Marketing with WordPress and More

I was wasting a lot of time with trial & error before I read WordPress for Internet Marketers by Leanne King – a treasure trove of excellent tools and techniques that can help you transform your blog into something attractive and profitable.  It’s also one of the best resources I’ve found for information on reliable plugins!

Note: Many of the plugins below are free and recommended by Leanne King

1. Platinum SEO Pack is often cited as being better than the very popular All in One SEO plugin. It can greatly improves how your blog is indexed in search engines and is a must-have, unless you are using a premium theme that is already properly SEOd (and regularly updated to keep current with what search engines like).

2. OptinPop allows you to easily add a customized opt-in box that you can connect with one of the top 2 autoresponders I reviewed in my post Autoresponder Review – Top 2 Choices

However, I am far more keen on Robert Plank’s Popup Software which I’m using on this blog.

3. WP-SpamFree is a popular spam blocker that is easy to configure. If that isn’t enough to stop spam comments, considering adding SI Captcha.

4. Theme Tester is handy because having a great theme for your business blog is essential and you will probably end up switching themes more than once. With this plugin you can test different themes without affecting what your visitors see until you’re ready to make the change official.

5. Robots Meta is awesomely helpful. It allows you to  easily change which pages  in your blog are indexed in search engines (you don’t want download pages indexed, for example) and whether links in a post or on a page should be dofollow or nofollow.

6. Frame Buster thwarts attempts to load your site in a frame.

7. WP Database Backup helps you to backup your blog as often as you like. Backing up  regularly is wise for everyone, but it can be all the more critical if your blog is a source of income. This plugin makes it easy, allowing you to set how often the backup runs and where to send the file for safekeeping. You can read more about backing up WordPress here

8. Google XML Sitemap generates a special XML sitemap that helps search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to index your blog.

9. TESTIT makes it possible to split test different posts within WordPress. You can write two versions of any post and see from within the WP Admin which post generated more clicks or which blog post inspires the most people to click through to other pages on your blog, other categories, other posts, what you have in your sidebar, etc.

10. Podcasting is a great way to get your message out. This plugin takes a file from your site or another site and adds it to an iTunes-based feed. It also includes a player so visitors can tune in on your blog. Having a good microphone is important.

11. Auto Social Poster Gold will auto bookmark your blog posts to over 30 bookmarking websites as soon as you click Publish. It also has a random submission option if you want to avoid being slapped for submitting to too many sites at once. This works far better than software like Web2Submitter in my opinion. I learned about this product from James Schramko.

Note: to learn about the best free and paid security plugins to protect your blog from malicious hackers, buy WP Defender

~ Lillea Woodlyns

Leanne King is known as The WP Queen. It’s easy to see why when you read WordPress for Internet Marketers , her WordPress how-to guide that helps beginners and pros turn WordPress into, as the product tagline says, a money press.

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Special Notice:  I highly recommend: WordPress for Internet Marketers by the ‘WP Queen’ Leanne King.  Read my full review here

You probably know it’s important to regularly back up the files in your computer in case something goes screwy and you lose your data.

For the same reason, it’s equally important to backup your WordPress files!

Technical wackiness can happen online too. Wouldn’t it be awful if you lost all of your posts and settings? But don’t worry, if something dreadful happens and your files go belly-up, a recent backup – say, a week old at most – will definitely help a lot.

If you post a lot on your blog, it’s wise to backup your WordPress blog database frequently - perhaps daily.

I use the WordPress Database Back Up PlugIn for exactly that.

After the PlugIn is installed and configured (not hard to do!)  it can be set to automatically back up your blog’s database whenever you like. Mine is set to backup daily. Every day the backup file is sent to an e-mail address of my choice.

Very easy!

It’s also best to do a FULL backup of ALL of your WordPress files – perhaps weekly.

I save the full backup files in a folder in my computer.

I have used the FREE FTP program Filezilla to upload files to this blog. It turns out that you can also use it to for the full backup of your WordPress blog. Filezilla works on both PCs and Macs.

After connecting to your site with Filezilla, it’s very easy to download your WordPress blog files to your computer for safekeeping.

7 Easy Steps to Follow to Create a FULL WordPress Backup

1. Download and install Filezilla on your computer.

2. Create a new folder on your computer desktop to store your blog’s backup files. Name it something appropriate and exact like ‘Full Blog Backup Jan 1 2010′.

3. Using Filezilla, connect to the site that your WordPress blog is installed on. For information on how to configure Filezilla, read the directions at http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_FileZilla

4. In the Right Pane of Filezilla double click on WWW.  Click on the ‘blog’ folder. Or, if you have more than one site, find the site for the blog you’re backing up and look for it’s blog folder. In the Right Bottom Pane of Filezilla you’ll see these folders:

wp-admin

wp-content

wp-includes

Those are the folders for your WordPress blog. You’re going to copy them into the folder that you created on your computer desktop.

5. In the Left Pane of Filezilla click on the folder that you created on your desktop for your backup.

6. In the Right Bottom Pane of Filezilla highlight the wp-admin folder. Right click on it and select download. This will download the folder to the folder on your desktop. When the download is finished do the same thing with the folders wp-content and wp-includes.

This process may take a while if there are lots of files to download inside the folders. Be patient.

7. Do you see the files right under the wp-includes folder? Select all of them, right click, and then select download to download them to the folder on your desktop.

You’re done!

Remember, if you upgrade to a new version of WordPress, you should do a full backup beforehand!

~ Lillea Woodlyns