The SEO guide covers key areas such as:

• SEO Basics
• Optimizing your site’s content
• SEO for Mobile Sites
• Improving your site’s structure
• And more

Click here to download the Google SEO Starter Guide.

A fast, efficient broadband connection is becoming increasingly important every day. Whether you use your computer for business, entertainment or a combination of the two, you need and deserve a high speed internet connection in return for your hard earned dollar. An internet service provider, or ISP, is only a provider. It is for that reason that preparing the computing space, whether it be a home or business, is the sole responsibility of the individual.

The truth is that there is a wide range of problems within your own home that could be wreaking havoc on your broadband connection. Luckily we have devised a list of 10 steps that can have you on your way to the blazing fast internet connection that you pay for in minutes.

1. Move Closer to the Router: If you are using a wireless broadband connection, simply try moving closer to the router. In many cases this is one of the best ways to boost your connection speed for free.

2. Lose the Line Extensions: One of the most common problems is the line extension. A line extension is a length of phone line used to allow the placement of phone jacks all throughout a building. The problem is that they are often faulty and cause significant losses in broadband connection speed due to interference.

3. Connect the Router Directly to the Master Socket: Another easy way to boost your connection is to make sure that your router is connected as closely to the master phone socket as possible. To accomplish this situate your router as near as you reasonably can to the master socket and then use the shortest operable cable to connect the two.

4. Check for any Interference: A variety of household electronic devices can cause connectivity problems. To determine whether or not this is a problem in your home perform this simple test: turn all of the electronic devices in your home off and then turn them back on one at a time while watching your connectivity for any disturbances.

5. Try Ethernet: It is a good idea to try using Ethernet instead of wireless for a trial time as it tends to be more stable than Wi-Fi, although much less flexible.

6. Get Updated: Check for any updates available for your operating system. Try updating your DSL modem to the latest firmware as well. There should be instructions in the owner’s manual but if not you can call your service provider and they will walk you through it.

7. Secure Your Network: If you are using a wireless internet connection make sure that your network is secure and password protected. Allowing unauthorized users to “piggy-back” on your internet service can use up precious bandwidth which will in turn slow down your connection speed.

8. Try a New Browser: There are several different web browsers available with Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome being particularly popular choices right now. Google Chrome, especially provides a better browsing experience since its loads fast than the average browser..

9. Get a New Modem: If your modem is more than a year or two old it may be time for a replacement. Your ISP may provide this for free or for a small fee that they will often drop if you renew your contract.

10. Find a New Provider: If all else has failed, give another ISP a shot!

There you have it, 10 tips that are bound to increase the speed of your broadband connection. Good luck and enjoy the speedy internet connection that you paid for.

Now, like most people, you probably still write your articles the wrong way and make no sales from your efforts. Sounds like you? Yeah, I already know it does. Because if you were already making as much money as you wanted, you wouldn’t be reading this. So what’s the difference between an article that makes money and an article that doesn’t?

That was a pretty broad question on my part, but I did that deliberately because the differences are many. There are questions you need to ask yourself before you even start writing. These are the questions that even I ask myself today when writing articles and going live with them. Check them out below.

Basic Questions To Ask Yourself Before Writing

The first question you need to ask yourself is, do you know enough about the product you’re promoting? New Affiliates have a bad habit of trying to promote a product they really know nothing about. And in most cases, if you don’t know enough about the product you’re trying to promote, then you don’t know anything about your target audience and they quickly identify you as an unreliable source.

Another question is do you know who your target audience is? If you don’t know who you’re promoting to and your idea is just to promote to the general public then you have a problem and you’re less likely to make sales.

The last question you need to ask yourself is do you have proof that your product actually sells? Even if your article is flawless, if the product you’re promoting doesn’t sell, it doesn’t sell. It’s like being a girl scout, using  the “cute little girl” method of getting you to buy something. But instead of selling girl scout cookies, trying to sell you tap water in a cup.

To find out proof that the product you’re promoting actually sells, first look at the product page and ask yourself if you’d buy their product if you needed it. Then if you’re promoting a Clickbank product, check out your products gravity or “grav” for short. If using Commission Junction, check out Network Earnings.

Coming Up With That Killer Title & Header

I like to look at titles and headers as a book cover. And while you’re never supposed to judge a book by it’s cover, most people do. If you’re promoting a product such as “A Six Day Guide to Six Pack,” if your article title is “How to Get A Six Pack” you’re probably going to immediately lose your readers’ attention because that title is no different than the average. Now if you have a title like “How to get a Six Pack & The Hottest Girl At The Beach,” that immediately makes most guys want to keep reading.

Now the header is pretty simple. You don’t always need it. The header is something I generally like to add if I couldn’t make the title as interesting as I wanted to. A title would be something like “How I got my High school Crush,” then the header would be right under it in smaller font and would be something like “…And how you could too.”

Providing Information While Keeping Your Readers’ Attention

Now you’ve got the readers attention. DO NOT see the intro as a point for you to start rambling and bore the reader. The intro paragraph needs to be almost as interesting as the title. At this point you want to tease the reader with questions you already know they have and then tell them they can find the answers in your body paragraph. Once you do that, you’re pretty much guaranteed they’ll look at what you have to say. And like I said earlier, it’s OK to place a link to your product in your intro paragraph.

Now when writing the body, this is where you make sure that you include information you don’t think the average member of your target audience would know but not too much, or they won’t need to buy your product. This is where you gain credibility. You want to sound like you know what you’re talking about and actually understand where your audience members are coming from; and if you’re doing Affiliate Marketing the right way, you should know where your audience members are coming from.

As a tip, when you’re done writing your body, make sure you go back over it to ensure that it’s informative but still fun to read with a light tone. If your article body is too boring, the reader is going to leave your page. You don’t want this to happen.

Summing Up & Making The Sales

Now it’s time for you to sum up your article with a closing that leaves your readers wanting more, ultimately leading them to clicking your Affiliate links. Think of your closing as a cliff hanger to a really good movie, but instead of making your audience wait for the sequel, they have access to the sequel through your beautiful Affiliate link.

If you follow these steps, you’ll be guaranteed to make money online and gain a huge advantage over the average blogger. Good luck!

Having been in web development and on the blogging scene for a while, I’ve come across the good, bad and ugly in WordPress theme development and design; and have seen many bloggers spend money on themes they grow to regret.

Here are 7 very important factors that you need to consider before spending the cash or start getting attached to a theme that ends up being a complete waste of time.

1. Design Compatible With Your Goals?

Think about what you will be trying to achieve through your blog and how you will want to interact with your readers. For example, if your blog is about photography, don’t purchase a theme that doesn’t have portfolio page options, fancy lightbox effects or does not offer unique control of your image files. Get the picture?

Before choosing your theme, make a rough sketch of what you would want your site to look like with the primary components at the positions you think will be most beneficial for your readers. Always aim for user-friendliness and straight forward designs.

2. Admin Panels Included

If you’re going to be spending money on a premium theme, ensure that it comes with theme / customization options which will enable you to change colors, header images, logos, CSS styles and add supporting code like google analytics, etc. These features will give you a great level of control over your blog’s design without the need to learn too much code required for manipulating your design.

3. Technical Support & Community

Does the site from which you’re purchasing your theme have a supportive community of developers and users who are ready to answer your queries and assist with problems if they arise? Ensure that this community is vibrant and take a look at past queries and posted user difficulties and observe how they are handled. If you see many questions unanswered in their forums or blog then that’s a sign of how they treat customers.

4. User Manuals & Documentation

Purchased themes must come with user manuals and other types of documentation. These will help you to get started with your new theme easily and the learning curve would be shortened.

5. Theme Updates

Once a theme is purchased you should not have to pay for future updates, improvements and additions. Web development is constantly changing and improving, so there will always be newer versions of your theme released on a regular basis. If the developers want you to pay for updates or just don’t offer any at all, then don’t buy it.

6. Price – Is It Worth It?

The price of WordPress themes can range anywhere between $10 and up to even $100 depending on the type of package you’re purchasing, features and complexity of the design.

Do not spend more than $40 on a theme that does not have customization options which will allow you to easily tweak and personalize your blog. Look for theme developers like Elegant Themes who offer a yearly membership of $39 which will allow you to download all their cool themes.

Free or Premium

It really does not make a difference whether your theme is a free one or if you paid for it. As long as it accomplishes your goals, then you should do just fine. However, paid premium blog do tend to consistently offer more features, more unique designs and their developers provide more support.

7. Caution!

Never download and use themes from sites that are giving away premium themes (which are usually sold by their developers) for download when they themselves are not the theme’s developer. 90% of the time, these themes will contain hidden malicious code that can potentially harm your reputation as a blogger and eventually cripple your site and cause loss of data.

Always download themes from their original source which is usually from the developer’s website.

WordPress Theme Resources

There are quite a few developers online who are simply awesome at developing and consistently release killer WordPress themes on a monthly basis. Below is a list of both premium and free WordPress theme sites. Note that premium sites do occasionally release free themes like the Morning After theme from WooThemes.

Free WordPress Themes Sites:

• Skinpress
• Simple WP Themes

Premium WordPress Themes:

• Elegant Themes
• Woo Themes
• Rocket Themes
• DIY Themes

Conclusion

Having the perfect theme for your blog will play a key role in determining its initial success and developing your image as a blogger. Take pride in your design, keep your readers in mind and always aim for the highest standards.

Which theme are you using for your blog design? Are you satisfied or are you thinking of making a switch or doing an upgrade? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below, we would love to hear from you.

Below, I will show you the best permalink structure to use for SEO and how to do it.

What are Permalinks?

Permalinks as WordPress.org defines it:

…are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to link to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. The URL to each post should be permanent, and never change — hence permalink.

So in, http://www.yourdomain.com/first-blog-post, ‘first-blog-post’ would be a pretty permalink and can be customized within your WordPress dashboard to suit your preferences.

How To Setup Your Permalinks

To setup pretty permalinks for your WordPress blog you need to access Settings in your WordPress dashboard, then select Permalinks. You should see some options like below:

Select the custom structure field and enter, /%postname%/ and click Save Changes. This will create a permalink structure of www.yourdomain.com/postname/ which is the most effective URL structure for your blog.

Also, depending on the needs of your site and if you would like more structure to your URLs and posts, you could use /%category%/%postname%/ which would display the name of the category where your post is filed as well. So it really can be customized however you like. To see a full list of structure tags that can be used, please visit the WordPress Codex Here.

SEO Basics When Using & Choosing Your Permalinks

Generally, I always advice my clients that when choosing their domain names, shorter URLs are better both for the human mind that tries to remember them as well as being simpler for search engines. The same goes for the URLs used when you create new posts for your blog.

For example, if the title of one of your blog posts is “How To Make A Million Dollars By Doing Absolutely Nothing For A Year,” it would best suit you if you customize your post ‘slug’ (as in the URL for your post) to something shorter and simpler. Without any customization, WordPress will automatically assign a post slug to your article as www.yourdomain.com/how-to-make-a-million-dollars-by-doing-absolutely-nothing-for-a-year, this is not the most efficient permalink and basically does not get to the point for the search engines.

A more appropriate post slug would be something like www.yourdomain.com/how-to-make-a-million-dollars which provides less unnecessary information, which will in turn make it easier for you to be found through search engines.

Customizing your ‘slug’

Once you start typing the title of your new post, your article will be automatically assigned a post slug and you will see an option appear below the title field to edit your post permalink. To customize your link simply click edit and change it to whatever you like.

Basically, customizing pretty permalinks allow you to have more keyword rich URLs and gives you the added SEO benefit if other sites use those URLs to link back to your site.

Safely Migrating Your Permalink Structure

If you’ve already started publishing to your WordPress blog and have decided to change your entire permalink structure at a later stage, you will not be able to safely make the change using the regular settings alone since all links to your posts would be broken and return a ’404 page not found’ response to your visitors. You will also lose any pagerank that your posts may have gained since the URLs would no longer be valid.

Thankfully, there is a neat plugin that allows you to successfully make the structure change without any disasters by generating a ’301 permanent redirect’ for your post pages. This simply tells search engines and your visitors’ browsers that the pages have moved to a new URL and they would be seamlessly redirected. All pagerank and links would be transferred.

The plugin can be downloaded here: Permalink Migration – After you’ve installed and activated the plugin, you may then go ahead to change your permalink structure in the regular WordPress dashboard settings.

Conclusion

Using pretty permalinks is absolutely imperative if you want to become the authority within your niche and generate as much search engine traffic as you possibly can.

If you’re thinking of changing your permalink structure or have done so in the past please let us know by leaving a comment. We would love to hear from you and also know how your search engine traffic improved since making that change.

So today, I’ll show you how to create your own custom front page that can serve your visitors as a sales page, introductory page or just about anything you wish.

Step 1 – Create your custom page

To create a custom page, simply duplicate your page.php file which is found in your theme’s main directory and give it a name of your choice. This name must be different from “page.php” This is found in your “wp-admin/wp-content/themes/yourtheme/. Where “yourtheme” is the name of your currently active theme directory.

Step 2 – Add required code to your new file

Add the code below to the top of your new page, replacing “New Page Template” with a name of your choice. This is what WordPress uses to detect the file type (whether its a template or not) and the template name.

<?php /* Template Name: New Page Template */ ?>

Step 3 – Select your new page template

Once you’ve created and saved your new template, within your WordPress dashboard create a new page and select the new page template you created in the template selection drop down menu and click publish as shown below.

Step 4 – Publish and set your new front page

Go to Settings then Reading in your WordPress dashboard and select the static page radio button and select your new page from the drop-down as your front page display as shown below and click save.

Final – Create your content

You may look at your original page.php template file to get an idea as to what you may want to include in your custom page template like the header and footer or possibly the sidebar. Remember, the content you place here is up to you.

See how simple that was? You have now created your custom front page for your WordPress blog. You may go ahead and add any content you like to your new page.

If you experience any difficulties in getting this done please feel free to ask for further assistance. I would love to help.

In this video, Adam Purcell from Hungry Dog Media demonstrates how easy the plugin setup is and does it in under 5 minutes.

Note: The video is best viewed in full screen mode

Additional Features of the plugin include:

Payment Options
Integrates with Google Checkout, Paypal, Payment Express, and many other trusted payment processors.

100% Customizable
Use your own HTML & CSS and have complete control over the look and feel of your online store.

Search Engine Friendly
Awesome tools are integrated to improve your online product search rankings.

Head over to Getshopped.org to learn more about this awesome plugin or you can download it here: WP E-Commerce

Discussion: I’m currently testing all the capabilities of the plugin. So far so good. If you’ve had any experience using the WP-E-Commerce plugin, please leave us a comment to let us know what you think about it.

Failure to monitor your blog can result in the advent of non-standards compliant code that not only gives your blog a cluttered look, but sometimes causes your blog’s pages to load improperly or not at all. With all the modern emphasis on productivity comes an equally important emphasis on simplicity and order on the Web. A successful blog needs to be useful and visually appealing which means that to keep yours on the radar, you’re going to have to clean it up a bit. Here are some steps you can take to keep your blog simple, clean and in tip-top shape.

1. Offload or Reduce Your Blogroll

It’s nice to list some other blogs that you and your readers might be interested in, but does it really have to be on every page? That’s up to you, but you should carefully consider moving it out of the way and planting it on its own page rather than cluttering up your sidebar.

2. Delete the Spam Kill Count

Useless elements like Akismet’s spam counter do nothing to contribute to the mission of your blog, so why bother? Everyone knows about the Akismet plugin for WordPress and that it indeed does kill spam, but what value is the kill count to your blog. Think about taking that off your blog so users can pay attention to you instead.

3. Remove RSS Feeds for Posts

Most people aren’t interested in an RSS feed for a post anyway: if they are, they can bookmark it. Besides, too many feeds complicate your blog, so removing all but the main one should help your blog.

4. Ease Off the Social Bookmark Buttons

Many people find all those submission buttons for each post to be distracting, so why do some blogs have the icons and links plastered everywhere? If you want to get your posts submitted to these services, either the links or the icons should do. Be sure to discard the one you don’t want to keep. And you don’t need to list fifty options: stick to the main players, ie. Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious.

5. Delete Your WordPress Version Number

By default, WordPress shows the world what version of the software is running your blog. First, that is not interesting to most blog readers. Another thing is that hackers can judge by the version number what vulnerabilities exist on your site, so it’s always best to keep this information off your site.

6. Reduce the Number of Categories

Category lists can get excessively long, and they aren’t the most popular part of a blog anyway. Besides, if it is shorter more people will be likely to browse through it. Make your blog less complicated by keeping your number of categories low.

7. Put Polls in Posts, Not in the Sidebar

It’s great to learn the opinions of your visitors, but how about writing a post and including your poll there? Polls in the sidebar give your blog a cluttered look and can distract visitors from the real you.

8. Move Your Archives

Readers who are interested in learning more from your site will be happy to click on a separate page to navigate your archive. Your blog will look much cleaner too.

9. Counters and Alexa Widgets Have to Go

These gizmos take up real estate on your blog, but don’t contribute anything to a positive user experience: take them off.

10. Have a Utility Area

Consolidate site policies to your “About Me” page so people can learn about your blog all in one place. If you offer services, then create a dedicated services page too. Same goes for your contact form.

Now that you’ve tried these steps, your mind is probably coming up with more ways to clean up your blog. Keep working at it and soon you’ll have a clean blog that meets modern expectations. You and your readers will be pleased with the results.

If you missed my previous security articles, you may view: 5 Extreme Steps to Secure Your WordPress Blog and 10 Simple Steps to Secure & Protect your WordPress Blog.

Since last year, thousands of sites have been hit by SQL attacks where malicious code is injected into the site. This type of attack completely disables the site’s permalink structure thus making blog post URLs inactive.

The Awesome Solution

We all know that prevention is better than cure, so below you will find the code that will be used to secure your site and prevent the injection. If you are tech savvy, you can create a new .php file, copy and save the code below and give it the file name: block_injections.php.

The code:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Block Bad Queries
Plugin URI: http://perishablepress.com/press/2009/12/22/protect-wordpress-against-malicious-url-requests/
Description: Protect WordPress Against Malicious URL Requests
Author URI: http://perishablepress.com/
Author: Perishable Press
Version: 1.0
*/
global $user_ID; if($user_ID) {
if(!current_user_can('level_10')) {
if (strlen($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) > 255 ||
strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], "eval(") ||
strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], "CONCAT") ||
strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], "UNION SELECT") ||
strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], "base64")) {
@header("HTTP/1.1 414 Request-URI Too Long");
@header("Status: 414 Request-URI Too Long");
@header("Connection: Close");
@exit;
}
}
} ?>

Source: Perishable Press

If you would prefer not to dabble in any code, you may download the plugin here: Block Bad Queries Plugin

Save the file above and upload it to your plugin directory, /wp-content/plugins/, or use the Add New feature in your plugin section in the WordPress dashboard. This plugin will check for excessively long request strings (greater than 255 characters) as well as the presence of base64 code in the request URI which hides the malicious code.

Once the plugin is activated, it will silently and effectively close any connections for this type of injection attack.

Start Protecting Your Blog

This type of injection attack is extremely common in unprotected WordPress installations and the malicious code is often found hidden within free WordPress themes that are downloaded from questionable websites.

Always remember that prevention is better than cure and your site is your valuable investment.

Discussion

Please share your experiences with securing your blog and the problems that you have overcome. Also, if you require further assistance with implementing the code, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Here are 5 additional tips and practices to ensure that your investment of time, energy and money in your blog never goes to waste.

1. WordPress File Monitor Plugin

This plugin monitors your WordPress installation and sends an e-mail alert to a specified address whenever a file is changed, added or deleted. Usually when a site or blog is hacked or compromised in some way, there is always a file that is altered in your directories. Under normal circumstances we would not know about such low-key changes taking places, so the plugin keeps a constant look-out and reports any changes.

The plugin also shows alerts in the WordPress dashboard, just in case you missed the e-mail alert.

This plugin can be downloaded here: WordPress File Monitor

2. Move Your Wp-config.php File

This tip actually came from Sachin, a fellow blogger and web developer, who commented on my previous security post.

You can further secure your WordPress blog by moving your wp-config.php file (which is found in your root directory) to a directory level that is higher than your www (root) folder. This move will prevent your blog from being hacked through your wp-config.php file.

3. WordPress Anti-Virus Protection Plugin

Hopefully, most of us have anti-virus software for our personal computers, so why not have it for your wordpress blog? This plugin is an extremely effective solution for detecting and protecting your blog against exploitations and spam injections and offers the ability to conduct daily automatic scanning and manual testing while providing e-mail notifications.

This awesome anti-virus plugin can be downloaded here: WordPress AntiVirus

4. WordPress Firewall Plugin

This one is pretty neat and recommended for more advanced users. This plugin has a vast amount features that complement your web host server by logging, detecting and intercepting suspicious parameters and requests. It is also useful for mitigating dreadful zero-day attacks (See definition for Zero-day Attacks Here) and setting different security protection levels.

The plugin can be downloaded here: WordPress Firewall Plugin

5. Encrypted Login Password Plugin

This plugin is very useful for users who do not have SSL (Secure Sockets Layer, see definition here) enabled or is not available. The plugin increases the security of the login process by using a combination of public and secret key encryption to encrypt the password on the client side when you log in. Your server will then decrypt the encrypted password with a private key and grant you access. Note: Javascript is required to enable password encryption.

The plugin can be downloaded here: Semisecure Login Reimagined

Use the plugins and tips above to seriously secure and lock-up your wordpress blog to the Max! Remember, its your investment, so do what it takes to protect it.

Discussion:

Please share with us other tips or plugins not listed above that you may have found useful. Also, please share any experiences or difficulties you may have had in the past and what you did to overcome.