Marlon Sanders' latest article:
'3 Easy Tweaks To Your Blog That Make It Viral, Vital & Valuable'
Subtitle: Subtitle: Get your plugins installed, spruce up your sidebar, add recent comments, fix those blasted permalinks and add the Twitter viral script you won’t believe — all in a jiffy!
Do you have a blog?
If you don’t it’s an easy thing to set up.
http://wordpressmadeeasy.net/
That little product right there from my Ateamer Mike Paetzold will get you going — fast! It’s also a great example of how to create a simple product with a built-in audience.
I’m the King of Step-By-Step Internet Marketing, NOT the king of blogging. But I did spend yesterday tweaking out a few things on my blog, inspired by RobertPlank.com.
Robert’s blog has some really nice tweaks on it I liked,so I added a few to mine. And you might want to add them to yours.
I cover how to set up your blog in Promo Dashboard, if you have it. Normally, I reserve highly detailed step-by-step information for my products. For one thing, to get it right takes more time than I have to write my ezine.
Also, you often need supporting video. But I’m brave today, so in the 45 minutes I have to write this ezine, I’m going to hammer out a few step-by-step procedures for you. Understand that when we do this in products, we support it with screen caps and videos.
This is a very small taste of how we do things around here in our Dashboard products. It really takes a lot of time and attention to detail to do steps like this with screen caps and video so they are as goof proof as we can get them.
THAT’S that value we offer others don’t. No one has stuff as step-by-step as our Dashboards.
Here we go:
After you have it set up, here’s what you do:
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1. Set up your permalinks
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Your permalinks are the way your blog post url’s read.Here’s what mine looked like before:
http://www.marlonsnews.com/?p=123
The problem with that structure is it has a number at then end instead of your keywords.
After fixing my permalinks, my url’s now look like this:
http://www.marlonsnews.com/7-ways-to-kick-your-sales-profits-up-a-
notch-starting-this-week/
That’s much better for your search engine optimization (seo). Here’s how you do it:
a. On the left menu, click on “settings.”
This will drop down a little sub-menu of things you can tweak your settings for.
b. Under settings, click on “permalinks.”
You’ll see several buttons you can click under “Common Settings”
c. Click Custom Structure
d. Put this in the custom structure field:
/%postname%/
2. Redirect links to your blog
If you already have your blog set up, you’ll have inbound links to your blog posts from readers and from Google. If you change your permalinks setting, then all those links go bad.
This is NOT good!
When I originally set up my blog in March of 2007, I didn’t feel the permalinks were important. Later, when I decided I wanted the seo boost, I already had inbound links and didn’t wan to muck up what I was doing.
So how can you FIX your permalinks WITHOUT mucking up your existing inbound links?
Here’s the solution:
a. On your left wordpress menu, click PLUGINS
b. You should see one called “permalink redirect”
If you don’t have the permalinks redirect in your plugins,go here and follow the instructions to download and install:
http://scott.yang.id.au/code/permalink-redirect/
b.1 Download the plug b.2 Unzip the contents
(If you don’t know how to do this, go to youtube and search “unzipping” and HOPE you find children safe videos!}
b3. Ftp the whole “permalink-redirect” folder to your wp-content > plugins folder b4. Go back to your plugins menu under settings and you will now see a listing for permalinks redirect. b5. Click activate
If you get lost on the above, go to youtube and search:
“How to install plugins on wordpress”
c. Click activate on the right side.
d. In your settings, you will now see a link for “permalink redirect”
e. Click it and scroll down to the text box labelled “old permalink structures”
f. Paste in there the way your OLD links were structured.In my case, here is what I pasted in:
http://www.marlonsnews.com/?p=123
g. Click “update options” and you’ll be good to go. Your old links will now redirect to the new ones. So you don’t lose any links.
And the best part is, your URL’S now have keywords in them for the search engines.
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2. Set up Tweetmeme — the coolest viral Twitter script
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I’m excited about this one. It shows the number of tweets for a blog post. And lets people tweet the post just by clicking.
Go to: http://www.marlonsnews.com and tweet one of my articles. You’ll see how easy it is to use and why you need it on your blog.
a. Go to — http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweetmeme/
b. Just as you did in number one above, download the plugin
c. Upload to wp-content > Plugins just as you did above and then activate
That takes care of that one. Now, I’m going to have someone tweak my template to get it located where I want it. And you may need to hire someone to do that.
Or if you’re smart, you’ve used outsourceplan.com to hire a virtual assistant like I have. The Sultan of Speed Internet Marketing and my friend Jason Fladlien just used the system to hire someone for $2.50 an hour!
So now you have your VIRAL component installed.
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3. Add Recent Comments With Avatars
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One of the things Robert has at RobertPlank.com is the most recent comments on the right hand sidebar. His have photos. Now, I found a great little plugin that adds user’s avatars. However, most of my folks don’t have a picture.
So I’m pretty sure Robert has a different plugin or a tweak. I’ll find out from him. In the meantime, you can add your comments on the right side easy peasy.
Yours will look like mine does right now at marlonsnews.com.
a. Download the plugin:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/recent-comments-with-avatars/
b. Install same as above.
c. Click “Recent Comments” under settings to tweak your look
Now you have it.
You’ve fixed your permalink structure, added a killer VIRAL tool AND added recent comments. One more.
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4. Re-order your sidebar widgets
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See all those things I have on my right-hand sidebar:Recent comments, categories, archives, blogroll, tags?
All of those are called “widgets.” And you change the order of them, add and delete them using widgets.
a. On your left Wordpress menu, click “Appearance”
b. Under appearance, you’ll now see “widgets”
c. If you have a widgets-approved theme, you should see a widgets menu.
What’s WEIRD is I don’t. And this really hampered my ability to tweak my blog. But when I go to this URL, I get my widgets menu:
http://www.marlonsnews.com/wp-admin/themes.php
d. Substitute your domain where mine is and you should find your widgets.
e. Click ADD next to any widget you want to add to your sidebar
f. On the right side, you can just drag and drop to re-order your widgets! How cool is that?
Alright, your blog should be pimped out now.
Have fun.
PS: If this article was valuable, please go to my blog and tweet it to others:
Marlon Sanders
Marlon Sanders is the author of "The Amazing Formula That Sells Products Like Crazy." If you'd like to get on his mailing list and receive tips, articles and information about online marketing, visit: http://www.marlonsnews.com.
*IMNewsWatch would like to thank Marlon Sanders for granting permission to reprint this article.
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