well a theme performs is to try out your site using the native WordPress themes such as TwentyTen or TwentyEleven and compare how well or badly your current premium theme fares against these.

Further Reading

• When themes go wild
• WordPress system integration 101

3. Your Hosting Solution is Not Very Good

Your hosting provider is another crucial factor which can affect the performance of your site.

A lot of the “cheap” and “free” providers are cheap and free for a reason. These hosting providers are usually under-resourced in terms of hardware and the features they provide. Also the type of hosting plan is important and which plan you choose is based on how much traffic you are getting to your site.

Shared hosting is the most common plan and will usually suffice for most WordPress sites provided that the hosting provider is reliable. In this type of solution your site shares the server’s resources with a number of other sites. If your hosting provider puts you on an overcrowded shared server then it will significantly affect your site speed. For higher traffic scenarios, a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or a dedicated server solution is usually required because this provides you with more dedicated CPU and RAM Memroy resources which will keep the page load time optimum under high traffic scenerio.

A Short All-You-Need Guide to Keyword Density

Whether the question is about quality on-page SEO or about the requirement of the keyword(s) in the article, keyword density does matter. From top successful bloggers to newbie bloggers, keyword density is always a topic to discuss about. If you’re not really familiar with the term at all, here’s a small definition.

What Is Keyword Density?

Keyword density is the amount of specified keywords that appear inside an article. It is represented in percentage (%). A short example of keyword density could be this – If you have an article of 100 words, and your keyword is placed twice into the article, the keyword density of that article would be 2%.

What Is An Ideal Keyword Density?

A question that even Google can’t answer. The link goes out to a video by Matt Cutts (the head of Google’s WebSpam Team).

An ideal keyword density for an article could be anywhere between 2%-4% (as suggested by many authority sources). But this is not always true, as there are articles that rank well for highly searched keywords even though they have a very low percent of keywords in them – sometimes about 0.5% too! Yes, it’s not impossible. Later in this article, we’ll discuss how this can really happen.

Do Search Engines Care About Keyword Density?

A short answer to this is – YES, they do and elaborating that answer would bring in many facts. Search engines recognize keywords in an article to identify what the article is actually about. But there are millions of webmasters who take it the opposite way by assuming that the higher the keyword density of an article is, the better chances it has of ranking well on SERPs. But this is completely incorrect, because if the number goes too much above the normal (which has no numeric value), search engines consider that article to be one which lacks quality and that which has no potential of providing value to the readers.

Should I Have More Than One Keyword In The Same Article?

One more unanswered question. Having more than one specific keyword in an article should be somewhat challenging if the writer/author is not really “good”. This is because naturally placing both the keywords inside the content could be a task, and would require some extra attention to the content of the article. Also, not practicing it perfectly would leave the search engines confused about the purpose of the post.

It is advised that if the author is planning to rank the same article higher for more than one keyword, he/she will prominently need to focus on placing the keywords in such a way that they look ‘natural’, and not forcefully added to the article.

How Do Short-Tail And Long-Tail Keywords Matter In Keyword Density

First of all, what are short-tail and long tail keywords?

Short-Tail keywords are the words that are shorter in size. These are usually one or two words and in some cases, three words. For example – make money, keyword density, Internet marketing etc. Short tail keywords don’t often work well for ranking articles higher on SERPs as they’re often taken by homepages. But the other option we have is definitely great for ranking articles well on SERPs.

Long-tail keywords are, of course, the opposite of short-tail ones. These are phrases or even sentences. Some examples for these are – how to make money on twitter, free keyword density checker, best Internet marketing services etc because the searches are specific to what an article is about. On the other hand, the short-tail keywords are not at all specific about the requirement of the user, the keyword ‘make money’ must have an enormous number of articles because there are hundreds of ways to make money, hence millions of articles are written by thousands of people all over the web. As mentioned above that long-tail keywords are best for ranking single posts/articles well, we’ll discuss on how to do the same.

The Importance Of Having Keywords In Headers Inside The Post

Note that the ‘headers’ mentioned here are the ‘heading tags’ inside the content. You might know them by H1, H2, and H3 etc. Search engines do give a lot of importance to the header tags i.e. <h1>, <h2> etc. (as the search engines go through the HTML of your content). This is because headers define your post. They are a short summary of your articles. The most used header tags are usually H2 and H3 as there can be several sub-headings into an article – like this article for instance.

When it comes to placing keywords into headers, one has to be careful enough about the same. Here are some quick tips on how to practice the correct way of using keywords in heading tags –

• Don’t use the keywords in all the headings
• Don’t link anything from the headings, especially using the keywords
• Keep the headings unique than the other content on that page, but do include the keyword in one of them.
• Don’t repeat the headings (e.g. Strategy 1 Of Keyword Density, Strategy 2 Of Keyword Density, Strategy 3 Of Keyword Density etc.)

Keyword Density Strategy To Rank Single Posts Well

Though there are many factors that determine the ranking of posts on SERPs, keyword density is one of them. If you follow some tips from here, you’ll probably notice some change in the rankings of your articles on SERPs –

1) ALWAYS choose a long-tail keyword. This is because short-tail keywords don’t really help getting posts rank well.

2) Use keywords in headers inside the post, but in a limited number.

3) Don’t worry about the ideal keyword density. Just go with what suits the post. Just make sure you place enough number of keywords so that search engine bots can recognize what the article is actually about.

4) Try to focus on a single keyword (long-tail, of course) rather than going for more. This helps you, the writer, as well as the search engine bots to focus on the purpose of the article.

Conclusion

The conclusion is simple. To keep your quality content worth it, don’t stuff it with too many keywords. The keywords should define what your article is about, and not be the article itself.

Disavow Links Tool: Are Your Back-links Negatively Affecting Your Ranking?

Many sites recently suffered a big demotion in terms of Google ranking, and consequently the amount of organic traffic they receive, due to one of the Google Panda updates.

Was your site one of them? Well if it was it was probably due to a few reasons, one of which may have been due to excessive number of unnatural and low quality (spammy) back links.

In the past couple of years there has been quite a concerted crackdown by Google on sites deemed to be of low quality or those seen as “spammy” in nature from the viewpoint of Google.

This includes sites which have an “unnatural” collection of back links. As you may already know, back links are only one of the many indicators which Google uses to calculate the page rank of a website or web-page.

Over the years, the number of back links pointing to a website was one indicator which was quickly learned by most webmasters to make a significant difference to rankings, and as a result, many website owners poured a huge amount of effort in building as many back links to their site with the aim of catapulting their way to a higher page rank.

Unfortunately things got out of hand and a lot of people resorted to back-link-building techniques which most people (especially Google) considered to be a disreputable practice and a form of cheating.

Even more importantly, the quality of search results was being affected because Google was finding itself displaying poor quality sites on the first few pages of search results on account of the sheer amount of back links these sites had pointing to them.

Website owners were going crazy trying to SEO their sites using strategies which resulted in a massive number of unnatural back links being pointed to their site in a very short amount of time.

Perhaps you undertook something similar with your site and built back links by commenting (or spamming) other blogs or forums. Or maybe you hired some so-called “SEO expert” to optimize your website.

But as we all know, the people at Google are a very smart bunch and they have been working quite hard to combat this cancerous practice by penalizing those sites which they considered were cheating the system with unnatural SEO practices.

Google is always trying to make it harder for those attempting to game the system and the most  public demonstration of this is their release of several search engine algorithm updates in the past couple of years, some of which were given the names of Penguin and Panda.

Now we all make mistakes in our lives, innocent or otherwise, and the good thing is that Google is giving people the opportunity to somewhat redeem themselves by voluntarily giving them the ability to remove the spammy back links pointing to their site.

This is in the hope that it will wipe most of the slate clean and give people the opportunity to improve the rankings of their penalized website over time in a fair manner.

Google recently introduced a handy new tool called the Disavow links tool which falls under the umbrella of the “Webmaster Tools” and which is designed to help site owners “disavow” or clean up unnatural or spammy back links which are pointing to their site.

To use this tool you will obviously need a Google account and also you have to be signed up for the Webmaster Tools.

How to Use the Disavow Links Tool

Attention: Google warns that the disavow tool should be used with caution because removing the wrong links may potentially harm your site’s traffic and ranking.

The disavow links tool is fairly straight forward to use. Below are some basic steps to get you started.

Step 1: Log into your Google Webmaster Tools account and select your website.

Step 2: To get a list of the back links to your site go to the “Links to Your Site” menu item as shown below.

You can then download all links to a CSV file for easy manipulation and copying.

Step 3: Prepare a text file containing the back links you want removed and save it on your computer. See the screenshot below for an example:

You’ll note that Google has allowed for the ability to remove back links using two ways.

One is via the use of the “domain:” prefix followed by the domain name (see first example in figure above). This will remove all back links from the domain without you having to specify each individual link.

Alternatively you can remove links individually from any domain by specifying the link URL as shown in the second example above.

Note that you can also add comments in your file using a “#” symbol.

Step 4: Now go to the Disavow Links Tool page and choose the URL of your site and click the “DISAVOW LINKS” button as shown below:

After clicking the button you will be presented with a warning before using the tool as shown below. To proceed simply click the “Disavow Links” button.

Step 5: Now you will prompted to upload the text file you prepared in Step 3.

Upload the file and then click the Submit button.

That’s all there is to it.

Google says that it may take several weeks for the link removal to fully show its effects because your site will need to be re-indexed.

It must be re-stated that you should only use this tool if you know what you are doing because it could have negative effects if not used correctly!

Adding Firewalls to Your WordPress Site

Many of us have heard of “firewalls” in terms of hardware or software, and how they protect an asset like a network or a computer from external attack. Well, a web application isn’t exempt from the list of “assets” that one may need to protect when working (or playing) on the Internet.

Essentially, what a WordPress firewall will do is protect the WordPress installation (and in most cases all added files) from 3rd party attack. The software will filter any commands before reaching any executable script in order to ensure integrity. Mostly this involves adding commands to the .htaccess file which is processed before any scripts (including PHP scripts).

There are plugins available that allow you to decide on the various layers of protection that you desire. This is done through a graphical interface in the WordPress dashboard making it so you do not need to understand any complex commands. You simply make your changes using an interface most WordPress users are familiar with and the software will “write” the commands for you.

This is often done in stages because the protection can sometimes block desired commands.

Firewall features of the All-in-one WP Security plugin for WordPress

In the remainder of this article I am going to walk through some of the important firewall features in the All-in-one WP Security plugin plus demonstrate their setup in the embedded video.

Basic Firewall Protection:

At a minimum you should enable the basic file protection with this plugin. This will deny access of scripts modifying the .htaccess and wp-config.php files, will disable the server signature thus preventing display of version information, and also limit file uploads to 10MB.

Separately you can enable pingback protection which disables access to the xmlrpc.php file. Of course, only do this if you are not leveraging the WP XML-RPC functionality already. This, among other things may give you protection against some forms of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.

Additional Firewall Protection:

This section has some intermediate and advanced firewall settings that can be employed.

It’s a really good idea to do a backup of the .htaccess file before activating any of these features as they can potentially break functionality of other plugins. A lot of times those plugins will have a section in their FAQ to indicate that possibility. This security/firewall plugin makes is simple to backup the .htaccess file so it’s worth performing those couple of clicks to make it happen.

Disable Index Views: A lot of times when a directory (or folder) is viewed on a web site, a list of the files present in that folder can be seen publicly if there isn’t an “index” file in there. WordPress mostly handles this elegantly, but for the situations where it doesn’t, this setting will pick up the slack.

Trace and Track: Disabling trace and track can limit the ability for hackers to use Cross-site Scripting (XSS) which sometimes gives them the ability to steal legitimate users’ credentials or cookie information. While many web browsers help prevent basic techniques for Cross-Site Tracing (XST), there are more advanced methods that the browser can’t currently prevent.

Proxy Comment Posting: This feature can limit comment spam by stopping the ability for proxy servers to post comments on the WordPress site.

Bad Query Strings: Enabling this firewall feature can help prevent attacks that exploit cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities can allow hackers to steal data, run malicious code, take control of user sessions, among other things. Enabling this can also interfere with legitimate requests therefore it is wise to backup the .htaccess file and test the functionality of the web site after applying. Better may be to read your other plugin’s FAQs to see how they interact with this feature of the all-in-one firewall plugin.

Advanced Character String Filter:

5G Blacklist/Firewall Settings: Finally, you can apply the tried and tested blacklist rules that can help to reduce the number of malicious URL requests that hit your WordPress site. Simply enable the 5G Blacklist firewall protection from perishablepress.com to gain this extra security.

Creating Content, Establishing Blog and, Site Optimization

Hey there, Richard from richardsalingmarketing here again. So you want to blog and tell the world what you think because you believe you have a lot of value to share. That’s great. I imagine that you may want people to find you in order to read what ya have to say right? There is a lot to having a blog and getting it established. I hope you have tons of time. I don’t even write as much as I should, which is about 20 posts per month.

Through the years, I’ve learned a few things about online marketing and driving traffic. What I do for businesses is a lot different than what I do for my personal blog here. Mainly because of the resources and available time involved to perform indepth SEO. There is more to it than just puting up great content.

Yes it’s important to publish great content that adds value. That is just a very small part of the formula though. There are the backlinks, to and from other sites with domain authority. the syndication to the various social networks to strengthen the social signal which Google likes. There is also the technique of building a PBN (Private Blog Network); which could be considered black hat. Having a network and linking the sites together does not necessarily violate search engine guidelines. It depends on why you’re linking the sites together and if you’re using the links to influence search results (i.e. increasing your pagerank). So here are a couple of things to think about to perform SEO on your blog that are strictly whitehat SEO.

Tag! You’re Not It

Title Tags aren’t required in blogs as much as websites because search engines already crawl the page and see the title of the blog and you’re already ranking for the blog title. So you aren’t helping by having a title tag repeated. You don’t need to rank for it more than once.

Keywords in Meta tags used to be important as search engines had less ways to determine what a site is about. Now that technology is so advanced, search engines have better ways of determining rankings and relevance. I still like to put the keywords in there (for other search engines) and do this by enabling ‘dynamic’ keywords with the All in One SEO pack.

Getting Backlinks:

I won’t go into all of the ways that you can build links to your site as there are some great articles out there on the web already, but I will list some of my favorite methods:

• Write Awesome Content – There’s nothing better than writing an article that gets tons of links from relevant bloggers. If you put enough work into your content and regularly engage with other bloggers in the niche, they’re going to link to your posts.
• Guest Posts – I really like links from guest posts as they send traffic, they’re relevant, and you can usually customize the anchor text of the link to be anything you want. If you want to learn more about this method
• Collaborate – Collaborating with other influencers in your niche is not only a great way to connect with more people, but it’s also a good way to get people talking about you. Oftentimes when I have interviewed people, they will link back to the interview from their own site. I also see people doing group projects which involve over 20 people and then end up having them all promote the one resource. If you can get other people involved, they’re going to help you spread the word.
• Link Out – When you link out, people link back. I don’t recommend link exchanges or filling up your blog roll, but if you find something on another site that your audience might enjoy, don’t be afraid to share it. You never know, that big blog might just send their 5-figure audience your way.

Focus On a Keyphrase

Unless you’re really, heavily into branding, it’s a good idea to try to optimize your site around a keyphrase that can send you search traffic. Most blogs end up getting the majority of links to their homepage, so it’s a good idea to try and leverage those links by getting search engine rankings for a relevant phrase.

For me, I’m aiming to rank for the phrase ‘online marketing Scottsdale’. Although it is fairly competitive, it has a decent search volume and it’s relevant to what this site is about: helping small and medium size business get a better a ROI on social media and getting found as well as matching the offline customer experience with the message.

The first thing to do to get found online is to find keywords that have a high search volume as well as being relevant to your site. The Google external keyword tool is a good place to start to see which phrases are popular in your audience. Make sure you select ‘All Countries and Territories’ on the left and then ‘Exact match’ on the right hand side to get accurate results.

However that is NOT the only tool you should be using in order to find the best keyphrases for your WordPress Site. Here are 3 sites that help you find what your competitors are using:

• keywordspy.com
• keycompete.com
• hexaTrack.com

Now use keyword research sites to expand your reach. If you intend on using Google AdWords to drive traffic then these keywords will be divided into your campaigns and adgroups. There are 3 other tools we can use in order to expand lists even further into multiples of cities, states, product names, artist, etc.

• WordTracker.com
• KeywordDiscovery.com
• SpeedPPC.com

Once you have the keyphrases, you can use them in:

• The title tag for your homepage
• The heading of your site
• Your logo
• As anchor text in links from other websites

Just don’t over do it. Google doesn’t like stuffed pages. A good rule of thumb is approximately 20% of the article is filled with keywords you are working to get ranked for. With that, stick around 3-4 keywords so they have more weight and relevance in relating to a search query.

Index My Site With a SiteMap

If you are running a new site or one with only a handful backlinks pointing towards it, a sitemap can make a big difference in enabling Google to discover and index all of the relevant pages on your website.

In simple terms, a sitemap is simply a specifically formatted list of the pages on your site that you would like to be indexed by the search engines. You could create one manually if you like carrying out jobs that can be automated with ease. Otherwise I have a couple of suggestions:

Google XML Sitemaps: with over ten million downloads and an average rating of 4.7 out of 5, you can rest assured that this free plugin gets the job done.

WordPress SEO by Yoast: this free plugin has a number of SEO-related functions, one of which is an XML sitemap generator.

The process of building an updating a sitemap is almost entirely automated. You set a few options as you see fit then let the plugin do the rest. Google says that “[most] webmasters will benefit from sitemap submission, and in no case will you be penalized for it.” With that in mind, why wouldn’t you create a sitemap for your WordPress website?

That should be enough for now to get ya started. I’d love to read your thoughts on this.

Enhancing Site Usability with Toggle Media

WordPress can embed certain kinds of media content into posts and pages; using the oEmbed protocol. But appearance and usability issues can occur, when this capability is rendered on mobile devices; like smartphones.

In this example, we see that media embedding can take up much of the phone’s screen, clipping the media horizontally, and that users must scroll to view any surrounding text. Mobile device users should not have to navigate around an oversized media preview.

The embed Shortcode

The “width” and/or “height” attributes of the WordPress “embed” shortcode, allows us to resize the media, so that it does not become unreasonably clipped, on mobile devices.

Notice there must be no white-space (space characters) between the ends of the embedded media URL, and the shortcode delimiter (square) brackets.

The presence of white-space causes the media URL to be displayed as a URL hyperlink, that when clicked, causes a page redirect to the specified media URL.  This situation can sometimes be desirable when presenting users with NSFW (Not Suitable For Work), or perhaps (even work related) sight-sensitive, media; in which case the media preview needs to remain hidden, until users are prepared to see the media, hiding behind the URL hyperlink.

This however presents its own set of issues. Users are now forced to use the browser’s “Back” button to leave the new page; and they may also be confused by the sudden site re-branding that occurs, when the new page is opened in the same window. Furthermore, the hyperlink is rendered without the benefit of any identifiable context, which may cause users to hesitate before clicking the link.

Toggle Media

Toggle Media is a filter plugin that enhances the WordPress embed shortcode in the following manner: 1. Allows you to add a text or image anchor to the URL hyperlink. The anchor then replaces the preview image that’s normally displayed. 2. When clicked, the embedded media preview is revealed (opened) or hidden
(closed), using a visual toggling effect. To get started; download, install and activate, the WordPress Toggle Media plugin.

Once activated, a new “toggle_media_anchor” attribute is added to the existing embed shortcode. The parameter for the attribute can either be a text label, or an image URL:

• toggle_media_anchor=”Click here to see video”
• toggle_media_anchor=”http://example.com/Images/Warning_NSFW.png”

This is an example of the embed shortcode using a text anchor attribute:

Please note that in the above example, there must be no whitespace (space characters) between the ends of the embedded media URL, and the shortcode delimiter (square) brackets.  The presence of whitespace causes the media URL to be displayed as a URL hyperlink, that when clicked, causes a page redirect to the specified media URL.

The ability to toggle your media open and close, when used properly, will enhance the usability of almost any site.

Track your Friends and Family with Google Latitude

You can now track where your friends and family are with Google’s new feature for Google Map called “Latitude”. Google Latitude can be used on the following compatible mobile devices:

• Android-powered devices, such as the T-Mobile G1
• iPhone and iPod touch devices (coming soon)
• most color BlackBerry devices
• most Windows Mobile 5.0+ devices
• most Symbian S60 devices (Nokia smartphones)
• Java-enabled (J2ME) mobile phones, such as Sony Ericsson devices (coming soon)

If you don’t have any compatible mobile devices, you can still use it as an iGoogle gadget and track your friends from you computer. This service is available for use in 27 countries at the moment.

A lot of people are concerned with the privacy issue but everything about Google Latitude is opt-in. You can control exactly who gets to see your location. You can also decide the location that other people see.

Google Latitude in Action

Privacy Tips for Google Latitude

The following video on privacy tips shows how you can adjust your privacy settings on Google Latitude.

Remember, Google stores the most recent updated location on their servers. So if you don’t want Google to store your location simply hide your location.

10 Tips for Self Employed People to Stay Organized & Productive

f you are self-employed and regularly work from home, then you might sometimes find it difficult to stay organized and productive. When you work for a traditional employer, it’s a simple matter to settle into “work mode” and to get your tasks done every day, but working from home requires quite a bit of discipline. Here are 10 tips to help you stay organized and productive.

1. Keep a Tidy Workspace

If you have a messy workspace, then you can feel less motivated and more stressful. It’s important to have an area dedicated solely to work and to keep that area free from clutter.

2. Set Goals

If you know what you need to do every day, then you are much more likely to accomplish it. To-do lists are a must for the self-employed person. You might want a daily do-do list as well as a weekly to-do list.

3. Exercise

It’s tough to stay productive if you are always feeling tense and stressed. Exercise not only helps you get your mind off your work for a time, but it also keeps your brain in top shape to help you solve the important problems that come up in your work. By the time you get back to your desk, you will feel refreshed and ready to tackle anything.

4. Keep Busy

Even if you don’t have any current assignments, there is always something to be done. You could work on improving your website, on new ways of promoting yourself, or on sprucing up your resume. As a self-employed person, your work is never done. The last thing you want to find yourself doing is watching television all day.

5. Walk Away

If your work starts to become overwhelming, don’t hesitate to simply get up and walk away. Since you’re your own boss, you can decide for yourself anytime you need a break and whether you would be better off taking a walk or grabbing a cup of coffee. You’ll be much more productive when you decide to sit back down.

6. Treat it Like a Job

Treating your work like a job means that you should keep a strict schedule and stick to it. This may sound more rigid than you’d like, but doing so can help you to become much more productive in the long term.

7. Prioritize Income Activities

There are so many things you could be doing every day, so it is important to prioritize. You should focus first on those activities that generate the most income for you, then shift your attention to activities that generate less. You should seek to avoid activities that do nothing for your bottom line.

8. Keep a Daily Log

By keeping a daily log, you’ll be able to track where you are spending most of your time so that you know the areas in which you need to improve. Most self-employed persons overestimate the amount of time they actually spend in productive activities, so this will help you see if your results match your aspirations.

9. Limit Email Checking

Checking your email every 10 minutes can be devastating to your productivity. It can distract you from the tasks you ought to be doing, and it puts you into a response mode. It’s a good idea to set aside 2 or 3 times each day to check all your email at once.

10. Get Some Good Office Furniture

There’s a good chance that you’ll be spending an inordinate amount of time at your desk, so it’s a good idea to get some good furniture. A good chair is good for your back and will help you keep healthy.

Staying productive and organized when you are self-employed is a tough task and certainly takes a bit of self-discipline. If you follow some of the tips above, then you can make the process a lot easier.

10 Ways to Proofread Articles Faster

No matter how much a person enjoys writing, almost everyone has a concern for writing clearly and accurately, without errors in grammar or spelling. Although proofreading can avoid embarrassing and costly mistakes, the pressures of deadlines and fatigue often cause the proofreading process to fail.

Saving time and producing better work are concepts that appeal to most writers. The increased output combined with increased quality represents a surefire approach to building a writing career. To help writers improve their proofreading skills, here are 10 ways to proofread articles faster and more efficiently.

1. Pay attention to your personal weaknesses: Often writers find themselves consistently spelling the same words incorrectly. Although misspellings often derive from a mental block or a lack of familiarity with a word, they can also result from a flaw in typing skills that causes your fingers to hit an incorrect key combination or from a keyboard that is defective. By understanding the cause of typographical errors and to the most frequently misspelled words, writers can discipline themselves to be extra attentive when those words come up.

2. Use time to your advantage: Rather than proofreading a completed piece immediately, many writers will discover that revisiting that piece later, when the familiarity of the work has dissipated, improves their ability to quickly detect errors.

3. Get a second pair of eyes: Spellcheckers can help catch mistakes before they can harm your reputation as a writer, but they do not guarantee perfection, especially when a spelling error takes the form of a different, properly spelled word. For example, if a writer typed too,where but meant two,were the spellchecker probably would not pick that up. Nothing finds errors in text better or faster than another person taking a fresh and objective look at the material.

4. Use text to speech: Some writers may find that hearing their work read back to them can help identify unclear statements and poor grammar. This process can help identify errors that proofreading alone fails to find. Writers may also discover that reading their work aloud has similar effects.

5. Look up rules: Proofreading goes a lot smoother with a handbook of style nearby. If a phrase or punctuation doesn’t seem right, look it up. At first this may seem like it costs more time, but over the long haul will improve the speed and accuracy of writing and proofreading.

6. Focus on one sentence at a time: Some writers fall into the trap of trying to grasp too much material at one time. Writers can pace themselves by evaluating each sentence by itself, deliberately checking for structure, punctuation, and clarity.

7. Create a system: A writer that tries various proofreading methods will eventually find the ones that work best. After developing a routine that effectively catches spelling and grammar errors, writers can then work on proofreading speed.

8. Circle all punctuation: Writers can print out their work and then circle every comma, period, semicolon, colon, etc. so each one can be evaluated for accuracy. Focusing on punctuation often brings out errors in sentence structure that can then be corrected. Those who resist wasting paper and ink can bold punctuation within the word processor to get a similar effect.

9. Read backwards through the text: Filling in nonexistent letters, words, and punctuation seems natural to the human brain. To throw it off balance and make it work better for proofreading, try reading through the text backwards. This breaks up the anticipated rhythm and flow of the writing, allowing the mind to focus on the letters and words found on the page.

10. Give it the double take: Writers should never rely on the quick once-over. Ferret out the errors left undiscovered by reading through a piece two or three times.

Most writers frustrated by spending hours proofing a document only to find an error after publication should patiently work to develop proofreading skills that focus on weaknesses and lead to greater efficiency.

6 Tips to Help Ignite Your Creativity and Increase Your Success

When it comes to achieving success on the Internet or anything in life for that matter, it probably isn’t a secret that having some capacity of creative spark or talent can increase your chances of attaining your goals.

But what makes some people more creative and successful than others? Is creativity something genetic and does that mean those who aren’t blessed with this gene are doomed to never be creative or successful?

Well the simple answer is that creativity is something which we are ALL born with but some people lose it more than others as they grow older. If you observe young children playing you’ll know what I mean when I say we all start with a propensity for some kind of creativity which is usually fueled by curiosity.

Many people lack a creative spark because they stopped doing the simple things which leads to creative ideas in the first place.

Most people, as they grow older start to develop bad habits or a limited mindset maybe because they are in a job they don’t like or a difficult financial situation. As time goes by, the curiosity they had when they were children diminishes and with that so does creativity.

Instead of using their curiosity and creativity to investigate ways to improve their lives these people give up trying but they also wish things could be different.

A lot of people also believe that to achieve true financial or other success you need to invest a lot of money in the first place or have to go to a top university so that you get the right job in the right company.

The reality is, that at this point in time in the evolutionary scale of technology, everything you need to make you successful is readily available at your finger tips from the Internet in the comfort of your own home. We can even go so far as to say that the Internet is the new “UniversityofSuccess”.

A little over a decade ago you could be excused for believing that you needed to attend some sort of college or university to learn the necessary skills to help you succeed, but now that’s not true anymore.

For a fraction of the cost of a regular university or college course, now you can teach yourself a new skill or get full guidance and coaching online without having to leave your home.

All that is needed on your part initially is some curiosity and action to get you started.

The list of 6 pointers below which I’ve compiled from various successful people will help ignite your creativity and re-charge your motivation:

1. Try something new for 30 days
   This is a great suggestion which I recently heard in a presentation from Matt Cutts who is a search optimization engineer at google. Trying something new for a month is a fantastic way to re-build your creativity and whet your curiosity. This can also help you discover the thing that you love doing in case you weren’t sure what it was to begin with.
   In terms of the Internet there are countless of free and premium courses and products available in which you can learn or discover a new skill which you can use to enhance your creativity.
2. Do what you love
   People who make a living from doing what they love instantly have a head-start on those who hate or are indifferent to their jobs. Apart from the fact that you feel good doing what you love, you also have no negative baggage which comes from the stress and resentment of doing something you don’t like.
   If you don’t know what you love doing, then maybe applying point 1 above might help you.
3. Keep your goals to yourself – at least in the beginning
   Sometimes when you decide to muster up the courage to try something new it’s a good idea to keep your goals a secret initially. This may sound counter-intuitive because most people think that by making their intentions known they can increase their visibility and hence their chances of success because somebody out there might offer some help. Well that’s true to an extent but in a lot of cases the people you might be sharing your goals with might not have the same enthusiasm and mindset as you, and quite often they will try to talk you out of your “crazy ideas” and tell you that it’s just too hard.
   Therefore, unless you’re certain that you are talking to people with a similar attitude as yours, hold on to your goals and plans until you’ve put them into practice.
4. Be curious
   When you start digging deeper into something out of curiosity, you usually find that not only do you enhance your knowledge about that thing, but sometimes you might come up with creative ideas which you would never have thought of if you hadn’t indulged your curiosity.
   So next time you are reading or watching a tutorial about how to do something for your blog, why not delve deeper and experiment with what you’ve learnt and see what happens.
5. Improve
   Improving yourself both in terms of knowledge and in general can only serve to benefit you and those around you. Most of us are increasingly becoming aware of the huge economic changes sweeping the world’s societies in terms of employment and what it means to be financially secure. Having a regular job for 20, 30 or 50 years until you retire is a thing of the past. The new reality is that people who can re-skill quickly and who regularly add to their existing skills will be better off in today’s economic climate.
6. Focus
   The ability to focus determines the outcome of the task you are trying to accomplish. Therefore whenever you set yourself a task, see it through to completion by doing regular highly focused little chunks at a time. Doing small manageable chunks can make the highest mountain seems like a mole hill.

Creativity and success are not just something necessarily reserved for a special few and now with information and knowledge so readily accessible from the Internet, cultivating your creativity has never been so easy. Therefore applying some of the ingredients above to your life will go a long way in maximizing your chances of reaching your goals.

Why Appealing to Emotion is Good for Your Blog

Whether you like to admit it or not, most buying decision you make has some sort of an emotional basis. It’s a fact that we humans are emotional beings and in general our emotions govern almost all of the thought patterns we have and decisions we make.

So it is no wonder that in the field of marketing, the cultivation of emotions to generate a desired response is widely practiced. The reason why copywriters and advertisers in general use emotive messages in their targeting campaigns is simply because it works.

People will buy your product or read your blog posts based on emotional triggers. They may often tell you otherwise by putting a logical spin to the decisions they made when they purchased whatever it is they bought, but logic was not the basis for their decision – the emotional reasons were.

Ask any of the big-shot Internet marketers and entrepreneurs and they’ll tell you that the main niche categories from which they make most of their money are in the following areas:

1. Health and fitness
2. Love and relationships
3. Finance and money

The common thread which runs through all of the above categories is that they are highly emotionally charged topics for most humans. This is because they all contain elements which trigger two of the biggest emotions in people: fear and greed. (They can also trigger other emotions (like love) but not to the extent of fear and greed.)

It can be argued that greed is just a different manifestation of fear because a person is usually greedy out of fear of failure or not being good enough or fear of missing out on something or losing something they have.

Irrespective of the type of emotions triggered, the point is that as a blogger you should be aware of this human trait so that you can apply this knowledge to your articles and copywriting in a way which is favorable for you and your customers or readers.

Rather than preying on the emotions of people to sell your products you can take another perspective. That is, you can use your new-found knowledge about emotions and marketing to resonate with your readers and connect with them.

This also applies even if you’re not selling anything but you simply want to attract more like-minded readers to your blog. As a blogger you are usually telling a story or offering information or an opinion through your writing.

The most successful bloggers are those who have made a connection on an emotional level with their audience. Connecting on the emotional level with your readers is important whether or not you are selling something.

For instance if you are simply blogging about a subject you are passionate about, the words you type will be your medium with which to build the emotional connection with people.

It’s this connection that keeps the readers coming back and it’s the same connection which makes humans feel that they belong or that they are part of a group of people who “are in the same boat” or who think and act like they do.

For those who want to sell products or services via their blog, appealing to the emotional dimension in people is fundamental to the success of the business. As mentioned earlier, humans base their decision to buy something on an emotional level and they will often buy from people they trust and feel comfortable with or from those they believe will satisfy an emotional need.

Below is a brief list of some basic psychological pointers which you can consider if you want to use emotion to attract readers and customers:

1. Meet the emotional needs of people

It is better to fulfill the emotional needs of people rather than trying to come up with ways to trick or cajole them into buying something from you. That is, appeal to their goals by offering a product or solution which will help them get what they want or need.

For example if you’re trying to sell training videos which show people how to create and run an affiliate membership site, highlight some of the “intangible benefits” of your product. In other words show people the possibility that by buying your product, they might achieve their goal.

2. Highlight the value of what your are offering

All people despite their level of wealth, look for value in something before they buy it. Value is a relative quality and depends on what you’re selling and how much it is compared to similar products.

Your aim should be to convince people that the value of your product is at least equal to or greater than the price you are selling it for. The perceived value of your product by your potential customers is the most important thing because people’s perceptions are usually governed by their emotions.

3. Encourage social interaction on your site

Connecting socially is a strong human predisposition, and creating an environment on your site which allows your readers to interact with you and/or each other can be emotionally beneficial. Making yourself available and making it possible for people to ask you and (each other) questions helps foster a sense of belonging and builds connections.

I hope that this article has at least made you think about the role of emotions in marketing and human relationships. If you can cater for the emotional needs of your readers then you will go a long way in succeeding to gain their trust and hopefully their business.

Awesome Tips on Writing Headlines for Your Articles and Landing Pages

Copy-writing experts say that 5 times as many people read your headlines compared to anything else on your page.

In many situations in the online realm, your headline is THE most important thing you have which you can use to convince somebody to become your customer, client or reader.

The competition for attention on the internet is fierce and becoming tougher as time goes on with countless new sites coming online daily, therefore good headline writing skills are becoming more important than ever.

To put the importance of headlines and good headline-writing skills into perspective, just look at the common things you see people using every day on the web.

For example, when you tweet about your latest post or special offer you are in effect tweeting a headline.

Thus, if the people reading your tweet are not intrigued enough to stop and read your message and then click through to your main website then you need to seriously re-consider your headline writing skills and techniques.

It doesn’t matter how great you think your content inside your pages is, if your headline isn’t doing its job in convincing people to read on or click-through then all of that hard work you put into writing the great content or producing that amazing product is wasted.

Therefore it is imperative that you learn how to write good headlines if you want to succeed on the internet.

You could be excused if you have the impression that smart and eloquent people are the only ones who would be good enough to come up with amazing headlines, but in reality almost anybody (including you) can learn the ingredients and techniques necessary to write an effective headline which will be relevant for your website.

Below are some points which you might want to consider next time you are writing your headline.

1. You can use your headline to demonstrate that you understand the reader’s problems

Demonstrating understanding and empathy regarding somebody’s situation or problem is another role which your headline can play.

When people are dealing with somebody who understands their problems it usually becomes easier for them to trust somebody enough that they at least give them a chance to say their piece.

In other words, it is more likely that people will give you the opportunity to state your message by continuing to read past your headline.

2. You can be brutally honest about outcomes and worst case scenarios in a headline

This is a sort of mirror opposite of the point earlier where we talked about encouraging people’s dreams and aspirations.

You can also use your headline to highlight a negative scenario instead of a positive one because most people fall roughly into two categories – optimists and pessimists.

In order to get certain people’s attention, sometimes you need to shock them into reading your page by highlighting worst case scenarios or undesirable outcomes if a problem or situation is not addressed.

An excellent point in case is something like the following headline used in an anti-smoking campaign:

“Every breath you take will eventually destroy your future”

3. Confirm people’s suspicions about something in your headline

People love reading something which reinforces to them that they are right.

This couldn’t be more true for situations where people are suspicious or wary about something.

In psychological terms, when a headline confirms a suspicion somebody might have about something, they will seek to have their thoughts reinforced by continuing to read past your headline.

To see what I mean, next time you are reading some news or other articles, look for headlines which might start with words such as:

“What <xyz> are not telling you about <insert topic here>“

The above style of headline is a classic way in which online copywriters and businesses will reel you into reading further by sparking your own suspicions about a topic or thing.

4. A good headline will encourage people’s dreams and aspirations

Most humans have desires, dreams and aspirations. Actually it can be argued for better or for worse that the modern consumer culture is a testament to these human traits.

People will buy that new shiny toy because they believe their dreams will be fulfilled in some way or they might seek to find ways to learn how they can aspire to be better than they are by buying a self-help book.

Thus if you have something to offer to people which will help them get closer to their goals or dreams, try weaving this into your headline.

Here’s an example from a popular men’s health magazine:

“3 ways to last longer in bed”

5. Try writing your headline first next time you are writing a post or landing page

By spending some time thinking about and writing your headline first, you can be better prepared to craft more meaningful and relevant sales copy in the main body of your page.

After all, the headline is a prelude to what your readers expect to get or read when they progress past it.

Thus by writing your headline first, you can often get a clearer understanding of the content you will need to write to fulfil the expectations or promises you made in your headline.

6. Observe how the experts write and use headlines

If you don’t make the time and effort to watch and observe how the masters do it you don’t stand a chance of coming up amazing headlines of your own.

Thus as a diligent student and hence competent headline writer, you will firstly need to understand why a great headline works before you can intelligently adapt the same technique for your own needs.

Next time you are reading something on the internet or newspaper or magazine, try becoming more aware of the headlines of the material you are reading.

See if you can identify patterns and the use of certain types of words and sentence structures which you can mimic in your own headlines.

Internet Marketing Sales Funnel 101

The majority of successful internet businesses rely on something known as a sales funnel to achieve their overall success. The best online businesses and internet marketers are almost all heavily reliant on sales funnels as a marketing tool.

What is a sales funnel?

In order to explain what a sales funnel is we will put it in the context of the various stages of the online marketing phases a lot of successful business employ when selling products.



The concept of the sales funnel begins at the very start of a marketing phase where you are trying to capture the interest of as many visitors and prospective customers as you can via techniques such as:

Writing quality and targeted content and articles from your blog to bring “organic” visitors to your site via search engines
Building a list via email signups through your blog by offering free downloads or gifts
Using a landing and other sales pages to get people to take a specified call to action – ie, signup, buy etc
Using social networks to signup people in order to be able to broadcast your special offers or the latest blog article releases
….and there are many other techniques you can use to generate more traffic and interest to your website, but hopefully you get the general idea.

Now from the aggregated group of visitors you receive via the techniques listed above, there will be a smaller group who will eventually become customers.

At this stage the effectiveness of the sales funnel will really start to shine because it will be instrumental in further engaging this smaller group of people who have already demonstrated an interest in your product and a propensity to purchase from you.

You might by now be recognising the reason for the “funnel” analogy.

That is, at the very beginning of your marketing efforts you will usually start with a larger group of visitors, and then a smaller number of these will become subscribers or regular readers of your blog, and then an even smaller number of these will become customers.

In other words during each stage of the marketing process people will drop off until you have a small minority who become your customers.

In essence, the sales funnel concept involves the filtering out of disinterested prospects by focusing on and further engaging your most responsive customers because of their demonstrable willingness to purchase from you.

Hence why we use the term sales funnel, because you are starting with a broad set of marketing techniques and visitors and progressively narrowing this down as the process continues by tightening your marketing with laser-like focus to a select group of very targeted customers.

Why are sales funnels necessary for the success of your business?

Marketers who have studied consumer behavior and psychology will tell you that people who have already shown an interest in your products (ie, existing customers) will by far be the most likely group to buy from you again.

Based on this fact, by spending a lot of your energy and marketing efforts focusing on this group of people means that you will get higher conversions because you are intelligently using your time and resources for maximum returns.

Below are some important qualities of sales funnels which demonstrate why they are a powerful concept to use in your internet business.

A sales funnel will help increase your conversions

As we’ve discussed earlier, during each phase of the sales funnel, the number of people will decrease but the number of likely prospects will increase.

By its very nature, a sales funnel will filter out non-prospective buyers and help build up as many targeted prospects as possible.

This is because as the funnel begins to narrow at each stage the marketing methods performed become increasingly more targeted.

Therefore the sales funnel will create a more fertile environment with extremely targeted prospects who will have already demonstrated an interest in your products or who have purchased previously from you.

You can then spend your marketing efforts appealing to the needs and wants of these people knowing that you have a higher than normal chance of converting.

An example of a crucial sales funnel component is the landing page. This is usually way down in the most narrow portion of the funnel where you are pitching your message to very targeted visitors.

Sales funnels can be used to accurately predict the number of sales you will make

The structure of the sales funnel mechanism means that at each stage of the marketing phases you can quantify the number of prospective customers and hence use this to predict the percentage who eventually become actual customers.

Remember earlier we said that as a prospect moves through each stage in the sales funnel they will be considered a more targeted visitor and hence the marketing which is presented to people as they move down the funnel will reflect this.

As a simple example, Fred Smith has been monitoring his website traffic for at least 6 months and he receives 5000 visitors per week to his website.

Of these, Fred usually gets around 3% (ie, total of 150 people per week) who sign up for his free weekly newsletter.

Then from the 150 people weekly who sign up to his list Fred ends up converting around 1.5% who become paid members or buy one of his products.

Therefore by using his knowledge of the number of prospects at each stage Fred can accurately predict the percentages of people who will sign up to his newsletter and those eventually buy his product.

By being privy to the traffic and conversion figures of the various stages of his marketing phases, Fred can use this to identify and improve areas needing attention (discussed more below).

You can use a sales funnel to identify marketing deficiencies or obstacles

By monitoring the traffic and statistics during each of the marketing phases you will be able to observe any down or up-trends during each stage of the funnel over time.

With this knowledge you can then make more informed decisions so that you can take the best possible corrective action or spend more time concentrating on a particular strategy if needed.

For instance you may spot trends that during the year where you might see a trend where there is drop in calls-to-actions for a certain month in your email campaign and you might decide to change your campaign content or increase the frequency of emails sent for the next few months.

Building a Sales Funnel

In order to convert marketing campaign into an optimized sales funnel there are a few essential things you will need to do.

You will need to have a product or service which you can sell

Before even considering the construction your sales funnel, you will need a product or service to offer to sell to your visitors.

Items which you can sell online can range from physical products to your own digital creations such as eBooks, videos or software and also things such as membership programs or consultation services.

If you don’t think you can create your own product there is also the option of affiliate programs such Clickbank, Amazon or affiliate programs available which you can use in conjunction with blogging from your website.

Ultimately it is very important that before choosing a product to sell that you try to identify a niche which people out there are demanding and then supply this need to them.


Keyword Research

Following from the above point, keyword research is an important task for determining who your prospective customers are what they are searching for.

Keyword research allows you to identify the words and phrases people are using when they are searching for answers to their needs and desires. The best free keyword research tool to is the Google keyword tool. (If you’ve never used it just Google the words Google keyword tool)

There are other keyword tools out there some of which cost money and you should do your own research to choose the best tool for you.

Once you have discovered the phrases and words people are using for their searching, you can then apply these words to strategic areas of your website such as titles, subheading, blog content, landing pages etc.

There are many techniques in how you write your content or copy and it is advised that you read up some good books about copy writing.

The front and back end of your sales funnel

The front door of your sales funnel is the broadest part and serves the purpose of attracting a large base of prospects. This is the initial capture point where you are employing broad range of marketing techniques to attract your visitors which will then be slowly guided further down the funnel.

Offering free or cheaper priced products and bonus items is usually a good way to get the people’s feet into your sales funnel’s front door.

Eventually some of your prospects will work their way into the more narrower parts of the funnel and a proportion will even make it to the back end.

The deeper parts of your sales funnel is where your more premium items are offered to the people that have demonstrated a specific need for these products or services.

At this stage your prospects are highly targeted and most likely to buy because this small percentage of people have already bought products from you.

Very specific email campaigns and product launches are a good way to keep engaged with these people because the engagement is the key to the success of your conversions.

Fine tuning your sales funnel

As we have already seen from above, a sales funnel is really a marketing framework which represents all of the stages from your initial leads to actual sales.

Optimizing your sales funnel can appear as being quite complex but is something which you may need to do as you go along.

For instance you should seek to identify all the possible ways that people can enter your funnel so you can establish their origination point.

Once yo have done that you should list all of the possible things that visitors to your site can do once the have arrived there. For example they might be able to read blog posts, watch free video content etc.

Then you need to analyse the page statistics such as the time spent on page, most clicked links, entry and exit paths etc. (Google analytics is a great tool for this)

And finally once you have done all of the above, you will be armed with the precious knowledge to determine how your funnel actually operates in reality and then you will be able to identify and correct weak points or exploit the strengths.

In summary, even though this article has barely touched the surface of the sales funnels, it will have hopefully provided you with an introduction to get you to see the big picture of the mechanics of online sales and marketing.