With fierce competition and more and more businesses now publishing information on the web, it has never been more important to optimise the quality and content of your online posts. In order to really reap the benefits of blogging, if you want to project your brand and generate more traffic to your site, there are some key areas to look at. These include the length, content and the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) of the words in your blog. We have created a checklist of the most important steps to improve your online content below.

Tips and Tricks For Improving Your Blog

1. Create Useful Content – The most successful blogs are those that find a niche in the market and explore it. Some questions to ask yourself include: Does my web page serve a need for specific information? Does it entertain, clarify, inform or educate? Writing for the sake of writing won’t necessarily retain an audience.
2. Make it Reader-Focused – It is essential for any small business to write for the end user, rather than focusing on your own business interests. Research your audience through social networking sites and forums. Browse similar business pages to yours and find out what customers want to hear about and comment on. How can you best address and answer these questions over other sites?
3. Keep Blogs Up-To-Date – News is constantly updated on the web. Is your blog doing the same? An online sport retailer might keep customers informed of the latest sportswear they stock through blogs, for example. In order to gain a strong following and to address key issues, you should ensure your writing keeps up to date with your customers, their needs and with what’s happening now.
4. Include Links to Other Sources – Linking to other writers, media and websites (like your Facebook company profile) in your post gives your customers some context and can strengthen trust and reputation. A small garage, for instance, might benefit from customer reviews and recommendations on their blog.
5. Keep your Message Simple – Your post should present its message in an easy-to-read manner. Cutting out descriptive words and making sure you only have one main message keeps your articles concise. Try to tell your story with a beginning, middle and end. An average reader’s attention span is 96 seconds per blog, so you want to catch your customers’ attention immediately. Shorter, regular posts generate stronger readership over longer and irregular blogs.
6. Presentation – Presenting information in bite-sized chunks is another way to keep your content engaging: try using lists, vary the formatting and use headers and pictures to liven up your blog. A florist’s small business blog, for example, may scatter images of plants among the text in the post to add interest.
7. Use Titles Carefully – Imagine telling a neighbour what your post is about in the space of five seconds. Use this summary to create a short and snappy title to clearly outline your post for your customers. Those finding your blog through Twitter and search engines want to get the gist of an entire article in the title.
8. Catchy Content – Studies show people remember just 60% of what they have read online. Improving your SEO in blogs addresses this reality. Tagging posts with buzzwords and keywords will help get content featured in search engine results – which helps customers reach your blog.

Heather Gorringe, founder of online horticultural business Wiggly Wigglers (lywwww.wigglywigglers.co.ukigglers.co.uk), has run a blog since September 2005 to promote her company and had this to say about blogging: “Google and other search engines really do like websites that are updated with new content regularly and that means that we are more likely to appear higher in the search rankings when people are looking for things we supply. Interesting and informative content on our blog helps us to build our reputation as a brand, a thought leader, and somebody worth listening to.”

Successful blogs tackle important issues and start up a conversation between the business and the end user. With the sheer amount of posts online, and competition for readers increasing, think carefully about how you present your content.

To integrate your blog into your website and for more apps to help bring your content to life, take a look at Names.co.uk’s 1-Click Installs, which include the World’s number one blogging tool WordPress at Namesc0’s wordpress hosting page

1. Login to WordPress
2. In the left column, expand the “Tools” section
3. Click “Export”
4. Click the “Download Export File” button and save the xml file to your computer.
5. Install WordPress on your new hosting account.
6. Login and Click “Tools”
7. Click “Import”
8. From the list, choose the last option: WordPress.
9. Click “Choose file” to select the import file, and find it on your computer.
10. Finally, click “Upload file and import”.

With that you will have successfully moved your WordPress blog. If you had a custom theme, you will also need to copy that separately. Otherwise, you are all finished.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

The hackers are uploading malware to the sites, which visitors to the sites have been prompted to download. Network Solutions experienced a similar problem several weeks ago.

It is always important to keep CMS’s and other scripts up-to-date. This situation isn’t so much Go Daddy’s fault as the customers’ for failing to update their installations. However, Go Daddy’s large size also makes it an attractive target for hackers.

Photo | simonok

Are extensions and plugins a security risk? How can you make sure they do not hurt other users or the server? Like with any security issues, there are general precautions you can take.

1. Make sure the user has no additional privileges outside of his or her chroot environment.
2. Remind users to check the permissions on scripts so that attackers cannot use them to piggyback onto another system.
3. Do not allow root login under any circumstances.
4. Keep an eye on logs to see if any scripts are behaving unusually.
5. Disable scripts with known problems, and direct users to viable alternatives.

Because the attack exploits user error rather than an actual bug in the WordPress code, it is important to make sure that yours or your customers’ WordPress-based sites are secure. The first thing you can do is to chmod wp-config.php to 640, which means any outside site visitors will be completely denied.

chmod 650 wp-config.php

The second is to deny access using your .htaccess file, since no one who accesses the webserver will actually need access to the file under any circumstances.

# to protect wp-config.php

order allow,deny
deny from all


That is essentially all it takes and is actually more than is probably necessary to keep everything secure.
Warning: Some web hosting providers provide automated scripts to install WordPress for you. Do not assume that those installations are automatically secure.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

WordPress – The company that offers free service also offers their blogging software as free and open source PHP code. It is easy to install and maintain.

Livejournal – The old kid on the block, Livejournal was a perl-based blogging software with a big following.

Moveable Type – Another perl-based blogging app that is very popular.

Drupal – This blogging software/CMS is uniquely known for its easy scalability. Create a blog for one or hundreds.

Serendipity – I have personally never used this one and know little about it, but it seems to offer a good host of features.

There are many others and no shortage of free and paid hosted solutions. In a future post, we will compare some of their features.

Photo Source: Flickr

The cause of the outage is still being investigated, but right now it seems as though one router caused all the ruckus. Apparently someone at one of the four data centers where WordPress rents space made a configuration change to a core router. This not only blocked off access to the blogs at that particular facility, but the other three data centers as well.

Photo | ozdv8

There are a few things you should consider when using such services:

1. Does the provider’s service provide updates for the scripts?
2. Are they standard installs that can be modified the same way a manual install would?
3. Is the software open and common so that if the user decides to leave that host, they can take their data and design elsewhere?
4. What type of the support does the host offer for these third-party packages?

Depending on the answers to these and other questions, you may decide to use your web host’s services or install the applications you need on your own.

Answer: There are hundreds of content management systems and tens of really good ones, but two very popular ones: Joomla and WordPress, are often highlighted. The truth of the matter is that there are benefits and drawbacks of both, and the one that will work best for you mostly depends on your needs and preferences.

Joomla is a large multi-functional CMS that is highly extensible and very customizable. Your website could be anything from a storefront with an ecommerce shopping cart to photography portfolio featuring a gallery of your work. The frontend, templates, and arrangement of modules are all subject to your imagination. It can also function as a blog or news magazine, but in that category it is a sloppy second to WordPress.

WordPress was primarily created as a blogging application. Since then, however, it has grown into a full-featured news creation and management tool. With it you can have a single user blog or a multi-user site complete with user bios, advertisements, etc., all extended through the plugin interface. Installation, setup, and extending of WordPress has become very easy, arguably easier than Joomla, and WordPress suits those who do not need all of the extra bells and whistles of Joomla.

The name will be used for a free URL redirection service for bloggers hosting on the WordPress site, similar to Bit.ly on Twitter. WordPress not only makes a great CMS, but also provides free subdomain hosting for blogs.

WordPress was able to obtain the name through a special agreement with the .ME registry. Most domain operators do not allow the sale of names under three letters.

WP.me seems to have been given as a gift, which was probably a good PR move for .ME. WordPress’s use of the domain will likely give the extension some much-needed attention.

Source | The Domains