Reviews are the core of blogging and any successful blog would write about things they have liked and disliked in the niche. So you should expect reviews on almost every blog. As a blogger, if you are writing review for some product you not only want your existing readers to read them but you also want new readers to come to your site when they are looking for reviews of the product you have already written.

At times it has happened that I read a review and when I purchased the product I shared my views of the same product and managed to outrank those reviews that are online for few years. So I will share with you some key things you should focus on when writing a review and not write a review just for the sake of writing one.

So let us begin…

1. Reviews From A View Point

The difference between a “Review” and a “Great Review” is when you write the review for users who have not used the product you are reviewing and give them the feeling of what to expect when they get the product. This means you need to get detailed picture about the product features and try to explain each feature in detail and how to use those features in a better way.

My vBSEO Review where I showed how vBSEO could improve site traffic with facts and figures or TribalFusion review where I showed how I tripled my eCPM for.

Coming back to the original point of making review detailed would mean reviews becomes longer and don’t hesitate to split the reviews in multiple articles. My reviews are pretty long explaining insider information about the product.

iPage Review, Aweber Review Or PowerYourTrade Review on Technical Analysis blog where I had to cut on the images just to make sure it just does not become too long.

2. Unbiased Reviews

Always try to review with only one thing in mind that is facts and not make your views biased. Everything positive about a product would mean there is something fishy about your review. Either the writer has been paid for the review or is some way or the other related to the product.

For positive facts about the product, show samples and screenshots of you using (or used) the product to make sure you let your readers know that you are reviewing product only for your readers and not for making quick buck out of it.

vBulletin has been my first choice for all my online forums and I shared the same in my comparison of phpBB and vBulletin but I was brutally honest to share why you should not be buying vBulletin 4 as well.

3. No Copy Paste

When someone is searching for review chances are high that they have been reading reviews from lot of other blogs as well and so if you copy content from them, users will soon detect and realize that your review is not a real one and would not be interesting in reading it. Apart from that copied content is punished very badly in Google.

If you had to copy something from somewhere you should only copy the snippet and make it as quote and link to the original article and this happens when you want to share what others are saying about the same product or you take some content from the original author of the product you are reviewing and things like those.

4. Search Forums For Questions About The Product

If you take few minutes to search forums about the product, you will find what users are asking about the product and you can answer those questions in your review as well. It has an added benefit that other people would link to your reviews as and when people post more question about the product in the forum. Make sure you understand that other people will link to your review and not you who do that because if you do, it may be termed as spamming.

When I wrote AWeber review I saw people are looking for Slideup form for subscription and so I created the WordPress plugin for AWeber Footer Slideup. Similar I saw people have lot of questions on Payoneer India Operation Issues when I reviewed Payoneer from an Indian perspective and answered those questions and it was the most linked post at that time from various forums including DigitalPoint Forum.

5. Negative Reviews

You paid for a completely crap product, you can share the review with proof and they can become the talking point in the community and forums because negative review about a product does guarantee that you are being brutally honest about the product and so people tend to link to such reviews quite often.

• Sharekhan PMS Service Review
• iPage Review
• ibibo ads Review
• And many many other …

Many bloggers like to share more negative reviews about bad product than positive reviews about good products to make sure those review drive links and traffic to their blogs. In SEO terms it is known as link baiting.

Negative reviews like Sharekhan PMS Review and others worked really well for my Technical Analysis Blog but positive reviews work more on IMTips. vWorker Review is linked from Official Wiki page of vWorker or BuySellAds review is linked from the official BuySellAds blog but that does not mean that negative reviews just did not work on IMTips. I have seen lot of my issues get solved once I blog about the issues like my Ozone Media Review where I got phone calls from Ozone Media team to solve my issues after the review.

6. The End of Review : Summary

Summary of review is very very important because reviews tend to become longer (like this one with lots) and many readers tend to skip many sections after just reading the headlines or looking at images and so if you can summarize your review in few lines, it help those readers immensely.

Positive or negative, write a review from the point of view of the customers who is looking to get more information about the product. Do you share product reviews on your blog? Share your reviews in comments below.

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Every blogger wants to be read but have you ever wondered what can make you a better blogger. I am talking about being a better blogger and not about having a better blog. For a better blog you always need to write valuable content with clean layout etc etc but there is one of the most overlooked elements about blogs that is the blogger itself.

So let me share with you few tips about how to become a better blogger?

1. Read your own blog

Just because you have blogged about it does not mean you can forget about it. I refer few of my blog posts quite often. Posts like WordPress SEO Tips or Link Building Strategies or vBulletin Optimization and the list continues…

2. Always reply to blog comments

One of the reason people comment on your posts is because they want to interact with you, the blogger. If you do not reply, they feel ignored, and will not comment again. I always reply to each comment including thanks that readers leave on my blog.

3. Read and comment on your readers’ blogs

I visit my readers’ blog and try to comment where I can make sense. Yet another way to encourage your reader’s to keep coming back to your blog.

I recent incident which I remember is where Deepak of BikeAdvice.in left a comment here and this led me to discover his blog. I say discover because I would never have landed on his blog because it is about bikes’ and I am not bike enthusiast to an extent that I search in Google about it.

I left a comment on the post where he shared how the blog Breaks Previous Traffic Records and now we both are connected to each other in more than one social networks and are interacting on many other front apart from blogging.

Remember it is not about dropping your link in comments in other people’s blog but it is more about interacting with your readers and other fellow blogger. I could have easily commented using blog comment form on the page that would allow me to leave my link on that blog but I preferred Facebook comment.

4. Repost excerpts from other blogs

When you read other blogger’s good blog post you can re-post an excerpt of it or your own views about the same on your own blog, providing a link back to the author’s blog. Occasionally, they will even make a post on their own blog and refer to your content.

I shared my views to one of the article of Manshu here and Manshu did the same on his blog here.

Remember don’t post an entire article because that is illegal but posting a brief excerpt and linking back to the original is the right way.

Final thoughts

It is just not enough to write a great blog post but you also need to be a good reader to other great blogs and interact with other bloggers.

How do you make yourself a better blogger – Share your views in comments below.

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Thesis, Genesis or WooThemes, all are premium WordPress themes. I use Thesis theme for my blog but the most popular option for new bloggers is to use free WordPress themes. Actually there are thousands of free WordPress themes available and this can make newbie bloggers think they don’t need a premium WordPress theme at all.

According to me, you can use the free WordPress themes for personal leisure blogs. All other type of blogs definitely need a premium WordPress theme unless you can do all of the following yourself.

1. Customization

Most free WordPress themes, do not allow very high level of customization without editing the theme PHP files. If you are looking for high level of flexibility with widgets, columns – Premium themes is the right choice. Almost all premium themes provide lots of customization to suite your personal needs.

Thesis theme offers hundreds of Design and Site Options to choose from including how many columns you want in your blog, what font you prefer, how you want the Navigation at the top, What is the preferred width for your sidebars, how you want to display posts on the homepage … etc … etc …

2. Search Engine Optimization

Free WordPress themes are done with SEO in mind but the prime objective of those themes is not SEO. In some free themes, the HTML coding may not be completely SEO-friendly which means you are taking a huge risk at the cost of a premium theme.

Check out my article on How to Make WordPress More SEO Friendly.

3. Professionalism

Many free themes don’t allow you to edit (not remove) footer link or text. Normally this is done by encrypting the content of footer.php in the themes file and if you edit the file, themes becomes unusable. Because free themes fear the removal of the developer links from footer, they don’t allow editing footer part of the theme which can make your entire blog design look unprofessional.

My Thesis license does not compel me to have a link to Thesis in footer yet I have copyright notice because I could edit the link as per my needs aka IMTips.co Runs on Thesis WordPress Theme.

Do you use a premium WordPress theme or prefer the free one? What is the best thing you like about your theme? Share your views in comments below.

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I have seen lot of blog fail in front of me and as I talk to the blogger’s I find some of the most common mistakes these bloggers make that leads to nothing but failure. I prefer to phrase it as blog fail and not Blogger fail because it is not the blogger who has failed but it is actually the blog that failed to meet blogger’s expectation.

So let us see what the common mistakes by new bloggers are.

Blogging for Money

No matter what business you start, you should focus on building the business first and then worry about the finances of the company and blogging is no different. If you read books on blogging, you can accumulate lot of knowledge about blogging but that does not mean you have became an expert. You have the bookish knowledge but then applying the same to your blog practically in your niche can take some time to learn. Try to gain the experience and knowledge before thinking about making money out of it.

My Technical Analysis Blog never started it with the intention of making money but to help retail investor understand the market in India. I myself evolved as trader, investor as well as blogger and so did my blog and today I have my eBook that is selling very well in India.

Dead Blogs or Copy Paste Blogs or Automated Blogs

In many discussions on various forums I see people feel proud on the number of blogs they own. I read such threads and I don’t feel like sharing the number of blogs I own i.e. two of them because some members own few hundred blogs.

Having more blogs is not bad provided you can create content for each of those blogs on a regular basis but if you have too many blogs few of them are bound to become dead over time. To make it alive you may either need to copy paste content from other blogs or make it an automated blog i.e. a blog which fetches content from other related blogs and forums, spins the content using some software to make look unique for search engines.

Instead of trying to make such blogs it is better to have one or two blogs where you can actually BLOG.

Worry too much about SEO

There are very few people who start their first blog and know about Real SEO. Majority of the people I have met have read about SEO in forums and think they are expert in SEO and can do wonders with WordPress and start blogging. They don’t focus on blog but their focus is SEO.

Let me just give you a very simple example of how forum information in SEO can be misleading.

jhon786 asked my opinion on one of his query on blog commenting Commenting on blog is beneficial or not?

In forums anybody can share his views and opinions about any question and that helps knowing different views and opinion. Things that work and things that don’t but that can lead to lot of information that may not always be very correct and so you have to grasp that information like views and not as information.

As an example the first reply to the thread says that blog commenting is very useful and can lead to lot of traffic. If some one searching in Google lands on that thread, reads the question and if this is the only answer to the thread or if there are few such answer to the thread he may start thinking blog commenting can do wonders which can lead him to think about blog commenting as part of SEO. The reality is I am yet to see any site that can rank higher in Google only based on blog comments.

When starting you should focus on blogging and over time get your SEO and marketing plans executed.

Not Investing Money

What would you prefer if you plan to be a cricketer?

1. Build a cricket bat yourself from raw wood.
2. Purchase a good quality bat from a shop.

I am sure nobody will be opting for the first choice. Now what would you prefer if you plan to be a blogger.

1. Build the complete blog yourself from scratch.
2. Get it done by a professional. (I am offering blog setup for free)

Many will agree that everyone will not opt for the second option and that says it all.

Not focusing on right Stats

Alexa ranking or Google Toolbar PageRank are some of the stats many new blogger’s tend to focus more on and these are the stats you should never focus on. Apart from those stats you should not even focus on your Google Analytics stats when starting out. Does it matter if you get 1100 or 1500 visits to your blog in last 30 days? Isn’t that just a number to satisfy you?

For blogger the most important part is content t start with and once you have good solid content on your blog you can work on links to your content. So you should focus on only one number which is how many good quality articles you have on your blog and how you can increase such good quality article count.

Final Thoughts

I am not saying that these methods are wrong but what I mean is these methods are not good if you are just starting out as blogger because I have seen these mistakes enough times to judge that they are the most common reasons on why new blog fails.

What are your reasons on why do most new blog fails?

Image Credit: Hans Gerwitz

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You may have heard this – Starting a business is risky quite often but the important question is do you believe in it?

I don’t give a damn to statements like

Starting an online business is risky. Trading in Market is risky.

But can you find a situation in life without risk? Even crossing the street is super risky.

Job Risks

Let me tell you a story I read couple of years back in some magazine and so I will not be able to quote any reference. The story is related to the economical crisis in 2008 where many people have committed suicide.

It was about a couple who both were working in a leading software company in US (or probably UK) and they committed suicide. Both husband and wife were drawing more than 100k monthly salary jointly six months before they committed suicide. In few months’ 100k monthly income put them in so much financial crisis that they opted to commit suicide.

Getting on the lighter note I also remember a joke from India.

An Indian visits a girl’s place for marriage proposal. Typical Indian arrange marriage scenario. Girl’s father inquired about the profession of the guy. He was an owner of a software company. The marriage proposal was rejected by parents because the guy was not doing a job.

Few days later the girl is married to some other guy. This second guy is actually doing a job in the same company as the first person who was rejected because he was not doing a job.

Misconception about Jobs

The misconception is if you are doing a business you are taking risk but if you are doing a job you are more secured but the reality in the misconception is if you are not making the decision you assume it to be always right. As an employee

• You are betting on somebody else’s decision each time, every time and assume he will make the right decision.
• You have all your eggs in one basket. What if your boss fires you on any given day? It is quite unlikely that you can loose all of the clients at once.

What if my greatest money maker is gone? I will still be making 66% of what I am making today. See here if you want to know why I will still make 66%.

Yes Jobs are less risky if you can get a Government job in India where you waste your time doing nothing for others and still get paid for.

All these is not to influence you to quit job but the idea is make a move by preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.

You don’t need to quit your job today because you want to be a business person but what you should be doing is probably what I did and the way I did.

Challenges Change Over Time

I started online in 2004 but I took lot of time to learn things because information was not that readily available at that time. I had to learn the hard way of experimenting things and understand what works and what not. I have tried things like ad typing jobs and data entry jobs to see if they worked. As of today we have lot more information readily available to understand what works and what not. Yes there are different challenges these days i.e. overload of information and that is the biggest challenge these days.

Time when I started there was very little trust worthy information available related to creating blogs/forums. Even Darren Rowse aka Problogger.net was very new to blogging but today you can find few great eBooks on Blogging only from Darren Rowse and he is one among the many few geniuses who can teach you about how to make a living online blogging.

Understanding Blogging Risks as of Today

Let us understand with an example how risky an online blogging business actually is?

Let us say you are passionate about Gadgets and you can write high quality articles on gadgets. So let us calculate the risk for your passion assuming you are doing a job and so you can only dedicate 10 hours per week only to your passion i.e. blog.

So you will need domain and a host. I recommend BlueHost to start with which costs $60 per year.

AWeber is $19 per month but you can opt for GetResponse which is only $9.95 per month.

ScribeSEO is $17 per month

You want the best theme for your blog and Thesis (the one that I use) costs $87 one time fee.

So, for next couple of years, your outflow would be (assuming you pay yearly to reduce cost) -

• Domain and Hosting with BlueHost – 95 USD
• GetResponse $98USD per year - 196 USD
• ScribeSEO $46 every quarter - 368 USD
• Thesis Theme for WordPress $87 – 87 USD one time
• You can get your blog installed for free.

So financially in the next 2 years you can only loose $750.

Yes if you have been dedicated to your work for 10 hours per week you may even loose the hard work you put in for 2 years. I am saying you loose 10 hours of hard work but actually you are not loosing 10 hours of work but gaining 10 hours of work experience per week. I know many college students in India are more than happy to pay 35,000 INR for industry exposure and experience of 2 years but no one would prefer setting up a business with the same money.

Strange isn’t it?

You ask anybody here in India – join XYZ course which will teach you blah blah blah and pay $750 and they will think about it but you tell them to setup an online business for the same amount and the answer would be NO I don’t have time for it. I know many people personally who have preferred coaching classes over a blog.

Now coming back to the blog we setup with an investment of $750.

You are working 10 hours per week. It means you can easily write 3-4 articles per week but let us only assume 2 articles per week because when starting out you may not be as good as getting the articles out as when you become experience.

If you start with 2 articles per week you can easily add 10-25 readers on an average per day to your blog and this means 10,000 blog readers in 2 years of your blogging experimentation. Now this blog can actually generate lot of money because you have added value to your readers for 2 long years and in the process learnt the art of blogging the practical way. The amount of money you will make depends on the niche but for our example of Gadgets it will be lot higher than many other niches.

So now coming back to the original question from where we started - Is starting a business is risky? But now you know how to answer this weird question and may be you don’t believe in the question any more.

So let me ask you a new question. Can you now afford this risk to experiment a business online?

My answer would be – If you cannot afford to take this risk you don’t deserve to be doing business online.

Share your thoughts in comments below.

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Very detail comparison to understand which is better – Blogger or WordPress.

WordPress Blog as wordpress.com sub-domain

Your blog URL will be on sub-domain of WordPress.com aka shabbirbhimani.wordpress.com and you can get such blog for free at WordPress.com

Advantages

1. Free.
2. The most powerful blogging engine aka WordPress.

Disadvantages

Making money from a wordpress.com blog can be tough because

1. WordPress.com blog don’t allow you to execute any external JavaScript’s in Sidebar or in post content. This means you will not be allowed to put any ad network like Adsense on the blog. Yes you can use direct banners from affiliate advertising for monetizing the blog.
2. WordPress.com blog don’t allow you to add other plugins of your choice and you can use only those that they offer in the admin interface.
3. WordPress.com blog neither allow editing of themes nor allow you to use a custom theme of your choice. I prefer and use Thesis theme and you cannot use such premium themes for your wordpress.com blogs.

Blogger Blog on blogspot.com sub-domain

Your blog URL will be on sub-domain of blogspot.com aka shabbirbhimani.blogspot.com and you can get such blog for free at blogger.com

Having Blogspot blog overcomes one disadvantage of Adsense or external JavaScript we had for wordpress.com Blog but then it adds few other disadvantages. Many Ad networks require that you own the top level domain and not a sub domain. So a Blogspot blog will be eligible for Adsense but you may have tough time to get approved by other premium ad networks especially CPM Ad networks.

Blogger blog on self hosted domain

Having a Blogspot blog on your a self hosted domain is also possible but I have not tried that myself. You can see the instruction on how to move blogger blog to your own domain here. But blogger blog on a self hosted domain has quite a few disadvantages

1. There are no good plugins available for blogger blog even if you host your blog on your own server.
2. There are very few premium themes available for you to use. I am yet to see a theme even close to what Thesis for WordPress.
3. Comments are mainly handled by blogger and you have very little control over them.
4. No control over the permalinks. I don’t prefer the date in the url for my posts and you cannot have a blogger blog without year and month in the url.
5. Blogger can only be used as blog. This means you cannot use it as a complete content management system like WordPress.

WordPress Blog on self hosted domain aka imtips.co

You can download WordPress blog to be installed on your server from WordPress.org. I am offering Free WordPress Installation Service.

WordPress is undoubtedly one of the best blogging platforms available and is very easy to use from multiple view point – SEO, plugins or themes. Apart from that it has all the needed stuff to make it look like a professional website and not just another blog (if you want it that way).

The question which is better Blogger or WordPress is answered. It is all WordPress show.

Share your views in comments below.

Update Nov 29 2011: Now you can make money from your WordPress.com blog. See http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/wordads/

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Offering blog reader’s Free WordPress Installation Service. Yes you heard it right totally free WordPress installation service.

What to expect in free WordPress Installation Service?

1. Install theme of your choice. I highly recommend Thesis for WordPress! This is what I use for my blog.
2. Blog is Search Engine Optimized with the right permalinks and plugins to get the most traffic from search engines with as little effort as possible.
3. Install and configure essential plug-ins like Facebook and Twitter share buttons, Google Analytics, SEO plugins and other cool plugins to make your blog more interactive.
4. Create an opt-in form through AWeber or GetResponse. I use AWeber for my blogs.
5. Setup custom email addresses (@yourdomain.com) so your blog looks more professional.
6. Setup contact form so your visitors can email you with questions or comments.
7. Personal consult for an hour - (Worth $20) After blog is finished I will make sure everything is in place and explain you how to use your blog along with ideas and blogging tips to help you succeed.

What’s The Catch?

You may be wondering what the catch is but actually there is no catch. Your blog installation service is being sponsored by BlueHost. They are paying me to get all these done for you. If you were to pay someone to install WordPress blog along with the plugins, it would cost you at least $100 and BlueHost is paying me for referring you to their hosting.

If you are not a regular reader of my blog you have the question that is BlueHost the right host for my blog? Let me clarify that I am using BlueHost for all my shared hosting needs for years. Apart from that it is one of the top recommended hosts on WordPress.org as well.

Update: BlueHost is offering a free domain for rest of your life if you place your hosting order using my affiliate link.

How to get the Free WordPress installation service?

To get the free WordPress installation service, all you have to do is order a web hosting plan from BlueHost using the link http://imtips.co/go/bluehost and forward me your BlueHost login information to shabbir [at] shabbir.in or shabbir [at] imtips.co and I’ll install WordPress blog for you. Afterwards, I’ll email you back the login information for your new WordPress blog and this is when you can change your BlueHost login information that you have given me. Once you are done with your login details changes you can start blogging!

What are you waiting for? Start your WordPress Blog on a self hosted domain NOW.

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I analyzed top individual bloggers (the one that I follow) and came up with list of best business models they use for their own blogs. Note that I am not talking about blogs promoting affiliate products or making money with advertising networks but those bloggers who have created product(s) to compliment blogging as a business.

1. Educational Course, Book or eBook

Paid course or and eBook is one of the most used business model for blogging and is implemented by various successful bloggers. Blog mastermind course by Yaro Starak or eBooks’ by ProBlogger to just name the few.

2. Jobs Board or Marketplace

Premium job listing is used by many bloggers like ProBlogger, FreelanceSwitch, Shoemoney and Go4Expert to enhance community experience among developers as well as allow employers to hire developers at a very affordable pricing. Job board is usually monetized in one of the two ways – Either Advertiser pays a fee to post their job listing, or job seekers pay a small subscription fee to have access to jobs.

Remember if you are trying to have a job board or marketplace, you will need users to post those jobs. So this business model may need to wait until your traffic level is decent.

3. Premium content

Many sites charge a fee for becoming a premium member of the site and gain access to premium features. Type of premium content varies from site to site. As an example Tutsplus offers premium articles for premium members and experts-exchange offers answer to the question for a membership fee. Forums like WebmasterWorld or ProBlogger Forum allow you to interact with other like minded people.

4. Services

I am very fond of providing freelancing services as an added method to cash in some decent money in my pocket along with blogging. If you have a new blog there are very few money making opportunities directly from your blog but you can make a lot of money from new blog providing services. People blog about things they love or are expert at and if you can use your blog to show your expertise, you can grab lot more freelancing job using your blog.

Let me tell you how I use my blog to get lot more freelancing work. I provide vBulletin and WordPress services. Depending on the client requirements I show them the best articles from my blog to show my expertise and this converts really well at a price I am comfortable doing things.

Apart from me there are many other bloggers who provide different type of services on their blogs like Yaro for personal coaching.

5. Premium products

Last but by no means the least – is to have product that solves your readers’ problem. Products like Thesis by Chris Pearson of peasonified.com or ScribeSeo by Brian Clark of Copyblogger.com are some must have products for any blogger.

What is the business model for your blog? Have I missed anything? Share your views in comments below.

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1. Build Trust – Business Will Follow
2. How to Earn From Blogging In India?
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In my complete guide to WordPress SEO an important setting is of permalinks and you can opt for many different permalinks options in WordPress very easily. Let me discuss what permalinks options we have in WordPress for SEO and which one is voted as the most SEO friendly. You can see some of the default options in the permalinks settings.

But let us look at what other options we can opt for.

Directory Structure Permalinks

Use the following in the Custom Structure

/%postname%/

I use it on my Stock Market Blog

Static pages Permalinks

Use the following in the Custom Structure

/%postname%.html

I use the same here at IMTips

Hierarchy Permalinks with category

Use the following in the Custom Structure

/%category%/%postname%.html

In my opinion, it is the best permalinks structure but if you have multiple categories for a post, only one can show up, the one with the lowest category id and the post will be accessible through each category in urls which can create issues with duplicate content.

Hierarchy Permalinks with Tags

Use the following in the Custom Structure

/%tag%/%postname%.html

Remember if you have more than one tag per post you can have the same issues as above.

Hierarchy permalinks for Multi-Author Blog

Use the following in the Custom Structure

/%author%/%postname%.html

Unless you have more than one blog author it is very useful or else it does not make much sense to be using this Permalinks.

Finally your Vote

For more refer official WordPress permalinks documentation.

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Sachin Tendulkar

24th April 2011 is the day when legendary cricketer Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar turns 38. Let me take this opportunity to wish him luck on his birthday first. Coming back to blogging, you may be wondering what blogging lessons Sachin Tendulkar has taught me? Let me share those lessons with you.

1. Commitment, Passion & Dedication

There is hardly any record left in the book of Sachin Tendulkar to break. He achieved almost everything as an Indian batsman for the game of cricket but when playing for Mumbai Indians his passion and dedication for the game is still the same. He just loves cricket. I’m sure everyone remembers the time when Sachin lost his dad and came back to score a hundred in the world cup. This shows his commitment to cricket.

No matter which profession you are in, it is very difficult to have the same kind of commitment, passion and dedication like Sachin Tendulkar has for cricket but at least we can try. So as a blogger you should have similar kind of commitment, passion and dedication for your blog and readers.

2. Adaptability

When Sachin Tendulkar started playing cricket 20 years back, cricket was a lot different than what it is now. He adapted to the changes in the game of cricket. One recent example is his adaptability to T20 format of the game. Playing for Mumbai Indians, he is among the highest run scorer in IPL season 4.

Bloggers should be willing to adapt to new technologies trends faster and remain on top in terms of plugins, tools, SEO, products. A blogger’s ability to adapt to the changes will determine their success going forward. What worked 10 years ago, may not work to the same extent today, what worked last year may not be enough for you today.

3. Down to earth

Sachin Tendulkar when captained Indian side had less success. So stepping down as captain and still continuing to play the game of cricket suggests how down to earth person he is. Apart from that I heard in an interview of Sachin Tendulkar some time back where a reporter asked him about what he misses in life? He replied that living in Mumbai for so long yet not able to travel in the Mumbai local train is what he misses the most. This suggests his down to earth personality.

Blogging is a constant learning process irrespective of size of your blog and so if you are not willing to admit that you are still learning the process of blogging you cannot be a successful blogger.

Final Thoughts

Take nothing for granted and blog as if you are writing your first blog post. Don’t just get carried away with the success of your blog and you should be doing the basics for your blog right no matter how bigger you become.

More Related Posts:

1. Lessons Learned in 2010 & Targets for 2011
2. How to Earn From Blogging In India?
3. Power of Blogging. Are you Blogging Yet?

WordPress is the best CMS but there is lot of misconception about SEO for WordPress. Many people think that Installing WordPress is all they need for SEO. Though it is true to some extent you can still improve a lot in WordPress for SEO and convert your blog into an SEO Powerhouse.

If you have just installed your WordPress blog make sure you have your blog privacy settings correct. Under the Settings > Privacy make sure you have visible to everyone, including search engines option selected.

The Theme

The choice of your theme can impact SEO to a great extent so choose your theme wisely. I personally prefer Thesis theme for my blog because it is one of the best WordPress theme from an SEO point of view but you can use any good theme of your choice.

Once you are done with your theme installation, we will move on to get right WordPress settings to help in SEO.

Permalink Settings

Search engines and especially Google prefer better user experience. By default WordPress URLs look like http://imtips.co/?p=123 but as your can see URL of this post is http://imtips.co/wordpress-seo.html. You can get this done by editing the Permalink Settings for your blog.

This not only makes your blog URL’s user friendly but also makes URLs search engine friendly.

Anchor text in Backlinks is still one of the key factors in Google ranking and so anybody copying URLs will also have the keywords in the anchor text.

People when linking to your content may not always link like

WordPress SEO

But more likely will use

http://imtips.co/wordpress-seo.html

And this still has the needed keywords to your liking.

Many people even prefer to add category in the URLs. For using category you need to use the following permalinks structure

/%category%/%postname%.html

Or

/%category%/%postname%/

Caution: If your blog categories are such that your post can have multiple categories for a single post avoid using category in the URL.

All in one SEO Pack

All in one SEO is one of the most used plugin for WordPress SEO but if you are using Thesis Theme you can avoid this plugin but if you are using any other theme this plugin is a must. This plugin helps you customize your home page title, post page title to add your blog title to your post.

Apart from titles this plugin can also add Meta description and keywords to your posts.

A very important point to note is that by default this plugin has Noindex option checked for category, archive and tag pages. The main reason for this setting is many WordPress themes show full post content on those pages and so having those pages noindex can help you save from duplicate content but if your theme does not display full post content on those pages you can uncheck Noindex option. If you want you can even edit your theme to show only few lines of content from your post on those pages and enable this option.

XML Sitemap

XML Sitemap Plugin helps search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engine’s crawl website much more efficiently. XML Sitemap WordPress plugin helps you create complete XML sitemap for your WordPress including posts, pages, categories, tags and other custom URLs.

Internal Linking Structure

Better internal linking structure can help a lot in SEO and so we will use few plugins to enhance the internal linking structure of our WordPress site.

1. SEO Smart Link – As your blog grows it becomes almost impossible to link to old posts. SEO Smart Links automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts as well as comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog and helps internal linking for your blog.

2. Related Post – Many people argue how related posts can help in SEO but a better interlinking always help in SEO and related posts is a way to link to other related articles from your blog post. When it comes to related posts plug-in there are quite a few of them for WordPress but my personal favorite is Yet Another Related Posts Plugin because it has very intelligent algorithm for finding related posts.

3. Breadcrumbs – Google is integrating breadcrumbs navigation in SERPs and so having breadcrumb for your posts can help your SERP listing look more trustworthy.

Caution: I personally try to avoid breadcrumbs on blog where I have posts falling into multiple categories. As an example this post is under CMS and SEO category.

4. Pagination – As blog grows it contains tons of posts and if you use the default WordPress navigation, Most of your posts can be buried few clicks from home page. Using page navigation means each of your post is just couple of clicks from the home page.

SEO and Speed

WP-Super Cache – We know site speed is a part of Google’s ranking algorithm and WP-Super Cache can help speed up your website considerably. It generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog and then uses html files intelligently to show to your guests.

SEO For Images

SEO Images – Whenever you add Images to your post you always miss ALT and TITLE tag for images and SEO Images plugin adds both of them automatically.

Optimize Category Pages

Category pages are the most overlooked pages SEO in your WordPress blog and you should always do SEO for those pages. With the Thesis Theme, you can easily add custom information to the top of your category pages but for your other themes I will recommend to add category description at the top of the page. See what I do for my blog categories like Make Money.

Backlinks

I have quite a few articles on how to generate backlinks but today I am going to discuss ways to generate more links to your Wordpres blog.

1. Follow Readers – Follow your blog reader’s and visit their blog and comment on it. I always visit the site of person leaving comment on my blog to the extent I can and see if I can share some of my views on some their articles as well.
2. Use Ping backs – You can use pingbacks to notify other blogs that you have linked to them and sooner or later they’re going to return the favour. Edit Settings > Discussion and have the option Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article checked.

Final Thoughts

Feel free to ignore anything you think is not right for your blog. I myself don’t use all of them on all my blogs but they have worked for me or for my clients.

Don’t forget to leave your comments or suggestion for anything you think I have missed and I hope this helps all fellow WordPress bloggers.

More Related Posts:

1. SEO for WordPress Categories
2. Which is Better – Blogger or WordPress?
3. Free or Premium WordPress Theme?

The installation instruction in AWeber Footer Slideup plugin is not very detailed and so I am going to create a very detailed installation instructions with screenshots to help you get started with the plugin.

If you have any issues you can always post in comments and I will be more than happy to help or else you can even hire me at Elance to get it done for you.

Step 1 Generate Inline AWeber Web Form

1. Opt for In-Line Form Type (marked as 1 in the above screenshot)
2. Select the basic form design template (marked as 2 in the above screenshot)
3. De-select header, footer, privacy, counter, powered options. (marked as 3 in the above screenshot)

Step 2 Grab RAW HTML code of the form

Change the form settings as you normally do in the step 2 of web form creation in AWeber and when you reach step 3 i.e. publish your form opt for Raw HTML version of the code and un-check the check box to get the unformatted basic HTML code.

Sometimes the un-formatted checkbox malfunctions and if it does not work as expected make sure you save the form and then come back to the publish page again to generate the un-formatted html form.

Step 3 Upload and Activate the plugin

You can use the WordPress plugin interface to install the plugin or else you can download the plugin and manually upload the aweber-footer-slideup folder under the wp-contents/plugins folder. Once uploaded activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu.

When the plugin is active you will see AWeber Footer Slideup options in the bottom left corner under the settings menu.

Click the link. The link is http://yourblogurl/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=awfs

Step 4 Configure the Plugin with the HTML code

Once you are in the admin options panel for the plugin you see 3 fields.

Tagline is the content shown as heading which can be anything you want to display as message to your user.

For Hidden AWeber Form Fields (Required) we will use the Raw HTML AWeber code. Search for Hidden Div. i.e. the code between <div style=”display: none;”> and <div> . I have marked the code as 1 in the screenshot below.

Copy everything between the div and paste it in the text area you have for Hidden AWeber Form Fields. This is the minimum you will requite to do for the plugin to work.

Optional Fields

To add the tracking image find a second hidden div (Mark 2 in the above picture) where AWeber has the image to track views of the form and calculates statistics like submissions to unique display and submission to display.

<div style=”display: none;”>

Copy the image src url and place into the Tracking Image URL of AWeber Webform (Optional) field.

I completed all the above steps and yet I don’t see the plugin in action?

Your plugin should support the basic hooks in header and footer for the plugin to work. Make sure you have

1. somewhere in the header.php file. Ideally in <head>
2. somewhere in footer.php file. Ideally just before the </body> tag

I hope the installation instructions are more clear now but if you still have any queries or questions don’t hesitate to post them in comments below. I will be more than happy to help.

More Related Posts:

1. AWeber Footer SlideUp – My First WordPress Plugin
2. FeedBurner Footer SlideUp
3. GetResponse Footer SlideUp

Few weeks back I read on Chris Brogan’s blog, the importance of About Page. I verified the stats for my blog and noticed that my about page was pretty high on the list of “most viewed” content. See the stats of about page in the month of December 2010.

Looking at traffic metrics I realized few important things.

• Majority of my blog traffic is from Google but there has not been a single referral by Google on the about page. So about page traffic is mainly of reader’s who land up on some content post on the blog and are curious to know more about me.
• My about page is not linked in blog header but in footer. So reader’s are even scrolling to the bottom of the page to know more about me.
• My About page had only few paragraphs about me and so it had (not any more) high bounce rate and exit rate.

I came to the conclusion that reader scrolling to the bottom of the post to find my about link must be thinking

• Who is this guy (or girl) telling about how to make money online?
• How much money does he (or she) makes?

See my new and improved about page to see how I answered those questions.

If you have a well written about us page it can help your user stick around and become a regular reader. See the improved stats of my about page in January.

You can clearly see that people are spending more time to read the content as well as exit rate / bounce rate for the page has improved considerably.

Now the question is what all we should have in the about page.

1. Introduce Yourself

After all it’s your about page and so make sure you let them know more about you. Tell your real name (or if you have more than one person blogging your real names). If possible include a picture but avoid using usernames like “admin” at least on the about page.

2. Answer the Question – Why Listen to You?

The next question your reader may have in his mind is – Why should we listen to you? To answer this question write about your background and answer the question – Why this blog? It should help answer the reader’s question as to why should they listen to you.

3. Call to Action

Encourage people to subscribe to your blog. It works really well because person reading about you for few minutes someway want to know more about you and want to stay connected with you. Grab this opportunity. Just to share with you my subscription stats for about imtips page is 19% i.e. every 19 out of 100 user’s who view the form subscribe.

4. Get in Touch

Share links to your social media profiles to encourage readers to connect with you. I personally also prefer to have contact us link on my about page because many a times people are more interested in getting in touch with me by email.

5. Engage User

Engage your readers to your best content. Ensure your about page creates a chain for your readers to read. They have given their valuable time to read about you and so now your aim should be – not to lose a single reader from the about page.

What’s your about page saying about you?

More Related Posts:

1. About us pages – How to write them?
2. How to Write Product Reviews?
3. Why Do Most New Blogs Fail?

Let us take the next question from Ask me Anything which is by Ali

Which is the most profitable niche to start blogging?

The most important part of blogging is choosing the right niche. If you blog in a niche which interests you to write good content your task is half done. The mistake people do is try to find niche which is more profitable and I don’t see it as completely wrong but again the choice for niche should not only be based on profit but your interest should also play a role at least for blogging.

My blogs Investment Blog and imtips.co are in the most profitable niche and though I have programming background I am very much into stock market and internet marketing.

But before I talk about the most profitable niches let me tell you how to find good niches.

Visit Amazon.com. You can see “Shop All Department” in the top left.

Browse through categories where Amazon sell products and see where you are most comfortable. Remember you may not choose the top niche for your blog but you are choosing niche where people buy things online and you have an interest.

Now let us see the top niches. If you browse ClickBank Marketplace and you will see that top selling products are in the following niche

1. Health (Abs and Fat loss)
2. Wealth (Passive income and web traffic)
3. Entertainment (TV to PC product)

This is such a simple and crucial part of choosing top niche where people are already looking to buy. If you can fit yourself into these niches, that is great but if you can’t, consider niche where you have better interest and can contribute your expertise.

Finally I have to ask – Which niche works best for you?

More Related Posts:

1. What Business Strategy Can Work for Entertainment Niche?
2. Do You Blog for Profit or Profit From Your Blog? [Vote Now]
3. Blog Terms

M. Ramanathan Asked a very simple yet very important question

Greetings my firend!

I read through your site today and got very much interested.

You know why? Coz in your “About me” page, you said about blogging at home everyday after the full time job. Thats what now I’m at in the present.

I’m trying to put in my best efforts to create and grow my blog and so my online business.

It would be great if you can pen down a blog post about the problems you faced at the very initial stage when you started online business / blogging.

More specifically after finishing the full time day job, how you managed to write and maintain your blog / online business?

I have to learn a lot and its great to share knowledge with people with same passion.

Thanks a lot for your time buddy! Waiting for your next post

And I am sure many others will also have similar question.

Somewhere down the line we also know the answer to the question. The biggest problem is about managing time  and so let us first see some an example.

Check out the article I saw few days back from DailyBlogTips.com on How Hard Top Bloggers & Entrepreneurs Work? I Guarantee it will change your outlook to setting up online business forever and do remember that these people are already top bloggers.

I will add couple more people to the list.

Jeremy Shoemaker Aka Shoemoney is most of the time travelling which is part of his business and yet blogging. I rarely see his blog without an update.

John Chow blogs even in mid air.

and the list can go on and on and on …

If you are just starting out and planning to make your way up you need to be doing close to what they are doing currently if not more.

Isn’t it?

The important part is your passion for business, rest can always take the back seat.

I enjoyed weekend work and late hours of work when I was setting up my business along side my job.

Over to you

Your biggest challange to Building An Online Business When You Still Have A Full Time Job is gone. So what are your future business plans? Share your thoughts in comments below.

More Related Posts:

1. Building A Blog or Building A Forum – Which One is Easier?
2. 7 Biggest Entrepreneurship Challenges – An Indian’s Perspective
3. A+ List of Bloggers You Should Follow