5 Tips To Speed Up WordPress for Business Blog Marketing

August 6th, 2010 by JulieS

WordPress is a very user-friendly site, which is why it is popular among those who are blogging for fun, and those who use blogs for business blog marketing. However, too much traffic to your website can slow it down, and if you’re not prepared, and influx of traffic can crash your site. Here are some suggested  tips and tricks from Mashable, to make sure you can handle a high number of viewers.

1. Utilize WordPress Object Cache or a Caching Plug-In – There are several ways to cache database queries, preventing new server requests on each load, which lessens the strain on the server. There are several plug-ins you can download, like WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache. Or, you can enter the following code into your wp-config.php file:

// Enable the WordPress Object Cache:
define(ENABLE_CACHE, true);
Read more on this topic:

2. Choose the Right Web Hosting Service – Some web hosts are optimized to run Wordpress, and some are not. Here is a list of what you should look for when choosing a host:

PHP 4.3 or greater
MySQL 4.1.2 or greater
suPHP for security
Apache or Nginx

3. Be Selective About Plug-ins – Remove any inactive plug-ins, and any active plug-ins that you are no longer using. Also, make sure you are running the most current release of Wordpress, and all your plug-ins.

4. Choose a Simple Theme – With a myriad of themes to choose from, and the ability to customize your theme, it might be temping to go all out. However, themes with images, tables, or frames can slow down your site’s loading time. Want to know if your page is too slow? You can test it on YSlow or Pingdom’s Page Test.

5. Compress Images – People like pictures, so don’t omit them just to speed up your site. If images are formatted and compressed correctly. For black and white images, or images with only a few colors, it should be saved as a .GIF or .PNG. Images in full color should be saved as a .JPG. If you edit an image in Photoshop, use the “save for the web” option. When sizing an image, smaller is better.

These are a few of the easier ways to speed up your site. Next week we’ll get into more advanced techniques, so you can soon be on your way to a faster Wordpress site, ideal for great business blog marketing.

Bookmark and Share

Tags: ,
Posted in Business Blogging, business blog marketing | 1 Comment »

Business Blog Marketing 101: Recognizing Spam Comments

August 4th, 2010 by AliciaYoung

Not All Blog Comments are Created Equal – Know What to Post or Just Delete

Moderate and monitor all comments on your business blog.

Spam, the dreaded online term for anything that keeps coming back to annoy you and forces itself into your blog comment queue. Comments from far east websites as well as tactics from black hat SEO firms will likely degrade your business’s  reputation as well as other ethical blog marketing efforts.

How can a corporate or business blog avoid these infectious comments? Follow this rudimentary business blog marketing advice.

1. Always, always check the “moderate comments” box on your blog platform. If you do this, then you can decide what comments are worthy enough to approve on your business blog.

Recognize what constitutes Spam and what may be legitimate. Here are a few examples I recently found on this SEO business blog:

Submitted on 2010/07/27 at 10:54am

Good brief and this post helped me alot in my college assignement. Say thank you you seeking your information. (from what could be a non-spam website)

Submitted on 2010/07/28 at 7:56am

thanks for keeping me up to date on this issue.

2. If a comment is questionable, then follow the link provided. More often than not, the website will no longer exist or it will be another blog with a list of links and no content. These links are NOT the type of link building you want for your business blog, which may impede any other marketing efforts.

Look at this example below:

oldfortharrod.com
Usually I do not post on blogs, but I would like to say that this article really forced me to do so! Thanks, really nice article.

The site above is legitimate, but the comment is not. Our SEO blog receives many comments like this and I think someone is just adding a random domain or it’s the work of an unethical SEO firm.

3. Monitor & delete your business blog comment queue often. If your business is maintaining a blog everyday or every week, and it’s receiving traffic, then someone should be monitoring the spam and other comments too. If it’s not your marketing department, then appoint someone else to do it.

Afterall, you don’t want to waste your time sifting through 65 spam comments every month, do you?

Search Circus monitors all comments on our SEO business blog and we offer ethical business blog marketing advice via articles, consulting, and adult education classes in the greater Cleveland area. Ask us how we can help your business garner a greater presence online.

Bookmark and Share

Tags: ,
Posted in business blog marketing | No Comments »

3 Steps to Getting Ranked With Natural SEO

August 3rd, 2010 by SarahCarter

In a recent webinar entitled “The Perpetual Traffic Formula,” speaker, Ryan Deiss discussed the 3 key steps to getting your Web site ranked in the search engines with natural SEO. He explained that free traffic rather than pay-per click campaigns is the best way to go because of the increased competition with PPC as well as the decreasing amounts of people clicking on Google ads (only 2-5% of all clicks are on PPC ads according to Deiss).

There are three key steps to getting ranked in Google. Deiss calls these collective natural SEO steps, “The Ranking Triad.” These steps must be completed in the correct sequence to ensure a site’s success.

1. Content: Quality content is the first step to achieving an organic Google ranking. The site must have relevant, quality content (content IS king) that contains appropriate keywords without stuffing them. Also the site should have a domain name and meta tags that has a good SEO-friendly structure. Deiss suggests people to write or have someone else write at least 12 original articles containing 12 of the most valuable keywords to your site. Then post these articles in a WordPress blog as pages instead of blog posts.

2. Links: A site must have natural inbound, outbound and authority links for successful SEO. To start, drive 10-20 quality inbound links to your site, preferably from .gov and .edu sites. These are seen as the most trusted to the search engines. After completing step 3, drive 300-400 more links back to your site with blog comments, link directories and social media profiles.

3. Activity: This is the most important step that is often overlooked. Activity comes in the form of site traffic, RSS feeds, subscriptions, comments and updates. Deiss said Google is paying more attention to site activity than ever before. In order to get site activity, Deiss suggested to send some paid traffic to your blog, “dare” site visitors to comment, drive auto responder traffic back to your blog and encourage RSS subscriptions. Once your site is ranked, activity should take care of itself; however, a good way to keep encouraging activity is to send some social media or PPC traffic to your page as your site begins to get more attention.

Following the “Ranking Triad” will ensure that your site gets ranked in the search engines permanently. Following these steps in the correct order will help your site’s rankings and surpass your competition. The higher your site goes, the more revenue it means for your business. Natural or organic SEO is best in the eyes of the search engines and following these 3 steps is the best way to achieve a high ranking and stay there.

Bookmark and Share

Tags: , ,
Posted in Natural Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »