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Why Blog Commenting for SEO and Link Building Purposes Sucks

admin — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:10:37 +0000

With all due respect to SEO Specialists out there, I think blog commenting sucks. Period.

I used to utilise this link and traffic building method, but not anymore. Why? Because I myself is being bombarded by individuals and SEO experts alike with comments that successfully avoid my Akismet spam scanning, but contains, umm, useless and, sometimes, tasteless comments (How “Here are some dating tips for geeks” comment in my articles about web hosting sounds?)

I know there is a hint of “geekiness” in each of us webmasters and web developers – But, c’mon…

To worsen things, I have dozen of blogs, receiving dozens of comments (statistically, about 50% of them are spams – both blatant and subtle.)

I conclude that all the blog commenting for SEO and link building purposes are done for two purpose: traffic building (by trying to be among the firsts to comment on an authoritative blog post) and link building (especially on dofollow blogs.)

Abusing CommentLuv and similar WP Plugins

Blog commenting on WordPress blogs, especially on those that use CommentLuv and similar plugins, is sucks, as well. It’s like slapping Andy Beard’s campaign of dofollowing blog comments. His campaign promotes quality commenting with genuine intention to offer opinions first, and link/traffic building second.

Abusing Top Commentator and similar WP Plugins

I used to utilise “Top Commentator” WordPress plugins on top blogs in order to get my links on the Top 5 position, sitewide – With dofollow attribute. I suck and those who do just that suck, too.

Luckily, the Top Commentator plugin developer updates it regularly, so that it gives blog owners a power to customise the listing of top commentators, including the addition of every website owner’s life-saver vs. “malicious” blog commenters : nofollow tagging.

Abusing RSS subscription to be the first to know when your “target” blogs are posting articles

RSS readers and alerts are cool, but some use them to be the first commentator on the blog posts (a spoiler: This works wonder for me – Free, residual traffic to your blog, even weeks after the post date.) But you are not supposedly to do this by posting spam or junk comments!

How for us to avoid “suckiness” from artificial blog commentators

Learning from my own experience, I stop doing blog commenting for the sake of SEO/link building. Today, I comment on blogs because I enjoy the blog posts and want to tell the world what I think of the blog post.

I do still think about traffic and link building, but those fall deep, deep down in my SEO campaign checklist. I want people to pay a visit and link to my website/blog from the useful comments I write on other blogs. It’s probably the whitest hat SEO ever, but I enjoy and feel right doing it (just like the blog owners who do carbon offsetting to support a greener, environmentally friendly blogging practice.)

What’s your view about blog commenting?

The Benefit of Using PHP Include Function in Optimizing Your WordPress Blog Theme

admin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:42:37 +0000

I’m always a fan of PHP’s Include function, especially in tweaing WordPress theme.

Aside from core WordPress theme functions and common use of Include in PHP-based programming, I found some use of it in term of safe-tweaking your WordPress blog theme’s codes.

Here’s an example. Suppose you want to have your Google AdSense code embedded into the top of your WordPress blog’s index.php. Sure, you can add the code right away into index.php – However, I enjoy using Include function to embed the AdSense code. No WordPress plugin necessary…

Here’s how:

I create, for example, adsense-code-top.php file containing your Google AdSense code.
I then include the file into index.php by putting in the place I desire, for example, below the header.

Here are some benefits of using your custom Include function in your WordPress blog.

If you happen to crash your WordPress blog due to coding errors, you can easily check what and where the errors are by looking into your custom PHP files, instead of your WordPress theme files.
You can edit your codes faster by looking at the right custom PHP files you create, instead of scanning hundreds lines of WordPress codes.
You increase your WordPress blog’s coding usability – If you have someone tweak your blog’s theme codes, you can make her life easier by having your add-on organized in custom files (of course, don’t use obscure file name for your custom files – e.g. adsense-code.php is way much better than custom169236.php.

If you have other tips, please share by commenting on this post

OIO Publisher Ad Spaces Management WordPress Plugin – Automate Your Advertising Management

admin — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:19:27 +0000

I’ve recently purchased a WordPress plugin that automates blog advertising management – OIO Publisher.

I genuinely think that this WordPress plugin is one of the must-have plugin if you are serious about making money online.

Why? Because ads management can be confusing, at times. You have to manage your advertising clients’ payment. Be thankful if your clients want to use auto-payment subscription. If your clients are not comfortable with payment subscription, contacting and renewing the client ads are really a hassle. Make that a headache if you have dozens of advertising clients and dozens of websites – even hundreds

The following are some of the main benefits of OIO Publisher you can’t deny

OIO Publisher eliminates the need for middlemen

Using advertising management service, such as BuySellAds.com, cost you a large chunk of percentage from your ad sales. Not good.

You might say that BuySellAds.com has a perk: A marketplace that exposes your ads sales more. If you think that as a perk, think again – OIO Publisher manages your ads without the need of any middlemen, plus you can list your website on OIO Publisher Marketplace.

OIO Publisher Ad Server allows you to manage many ads on many sites in one centralized location

If you run multiple websites or blogs, you will find this WordPress plugin very helpful and powerful – OIO Publisher can have your blog as an ad server, managing ad spaces on your network of sites and blogs on a single, centralized, place.

OIO Publisher can run on non-WordPress powered websites

Yes, OIO Publisher can manage ads on non-WordPress powered websites, through the embeddable Javascript. Of course, you need the Ad Server to be set up on your WordPress-powered site.

Not only on blogs, I have OIO manage ads on my PHPLD-powered and eSyndicat-powered web directories How’s that for flexibility?

How much OIO Publisher will cost me?

The plugin costs $47, and if you want to claim it now, you can have $10 discount using this OIO Publisher promo code: INDIGO-NOOB0509

In my opinion, $47 ($37 with the promo code) is a small investment that can return you exponentially in your resource management. Managing ads is time consuming, and hiring staff can drain your cash – Stop managing your ads manually, start managing your ads automatically with OIO Publisher.

Float ad wordpress plugin

admin — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:47:15 +0000

This plugin is a floating ad plugin. You can place your ad at the top of your blog and it will stay there although you scroll the page. You can comment about the plugin here. See the demo here. Download the plugin here.

To install the plugin:

Upload the plugin files to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
Place displayad(); ?> right after the tag on your theme file. You could probably find it at header.php.

To customise the look of the float ad, you can do so from your WordPress Admin Panel under the Settings Tab. To do even more customisation, you can do so from the CSS file inside the CSS Folder.

If you find our WordPress plugin useful, please consider donating…

Statistic wordpress plugin

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 07:09:26 +0000

Just created a simple statistic wordpress plugin. With this plugin you can see:

Today page view stat
Today referer stat

You can download it here.

If you have comment, critic, or suggestion please write it here.

If you find our WordPress plugin useful, please consider donating to us…

How to move your blog to subfolder

admin — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:44:57 +0000

Often you need to move your blog from www.domain.com to www.domain.com/test. You might want to test something and does not want to interfere with your blog. A way to do this is by creating a clone of your blog in subfolder. So how do you do it? Assume that your blog is at www.domain.com, here’s how:

Download database backup plugin from http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup.
Activate the plugin
Backup your database using your plugin. Go to ‘Manage’ -> ‘Backup’ menu. Choose ‘All tables’ and download the backup file to your computer. You will get a zip file with .sql file in it.
Extract the .sql file
Backup the .sql file. You can just copy the .sql file to another folder
Open the .sql file using notepad.
Replace ‘http://domain.com’ with ‘http://domain.com/test’
Create a new wordpress blog at sub folder i.e. www.domain.com/test
Loggin into your phpmyadmin. You usually can find your phpmyadmin at cpanel.
Click databases, and select the database that you will be importing your data into.
Across the top of the screen will be a row of tabs. Click the Import tab.
On the next screen will be a Location of Text File box, and next to that a button named Browse.
Click Browse. Locate the .sql file stored on your computer which you have modified using notepad.
Make sure the SQL radio button is checked.
Click the Go button.
You should now have a new blog at http://domain.com/test.
Contact me if you have any problem.

Tips

If you have huge database, you might want to reduce the size so you can import small database. What makes the database that huge is usually your post. So in order to reduce the size, you need to delete some post in the .sql file. Open the .sql file and search ‘wp_posts’ word. Find something like : “INSERT INTO `wp_posts` (`ID`, `post_author`, `post_date`, `post_date_gmt`, `post_content`, `post_title`, `post_category`, `post_excerpt`, `post_status`, `comment_status`, `ping_status`, `post_password`, `post_name`, `to_ping`, `pinged`, `post_modified`, `post_modified_gmt`, `post_content_filtered`, `post_parent`, `guid`, `menu_order`, `post_type`, `post_mime_type`, `comment_count`) VALUES
( x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x),
( x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x),
( x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x)”.

This is the command to insert data to your database. So you need to remove the
( x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x). To see the difference download this zip file, and compare the two files. The old.sql will insert two data, while the new.sql will only insert one data.

Collapsable menu plugin for wordpress

admin — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:58:36 +0000

I have just created a collapsable menu plugin. This plugin is very useful if you have child category. For example if you have finance category, stock and option subcategory. You would only create article and sign it to the subcategory. To understand what the plugin do, see the image below:

‘Uncategorized’ menu has no sub category, so when you click it it will go to the ‘Uncategorized’ category page.
‘Category 1′ menu has ‘Category 2′ and ‘Cat baru’ sub category. If you click on ‘Category 1′. I will show the show sub category, and if you click it again it will hide the sub category.

Download the plugin here. The plugin is also hosted at here.

If you find our WordPress plugin useful, please consider donating…

Optimize your blog ads

admin — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:07:42 +0000

You must show related ads on your blog to make more sales. I have just tweak my ads at my money blog. I have joined two affiliate products: stock product and forex product. So the right way to display these ads is to display in its related page. SO what I did was displaying the stock product in the stock category page, and show the forex product in the forex category page.

What I did was do some coding in the category.php file of current theme:

– your ad code here

The code says that if current page is category 20, then display the ad. You can find out the ID of category by going to the “Manage Categories” page setting, where it will list all of your category for your blog. Hover your mouse above the “Category Name” you want to check, the status bar of your explorer will show the link to edit the category. The link will contain ‘cat_ID‘. This is your category ID.

Where to submit your wordpress template

admin — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:18:43 +0000

I have just finished my template, and am planning to submit it to websites that accept my wordpress template. After browsing for a while, I have found these websites:

WordPress tempate for SEO

admin — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:57:01 +0000

I have created a wordpress template optimized for SEO. I’ve used it on my other blog. It has 3 columns, sidebar on the left and right side.

Installation

1. Download and extract the zip file.
2. Upload the theme file to your server at “/wp-content/themes/” folder.
3. Activate the theme. (Admin Panel -> Presentation -> Themes)