A blog about WordPress tips, troubleshooting, reviews and more!

Tips, Tricks & Reviews

A blog dedicated to the WordPress community for designers and administrators

Migrating from Disqus to WpDiscuz for WordPress commenting

Since I started blogging over a year ago, I wanted to have a commenting system that was user-friendly and feature-rich. I thought I’d find a permanent solution in Disqus. After all, it’s used by major websites including some of the top news organizations. The fact that you only needed one account to comment across the platform on other websites made it extremely appealing. So why did I decide to migrate to a new system? jQuery errors and my lack of faith in getting timely support.

March 4, 2019 News, Reviews, Tips

Niche Dreams – Part 8: Becoming the Brand

In the last two installments of Niche Dreams, I talked about how I wanted to integrate myself into my brand. It’s something I probably wouldn’t have been comfortable doing a year or so ago, but times have changed! I’ve learned a lot during these months of building up my niche website, and I figure using my experiences within the niche is the best way to get exposure. One of my goals was to create a video review of a product I use and promote on the site. That’s been accomplished. I also finally set up my brand with Instagram and […]

March 1, 2019 Niche Dreams

Don’t neglect these very important on-site SEO factors

In another excellent post by Search Engine Journal, they list 5 crucial factors for following the best on-site SEO practices. If you haven’t already, you should click on the source link to get all the details. Each of these factors includes multiple subsections which further explain their importance.

Below I’ve listed my thoughts on each topic as well as rehashing what the folks at SEJ think. Of course, on-site SEO should be your first concern before you plan on any external link building or promotional strategies.

February 28, 2019 News, SEO

Another popular WordPress plugin has major exploit patched

This particular exploit really hits close to home. WP Cost Estimation & Payment Forms Builder is a premium plugin that I’ve been using on this site for over a year. It’s a fantastic plugin that has allowed me to customize packages for web design and SEO clients. Before you check, yes, I’m already updated to a secure version.

February 26, 2019 News, Security

Build your brand and gain an audience by telling a personal story

Using the storytelling method of producing content is actually something I’ve recently decided to implement on my niche website. It wasn’t my plan when first building the site. However, since I frequently use the products advertised, it made sense to incorporate my experiences into the brand. It’s certainly not easy putting my face out there for everyone to judge, but I do believe it will help me succeed in my ultimate goal. That goal is to earn a decent side income in addition to my web design job.

February 22, 2019 News, SEO

How search is evolving from text queries to image recognition

Call me old fashioned, but I thought searching by entering text would always be the dominant method of looking up things. That rationale was backed up by over two decades of users typing in their queries. Of course, in hindsight, I realize a lack of alternatives is most likely the primary reason why.

February 20, 2019 News, SEO

Optimizing Website Speed

In 2019, speed will be more important than ever. That’s why we’ll talk about how speed influences websites and what you can do to make your site faster.

February 18, 2019 News, Tips

Avoid these link building pitfalls for a more natural backlink profile

I’ve blogged about my love of SEOJet on a few occasions. It’s a tool that provides an outline for building external link maps based on anchor texts. The idea is that with a strategy of focusing on quality backlinks, you’ll outrank a competitor with dozens or even hundreds more spammy backlinks. There are several case studies that show this to be true and yet many SEO agencies still try to get as many links as possible, regardless of quality.

February 14, 2019 News, SEO

How website content quality affects SEO rankings

Back in my early days of web design & SEO with Yoast, I didn’t really pay much attention to the readability score. After all, if I could understand the targeted posts and pages, surely others would too. However, googlebot has evolved to a point where it really tries to emulate a live person. You can’t expect to trick it by placing a keyword over and over again without any rational explanation. As Yoast points out above, the user experience is an important metric in rankings these days.

February 11, 2019 News, SEO

Wix super bowl ad implies SEO is easy on their platform

As far as website builders, Wix has come a long way. Yes, you can build a nice-looking website on the platform. However, if you want to compare it to a CMS such as WordPress, it is extremely limited. If you’re a business looking to be viewed as professional, Wix isn’t the answer. I’d say it is more suited for personal websites. Think of it as a modern Geocities or Angelfire.

February 8, 2019 News, SEO