Archive for the ‘Tips for Noobs’ Category
Getting your posts indexed.
Be sure that your posts are long enough.
Ernest Hemingway (when he still had a head) bet a guy he met in a bar that he could write a compelling story with just six words. The bar patron took him up on it. Ernest won the bet. Here is the story:
“Baby shoes for sale. Never worn.”
Does size matter?
How long should a blog post be? Is bigger really better? Yes. No. Do you think I frequently give self-contradictory advice?
Yes. No. Maybe.
Photo tag shortcuts.
“The problem with your business is that everyone tells you something different.”
- Yoda (or someone like him.)
Google can’t tell what a photo is about unless you tell it what it is about. On your WordPress 2.5, there are fields like “title” (for the PHOTO, not the page) and “caption” (alt tag).
Any SPAM on your site?
Most of us think of “spam” as all of those unwanted emails from casinos, porn, or drug sellers that fill up our mailbox. Actually, “spam” is a catch-all phrase that includes any kind of junk on the internet, including garbage webpage content and “black hat seo” schemes. Webmasters do plenty of it. Why?
Why do I keep seeing my old site on my other computer?
Q. I just built a new site on a test link at Bluehost.com. I re-directed the name server for my url from my old site to my new site. It looks great on my computer at home. When I go to my office I just keep getting redirected to the old site.
About your home page..
You don’t have to be a genius to know that your home page is your most important page. In spite of all of the wonderful content you include in your interior pages, most often your home page will be the page to rank in the search engines for keywords that are important to you.
If you are using a static page for your home page, here are a few good ideas to follow:
- Keep the design simple. Avoid having flashy animation or a large number of images.
Submit your site to these places….
Directory submission is one way to get backlinks to your site, although frequently the links are of dubious quality. Google favors sites that have quality backlinks. The quality and amount of link juice you get from these directories is hit-and-miss. Here are some quality sites that have excellent page rank:

Canonical issues or “What the heck is the name of this site?”
I used to think that only the Vatican had “canonical” issues. I guess that’s because I am Catholic, and never new of any other institution that would spell “canon” with only one “n.”