When setting up our blogs there is one thing we’re always told to do, and that’s to set up the Akismet plugin, but have you ever wondered just what it does?

True, it can seem like a total hassle to get up and running – though the only time consuming bit is getting the API Key through WordPress – but it will save you a whole lot of time in the future.

Akismet helps to block out all of those nasty little spammy comments that can appear on your site from people who just send them out there in the hopes of getting a few links back to the product they’re advertising. Sometimes it even works out for them. Seeing it takes them little to no time or money to do – and they’re obviously making enough money for it to be worth doing – so they’re just going to keep on doing it, but, it could take you a fair bit of time to get rid of it.

I recently checked the stats on my blog and was surprised to see that Akismet had stopped 6,084 spam comments dead in their tracks. I decided to take a look at the comments that were still in the spam queue, and wasn’t too surprised to see what sort of links they had in them.

The one thing that did make me laugh (I have a slightly warped sense of humour) was the fact that I had more links for mobile phone ring tones than I could possibly listen to in a lifetime, especially seeing I never have, and possibly never will, own a mobile phone.

The whole point of this post is this: you may not know what Akismet is, or how it works, just know that it’s in your best interest to have it up and running.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alan_Paterson

Akismet: Don’t try to survive without this one.  It will eat your comment spam for you and is a must have.

All in One SEO Pack: With All in One SEO Pack you can set your title, description and keywords easily for every page and post.

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One of the keys to optimizing one’s blog for traffic is going back to your goal in blogging. Are you blogging in order to share your experiences with your family and friends? Or do you want to share your knowledge in a particular topic with a wider audience?

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The latest version 3.0 has a number of improvements over previous versions, and to make it even better there are tons of useful plugins. And it is these plugins which make WP just right for your needs as a blogger.

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Term 1: Themes

A Theme is a collection of files that create the visual look of your WordPress website or blog. Themes are kinda like ‘skins’ that you can easily download, install and start using on your site. Themes also can include some custom features to give you greater control over the presentation and functionality of your site. In general, only one Theme can be used at a time.

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So what attributes make up the best blogging software on the market? I believe that it has to:

* Be free to use – there are so many paid for blogging tools about, why pay for software?
* Be flexible and extendible – if you want to add a feature to it, such as site maps, captcha checked contact forms, this must be easy to do.
* Be easy to set-up and install.
* Be easy to make it look different to other blogs – there is no point in running a professional blog that looks like 3,000,000 other blogs.
* Have ready made (and free) off-the-shelf styles readily available to install at the touch of a button.
* Be well search engine optimised and accepted by the search engines.
* Ideally, it should have a community of other bloggers that can also drift over to your new blog from related blogs.

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Congratulations! You have started your WordPress blog. Downloading, uploading, theme choice, plugins, widgets, niche – those are all done. You have even posted several articles. Now what? Who is going to read your blog? How are they going to find you?

As a website owner, have you ever wondered how some sites get on the first page of Google and others remain buried back on page 27? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is what it is all about.

Briefly, SEO is the creation of traffic and hits from other websites to your site. This increases the opportunity for the search engines to pull from your site. They may find images, keywords, local searches, or business specific searches. But when they find many hits on your website, they tend to like you better and rank you higher.

One way to increase your SEO ranking is to hire an optimizer. That means you pay to have your site reviewed, your keywords searched, and many other things. These services are usually expensive and require ongoing maintenance, which means an ongoing fee.

WordPress helps you to do it yourself. WordPress offers many plugins, most importantly “SEO All In One Pack,” that can help you increase your visibility on the Internet. Use these plugins, but follow these four rules, too.

1. Titles: front running words receive the most attention in a search string. Also, visitors read your page from top to bottom first, and then from left to right. The closer to the top you put your keywords (the beginning of your title), the more weight and attention the search engines will give them.

2. Increase Speed: Did you know that links in the beginning of a search engine result load faster than those near the end? Search engines actually weigh the length of time it takes for your site to load in their crawling matches. You can increase your site’s loading speed by cleaning it up. Remove code you do not need, lessen the video use, increase your cache speed. All of these will help increase the speed that your site loads.

3. Tag and Connect: If you tag each post with the same or similar keywords, you will increase your web presence. Pages are also weighted heavier than posts, so consider creating a page that links all the similar articles together with a “Read More” page or other link at the bottom of the page.

4. Keep Your Traffic: While links to other sites are a good way to lure visitors to your site, this may hurt more than help. Once someone links out of your site, you have lost the opportunity for them to browse your site further. If you do provide a linke, have it open in a new window – that way your reader can easily find their way back to your site.

WordPress actually supports several functions not found with other platforms. WordPress offers optimized descriptions, tagging, related posts, and defining titles. It is easy to use and allows the small entrepreneur to customize his site. This builds an online business presence through the use of search engine optimization without having to spend a lot of time learning the ins and outs of SEO or have to hire someone to do it.

Try these tips to enhance the presence of your site. Increasing your traffic will increase your web presence.
Did you find these tips on WordPress Plugin SEO helpful? You can learn more about WordPress by visiting http://www.learnwptoday.com. Here you will find videos that make it easy to learn all of the ins and outs of WordPress and having a successful blog. You can find it at http://www.learnwptoday.com.

Most of you know that Blogspot provides many widgets to its users but you might not know which are best for your blog. In this article I will provide you with the list of widgets that I think are best for your blog. Maximum users using both Blogspot and WordPress think that Blogspot lacks in customization than WordPress but following widgets will allow you to make customizable professional blog using Blogspot.

Blogger post comments provide all the functionality but if you want to have better commenting system then you should try Disqus comments. You can insert it in Blogspot from here.

This blogger widget shows related posts below each post on the basis of category/label. This will keep people on you blog for longer time. If you are interested, you can get it from here.

This widget ranks your posts by analyzing social engagement with your blogger posts like user clicks, bookmarking and comments. It will let your readers know about your most engaging topics. Grab it from this link.

Convey this translator button is the best way to increase international traffic to your blog. It can translate your blog content to number of different languages.

Social bookmarking is very important for every blog because it increases traffic to your blog. Facebook is top social community website. This widget will act as a handy tool for your readers to share your posts on Facebook with their friends. If you love to increase traffic to you blog then get it from here.

If you do not want to limit your users to share your posts only on Facebook then this widget is for you. This will help your readers to share your posts to many social bookmarking services including Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Stumbleupon and many more.

In this widget all your labels/categories can be presented in a flash animated label cloud. This is helpful to increase reader’s attention to your categories list.

If you want to learn more about WordPress and what it can do for you, join us on a FREE Introduction to WordPress webinar.  Click here for dates.