The Bloggging Workshop Blogging tips, money making ideas, search engine optimization and much more! 2008-08-24T17:44:32Z WordPress http://bloggingshop.com/feed/atom/ admin <![CDATA[META tags are pointless - or are they?]]> http://bloggingshop.com/?p=24 2008-08-24T17:09:28Z 2008-08-24T17:01:25Z SEO - The Do's and Don'ts of META tags - The Blogging Workshop

Meta tags are used by search engine crawlers and browsers alike. They give information about the site and its content.

Writing META tags (such as description and keywords) is starting to lose popularity. People don’t bother wasting their time on it because Google doesn’t take META tags very seriously anymore. This is because the tags were used a lot for spamming and manipulating the site’s rankings.

Even though they don’t help your rankings that much anymore, I suggest you give META tags a try, as I actually got my META description tag of my Windows XP tips & tricks site to be the site’s description in Google’s search results. That better-looking description gave me quite a good traffic boost from Google. My site didn’t rise in the results, but traffic did.

When writing these tags, use only your main and secondary keywords that you also have on your site. Don’t flood your META’s with irrelevant spam. Also double check you haven’t written a keyword several times. Writing good META tags will definitely not hurt your rankings in Google, but don’t expect much of a traffic rise.

If you don’t want to manually add the META tags to your header, check out this smart plugin for Wordpress: All in One SEO. It helps your ranking with many other options as well, such as setting Google-friendlier post title’s and permalinks and a lot more!

No such plugin for Blogger, not that I know of. Another point for Wordpress.

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admin <![CDATA[Blogger vs. Wordpress]]> http://bloggingshop.com/?p=13 2008-08-18T21:09:22Z 2008-08-18T21:03:20Z

When starting your first blog, the second hardest thing after choosing a domain name is which blogging platform to use. Google’s Blogger or Wordpress?

Here’s what to keep in mind when choosing.

If you are sure you don’t want to spend a dime on blogging, Blogger is probably the best choice. If you decide to go for wordpress.com, be prepared to pay a little for the basic things (custom php editor, webspace, unlimited users, etc.) They don’t cost much, but Blogger gives them free.

Blogger vs. Wordpress - The Blogging Workshop

Blogger vs. Wordpress - The Blogging Workshop

If you want to use your own domain, WordPress is inarguably the best solution. And by WordPress, I mean wordpress.org which is free, provided you find your own hosting.

A short note readers: I haven’t spent a penny since I started my first blog. Yes, I have several .com domains, including this one. Wonder how I got them? Stay tuned and subscribe to my feed to find out! :D

Wordpress has a lot more high-quality themes available than Blogger. If you want cooler ones than in the wordpress theme library, look in these sites:

  • www.topwpthemes.com
  • www.wpthemespot.com
  • www.amazingwordpressthemes.com
  • There are also a few great Blogger templates, look for them in these sites:

  • themes.blogflux.com/blogger
  • blogger-templates.blogspot.com
  • blogspottemplates.blogspot.com

  • Before creating a blog, think it over. Figure out how much you want to spend and choose a blogging platform accordingly.

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    admin <![CDATA[Adsense for feeds]]> http://bloggingshop.com/?p=6 2008-08-18T08:57:29Z 2008-08-18T08:48:00Z

    As you might already have noticed, Google has introduced a new adsense feature in the hope of getting more FeedBurner users. Adsense for feeds lets you add adsense ads to any of your feeds that are using FeedBurner.

    Setting up ads for feeds is a whole lot different from setting up ads for content. You can specify several things like how often you want the ads to be displayed (every feed item - every 4th feed item), where in the feed you want them displayed and of course, what color you want the ads to be.
    Google also lets you choose to set a color scheme automatically, but it’s better to make one yourself.

    When reading feeds, the background is usually white so make sure you choose a white background for the ads for blending. Or, you could use another color to make the ads stick out… Make the title blue like a normal hyperlink and the URL blue or green. The text should always be black.
    Oh and another thing, you can’t use the color schemes from your Adsense For Content.

    If you haven’t got one already, signing up for FeedBurner is definitely worth it, because you can monitor your subscriber stats and there are loads of other cool features.

    Adsense For Feeds - The Blogging Workshop

    Adsense For Feeds - The Blogging Workshop

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