As a new blogger, you may be wondering to yourself about just how much traffic you blog gets and why. It’s important for any blogger who wants to be commercially successful to take a look at their web stats and measure their performance once in a while. If you’ve never even heard of web stats or how to measure them, then you do have your work cut out for you but hopefully this post will help get you through the worst of it. Every time you as a blogger publish a post, it affects who comes to your blog and the reasons why. Certain post keywords and tags have the ability to draw in readers like a magnet while others don’t do anything to improve your blog’s performance at all.

So how do you know which keywords and phrases are drawing your readers in to your blog? That’s where analyzing your website statistics comes in. It may not be the most enjoyable task you will have as a blogger, but it will show you exactly what people are searching for online before they end up at your blog. Analyzing your web stats can show you:

• Who has been to your blog in the past?
• Which pages and posts drew them to your blog specifically?
• Which of your backlinks are sending you traffic?
• Which sites have linked to your blog?
• What sort of traffic are these sites sending to you?
• What kinds of keywords are being used to find your posts?
• What type of browser your visitors use to view your blog?

There are plenty of other statistics that you can learn about your site’s traffic if you have good tracking software installed. Here is a list of some of the best hosted statistics software online today:

Google Analytics – This is a free online stats system hosted by Google that has many options for customizing and viewing your blog’s stats. It even allows webmasters to set traffic goals and obtain keyword search information.

Stat Counter – A free statistics tracker that even allows you to view maps of where in the world your traffic is originating from.

Site Meter – They offer free basic stats tracking, as well as very sophisticated advanced tracking through paid subscription.

What the heck are dofollow links anyways? Basically, you can leave a link at any site you like on the Internet, but some webmasters choose to use “nofollow” link structures on their pages. This means that they would like to keep the search engines on their site only, not let the search engines pass to your blog through the link you have posted on their site. A website that uses “dofollow” link structure allows the links you post on their sites to be found by Google and the other search engines every time these search engines come around to their sites. So think of sites that have ton of constantly  updated content and you will start to see how easily you can find places to put links to your blog on their site. Here is a list of the best sites that offer dofollow backlinks to your blog:

Squidoo – Create a page on Squidoo about your blog topic or something you’re interested in, and link to your blog from within the page
Ezine Articles – Write an article for Ezine Articles in the topic of your choice and add a link to your blog in your signature box
Go Articles – Same as Ezine Articles
Propeller – Submit a blog post to propeller and it automatically links to your blog
Slashdot – Same as Propeller

Other things you can do to get backlinks to your blog that will be seen by lots of Internet searchers even if they aren’t dofollow, is to Tweet your posts on Twitter as that will go around the Twitter universe and bring you some traffic. You could also leave a comment on a blog you find matches the interest of your blog and that will send traffic to your blog as well. Agree to trade links with other bloggers you like but be wary of link farms or placing your link on sites that are irrelevant to your site’s topics.

Most if not all of these dofollow websites expect you to earn your backlink by adding valuable and original content to their sites. So simply pasting your blog’s url all over the place without contributing content will put you in the doghouse with most of these sites and could get you banned for being a spammer.

Most new bloggers fail to spend enough time in their organizational skills. It’s just not enough to have most of your best ideas on post-it notes all over your computer desk and no idea how you’re going to manage your blog. It’s also extremely important that you have a clear and focused plan for your blog overall, but also for the time you spend working on your blog as well. If you don’t have a set schedule for working on your blog or online business, then your failure rate increases. Even more detrimental to your new blog besides the lack of a clear schedule for working on it, is not having a plan laid out for the time you do spend on your business or blog.

Does this sound familiar? You’ve made yourself a nice two hour slot to sit down and work on your blog but you haven’t decided what it is you’re going to do with that time before you sit down to use it. So you open up your email and there are six new emails from friends and family wishing you well with your new venture and so you feel obligated to write them back. Then as you’re replying to those emails, the phone rings and it’s your mother wanting to see how you’re doing so you indulge her for a little while but then after fifteen or twenty minutes you cut the call short only to find you’ve gotten three new emails. One is from someone’s blog you subscribed to and the article they’ve sent you looks fantastic, the headline is a real attention-grabber so you can’t help but to read that article and head over to their blog to read the rest. While you’re there you see a nice free eBook you might like to read so you subscribe to their list and head back to your email to finish going through the two emails you haven’t read yet.

One email announces you’ve got a new follower on Twitter and so you have to head over to there to check them out and make that crucial decision whether or not to follow them back…it’s a real plot twist in the middle of the time you should have been working on your blog and growing your online business. Now an hour has passed and you’ve got 60 precious minutes left to get your arse in gear and get focused on the tasks at hand. But then you start to wonder just what tasks you want to accomplish with your blog today. Maybe you wanted to write a post but then you tell yourself that might take more than an hour and you don’t want to have to stop in the middle of your inspiration so you point form a few notes and move to the next thing on your non-existent list. Suddenly you’re thirsty so it’s time to go and grab a nice drink and flip through the mail you left on the kitchen counter. So now you’re back at your desk, you’ve quenched your thirst, sifted through your mail, and now there’s a new email waiting for you. It’s a joke email from a co-worker and you know clicking on it will distract and you only have 35 minutes left, you but you just can’t help yourself and once you’ve opened it and chuckled at its contents, you’ve lost your train of thought completely so you pack it in telling yourself the next time you have to work on your blog will be “real time” and nothing will distract you. But will it? There just might be 6 or 7 emails waiting for you in your inbox…

As a new blogger you’ve probably gotten Wordpress all loaded up to your server by now and even though you might not be too familiar with the Wordpress Admin dashboard you can’t wait to get your blog on and write your first post. While you could by all means get straight to blogging your heart out, one thing you should be aware of is that there are a few Wordpress settings that you will need to configure inside the Wordpress dashboard prior to publishing your first post. Let’s go through them together and once we’re through you can get down to the serious business of blogging about it all. So when you’re ready, log into your Wordpress Admin and let’s have a look around.

As of the writing of this post the current version of Wordpress is version 2.7 Coltrane and it is quite different from other versions of the software and requires some getting used to even for seasoned users, so here’s the nitty gritty:

Once you’ve logged into your account you will be in the default dashboard which is like your blog’s command center. You will be able to see lots of valuable information here like your blogs status in regards to number of posts, comments waiting to be moderated, who links to your blog, your recent drafts, latest news from the Wordpress development blog, and many other pieces of useful and interesting information about your blog.

While the dashboard is a helpful information center, the real heart and soul of managing your blog is found in the list of links in the left sidebar of your dashboard and they are labelled Posts, Media, Links, Pages, Comments, Appearance, Plugins, Users, Tools and Settings.
The first thing you should do to set up your blog is to change the password that was generated for you when you first installed Wordpress and that can be done by clicking on the Users link. You should see your profile and an option to edit the settings there. You will be able to change your email address, the color scheme of your dashboard, your user nickname and of course your password so make sure it’s something you can remember and note it down somewhere just in case. If you are setting up a multi-user blog this is also the area where you would add users and set their access levels.

The very next place you should go to is the Settings link and more specifically the General tab. You will need to add your blog title and tagline if you didn’t already do so when you installed Wordpress. Setting your time zone is also crucial to do as your blog posts and comments will always be off otherwise. It will also wreak havoc on your scheduled posts if your time zone is set incorrectly.

The next important area in the Settings link is the Reading tab. This is the area where you will choose if you want your blog to have a static front page such as a Home or Welcome page or if you’d rather have your blog posts running down your page instead. You will be able to set any page you’ve created as the front page of your blog so make sure to set it up before selecting this option. You also have the choice of how many posts to display on your blog’s front page and whether they display the full post or a small expert if you decide not to go with the static front page.

Next in the Settings link you should access the Media tab. This lets you adjust the default sizes for your thumbnails, medium and full-size post images.

The next option in the Settings link is the Privacy tab. You probably already said yes to have your blog visible to search engines when you set it up, but just in case you didn’t just double-check that your settings are set to being visible to everyone including search engines and such.

The last but probably most important setting you should set appropriately in your Wordpress blog is what sort of permalink structure you plan on using for your posts. This step may be last on the list here but it is crucial that you set this correctly so your post urls are defined the way you want them right away before you start posting…once you’ve set up your permalink structure you never have to do it again so take the time to decide your permalink structure now. If you’re having trouble deciding which permalink structure is for you I’ve written a post about choosing the structure that’s right for you as well as instructions to make changes to your permalinks here.

Now you’re all set, go on and write your first post…send me a link to it I’d love to read it.

Until next time new bloggers…have fun on the Internet and get those blogs up and running!

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In the Wordpress Admin there is a Settings tab and within that tab is the Permalinks tab. Setting up this area of your blog administration is crucial to having your blog post urls (or links) be the way you want them. The default setting for your posts is p=”whatever the post id number is” but it’s not such a nice url to have. Here’s an example: You’ve written a post on your dog care blog about how to choose the best breeds. With Wordpress’s default permalink strucutre your post would look like this:

“http://dogcare.com/p=123/” – What the heck does that even mean to anyone? Not much and if anything were to ever happen to your blog and you didn’t have a backup of your post database, would you be able to remember all of your post id numbers? Probably not, and then all those people finding your posts in the search engines would click and receive an error message because the link they followed would be invalid.

Next option is day and name and again this option is not so great either…why? Because time moves on and again if anything ever happened to your blog and you had no backup of your post database, you would have to re-post to your blog and the date from the re-post wouldn’t match the previous date. You would end up having to implement a redirection plugin to have your old post structure match up to your new post structure. Here’s an example of the original post link using this structure:

“http://dogcare.com/january/how-to-choose-the-best-breeds/” and if you had to repost it months later your new post would look like “http://dogcare.com/december/how-to-choose-the-best-breeds/” and you can see how the new link structure could never match up to the old link structure without a redirection plugin from the old link to the new one.

The same issues would arise with the month and name option so make sure to keep track of which posts were posted in which month.

Same thing goes for the numeric option but again you will have to keep track of which posts go with which number.

The best option by far is the custom permalink option and one of the best custom permalink structures to use is to have your post url structured by category and post name. The value you would need to enter for this field looks like:

%category%/%postname%

This will have your posts looking like this example: “http://dogcare.com/breeds/how-to-choose-the-best-breeds/”and if anything ever happens to your post database it would be easy to remember your categories and post names and they wouldn’t be dependent on variables that change like the date or post id numbers.

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Congratulations on getting your Wordpress blog installed! Now you can start blogging…what’s that? You despise the default Kubrick theme that comes with all Wordpress installations? I for one find that very hard to believe, I mean look at that theme…it’s simple, it’s rounded at the corners….it’s a sea of blue…

Okay, okay so there’s probably only 2% of the population that actually likes the Kubrick default Wordpress theme…and the only other theme that comes with Wordpress by default is the Classic theme and it’s not so hot either. So what’s a blogger to do? You could find some pre-made Wordpress themes and install them to your blog as is, you could modify a pre-made Wordpress theme with your own graphics and artistic style, and then install it to your blog, or you could get wild and create your own theme…okay, okay we’ll save the wildness for another post…

So today’s post is about where to find Wordpress themes. Back in the old days of Wordpress there were some pretty hokey-looking themes available for bloggers and they were pretty basic in their functionality. Nowadays Wordpress themes or templates, are nothing short of a marvel of superb design with breath-taking appeal. This new breed of Wordpress themes is not only stylish and good-looking, but they have an amazing level of functionality that will allow you to do things with your blog that you may not have known was even possible to do before.

If you’re just starting out with Wordpress and you’re looking for some excellent Wordpress template resources then here is a list of where you can get some free or not-so-free themes from:

WP Start – This site offers literally TONS of free Wordpress themes and the best part is that most of them are free premium themes. They also offer a great selection of priced themes but the costs are very reasonable.

Brian Gardner offers the Revolution based series of high quality, professionally designed WordPress themes with included support packages. His premium Wordpress themes can take your blog to a higher level or give your website that professional edge with a not so blog-like look. Click here to visit Brian Gardner Media LLC website

Wordpress not only gives you the most awesome blogging software on the planet, but they also provide a huge assortment of themes and templates for your blog as well. The Wordpress themes repository has the largest selection of themes anywhere on the Internet and they’re all free so if your on a budget, you won’t break the bank.

freewpthemes has around 150 free WP templates to choose from so be sure to have a browse over there.

Also have a look at The Wordpress Themes Archive where you can download a whole shwack of themes in one go or pick and choose between the more than 2000 themes freely available.

Happy Wordpress theme hunting bloggers!

Hopefully now that you’ve made the decision to start your own self hosted blog you’ve registered a domain name, bought your blog’s hosting, and changed your name servers so that your domain name points to your hosting account. If all of the above went smoothly then your site should be visible when you type it in the address bar even if it is just a hosting company placeholder page. Now it’s time to get your blogging software into your web space so that you can get to the serious business of blogging everything and anything that is on your mind.

In this post I will show you how to use Fantastico scripts to install your blogging platform and in a separate post I will also show you how to manually install your blogging platform without using scripts as it’s worth knowing how to do it that way too.

The benefits of using Fantastico scripts to install your blog are that it’s fast and simple enough to have your blog online and ready for you in less than five minutes. So if you’re ready, let’s get started!

Step 1 – Consult the Welcome Email Your Hosting Company Sent You

When you signed up for your blog hosting account you would have received a welcome email that contained details about your cPanel and how to access it. It will have a URL in it that looks something like:

This area of your hosting account is username and password protected so make sure you’ve located that information in your welcome email and enter it when you access your cPanel.

Step 2 – Accessing the Fantastico scripts

Once you’ve gotten to the cPanel interface you will see a lot of information and it can be a bit confusing and overwhelming. The information on the left side of the screen is a running log of your account activity like how much web space and bandwidth you’ve used. The right side of the screen is what we’re interested in and it is separated into rows and by category with names like Preferences, Mail, Files, Logs, Security, Domains, Databases, Software, and Advanced. While each section has its use which we will cover at a later time, for the purposes of this post we want to set up your blogging platform so scroll down to the section marked “Software” and you will see a blue happy face and that is your Fantastico scripts section so go ahead and click on it.

Step 3 – Choose Your Blogging Platform in Fantastico Scripts

Congratulations! You’re ready to pick your blogging platform from one of the many scripts available to you by your blog host.  There will be many options to choose from such as content management platforms and ecommerce, but this tutorial covers setting up Wordpress only. Once you’ve installed Wordpress you will have learned how to use the scripts in this section and you can experiment with the other choices available if you like. Locate Wordpress from the list of scripts in the section marked “Blogs” and click on it.

Step 4 – Setting Up Wordpress In Fantastico Scripts

Once you’ve clicked on Wordpress you will see a short description, the support forum and a link marked New Installation so click on it. The next screen is the first of three steps in your Wordpress installation.

You will now be able to view your Wordpress blog by typing in your domain name in the address bar and to log into your Wordpress administration dashboard you must add wp-admin to your domain name like this:

That’s it…you’re done! Now you can start blogging it up! Good luck!

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