Today is the last day of August so it is time to schedule the September edition of WordPress Question and Answers on Blog Talk Radio.
It will be Wednesday September 2nd at 7 pm edt.
We will go for an hour again this month and as always I need your questions. Please leave them in the comments below.
Steve and I will be doing a segment on changing your sidebar and talk about a a variety of plugins and other ways to trick out your side bar along with things to avoid.
Leave your questions below, mark your calendar and we’ll talk with you on Wednesday evening.
I have been expanding on the items that Nicole Dean did while guest blogging over at my other blog a couple weeks back. Here is one of them.
10. Ask your readers. You’ve got a list. You want those people on your list to like you and buy from you, right? So, ask them what they’d like to hear more about. Survey them with a tool like SurveyMonkey.com or EasyInternetSurveys.com or any of the other great free services and find out. Then, offer them more content based around that topic.
Now to find out exactly which of these you would most like to see expanded please vote in the survey below. I have listed all of the topics I have not already expanded on.
Just saw a tweet from Alex Syseof and went ot check it out. If you are into WordPress and blogging you should follow Alex on Twitter as he finds good blogging info and always shares.
This time it was a new plugin. It is an anti virus plugin and will check your files daily and send you a report. You can also scan your files at anytime so this looks like a good way to catch some of those nasty injections that can get you in trouble with Google.
It is easy to set up just upload and activate it.
Check the enable box and save the changes. You can run a manual scan but you may get some false positives where it will ask you if this is a virus. As I have been testing this it is usually instructions that are added to the theme and it is easy to tell. When it is completed you get all of the boxes to turn to green.
Looks like a good plugin that I will be adding to all of my blogs shortly barring any unforeseen problems. You can get it at
I will be going into more detail on occasion here. Today we will look at this tip.
11. RSS Feed Swipe File.
This idea came from my friend, Susanne of HillbillyHousewife.com – Set up a Google reader account which is a RSS feed reader/aggregator. Then, go and sign up for the RSS feeds for several competing sites. (If you don’t know of any competing sites yet, the feed reader will allow you to search for them.) Then, log into your feed reader any time you need ideas for a blog post. Alternatively, you can log into the feed reader once per week or per month and jot those ideas into your idea notebook for later.
Two things to do here to take advantage of this tip.
Set up a Google Reader account
Find and add the feed url for a blog to it
Google love them or hate them has some really excellent free tools. One of those that I use regularly is the Reader. Getting it set up is easy.
Open a Gmail account or use your existing account. You may want to have more than one if you are working across various niches so you can keep them separated..
At the top of your Gmail account you can click on Reader.
Once you do that the Reader will open up then you can add the url of the feed by clicking the Add a subscription button.
Then you can either add a search term to find feeds on your topic or add the actual feed url from a blog you wish to follow. This will also work for any rss feed you may wish to add. This can include news feeds, article site feeds or any place else that has an rss feed.
Here is what I got from a search of the term WordPress. You can just click the subscribe button to add each one to your Reader.
You can also add the feed url in direct through the Add subscription box. Most sites that have an rss feed will use the feed button or a hyperlink of RSS.
Clicking either the button or the link will usually open up the feed in a browser and you can just copy and paste the url into the add box. You can also find it by right clicking and selecting properties to get the url.
You now have the details so it is up to you to take action and use this technique for blog post ideas.
I will be going into more detail on occasion here. Today we will look at this tip.
19. StumbleUpon and Digg.
If you’re not using StumbleUpon and Digg yet, you’re totally missing out on my favorite tool for watching what’s hot (and you’re missing out on boatloads of traffic). I love my StumbleUpon.com traffic, but I also use the site to research interesting ideas for blog posts and Twitter tweets. Check out the site.
StumbleUpon and Dig can be an excellent idea platform and let you know what is really hot in your niche. First go to StumbleUpon and login.
You will see a search box in the upper right. Add in your topic and click search. Because I like blogging I will use that as a keyword.
I used a very general term and the first thing you will notice is the ability to apply a filter with options listed of related filters. Because I write about WordPress here I will use that as my filter..
Then I can either browse those results and I did the top topics was plugins so I can drill down a bit more by clicking the plugin filter.
Next I can sort the list by either ratings or reviews.
Looking at these lists I can see that the strongest ratings and the most reviews are consistently plugin lists. So if I am looking for a topic I would now look to do a post on one of the following.
Top 10 Must Have Plugins
8 Plugins Every Review Blog Must Have
5 Plugins To Reward Your Commenters.
Now it only took me about 3 minutes total going through StumbleUpon to find these topics and come up with potential blog posts with my slant that I know have a good chance of being popular.
You can sort through Digg in the same manner but StunbleUpon is my personal favorite for ideas.
Once you know the keywords you are looking for finding ideas that have a good chance of being popular is easy. If you do not know how to create your keyword tree and find profitable keywords check out the Keyword Call this Wednesday with Steve Roye and myself.
The two biggest factors in having a successful blog is picking a profitable niche and developing good keywords that are easily rankable.
This was also the #1 question in the surveys I did last month. Steve and I will be doing our keyword call next Wednesday. Just spent about 4 hours yesterday structuring the call, creating a notes sheet and a resource guide to make sure that we deliver easy to use, actionable information.
If keyword research is something you want to know more about I strongly recommend that you get access to our keyword call.
We will be covering the how to’s using free resources and exactly how to use the research once you have created your list to be most effective.
Hope to see you there. Sign up today for the keyword call.
Okay another upgrade was released today and yes I may be a bit frustrated. On the one hand I am very happy that they address security flaws as quickly as possible but …
It is easy to get frustrated with the number of updates lately. Because it is a security update you should follow through on it and I have added the video below that walks you through the process. You can see the details of it on the WordPress blog.
Before I get into the topic today a few notes. Nicole Dean is guesting on my blog Mike Paetzold Recommends and will be a guest all week. Nicole has been going from blog to blog all summer as a part of Nicole’s Summer Rock Star Blog Tour. Her topic is inspiration for your next blog post. Make sure you stop back each day.
Because Nicole is writing these I have had a chance to take that time and go on the road myself. Yesterday I showed up at The Internet Dad, my buddy Chris Morris’ home blog with a post titled “Pillar Posts – The Key To More Traffic“.
I have at least one other stop coming this week (submitted the post but not sure when it will be published.) This allows me to get in front of a new crowd (although no where near the number that Nicole has reached this summer) that may become regular readers.
Now to talking keywords. Keyword research was the #1 topic when I ran my surveys last month.
Understanding keyword research and finding those golden ones is one of the best ways to generate traffic. You can do it using free tools and Steve Roye and I are doing a call to show you exactly how to do that next Wednesday.
There will be a small investment for attending but you will get a mind map and a hand out that you can refer back to or take notes on.
Sign up today for the call at Keyword Call. We have scheduled it for an hour but will continue until all your questions are answered.
So some agree and some disagree with my feelings in those standard WordPress installs with the default theme.I do agree that the content is really the key but most of the responses were like me and if the look was bad the odds of reading the content were lower so why take the chance.
Changing up your header on the default theme is quite easy and adding a new theme takes no technical knowledge to speak of with the latest versions of WordPress.
First the default header. If you log in to your dashboard and click Appearance – Custom Header you will get the chance to change the color scheme.
That will bring up a screen that looks like this.
Each of the buttons below the header image allow you to change the color scheme of the header. The buttons are pretty much self explanatory – Font -Upper Color – Lower Color -Revert – Advanced – with the exception of Advanced which allows you to add the actual hexadecimal codes you want to use for the top , bottom and font or remove the text altogether.
When you pick one of the colors you will get a color picker and will see the change take effect on the header above as you make your selection.
This allows you to change the stock blue header to any combination of colors you may want to use. Here is an example.
A big difference from the original and your options are virtually limitless.
Second you could just change the theme altogether. This is just as easy to do with in the dashboard but you will need your FTP login information.
Click Appearance – Add New Theme to get started.
You can either search through the data base of themes at WordPress being very specific or if you have downloaded a theme that you like you can upload it from your computer. To do that just click the browse button and once you locate the file that you downloaded click install.
If you do not have a theme that you have downloaded you can search using the advanced features to find a theme easier.
Once you have found a theme that you think will be good you can click the preview button and see a bigger version then click install to actually load it on to your blog.
Once you click in
Once you click install you will enter your ftp information and click proceed.
Once it finishes you can preview – activate – or go back and try a different one.
Whether you change the header or add a new theme the credibility increase is worth the 10 minutes or so of your time. Even with the best of content your appearance will cost you readers.
First impressions do matter at least in this old bald guy’s opinion and now you have a step by step plan to change that.
A question that is subjective to be sure but it always amazes me when I see a blog that is the standard default WordPress theme. Now this is not a knock on the standard theme as I have seen some people that have used it effectively.
It is the stock header that usually gets me.
An example – A couple of times a day I go through my reader to keep up with the various news feeds I pull in to stay on top of different subjects.
I see a headline that hooks me, the initial blurb showing in the reader seems like something I may want to read so I click through and see the dead default theme.
I am gone. It may be elitist but if you could not even change the color of the header (easily done in the dashboard – no great techy knowledge needed) I figure you do not have the time to create quality content.
Now I may be missing great content but I doubt it. 99% of the time these have been blogs set up to pull others content in. No effort added so you don’t deserve my attention. My time is valuable and if I can’t see that you will provide some value for me using my time to read your site I am gone.
Please take the time to do something other than a standard install to at least let people know that you are serious about your blog. Adding a new theme or at least changing the default header color is extremely easy through the dashboard so spend the 5 minutes and DO IT.
Just my opinion or have I just become an elitist? Let me know in the comments.
