Blog Category: Blogs

Ok, I admit it. Since yesterday afternoon I’ve been trying to improve the speed of my blog. And this one tool has been incredibly helpful. PageSpeedTest How fast is your website loading? Find out!

Read the rest of this entry »

All bloggers should read this Reuters article “Judge in US defamation rules blogger not journalist“. Sorry if you’ve already heard of this, I’ve been on vacation and am just finding out now.

Read the rest of this entry »

I just noticed that my Feedburner counter shows zero readers. I went searching to see if anyone else has this issue and found this post: Feedburner Counter displays 0 readers on all blogs – so apparently it’s not just me. I agree with Vincent and am hoping Google hasn’t just decided to kill Feedburner services. Here’s a link to the official Feedburner Status Blog.

UPDATE: The number came back, magically, by itself. No idea why.

One of my clients found this excellent list of “50 Blog Topics for Small Business Owners”. If you have a small business website with a blog, and are banging your head on the desk trying to think of what to write about, read over this list, it’s sure to help you think of something to write!

50 Blog Topics for Small Business Owners by Jessica Swanson.

In the last 12 months, I’ve had three clients with WordPress blogs get hacked into. In every case, the WordPress version had become outdated. So if you see a little message like this when you log into your WordPress Dashboard:

Don’t ignore it, just hit the “Please update now” link and follow the instructions.

WordPress may release updates every month, or every few months, so be sure to log into your blog at least monthly to check for a new version number.

Prevent hacking and viruses – keep your WordPress Blog updated!

I ran across a really impressive article today while I was working on a client’s WordPress blog. She had hired a company to perform SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on her  blog and was unhappy and looking for guidance. While I knew some of the basics, I went in search of some expert advice.  I wanted to post a link to this comprehensive article called “WordPress SEO: The Definitive Guide To Higher Rankings For Your Blog” written by Yoast that I found, because although it’s quite lengthy and time consuming, it’s a wonderful checklist for those of you who have time and patience and  want to increase the rankings of your blog.

He starts out with the most important things to focus on:

• Permalinks (I always do this)
• Titles (yup, this too)
• Descriptions (um, don’t really do this at all for my posts)
• More text (who new you could change this!)
• Image Optimization (those pesky alt tags!)

Enjoy!

Usually Akismet protects my blog from spammers. It’s captured and prevented nearly 50,000 (yes, fifty thousand) spam comments from annoying me. But today, all of a sudden, I got a dozen spam comments one right after the other. I looked at the IP addresses, and they were from all over, Israel to the Netherlands. So I looked inside the Akismet Configuration and saw this scary message: “Unable to reach any Akismet servers.”

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the many reasons I like using DreamHost as a hosting company, is their WordPress “one-click installer” program that makes adding a WordPress blog to a website fast and simple. This article lists directions on how to set up a blog on DreamHost, assuming that you’ve already purchased a domain name and set up a hosting account with DreamHost. These instructions also assume that you’ve already got a good understanding of how WordPress works.

Read the rest of this entry »

How can tell if a comment you receive on a blog post/article is real and sincere – or just a spammer trying to get a link? I often get very short comments in my blog. They often say “Great post” or “Thanks for the tip”, or some such vague language. One of the ways that people hope to improve their website page ranking, is by getting inlinks – and they do this by leaving fake or spam comments in other people blogs. But how can you tell the difference?

Read the rest of this entry »

So you want to start a blog and become a blogger? I recommend you don’t use Blogger or another service that forces you to have a domain like yourblog.blogspot.com or yourblog.wordpress.com – but rather, strongly encourage you to buy your own domain and set up web hosting for your blog. I know this sounds complicated, but in the long run, it’s very affordable, around $10 per month – and you have complete control over your blog. I often get asked to set up blogs on client’s websites – and have run into some issues with different hosting companies – so this article will detail what to look for in a hosting company with blogging in mind.

Read the rest of this entry »