WordPress for Newbies #3: SEO
The third in the series of quick articles sharing the lessons learned by a newbie with others like him so that they might avoid the same mistakes.
Lesson #3 : Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is your friend. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it’s an acronym for “Search Engine Optimization” which is just a fancy way of saying “give search engines what they want to get good placement of your site in their listings”.
There are literally thousands of tutorials, articles, and other links out there to teach you how to do SEO, but most newbies reading this article may be prone to “blow it off” as unimportant or “too much trouble to do”. I’ve even got a friend who runs a fairly successful Tech web site who still doesn’t “get it”, so you might ask yourself, why should I bother?
The answer to that question is the very key to why you blog in the first place. Whether you want to monitize your blog, or whether you just want to become the next famous blogger out there, if you want your blog to be anything, you MUST practice successful SEO.
For the purposes of this little mental eruption, I’ll stick to Google, since they seem to rule the universe at the moment.
There are three essential things that Google looks for to get started, four really, but we’ll get to that in a sec. Each of the first three is “META information” which describes your page to every visitor, bot, and browser out there.
- The META name/title
This is the short title that shows up as the link text on search engines. This is “what you click on” when you search for something - The META description
The META description is a short sentence, normally around 160 characters or less to describe the site to a search engine and its users. - The META keywords (aka tags)
META keywords are essential little “tags” which help search engines know how to better index your site, and get a better idea what to show their users when they search for something. For example, if you use the keyword “WordPress” in an article (as I have below), it might show up any time someone searches for “wordpress” at Google. There’s a lot more to it than that, but I’m just speaking simple example here.
Luckily, things don’t have to be very complicated and you don’t have to learn HTML or even edit CSS files. WordPress already has several plug-ins to help you out with your SEO needs.
To find a list of what’s available, log into your WP Admin, then go to the Plugins >> Add New screen and search for “SEO”. You can pick one based on the ratings, or just try a few to find one that you like
Some themes, such as Thesis even try to add the appropriate stuff automatically for you, but the fact is that the average free or low-cost theme is built to look pretty rather than provide the best functionality.
Just be sure that when you create a post, you take the five extra minutes that it’d take to fill out the SEO details and your site will become much more popular. After all, what good is a great site if no one can find it?
Oh yeah, almost forgot about mystery item #4. The fourth thing, highly recommended is that you add a plugin to handle the creation, update, and submission of a sitemap.xml file. That little file, submitted to google, helps tremendously in letting google (and others) know how to index your site, what sections exist, and how to better get visitors headed in your direction.
When you’re searching for an SEO plugin above, you might also search for “sitemap” and install that as well.
Wayne Hunt
segwayne.com
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- Ten Tips for Top Search Engine Ranking (ronmedlin.com)
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- Ten Top SEO Tips (ronmedlin.com)
- SEO and How You Can Integrate It To Be a Trusted Expert (techburgh.com)
- Tips To Enhance WordPress Search Engine Optimization (ronmedlin.com)
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WordPress for Newbies #2: Focus
Lesson 2: Stay on Target
If you’re like me and you tend to ramble, before you click submit on a new masterpiece of literary expulsion, ask yourself three important questions;
“Why exactly am I posting this?”
All too often, as a rambling writer, I find myself starting a post with the intent to write a movie review, then quickly arcing off into things like popcorn prices, ticket prices, and other things that aren’t really related to the movie review itself. Why is this important? Well.. Hmmm. Simply stated, while everyone loves a car wreck, if you can’t even follow your own train of thought, how do you expect others to follow along with you?
“Who am I talking to?”
Second only to “Why am I posting this?” is a great question which deals with something a great number of blog writers tend to forget. Their target audience. Who exactly are you writing the blog post for? Yourself? Economics academics? Fans of the TV series “Dexter”? It’s only by knowing who you want to reach that you’ll discover the style of writing which allows you to best reach — and better yet keep — your readers.
After all, fans of Science Fiction writer Isaac Asimov and fans of comedian Lewis Black may both be intelligent crowds, but they seldom have much in common.
“Is this something that I would want to read?”
The most important question of this lesson is perhaps the most simple. Unfortunately, it’s often the most overlooked. When you get done writing whatever masterpiece that happens to be leaking from your grey matter, take a moment to glance over it and ask yourself… Is what you’ve written something YOU would actually want to read? If not, you’ve got work to do before posting. If you can’t even figure out what you are talking about, no one else can either.
As a blog writer, it’s relatively easy to get someone to randomly click on your article. The first 34 seconds of that reader’s experience will determine whether or not you’ve created a fan of your writing.
Here’s what works for me
- When putting the proverbial pen to paper with your thoughts, try to keep the subject in mind.
- The “draft” feature is your friend.
- Write whatever you’ve got in your heart to say, THEN go get some coffee, drag a cigarette, or whatever you need to do to chill out.
- Come back to the screen and read your article from scratch, pretending to be your potential reader.
- Ask yourself whether this is something someone might want to read, or whether you’re just venting your own rambling thoughts
- Take out, change, or shorten anything that doesn’t need to be there until you’re absolutely sure that what you’re saying is being said in the absolute best way possible to keep people interested.
There are people out there who may disagree with my theories, but all great authors go through drafts. That’s why God (and the publishing industry) invented Editors.
Wayne Hunt
segwayne.com
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WordPress for Newbies #1: Consistency
Technically speaking, I’ve run this blog since 2003 in one shape or another but it’s only recently that I’ve become serious about making something out of it. I’m by no means an expert, but I wanted to share with you what few great tips and tricks I’ve discovered so far along the way.
Lesson 1 – Post early, post often, post consistently.
Nothing kills a blog faster than a visitor finding “last updated April 2003” for the last article you wrote on your site.
When you create a blog, you’re either serious about it, or you’re not. Either way, if you want your blog to be more than your own private psychobabble outlet, you need to realize that you’re making a commitment to post regularly.
I fell into this trap. Most people do. Work, real life, and just general bleep happens to get in the way of your blogging success, but if you stay focused, keep posting, and appeal to your readers, good things will happen.
Even if you consciously make the effort to post one thing that interests you per day, in a little over 3 months, you could have 100 different articles on your favorite subject. They could be sharing your perspective on a particular set of subjects, teaching others how to do certain tasks, or literally anything else you might think of.
If you take nothing else away from this lesson, please understand that “Content Is King”. Without content, there’s nothing to read. No readers, no blog. Get it?
Wayne Hunt
segwayne.com
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I’m a full-time motorcyclist.
For the first time in 26 years, I find myself not owning a four-wheeled vehicle.
Because of the economy and other uncertainties, I’ve been evaluating things recently and just came to the conclusion that I couldn’t really justify $630 per month to drive my truck 2 or 3 times a week back and forth to work (6 miles each way) and around town, so I sold it outright to the guys over at Carmax who gave me a good deal on selling it.
$421 / month payment
$110 / month insurance (because of the HEMI)
$100 / month in gas and incidentals
All this to drive what amounts to less than 200 miles per month, or $3.15 per mile.
What I don’t know is how well I’ll be able to adapt to being a full time rider. No matter how much you enjoy something, nothing takes the love out of it like having to do it all the time.
To that end, I’m looking for a cheap beater to drive around in, fetching groceries and such. Wish I had my friend Rob’s luck at finding $500 pickups that last for a few years, but then again, this all started yesterday and I’m just being impatient really. As much as I love my motorcycle, I’m finding that I don’t like being without a car to fall back on one single bit.
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Wayne's Rules of Riding 101
With the weather great outside this week, I’ve passed a few riders on the road who were obviously either newbies, or people who’ve returned to riding after several years to save gas. Thinking about Motorcycle safety, I am the first to say to anyone that motorcycling isn’t for everyone, so I thought I’d offer my “wish-they-were-patented” “Wules of Widing 101″ to no one in particular.
First things first, riding requires both respect, fear, confidence, and a little bit of talent and sheer blind luck.
Rule #1, Unless you have been blessed by St. Christopher himself, everyone goes down at some point.
Before you ever get on a bike, you need to fully understand and accept that. Because of many factors, the worst of which are other drivers, motorcycling is by far a more dangerous mode of travel than a car, or even a convertible. Riding is FAR more liberating and fun, but never forget the simple fact that you COULD die. You could also die in the shower, or fetching the mail, or wolfing a cheeseburger.
Accept rule #1, and you can move towards riding. If you can’t, forget about riding. Please.
In short: Motorcycling is not about taking risks, it’s about constantly weighing, and accepting the associated risks while working to minimize them at every single moment.
Rule #2, you are NEVER a master of a motorcycle
Evil Knievel taught us that 35% of the time he jumped. If he can’t be perfect, who can?
Rule #3, a little bit of fear is a good thing. Be respectful of what you’re doing.
When you’re climbing on a motorcycle, whether a 75cc moped, a GSXR1100, or an 1800cc GoldWing touring motorcycle, you are putting your faith in yourself that you have the ability — if not the training — to handle everything the road can throw at you.
That sometimes includes “flying” turkeys trying to get across the road quickly.
Motorcycles are not the place for you if your mind is on where you want to go rather than watching where you are (and everyone else is) going.
Too much fear on the other hand doubles your risks at any given moment. Everyone has scary moments on bikes. If you have a quick scare, pull over, figure out what happened, ask yourself if you could have done anything better, calm down and breathe, then start again.
Rule #4, confidence.
Bikes are psychic to their riders. If you look / think left, you’ll go left. If you look / think right, you’ll go right. If you think you’re going to crash, guess what? YOU will find some way to do it.
While you need to pay attention to what you’re doing, it’s not you that you need to worry about, it’s all the other idiots around you who are literally driving blind and deaf to motorcycles.
I always tell people it’s not my job to ride the bike, it’s my job to make sure all the other idiots out there see me.
Rule #5, if you’re in a hurry, don’t ride.
When you leave the house 15 minutes late for work, you’re never going to make up that 15 minutes in the 15 miles to work.
“Hurry” kills.
Either accept that you’re late, then take your time getting to work (even if that makes you 30 minutes late) or take another vehicle.
Anyway, these are my top 5 rules. I’d love to hear yours.
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Spontaneous trip to Shiloh
About three weeks ago, I attended one of those management luncheons — you know the type — where one of the speakers addressing the crowd talked about the Battle of Shiloh and more importantly, how the leadership there can be directly correlated to the present and business management principles. I’m not very much into the whole pro networking really, but I found this speech fascinating.
To that end, last Sunday afternoon I ended up at lunch with a friend, who asked “what are you going to do with the rest of your day?”. After a bit of thought, I said “50/50 shot. If the camera is on the Goldwing, I’m going to ride to Shiloh. If not, I’ll go home and go back to sleep.”
2.5 hours later (4pm), I pulled in to the Shiloh National Battleground Park lot, camera loaded and ready to stretch my legs.
Now at 4pm, with another 2.5 hour ride ahead of me, I’m battling the clock for daylight. I’m also — for some incomprehensible reason — battling the park’s trinket shop which doesn’t fathom the need to carry AA batteries for when tourist’s cameras run dry.
As such, I was only able to spend time walking the National Cemetary at Shiloh (which is impressive) and taking about 50 or so pics before the camera died. I didn’t get to tour the battleground itself, but plan to go back with multiple sets of batteries and a full day to walk around.
I did however get to tour the museum on the grounds with all the civil war artifacts. While that’s always neat stuff to see, I walked away thinking only two things:
1) Every piece of clothing I saw leads me to believe that I — at 6’4″ and 320# would have been an absolute giant to these people.
2) Based on the photos on the wall, Kevin Kline did a FANTASTIC job impersonating Grant in that Wild Wild West “reimagining”. Looks EXACTLY like Grant in the movie…
So. Another 2.5 hours later, and I’m at the house, ready, or I should say “ok with” the concept of Monday. Weird thing is, and as a rider, I don’t object, the Garmin GPS took me in 100% completely different directions coming and going, meaning I saw 2x as much on the ride as I would have normally.
All this has to do me, because it’s been raining ever since, and will probably continue to do so until this upcoming Friday (the 8th)
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Getting older, getting colder…
Boy, I don’t know what it is about growing old that sucks, but getting cold natured has to be one of them…
Three years ago, you would have found me playing ball outside with the family in January during 32 degree weather in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, feeling perfectly comfortable.
This year though, it’s 45 degrees outside and I find myself in a jacket, sweater and thermals. Seems no matter how high the thermostat is set, I’m always cold in the house, and it sucks.
Last year when I got my wing, I rode a documentable 300 days of the year (1/10/08 to 1/10/09), stopping only for driving rain and below freezing temps — for fear of black ice.
This year in the first two and a half months, I’ve been able to pull the bike out of the garage about 6 times and get to where I want to go comfortably albeit my hands were frozen by the time I got there.
I know. I know. Just “bundle up” or “just go spend $2000 on electric clothes” or “man up” or whatever, but it’s not that simple. Spending great deals of money right now so that I can ride isn’t quite as easy in this economy as it was. Well, yeah, I guess I could just put it all on a credit card and be miserable, but isn’t that what got us here in the first place?
For the record before the next sentence, “PMS” in the motorcycling community stands for “Prevented from Motorcycling Syndrome”.
This is where age meets PMS. I’m there. Impatiently waiting for the Global Weirding to stop and the weather to get warmer.
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A potential Eureka moment.
Greetings fellow earthlings,
I know I haven’t been around much, what with travel, the holidays, and now a sinus infection that’s got me scrambled, but I have an idea.
In the last month or two, I’ve found myself addicted to Facebook (gee, thanks sis 
), meaning I forget about everything else and end up over there dribbling away and playing the terribly addictive “games”.
I wouldn’t call them games so much as distractions really, because for the most part they’re no-brainers.
THEN, the programmer in me kicks in and I begin to consider the fact that — to the best of my wanderings — no one has created an Open source version of Facebook/MySpace/etc in CMS fashion.
I’m not talking about cloning Facebook or the others. That would be illegal of course, but building a Content Management System (CMS) engine that has the same appeal and “I’m an individual part of a community” drive as those other more famous sites, then make it available for anyone to run a site on, ala PHPNuke, Xoops, and the other similar CMS engines.
Toss in personal blogging for the members like we do here, and I really think the potential is there to change the world, or at least the face of the Web.
To that end, I believe I may not be posting too much in the near future until I can jot down my ideas and move forward in a way that makes sense for me. Heck, if anyone’s smart enough (or more enthusiastic enough) to beat me to the punch, I’m ALL for it, as it’s less for me to do..
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Motorcycling in a sleet storm….
With all the recent travel going on (and more to come) and the weather pitching in to help, I haven’t had a chance to ride much in the last month or so.
Yesterday, checking the weather channel and my iPhone apps about 7:30 am, all seemed to agree that it was 36 degrees, and the rain was clearing off by the 48 degree afternoon. To that end, and having ridden in colder climates (work is only 6 miles), I bundled up in my US Military thermals and headed off to work…
Little did I know how much the Weather Channel sucks…
Got to work, all is toasty, even at 36 degrees. Parked the bike, and resumed my day. Three hours later, lunch time, I head out for a bite, only to realize that North Alabama was in the midst of what we would consider a major sleet storm and that the predicted 48 degrees was NEVER going to happen.
To that end, I don my gear and head — carefully — back to the house. Windshield down, visor up, being pelted in the face with sleet every inch of the way. Hands frozen, legs soaking wet, and I’m sure there’s a cold or flu bug in there somewhere.
That being said, the resulting adrenaline rush from that 6 mile ride was actually really, really cool. Not something I’d want to reproduce every day, but exciting. This morning of course, as temps had dipped overnight, I drove the truck into work, sliding on ice at pretty much every intersection. Not nearly as much fun as riding.
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Taking on the Dragon
Sorry for the delay in posting/podcasting guys. Belated tax season, and work’s been picking up, but I wanted to take a moment to share the last bit of fun I had (Labor Day). For about the second time in 10 years, I actually found myself with a 3-day weekend. All weekend I sat around going “I should go ride the Dragon”.
That Sunday, I met up with a friend for lunch and whined at him about my indecision. His response was simply “you should have gone…”. So…. with implicit permission in hand, I found myself leaving Huntsville at 2pm on a Sunday afternoon and riding all the way to Robbinsville, NC to visit the trails up there. Got there at 7:30pm, got the last room at the local Microtel, and rested.
The next day (Monday), got up and rode the “Tail of the Dragon” which, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, is an 11 mile stretch of US 129 which goes between Tennessee and North Carolina. What’s so frickin special about that? Well… hmmm.. in that 11 miles, there are 318 curves. Some of them so tight that you feel as though you could literally kiss your own butt going around them.
In short, motorcyclist paradise.
Wayne gets shot by killboy on his way through the Dragon
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