Blog Archives
2011 Blog Year in Review
| 2011 Statistics | |
|---|---|
| New Posts | 90 |
| Total Posts | 112 |
| Page Views | 10,584 |
| Google Webmaster Tools (9 months) | |
| Search Clicks (web) | 2,037 |
| Search Impressions (web) | 57,688 |
| Open Site Explorer SEOmoz | |
| Domain Authority | 20 |
| Home Page Authority | 27 |
| Linking Root Domains | 14 |
Top Read Posts of 2011
- WordPress nginx proxy cache
- Las Vegas Free Play Coupons
- Blackjack Strategy Card
- Blackjack Hands per Hour
- Blackjack House Advantage – Expected Value
- Optimize WordPress for Page Speed YSlow and Zoompf
- Free Las Vegas Buffet
- Free Rooms in Vegas
- Blackjack Money Management
- Blackjack Basic Strategy – Splitting Pairs
WordPress author information in Google using rel=”me” rel=”author”
Google is now displaying author information in search results.
Here are the steps necessary to set up your WordPress site to implement author information in google search.
In your WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance > Menus
Select the Screen Options link and make sure that Link Relationship (XFN) is checked.
Go to the menu item that displays the author information page for your site and add author in Link Relationship (XFN). For this to work, the menu must be displayed on all pages of your site.
Edit the page for this menu item and add a link to your Google+ profile using the following format:
<a href="https://plus.google.com/109024895387008001098?rel=author" rel="me">Google+</a>
Replace the url with the link to your Google+ profile. It is important that the link title has a + at the beginning or end of the title.
Go to your Google+ profile about page and add a link for your WordPress site home page to the Contributor to section.
You can test that you have done everything correct by using the Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool.
After a few weeks, you should start seeing something like the following in google search results for your WordPress site.
How to Start a Blog
Congratulations on thinking about starting your own WordPress blog. One of your motivations to start a WordPress blog may be to start making some residual income with it. There has been a lot written about how long it takes to start making income from a blog. Most experts agree that your first year of blogging will usually result in little or no income. With this in mind, here is a 5 step program to ensure your long-term success with your new WordPress blog.
1. Choose a Topic you have a Passion About
Your first step is to choose to write something that you are truly passionate about. Without this passion you will most likely stop writing when you are not receiving the results you were expecting. You must choose something that you will be willing to write about for free for the next year with no financial reward.
2. Get a Domain Name Now
The next step is to buy a domain name for your new blog. A custom .Com domain name usually costs about $12 per year. Buying a domain name now will make sure that when you build links to your new blog and have rankings in the major search engines, that you will be able to take these links and rankings with you wherever you decide to host your WordPress blog.
3. Get a Free Blog at WordPress.com
Now it’s time to set up your blog. Head over to WordPress.com and sign-up to for a free WordPress blog. After you set-up your new blog, you will need to purchase the domain mapping upgrade ($12/year) so that you can use your new domain name purchased in step 2 above. The best feature of WordPress.com is that it is free. Compare that to the $60+ you would spend per year to host your own WordPress site. Here are some additional thoughts on why my WordPress blog is hosted at WordPress.com
4. Write Great Content
Now that your blog is set-up, you are ready to start writing some great content. This is the next critical step in your blogging journey. If you do not put in the effort here, you will not get the results you expect. I would suggest that you commit to writing at least 2 posts a week so that after a year you have 100+ posts. With this number of posts in your first year, you should start to see some increase in traffic to your blog.
5. Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools
After your first few posts, you should sign up for Google Webmaster Tools. This is a free service provided by google. With this great tool you can see what search terms people are using to find and click thru to your new WordPress blog. There are so many great features of this tool that it deserves its own post to discuss. The important thing now is to sign up and add your domain name purchased above so that the stats are being tracked in the tool. Once you start seeing the stats, you can learn more about how to leverage google webmaster tools.
Are you Ready?
So that is your 5 steps to setting up your WordPress blog. If you follow these steps it will cost you about $20 in your first year of blogging. After your first year you should start to see an increase in traffic to your blog and then you can consider self-hosting your WordPress blog and start to monetize your blog with advertising (google adsense, chitika, etc.) and affiliate marketing (amazon, commission junction, etc.).
Best of luck in your journey. Please leave a comment with your experiences.
Optimize WordPress for Page Speed YSlow and Zoompf
Here are some optimization techniques to optimize your WordPress site for Google Page Speed 1.10.2, Yahoo YSlow 2.1.0, and Zoompf.
I installed a completely new WordPress 3.1 site with no plugins and using the default Twenty Ten theme.
Here are the relevant scores on a fresh install:
| Test | Score |
|---|---|
| Page Speed | 87 |
| YSlow | 93 |
| Zoompf | 49 |
- Edit your .htaccess file by adding the following:
<IfModule mod_headers.c> Header unset ETag FileETag None </IfModule> <IfModule mod_expires.c> ExpiresActive on ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 6 months" ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 6 months" ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 6 months" ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 6 months" ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 6 months" ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 6 months" </IfModule> <IfModule mod_deflate.c> AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/css text/plain text/xml application/javascript application/x-javascript </IfModule>
- In your /wp-content/themes/twentyten/header.php remove the following line: (this removes the charset from your page because it’s not needed if the web server is using the HTTP Content-Type header to define the character set)
<meta charset="<?php bloginfo( 'charset' ); ?>" />
- In your /wp-content/themes/twentyten/functions.php add the following: (this removes the ability to use remote editing)
function remheadlink() { remove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link'); remove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link'); } add_action('init', 'remheadlink'); - Optimize the /wp-content/themes/twentyten/images/wordpress.png using a tool such as ImageOptim. This will reduce the size of the image from 849 bytes to 661 bytes without losing any quality.
- Optimize the /wp-content/themes/twentyten/images/headers/path.jpg by saving it with a jpeg quality setting of 75% using your favorite image editing tool and then using a tool like ImageOptim. This will reduce the size of the image from 51,727 bytes to 42,154 bytes without losing too much quality.
- Minify the /wp-content/themes/twentyten/styles.css using the YUI Compressor tool.
Here are the new scores after optimization:
| Test | Score |
|---|---|
| Page Speed | 99 |
| YSlow | 98 |
| Zoompf | 84 |
Here are the remaining issues:
Page Speed:
- Use efficient CSS selectors
- Minify HTML
YSlow:
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Zoompf:
- RSS Feed Without Blackout Period (skipDays)
- RSS Feed Without Blackout Period (skipHours)
- RSS Feed Without Caching (TTL tag)
- Dynamic HTML Not Minified
- Potentially Cacheable Text Response (iPhone)
- Uncacheable Response (iPhone)
I hope you learned some simple steps on how to optimize your WordPress site.
Configure your WordPress site
If you are just getting started with WordPress, here are some tips to help you set up your WordPress site.
Before proceeding you should understand the difference between a WordPress.com and WordPress.org site.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
For WordPress.com and WordPress.org sites
WordPress Site Cleanup
- Go To Posts and Move the Hello World! Post to the Trash
- Go To Links and Delete all the Links
- Go To Pages and Move the About Page to the Trash
Recommended WordPress Settings
- Go To Settings > General
- Update Timezone
- Go To Settings > Discussion > Avatars Section
- Change Avatar Display to Show Avatars
- Go To Settings > Sharing (if you are using WordPress.org you must have the Sharedaddy plugin installed)
- Enable the Sharing Services you would like to appear on posts
Recommended Content
Useful External Tools
- Sign up for a Gravatar
- Sign up for FeedBurner and Burn your feed
- Go To FeedBurner Settings > Publicize
- Activate Email Subscriptions
- Activate Pingshot
- Activate Socialize (Twitter)
- Go To FeedBurner Settings > Publicize
For WordPress.com sites
Recommended WordPress.com Settings
- Go To Users > Personal Settings > Personal Options – Proofreading Section
- Enable Automatically proofread content when: a post or page is first published
- Enable All English Options for proofreading grammar and style rules
- Go To Settings > General
For WordPress.org sites
Recommended WordPress.org Plugins (WordPress.com already includes the functionality provided by these plugins)
- After the Deadline - check spelling, style, and grammar before publishing
- Akismet - checks your readers comments for spam
- Google XML Sitemaps - generates an XML sitemap for google
- Sharedaddy – allows your readers to share your posts
- WordPress.com Stats – stats for your site
Recommended WordPress.org Settings
- Go To Users > Your Profile > Personal Options – Proofreading Section
- Enable Automatically proofread content when: a post or page is first published
- Enable All English Options for proofreading grammar and style rules
- Go To Users > Your Profile > Personal Options – Name Section
- Update your First Name, Last Name, Display name publicly as
- Go To Settings > Permalinks
- Update Permalink Settings to Day and Name
