Give it to me hard-a noob ventures into blogging

  • Black Soldier Fly Blog

    I would appreciate any level of criticism you care to give. I’m extremely new to blogging, so I assume that I can improve several aspects of my site. In the past I’ve used some very basic code for posting images/links on forums, but my mind turns to pudding when I look at a wall of code used to create a website.

    The purpose of the site is 90% hobby blog and 10% commerce. I’m not trying to earn a living selling the product, it’s just that I’m already promoting it so why not offer it? The manufacturer noticed that a forum thread of mine was sending them a lot of traffic so they contacted me and suggested I become a dealer.

    I’m waiting for instructions from the manufacturer about how to set up the transfer of money and shipping info. I assume I’ll just set up a simple PayPal check out and then transfer the funds and info on to them. It’s only 2 or 3 products so it shouldn’t be too complex.

    Thanks in advance for your comments.

Viewing 14 replies - 46 through 59 (of 59 total)
  • Thread Starter bsflarva

    (@bsflarva)

    Here’s what it says when I click the Sitemap link for my site:

    Submit a Sitemap to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover.

    I wonder if it makes sense to follow Google Webmaster’s procedure for submitting a sitemap.

    I forgot to mention that I *did* actually submit a sitemap, which probably helped a lot. Now that I’ve looked at it again, it’s just a matter of adding the name of the file: sitemap.xml

    All the hard work is done by the plugin.

    Thread Starter bsflarva

    (@bsflarva)

    Done and done!

    I hope this does it! Thanks again mosey. ??

    On another note, do you have any stats programs running, like the WordPress one? I find it very helpful to see which keywords people are using to reach my sites.

    Thread Starter bsflarva

    (@bsflarva)

    I’m using Google Analytics for this site and my earlier Blogger site. I haven’t taken the time yet to study the keywords very much. Do you emphasize use of the popular keywords in posts?

    I’ve added the sitemap plugin and submitted my site to Google but I’m still not indexed. From what I understand this could take months. I just registered my blog with Technorati hoping that will help people find it.

    I’m no SEO expert, but what I tend to do is pick out words from my posts (after I’ve finished writing them) that I think might be keywords for visitors. For instance, my main site is a fansite for a band. This means that if I do mention the names of the band members or their songs, I put them down as keywords.

    Has Google Webmaster Tools already mentioned which pages are linked?

    On the Overview page, I get to see a link called ‘Index Stats’ which I can click to see if my site is linked on Google. The Url for this section is essentially:

    https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/indexstats?siteUrl=http%3A%2F%2FYOURURL.com%2F&hl=en

    (I’ve edited out my URL and changed it to YOURURL.com)

    p/s: I also use actual words for my url links, rather than p?=209. And another trick (which some say help for SEO… I have no idea) is to change your template header WP title code to something like this:

    <title><?php wp_title('&raquo;',TRUE,'right'); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

    This effectively puts your post titles in front of your blog name, so when your posts shows up on search engine searches, the post title comes first, then the site name.

    p/s2: I’ve got Google Analytics as well, but unfortunately I’ve never got round to learning how to use it to its full potential, and I *know* it’s very powerful. I’m currently mainly relying on the WordPress-provided stats plugin at present, since it just lists the no of hits, the keywords used by visitors via search engines (probably only google? no idea…) and the most popular pages and out-going links, which is pretty much what I would be interested in, as I have no plans on ‘monetising’ the site.

    Very interesting, unique site. I hope it does well.

    Thread Starter bsflarva

    (@bsflarva)

    Thanks gbali!

    Thanks mosey, I’m going to work on some of those suggestions. I’ve been meaning to change my links to words, and I like the idea of the post title before the blog name.

    I get the impression that getting indexed with google won’t happen until I get linked to on substantial (in google’s eyes) websites. A decent number of people are still finding me through my various forum posts and YouTube videos.

    Thread Starter bsflarva

    (@bsflarva)

    Hey guys, I have a quick question about the upgrade to wp 2.6. I’m still at the stage where a 15 minute task might take me hours to figure out because I’m still learning the language.

    How important is it for me to upgrade? How soon? I currently use 2.5 and I have a unique domain instead of a .wordpress.com blog. So far I’m happy with the way 2.5 is functioning.

    My site

    To be quite frank, I don’t think it’s a good idea to upgrade to 2.6 at the moment, especially as some people are reporting problems (as with all upgrades) with permalinks etc. I’d personally wait till 2.6.1 maybe?

    Thread Starter bsflarva

    (@bsflarva)

    Thanks again mosey. Being that I’m such a noob I think your advice is good. I’ll let the more knowledgeable folks work the bugs out.

    @bsflarva: Sorry I keep replying :p

    Thread Starter bsflarva

    (@bsflarva)

    Au contraire!

    Thread Starter bsflarva

    (@bsflarva)

    Well I’ve become very frustrated that my site isn’t showing up with Google. I realize my blog is relatively new, but there are few websites with the keywords and content pertinent to my subject matter.

    Google accepted my sitemap over a month ago and my site is indexed with them. My site has been validating since I made it. I think I have a decent amount of content since there is so little information available on the subject elsewhere. Finally today I switched to pretty permalinks and I hope that will help. I’m going to try removing the date from the url and see if that causes any issues.

    Thank goodness for my clunky ol’ blogspot blog, at least it’s showing up on searches.

Viewing 14 replies - 46 through 59 (of 59 total)
  • The topic ‘Give it to me hard-a noob ventures into blogging’ is closed to new replies.