Last month, I went to a fairly hugemongous blogging conference. Besides getting to meet many blogging friends in real life, which was a lot of fun (read getting to see a bunch of middle age folks singing karaoke like no one was watching) the most valuable thing I got out of the conference was the […]
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Optimization, Vulnerabilities, Hackers, Oh My! An Explanation of the Crazy WordPress Events of the Past Month
The WordPress Twilight Zone… It has been a really busy month for WordPress and WordPress users. It’s enough to freak a person out. But don’t. I know how out of control you can feel when you rely on technology to take care of itself, and it’s been doing a really good job of it until BAM […]
3 Easy Steps To Secure Your Blog
One of my favorite jobs, is tweaking and fixing people’s blogs. I love to dig into the code, pick things apart, isolate the problem and then fix it. I love it so much that sometimes I get lost in the looking and the researching and the fixing. But one thing stops me cold every. single. […]
The Easiest WordPress Yoast SEO Plugin Tutorial for Bloggers
As a blogger, you hear a lot of talk about SEO, sometimes you get it, sometimes you don’t. (If you don’t, it’s Search Engine Optimization – getting the search engine crawlers to see what you want them to see, determine you are an expert in your field and to stick you up there towards the top […]
3 Ways to Reduce Your Bounce Rate on Your Blog
Bounce rate is how many people come to your blog and leave without clicking on anything. Why should you care? Bounce rate is a metric. Metrics are what search engines use to decide if they should send readers your way. A typical blog has a 70-90% bounce rate. To be successful you should shoot […]
How to Center a Widget
You know what I’m talking about, you have all of these great badges from all of the places you’ve contributed, you stick them in your sidebar and they are all jiggety. You want to show off your accolades, but you want to look professional, right? Well give me a few minutes and I’ll show you […]
Don’t Get Hacked, Update Your Plugins
Last week we found out that WordPress SEO by Yoast had a security compromise. Messages were blasted out everywhere, Update Your Plugins! (Actually you should be okay, because the issue was so severe WordPress.org did a forced update for everyone.) But you still should update your plugins! This brings up a very serious topic I […]
Create a Bulletproof Password
This week I’m going to do a mini-series on protecting your blog or website. I think the most obvious place to start is with a bulletproof password. I participate in a lot of forums around the web. I would say the number one misconception I read is that small blogs and websites don’t need to […]
5 Ways To Rock Blog Post Titles
Content may be king. But if you can’t get that content in front of people, then it doesn’t matter one lick what it says. Without the right headline, no one may ever read your post. No matter how amazing and informed and funny it may be! That’s the awful truth. On average only […]