Updating .htaccess for better SEO
Once in a while it’s best to check out things and see what’s new, especially things that related to our blog. I’ve just update my blog to the latest version of Wordpress, so next I decided to check out .htaccess. It might not be something new but as long as it helps to improve my blog, it’s worth try it out. Below are few of the methods that I found out about .htaccess that is useful.
The first and most basic thing that we use .htaccess is to redirect non WWW to WWW. Take for example http://www.toasteggme.com and http://toasteggme.com, we want all the page rank juice and page indexed in just one address instead of two.
<code>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^toasteggme.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.toasteggme.com/$1 [L,R=301]
</code>
If you choose to redirect WWW to non WWW, here’s the way to do it. By the way you just have to write’ RewriteEngine On’ into the code once.
<code>
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.toasteggme.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://toasteggme.com/$1 [L,R=301]
</code>
If you need to redirect dynamic URL’s with parameters to single static file, this is the code.
<code>
RewriteRule ^earnmoneysignup.jsp?id=(.*)$ /moneymaking.htm [L,R=301]
</code>
The dynamic URL http://www.toasteggme.com/earnmoneysignup.jsp?id=1234 will be redirected to http://www.toasteggme.com/moneymaking.htm
If you like to redirect all files from a folder to one single file, this is the code.
<code>
RewriteRule ^earnmoneyproducts(.*)$ /moneymaking.php [L,R=301]
</code>
All the requests to the folder /earnmoneyproducts will be redirect to /moneymaking.php
If you like to redirect viewers who received a 404 error to another page, this is the code.
ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html
The benefit of having the above redirect is that viewers won’t get lost if they arrive to your website with an invalid URL.
Apart of trying to get the attention of search engines, we need to consider the usage of .htaccess towards the benefits of our readers. In my opinion the main function of .htaccess is redirect. I suppose we should direct our readers around our blog so that they won’t stuck at “page not found”. It is the work of keeping our blog in a more organized condition. After several years of blogging, we need to reorganize the old URLs to the new URLs. Some of the links or URL that we place several years before might expired or deleted.
There are some other .htaccess techniques that I did not mention. The above methods are the ones that I used for my blogs for SEO purposes. Feel free to check out the links below for further information.
The above information is taken and base on the reference from
.htaccess, 301 Redirects & SEO: Guest Post by NotSleepy | Seo Book.com
Basic .htaccess tricks for SEO and convenience | Blog | Econsultancy
Make Money from your tweets with RevTwt
This is my first post about making money using Twitter. The first Twitter advertising network that I found is RevTwt. Before signing up RevTwt, I did some checking on the response of bloggers or publisher who tested out the service. It seems that RevTwt is not well accepted. Anyway, I still decided to sign up and have a closer look at the site so that I can write a review about it.
There are few ways that you can make money from RevTwt. Basically you need to have at least a Twitter account with lots of followers. In order to let RevTwt posts ads in your Twitter account, you either provide them your Twitter username and password or use Twitter Oauth to give them permission to post ads. For security purposes I think it’s better to use Twitter Oauth. The first type of ads that you can choose is CPC – cost per click. Generally you get paid when your followers click on the ads. The second method is CPT – cost per thousand followers. That means you get paid on a fixed amount based on the number of followers you have. Plus the ads must stay on for at least 72 hours. The third method is CAP – cost per action. You can apply this ad in anywhere as you only get paid when a user completes the required action given by advertisers. The fourth method is to use the shorten URL service. When readers click on the shorten URL, ads will be shown in a transition page before arriving to the actual page. You get paid if readers click on the ads. This method can be use anywhere other than Twitter too. I think the shorten URL ads method is a good idea and it might become popular later.
Besides that you may also earn some money by referring others to RevTwt. You’ll get 20% of their earnings for life. Other than that the site also expanded their service to popular social network community Facebook. You may post the ads same way that you post at Twitter. All you need to do is allow StatusCash application into your Facebook so that they can post ads on walls, status and news feeds. RevTwt also partners with Twitter Greeting so that ads can be shown along with the greeting cards. You’ll get paid when your friends click on the ads that come together with the greeting cards you send.
There are many ways that you can make money at Revtwt but there are couples of things that you need to take note. Minimum payment is $20 using PayPal. You might need to work hard for the payment if you have less than 2000 followers. Please take note that most of the ads required clicks from US. That means if your followers are mostly from countries other than US, you might not earn much.
I have to say you need to have more than 2000 followers in order to actually make money with Revtwt. Plus your followers need to be from US too. The highest click that I’ve seen is about $0.15, which means you need to have at least 200 clicks to reach minimum payment. You may try it out but I think Revtwt is suitable for certain people with lots of followers. Just remember not to post too many ads as you might considered as spammer.
Do Blogs need Robots.txt for SEO optimized?
Lately I happened to check out the usage of robot.txt to search for any help on SEO optimized. Robots.txt also known as The Robots Exclusion Protocol is a set of instruction created for web robots or spiders. The search engine crawler will look for robots.txt where pages to indexed and ignored are defined.
If you have a blog and trying to locate your robots.txt file, most probably you won’t find it. That’s because in order to allow full access for all web robots or spiders, not having a robots.txt is a way to do it. That is why our blogs still get index even without a robots.txt. If that is the case, do we actually need to add robots.txt file?
It is said that robots.txt is use to avoid issues like duplicate content getting index. The intention of having robots.txt is to help improved page index and getting higher page rank. If you don’t really understand how robots.txt works, it’s better to not to touch it as it might do more damage than help. I did some study and research on robots.txt for some time and still couldn’t quite get it myself. If you still insist on trying it out, get the PC Robots.txt Wordpress pluin. What it actually does is creates a virtual robots.txt that is east to edit and manage. Once activate, you’ll be given a default robots.txt that disallowed a bunch of spam-bots and some standard Wordpress folders and files. Feel free to mess around with the robots.txt. You can always return to the default setting by reactivating the plugin. You can do all this right from your blog admin.
You can easily get information on what you can put into the robots.txt file but there isn’t any post telling what configuration is best for SEO. I guess it’s up to us to try it out. Here’s a post form SEOmoz that I think is good to check out as it explains how robots.txt affects link juice.
P/S: After trying out robots.txt myself. I think it’s better not to do anything about it. If you guys found it differently, please share.
Dealing with Comment Spam, Stopping Manual Spam or Taking advantage on Spam
When you decided to start or create a blog, comment spam is the one thing that comes along. Those that own a blog will surely have to deal with comment spam. As placing comments is a way to generate backlinks, it is considered as a SEO way to bring more traffic. Lately it seems comment spam has evolved into a so call “Smart comment spam” that gets through the popular Akismet filtering. Let’s take a look on what kind of “Smart comment spam” that we get nowadays.
First is the positive tone comment spam.
“Nice post”, “Great post”, “Nice info”, “Thanks for sharing”, “I like your post, will be back for more”, “I enjoy reading your post”…etc
These kinds of comments basically categorize as “Don’t have to read the post to comment.” These comments can either delete or let it be, you decide. What makes these comments categorize into spam are the links and names. Some of these comments just links to sales page, casino or any other page that is not from a simple normal blog. As for the name field, key words are used instead of names. That’s also for the sake of SEO.
It’s easy to filter out those auto comments spam as Akismet spam filter can block mostly all of them. The problem lies with those manual comments spam. These days many are hired just to place comments on blogs. These so call comment professionals write good praises which sometimes I’m hesitated in deleting them. The best example that I get are comments from the famous John Chow. Yes, that’s right, the famous www.johnchow.com. The links are exactly the same but the name filed is stated “making money blogs” and the email is mikejc12345@gmail.com. I assume that’s not John Chow himself but somebody that he hired to place comments on blogs, and that’s not the only person that he hired.
As there are so many comments that seem like spam, just how do we draw the line between spam and comment? I’ll leave this for you to decide but I do have three suggestions that might help you in fighting spam.
You can try set up a comments policy using a Wordpress plugin. Using the Wordpress Comments Policy plugin you’re able to list out a guideline of comments. It looks something like this. The plugin might not do the filtering but it tells your readers which comments you will delete. Probably might help in reducing the manual comments spam.
Another Wordpress plugin that you can try out is Manual Spam Blocker. It helps to reduce manually comments spam by stopping backlink builders from commenting. The Manual Spam Blocker closes the comments function of your blog if visitors arrived from search query that contains “post comment” or similar. That means if visitors found your blog just for the sake to comment, the comment function will be closed.
The third method is to edit the spam comments. You can basically change the links of the comments by placing it with the link to your other blogs. It does sound a bit evil but this is just fighting fire with fire. If those comments really are spam, they probably won’t care much about it. Perhaps you can use this method to find out which comments are for real. You’ll know that when you’ll get people complaining about the comments they placed.
P/S: I deleted lots of comments in this blog as I’m still trying to set the line between comments and spam. Sorry about that.
Upgrading Wordpress Manually
Honestly I don’t like the constant work of upgrading Wordpress. I just feel that we spent a lot of time on keeping up the Wordpress upgrading work. The latest version of Wordpress is 2.8.4, for now I suppose. This year Wordpress releases 6 new versions up till now. In 2008 last year there are 9 versions of Worpress released. I would suggest Wordpress developers combine the new version release into one per year. That will save us a lot of time and energy on keep on chasing after the upgrading process.
Although I don’t like to upgrade Wordpress so often, still we have to do it because of security purposes. One of the main reasons is to prevent your blog being hack. Other than that it’s just minor changes to fix the bugs. I prefer not to upgrade so often because there is a risk that problems might occur. When problems do occur, that means your blog might be down. The down time of your blog is very much depends on how good you are in solving the problems. Before you go on to upgrade Wordpress, be sure that you back up, well prepared and understand exactly what you’re doing.
There are lots of guide online on how to upgrade to latest version of Wordpress. I did a lot of reading and research before attempting on the upgrading myself. I just feel that I have to write the process myself. So here goes.
- No doubt the first thing that you need to check and read is Upgrading Wordpress Extended from Wordpress.org. This is the most trusted site which you can refer and compare with other guide written for better understanding. I’ll be just repeating the process here and adding my experience to make it easier to understand.
- Backup your database and all Wordpress files. Basically just backup everything. Be sure to check and verified your backups so that they are usable.
- Deactivate all plugins. You may install Maintenance Mode plugin and leave it activate. This plugin creates a page that says “Blog under Maintenance, please come back later”.
- Download the latest version of Wordpress. Extract the file and edit the files before uploading it. I did not use ftp. I just delete wp-content folder of the new Wordpress files, zip it back and upload it to the server. Extract the edited new Wordpress files and over write the old files. Just make sure you don’t over write these files below:
- Wp-config.php file
- Wp-content folder
- Wp-image folder
- Wp-includes/languages/ folder
- .htaccess file
- Robot.txt file
- Edit wp-config.php file. You need to add 4 lines of security keys. Just follow no.13 instruction Add security key definitions to the wp-config.php file at Wordpress.org. You can use the online generator to create the keys. If you’re not sure about this, just compare your wp-config.php file with the new wp-config-sample.php file.
- Run the Wordpress upgrade program by typing http://yourdomain.com/blog/wp-admin/upgrade.php or http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php. This is basically the location of your Wordpress installed.
- Follow the instructions by click on “Upgrade Wordpress” and after that “Continue”.
- Login to your blog and you should be using the new Wordpress. Activate all the plugins and you may try updating them. Be sure to check if the latest version of your plugins has been tested and compatible with the version of Worrpress that you install.
I’m able to upgrade my Wordpress without having any serious trouble. If you’re not confidence on performing the upgrade, then ask somebody who knows for help and assiatance. You don’t have to rush to upgrade to the latest Wordpress. It’s better to be able to blog then having a 404 error page hanging around. Just get everything ready and prepared before you proceed with the upgrade and you should be fine. Be sure to know where to get help if problems occur during your upgrade.
Money Making Opportunities and the People who successfully capturing it
Once in a while I like to read about other’s success stories. Either it’s online, television or books we can find lots of information regarding how people make a fortune. These stories really inspire us and give us great motivation to keep on pursuing our dreams. Below are some of the famous people that I read, within I found some interesting facts behind their success.
Harland Sanders also known as Colonel Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He started franchising Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant at the age of 65. It’s still never too late to search for money making opportunities, even at the age of 65.
Bill Gates, one of the world’s wealthiest men and the chairman of Microsoft. He started his career without even completing his university studies at Harvard. A college degree is not necessary needed in reaching out for money making opportunities. We seen lot more examples in the world of sports where athletic abilities worth more than a college degree.
Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Fuller Olsen, the famous twins that known around the world through television series Full House. They started to earn money when they were nine months old. I suppose they don’t even know what money is at that age. It is possible to land on a money making opportunity at a very young age.
Chris Gardner, a millionaire with his own stock brokerage firm. Gardner struggled with homelessness while raising his child before he found his money making opportunities. Even at the worst situation, there are still hope and possibility to obtain money making opportunity and live a better life.
Money making opportunities are all around us. It doesn’t matter if you’re old, young, educated or in whatever condition as long as you can see it and catch it. Once you capture it, you’ll be on your way to success. That goes the same as finding your first bucket of gold online. Consider it as a quest in search of treasure. You might spend a lot of time and energy without knowing if you’re on the right track or not, but as long as you keep on going eventually you’ll find the treasure.
Money Making Opportunity at IM Report Card
You get paid by just participating at IM Report Card. That means you will be rewarded by joining IM Report Card community and taking part on reviews, comments, suggestions, grading and referring. IM Report Card is a site where people get together to review and discuss about internet marketing related product s or services. These reviews, grades and comments help others in choosing the best product and avoid being scam. That’s the main goal of this site. Sign up is free but there are several countries that the site rejects application. These countries are India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippine and Singapore. According to IM Report Card they seem to experience lots of fraudulent and inappropriate use from these countries.
IM Report Card seems to have tight rules on almost anything. Perhaps that’s the way to prevent scam and maintain top quality info. It’s not a surprise for a site determines to fight scam. So if you’re planning to earn fast money by just clicking around fast and writing irrelevant comments, then IM Report Card is not for you. You might get ban from the site without having to claim your credits.
IM Report Card is actually a good place for you to get to know products and services before you spend your money. You’ll save a lot of time figuring out which products and services suit you best by going through the reviews and comments. Compare to forum, IM Report Card is a more trusted site as the reviews and comments are well control. That’s the power of combing shared experience into one place. For those that are new to internet marketing, this is a good place to learn. As for those experience internet marketers, this is a site to share your valuable experience and earn some money.
For the money making part, you need to have PayPal account. You’ll get paid once your account reached $20. At IM Report Card you basically earn credits for rating review, grading products, comment on services, suggest new products and referring new members. Each credit currently has a cash value of $0.01. In order to reach the minimum payout of $20, you’ll have to earn 2000 credits.
One thing I don’t like about IM Report Card is that instead of banning users from selective countries, the site should reduce their banning scope to individuals. That’s because not every users from the selective countries are fraud and fraudulent can be found all over the world. It’s all depending on individuals. It’s true that it will be a lot of work if narrowing down the scope to individual but if that can be done, it basically open up a potential market.
5 Simple Methods to Regain Motivation to Blog
No matter how much you love blogging, still there are times when you just don’t feel like blogging. It’s just one of those days that the motivation to blog is at low level. In order to regain motivation to keep up with your posting rhythm, here are a few methods to help boost your motivation.
- Read Top Earning Blogs. This is the best motivation method for me, especially reading post about their monthly earning report. Even if some of the earning reports might not be true, it still motivates me to work hard and try to reach that figure. As we go through blogs that have the same interest with us, it also inspires or gives inspiration on what to blog next. Check out the top 100 list and you’ll find lots of blogs that motivates you.
- Get yourself a good motivation book. The book that I’m currently reading is “The secret”. This book is more about positive thinking but serves just right to motivate me. I’m sure you can find lots of readings online that motivates, but once in a while it’s better to move away from screen to papers. Changing the reading environment is not just good for your eyes, it also helps preserve the interest of blogging. Having to look at the monitor long hours might makes you feel suffocate.
- Watch a motivation movie. Going for a good motivating theme movie is a great way to change your mood and increase your motivation. Some movies might just inspire you to start blogging right after you finish watching it. One of the best motivation movies that I love is “The Pursuit of Happyness”. I still remember the line “If you want something, go get it. If you have a dream, you have to protect it.”
- Listen to a motivation song. I suppose most of the wake up songs air in the early morning radio session works. It’s the kind of songs that can make you jump of the bed and starts dancing. I personally like the theme song of Donald Trump The Apprentice – For The Love Of Money. Find a song that can trigger your blogging mode. Once you found it, keep it close so that you can play the song easily any time.
- Talk to your friends about your blog. The best motivation you can get is to hear your friends said “I love to read what you blog.” In fact, tell everybody around you about the blog you have. Give them the blog address and ask them to check it out. Sometimes you’ll get emails, MSN or even phone calls from people that you know to remind you the post you miss. Knowing that your families and friends are waiting to read your blog, you won’t dare to miss a single post.
