I’m delighted to introduce to you - a new SEO friendly wordpress theme from DailySEOblog - “SEO Green” !

We’ve been working on this theme for quite some time now, and after a lot of modification and tweaks, here it is. We’ve managed to make it SEO friendly as much as possible, along with keeping the looks and feel of a contemporary wordpress theme.

This is a free wordpress theme, so feel free to download it and use tweaking it according to your taste.

What is so special about the theme?

The simplicity and effectiveness.

The theme is designed keeping in mind the common blogger who is on the look out of a wordpress theme that he can implement once and the forget about. This is for those bloggers who don’t want to think too much and crash their brains about optimizing their site.

The categories

The categories are put right on the top of the theme. Now, this is something unusual. You either find the categories on the right hand side or on the top bar header navigation menu. The reason they are put on the top is that you have a good real estate for doing SEO here. Make your categories SEO friendly by using keywords in them and even otherwise your categories are picked up by the search engines by default. Therefore highlight is on the categories, so you may want to tweak them and make them really attractive.

The meta tags

There are no meta tags by default on the theme. Simply because, they have no SEO value at all. Instead I’m using the categories to appear at the description on the SERPs. Once you install the theme, the description text that appears for it on Google would be the categories.

Now, for those who have lot of categories, this may look as spam on the SERPs. For those bloggers I recommend the headspace plugin to be added to the theme and everything regarding the meta content will be sorted out.

It is a common mis-understanding that the meta tags gets you lot of SEO importance while the truth is that it does not (apart form the titles). It does serve the purpose of an Ad-copy that compels people to click on your site while it is appearing on the SERPs.

The Header

The header has a logo to the left and the recent comments and the recent posts listed on it. To the right, you’ll find the subscription options. The recent comments and posts plugin is used here keeping in mind that the header should contain as much content as possible to be absorbed by the spiders. I could’ve easily left it blank, but there was a good real estate for SEO, so I thought it might be wise to just use it.

The logo space can also be customized according to your taste, just replace the image logo.jpg in the template directory to get this done.

The Footer

The footer has three columns that are very much “tweakable”. The first column contains an about me section where you can add text about you or the site, while adding a photo or logo of yours. The second and third column can be customized to add links, external or internal depending on your taste. 

Essential Plugins

- The theme comes packed with the recent comments and recent posts plugin, please activate it from the the Dashboard> Plugins menu.
- For those who want custom titles and meta info, I recommend you use the HeadSpace2 plugin.
- Any other plugin can be easily added to the right hand sidebar. A demo of plugins working can be seen here.

About the author

The theme is designed by my partner designer Prasanth, who have coded the entire code himself, while I bugged him with the SEO metrics.Prasanth helps me with design on my SEO projects.

Demo ~ Download theme

If you’ve spotted any errors on the theme, please let me know on the comments. I’ll very much appreciate it.Hope you’ll enjoy the theme as much as we liked designing it.

If you'd like to stay updated with SEO, grab the RSS feed now !What's this?

This has come out to be an one-stop SEO guide for all you wordpress users out there. I’m not sure if I’ve covered all the topics but I’m sure that these are(in fact all) the basic, essential steps all you wordpress users out there should follow in order to make sure that you have your wordpress blog on steroids. I’ve kept in mind all the SEO metrics possible that will make your blog SEO friendly.

The idea is to - “Put your wordpress blog on an SEO Auto pilot mode and keep writing articles that has a very high possibility to make it to the first page of Google, every time you publish them.”

The process of blogging on WordPress can be dissected in to three parts.

1 - Creating a powerful SEO friendly custom wordpress theme.
2 - Using all the power tools to catapult you ahead of others.
3 - Writing killer articles that are SE optimized.

How to create a custom SEO optimized, unique Wordpress theme?

Some people may argue that Wordpress is SEO friendly by itself, therefore you don’t really need an SEO. If you ask my opinion on this I’d say, both right and wrong. Right because, Wordpress is SEO friendly. Wrong because every Wordpress blog is SEO friendly.

Image this, everybody has a Bazooka to fight, so what makes the difference? Only the guy who has a better one will stand out. Similarly, only the guy with a unique custom wordpress theme can win over the others.

1. Selecting a SEO friendly wordpress theme for your site.
Check this first. Your theme holds a lot of importance in deciding your search engine ranks. Really. There may be sites that get away with it using a stupid theme or no theme at all, but remember, those sites are supported most of the times by other SEO factors that a common blogger may not have. Your theme, it’s layout structure, number of images used, code validation all should be taken into consideration while making a selection. Here’s a detailed structure.

- Select a theme with a SEO friendly layout. So that crawlers don’t find it difficult to find the content on your pages.

- The content should be clearly highlighted on the pages.

- The HTML and JavaScript code if present should limit to the first 15-20 lines of the source code. The first part of the source code should predominantly contain the content of your article.

- The whole HTML code of your pages should be completely valid. Use W3C Validator tools to check this and follow the recommendations accordingly.

- There should not be any/or very less flash and AJAX content on your template. If at all they are present, let them be in the footer/sidebar or below the fold. I don’t recommend it for the header. Resources - How to do SEO on flash enabled website, How to SEO with AJAX.

- Header of your theme is a good real estate for SEO. An image is fine, but in my experience I’ve seen that if text is placed in the header (either alone or combined with the image) with the necessary importance given (clue), it weighs more than the other text on your page. So select a theme carefully.

- When you select a theme , do a simulation test on the demo site. A simulation test is one that gives you an idea of how your pages would be seen by crawlers. In the search engine simulation test, if the results show the text featured on your theme demo, it means the theme is good for search engines. There are some themes in which we can see the text visually, but in a simulation test, no or very less text appears, keep away from such themes.

2. On site Optimization for Wordpress
On site optimization for wordpress is one of my favorite topics, simply because there is always a new concept that emerges out of the blue.

• SEOing Wordpress Title Tags - A very often repeated topic this one. Still I find that many bloggers don’t implement it. In this tweak, the best option is to use the permalinks in the <category><post-title> format. Although, I find that adding the date option impresses Google. It also helps the users to find how old the post is.
  Resource - Title tags and Wordpress SEO
• Interlinking your blog posts is an excellent way to spread the Google juice evenly.
• Optimize your categories - Categories on wordpress is an excellent resource for SEO, not many people have discussed this if I’m right. But there are some tweaks that we can do to optimize it for the search engines.
• SEO’ing the footer text - This is yet another SEO factor not many have discussed, but something that I find has a good scope. It may not work well for all themes as some themes eve completely ignore the footer. But if you use some wise tricks(clue) to give it the right kind of importance, it will help you get that extra mileage for your keywords.
  More onsite optimization tips or wordpress can be found here.

3. Put your wordpress blog on steroids.
A wordpress blog is SEO friendly by default, but adding some power tools to it can make it 10 times as effective as a naked blog. In fact, there are a lot of power tools available online, and many of them are scrap. The wise strategy is to pick the best ones that really fit your blog.

Here are 7 power tools that will catapult your wordpress blog from ordinary to a super blog.

• 1. Headspace Wordpress SEO - This is an extremely good plugin for Wordpress that I found very effective. It is even better than the much hyped All in One SEO plugin. It is a bit hard to manage this as there are more options in it, but this is far more effective than All in One SEO.
  2. Google XML Sitemaps - Sitemaps are an essential for your wordpress blog. You can either create a manual one here or use this plugin. The plugin creates an automatically updated sitemap whenever there’s a change in the site, like an article or a page edit.
  3. Homepage Excerpts - Duplicate content is a big issue on Wordpress. The same content is shown on one or more places on Wordpress and hence the chances of duplicate content and supplementary pages are more. But using this plugin will reduce the chances of duplicate content on wordpress as the homepage content is cut short.
  4. Social Bookmarking - Getting your sites content to travel and propagate is a key factor to getting popular. And what more could be better than social bookmarking? This is a best social bookmarking plugin I’ve seen in the recent times and the X number of them that’s been released.
  5. KB Linker - Extremely useful plugin. You know that internal linking is one of the best way to spread the Google juice and increase the authority and importance of pages. This plugin lets you to select a keyword and whenever there’s an occurrence of the word in your articles, a link can be automatically placed to the keyword. Use it to link to your articles and it increases the internal linking drastically.
  6. Kill supplemental results - There are more instances on Wordpress that increases the chances of supplemental results than you thought of. Homepages, Archives, articles the chances of getting supplemental results on a naked wordpress blog is higher. Use this plugin to decrease the chances in autopilot mode.
  7. Bunny’s Technorati tags - If you are looking for backlinks and traffic from Technorati blogs, you must have this plugin. I’m not a Technorati enthusiast, so I’ve not used them on this blog, but yes, I’ve tested it on other blogs and it works fine.

There are lot of SEO plugins available at the moment, but the truth is that you don’t have to use them all simultaneously. Many of them do the same purpose but some do one task better than other. In the above list, you can safely use all of them together without any clash while serving the purpose of SEO’ing Wordpress.

Now, that more or less completes the “Ordinary to Super blog” power tools that you need. But more importantly there are a few things that you should keep in mind or keep away from.

What you shouldn’t do to SEO your wordpress blog.

1. Say NO to Link Exchanges.
   Link exchanges are a waste of time. Unless you have a product that’s difficult to sell and get inbound links to like a P standing up thing, you really don’t have to do a link exchange. The links you acquire doing a link exchange is not really worth the effort as a one way link. So focus on your content and let the links come in because you have awesome content.
2. Avoid Wordpress themes that has lot of JS code especially in the first 50 lines.
   The first few lines of your blog when scanned by a crawler, is checked for vital information about your blog. Whether you have meta description tags or not, you need to have some information in the first few lines (speculated it’s 30, 50 and 100) of your code.
3. Do not tag one article in more than one category.
   It’s not a good idea to tag your article in more than one category. It is in a way fooling your readers and increases the chances of duplicate content. More info here.
4. Do not display the Archives links on the homepage OR use the Archives section.
   Archives increases the possibility of duplicate content. Either don’t use them or use the page specific meta tags to no follow/no index them. Headspace plugin can handle all this.
5. Do not use plugins that clash with each other.
   In the frenzy to get everything and not lose all, you install all the plugins only to find that nothing works out. I can give you an example. Using Headspace and Google XML Sitemaps with All in One SEO is not a good option. Especially if you are controlling the Robots.txt from Headspace, it tries to control Robots.txt, while All in One SEO too tried to write it. Which calls in a clash. So make sure you know what you are doing when installing plugins that serve the same or similar purpose. The best way out would be to have an in depth look into all the details and monitor what’s happening.

I hope I’ve covered all the bare essentials to SEOing your wordpress blog. If you follow the above steps, I can guarantee you that you’ll have great platform to blog. Now, it depends on what you write and how good you write that will decide how your ranks are on the SERPs. That’s something you should learn yourself, I don’t think anyone can train you on it although can give you pointers on concepts like keyword research and copy writing.

P.S - You’ll find numerous articles on the net googling for “SEO wordpress” but many of them were written long ago and does not reflect the new ideas and concepts pf the trade, which is what made me write this article. Hope it helped.

Is that a new term you heard? Dangling pages?

It probably got popularized by Andy more than anyone else, and I think there is some sense in the concept.

Dangling pages can be described as -

Links that point to any page with no outgoing links.

And according to Google’s docs -

They affect the model because it is not clear where their weight should be distributed, and there are a large number of them. Often these dangling links are simply pages that we have not downloaded yet……….Because dangling links do not affect the ranking of any other page directly, we simply remove them from the system until all the PageRanks are calculated. After all the PageRanks are calculated they can be added back in without affecting things significantly.” - extract from the original PageRank paper by Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page

A better description is also over here

OK, so Dangling pages are the ones that -

- updateAre not accessed by traffic/users
- Does have incoming links to it.
- Does not link to any page internally/externally.
- Does not carry any weightage what so ever.

Let me clarify something. Dangling pages are not the same as supplementary pages. Supplementary pages are a different scenario probably because they have the least importance in comparison to other pages on a website. They may pass juice and links. They get indexed but are not shown on the normal search index, while dangling pages may be shown.

When I worked with Alamy.com they had almost 60% of their individual HTML pages in the Supplementary Index, which were not preferred to be shown on the normal search index by Google. But none of them were Dangling pages. They all had severe interlinking done, and sometimes even relished links from outside.

But there were dangling pages too. There were pages and files in the live site, that were never used or linked to. They probably were installed for testing purposes and later not used. But they were indexed and Google thought they were scrap.

It could happen to your site too. In blogs, it is highly unlikely that there are dangling pages unless you have a poor template and a very poor linking system.

How to avoid dangling pages in a blog?

• Interlink pages as much as possible.
• Let there not be a page that does not link to any other page internally or externally.
• Let there be a universal navigation bar or linking structure that will ensure that even the most unimportant page get’s into the linking network.

So essentially, dangling pages are not good for your site/blog. Remove them or reduce their occurrences. Sometimes even an important page can be mistaken for a dangling page if the navigation structure fails to update the links.

Have you thought about it? If yes, this article is for you, if not quit at once.

When I first started a blog on a blogspot account, I was in a very bad shape, to be honest.
Just like you, I was in the learning phase of the blogging phenomena.
I picked a free template, tweaked it a bit to suit my preferences, and added all the possible plugins.
And when someone told me that content is the king, I wrote content daily. As anybody’s guess I struggled to find content. I’ll list down the things that really bothered me at the time of blogging.

• Content
  - Somebody would’ve already blogged about the content that I thought writing of.
  - It was difficult to write long paragraphs about something very silly.
• Audience
  - No comments
  - Confused over who I’m writing to.
• Returns
  - No incoming money.
  - No appreciation.

Content was the major concern. When people told that you should find traffic rich keywords, I found it difficult to write on “Mesothelioma” and “Asbestosis”. And when I managed to find some interesting topics, others would’ve already blogged about it and it would dishearten me.To top it up, even when I wrote about some topics that I was comfortable about, there wouldn’t be any response from the readers (if at all there were any). I think it’s a phase all young bloggers go through when they start blogging. Despite all this events, it was not an easy task to climb up the ladder.

But, down the line, there are some things that I think worked out in making the blog a success. And let me be honest with you, there is no rocket science involved. To bring you all that in a capsule form, here goes.

• Content is not the king. Consistency is.
  Well, content might be. But I think being consistent in delivering articles to your readers plays a more important part than the content itself.
• There is no topic on steroids. Your passion in your steroid.
  You don’t need to write on mesothelioma and asbestosis. You write from your head but make sure you have the dedication and passion all the way. It shines through.
• You will or cannot make everybody happy.
  Success doesn’t mean that you will make everyone happy. A more important thing is to make everyone talk about you. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t something that you need to work towards but something that comes along.
• Nor will you get followers overnight.
  Followers doesn’t exist. It’s a wrong term. What I’d be interested to know is, the number of people whom you managed to develop an interest in.
• Success does not come with money.
  Success isn’t money. It’s the measure of how close you are to your personal goals. This is my personal perspective, it should differ for you.

So there you go, all that blogging taught me in three years in a capsule form.

The point I’m trying to make here is that, blogging is a profession/career/hobby/whatever that is very slow in delivering results. It’s probably not for the stock broker kind who wants a return the very next day. It climbs slowly and steadily. Yes, the returns are there but it comes as a surprise and you can never invite it to you. Sweet isn’t it?

Have you ever had the chance of having a traditional Indian meal ? For the Indian readers, this question is irrelevant but for the rest of the world, this article might be interesting and mouth watering at the same time.

The (grand) Indian meal is pretty popular, particularly the south Indian one. Once, a foreign friend of mine who had the chance to have one jokingly said, that the thali itself reminded him of the solar system model he learned at school. Huh? He said, the rice is the sun (being at the middle), and there are lot of planets and their satellites revolving around it making it look almost like a solar system.

Well, I’d agree him on all points except that, in the traditional Indian meal, eating the sun won’t burn you, but the curries (the satellites) may, they are very spicy.

Having said that, I think there’s lot of points in common between having an Indian meal and blogging.

1. Template.
   In blogging, it is essential that you have a cool template, good enough to get the attention of the reader. Similarly, in the meals, there’s the template - the plantain leaf. A plantain leaf is used instead of a plate, which must be large enough to carry all the ingredients well.
   Similarity - 80%.
2. Starters.
   In both blogging and the meal, there are the starters. In blogs they are the headers and above the fold stuff. If the starter is good both the meal and the blog is enjoyable. In the meal the starters are placed “above the fold” and also in the blog.
   Similarity - 99%
3. Main course.
   And there’s the main course which is rice and the curries. In the blog, there are the articles in different categories. Having a good main course fulfills your hunger, be it a blog or the meal.
   Similarity - 99.7%
4. Dessert.
   In the meals, there is a always something sweet at the end. It normally would be “payasam”. And in blogging, there are the comments. Comments, though not always sweet, is definitely a dessert!
   Similarity - 59%
5. Addiction.
   Both the meal and blogging is addictive! If you taste it once, whenever you think of one, your mouth starts watering and you can’t get rid of it. Everyday, new tastes, new flavors, a whole new meal !
   Similarity - 70%
6. Widgets.
   In the blog you have the widgets to spice you your blog. Like the Lijit widget or the Mybloglog widget, and in a meal, you have the pickles and banana chips that sits alongside the main template , though very small, adding to the spice of the blog.
   Similarity - 85.6%
7. SEO and the thali meal.
   A thali meal is very much like doing a search engine optimization on your blog. As you know, in SEO, there are some procedures that has to be done methodologically in order to put yo in good shape. Like the keyword saturation and onsite optimization procedures. In an Indian meal, the order of serving the meal is really important. First, the spicy pickle, then some banana chips, then some curries, then the rice, then the sambhar(spicy curry), then the next set of curries!
   It sounds more or less similar right? If you mix up the order neither the meals is enjoyable nor the blog. You have to serve every ingredient in the same proportion.

   SEO - Keyword density - You sprinkle the keywords here and there to meet the right density.
   Meals - Salt - You sprinkle the salt to meet the right density.

   SEO - You make sure that the template is search engine friendly by ensuring a standard three column template with a proper header and footer.
   Meals - The template (plantain leaf) is very much like the template with the header to one side and the footer(tapering end) to another.

Seven reasons to think that an Indian meal is similar to blogging - there you have it. Now, some of the points may sound bizzare, but if there’s at least a 50% similarity that you found, I’d be happy!

These days, importance is given to link building than anything else in SEO metrics. Out of the various factors considered today as must have’s for SEO, link building stands out. At the forums and discussion boards, there is always someone who’s looking for outsourced SEO’s who can work on link building for their site. Many are preferring cheap SEO’s too. Hmm, though it looks murky, I’m not of the opinion that link building should be outsourced to any cheap SEO.

If you take a look around, you’ll see that out of all the bloggers, only a few say less than 10% even consider outsourcing link building. The majority of them handle it themselves. And they are good at it. May be there’s something you can learn here.

1. Link building is not tough as it seems like.
You have no clue why your site is getting a better PR, or a better position. That doesn’t mean that your link building campaigns, if at all any, has gone wrong.
Probably it means that you’re not doing it right. I’ll get to some tips of how to do link building successfully down the article.

2. Link building is not easy as it seems like.
Having said that, it’s not something everyone can focus on. Many of us do a one man job at the site, writing content, tweaking template etc. In between all this, link building goes out of focus and remain down the priority list.

3. Link building is not about commenting and directory submission alone.
Many of us count link building practices limited to directory submission and commenting. Well, honestly that’s only 10% of the whole process. There is a whole lot more in link building. Let’s see further.

Let’s clear some common mis conceptions about link building.

Last, day I asked a question, what are your link building methods?

And the common answer many agreed on was that - Exclusive content and natural linking will help you more than anything else. 

Josh Spaulding says that, since he deals with niche sites, he believes in natural linking though he submits his blog to directories.

Josh is right. If you have a niche site, and if you haven’t marketed in properly, it is highly unlikely that it will get noted by others and hence the link building will be fairly okay while not helping the site much. In such cases two things can help.

1. Directory submission and  2.Social Media Optimization.
If you submit the site to some quality directories, it is likely to get some attention and traffic(Not all does give it, you have to chose wisely).It would help you get some Google juice atleast, again it’s only a better alternative to waiting for your content to get noticed.

Social Media Optimization is the thing! If you are clever enough to create a remarkable(in the right sense of it’s meaning) article, which is likely to get noted by others, then things happen really quick! People notice your blog and favour it with links. Just what we wanted.

Nitin Pai is of the opinion that, natural linking is the best way to get links.

Here too, the uncertainty in when you will get the incoming links and attention is something that will put us off.Again, SMO will help you out here.

Rajan and Mohan is also of a similar opinion. They say that the content itself will bring you links if it’s exclusive.

So what we can learn from this discussion is that taking into consideration, the uncertainty and ambiguity in waiting for the spotlight to feature your content, taking a step forward and creating those killer, viral articles optimized for the social media, would help you more than anything else in building links.

• Agreed that content is king and exclusive content will bring you natural links but optimizing your site for the social media is the right weapon to hunt for links. It’s a fool proof strategy. Waiting for natural links to come is vague.
• Links from commenting does not help you get a higher page rank.
  I heard some one say that he builds couple of links a day through commenting to ensure that his page rank is better the next update. It’s a wrong idea. Commenting on blogs can only bring you traffic, and backlinks on Yahoo and MSN but not Google, unless if the blog is “Nofollow” free.
• Links from forums don’t help you at all.
  I know many of you will disagree with me on this. I can explain.
  Just answer the following questions and you will agree with me.

  - How many links can you gather from a forum?
  - If you are getting signature links at a forum, many others would. Isn’t it?
  - If all of us link to our sites from one single forum (or as many which provides sig links), wouldn’t Google put them all in one bracket ?
  - What’s that you’ll get from a forum that other’s don’t?

  Do you get my point now? From my experience, if you rely solely on forum links, they don’t give you any exclusivity at all. If you know of a forum that allows signature links, probably everyone will. Though it carries some weight, when everyone starts getting incoming links from common domains, they does not give you that edge over others. This is more applicable in the case of sites that fight for positions on the SERPs. For the small time amateur blogger, who just needs an incoming link for the sake of it, it works fine.

So the point here is that, handling link building campaigns yourself may not give you the desired effect because you are not specialized in it. But if you are very clever, there’s nothing stopping you. From my experience, hiring a so called “cheap SEO” doesn’t serve the purpose if you are looking for quality links. Many of them I know rely on forum links, directory submissions and at the most article submission. Beyond all these traditional methods, I’ll rank Social Media Optimization as the right weapon. If you can find someone who’s good at it, he can give you quality links than a cheap SEO. Remember, links are not just about numbers, it’s also about quality. Fifty incoming links from forums/directories is equal to five quality contextual incoming links.

We all love his themes, they are simplistic, elegant and classy. I love them for their versatility and user friendliness while some claim that they are easy to tweak and clean by code. Well, Sadish is a software professional in the US. He’s a very popular wordpress designer more so for his simple and clean wordpress themes that every blogger would love to pick up. I’ve been using his themes for a couple of websites, and I’d love to recommend them for young bloggers.

I managed to do an interview with the man. I must that him for finding time out for us, amidst his busy like crazy world. Here goes -

Sadish, I’ve read that you take up WP designing as a hobby. So, what are you professionally?

I am a software engineer by profession and I develop intranet web applications using Microsoft.NET technology for a corporate client in New Jersey.

OK, So since when did you start designing?

Actually I am not a designer by profession. I like coding and that is what I am good at. I jumped into designing when I had my site at Xanga.com in 2002. I started tweaking the site to suit my needs and that is when I got introduced into templates and CSS. I downloaded and played with many free templates on the web and I just started learning stuff by trial and error.
Then I helped one of my friends to find a free template for his website and I also helped him in tweaking it for his requirements. He reciprocated with an year of ASP hosting with the domain “sadish.net” registered for me. That was the starting point.

Interesting. Why do you like WP theme designing?

This is really hard to answer. The simple answer could be “because I feel so comfortable with it”. I have tried several other alternatives before settling on WordPress and I feel much comfortable with installing and customizing WordPress.
WordPress is developed with “the end user in mind”. If you look at the features on every new version, you would clearly know that the development team is listening to the people’s needs. The other thing is, testing of any changes you make to the theme, takes just two seconds. You don’t need to compile anything. You open up any theme file and edit and save it. That’s all you have to do.

Your WP designs are strikingly simple and quick loading. Is this deliberate?

Basically I love simple designs for use on my website. I never created a theme which I would not use for my own site. In fact, many of the themes that I share now are originally created for my own use. The other reason is that I want the user to be able to take the theme and tweak it for his needs. If the theme is more graphics oriented, then it is less customizable by the end user. Customizing the theme is a lot of fun, and I do not want to keep all of that within myself let other people also have the fun.

OK Now a question my readers would love to hear you answer.
Do you think bloggers can make money online?

Yes, definitely. But you should never start your blog with the motive of making the money. It really spoils the things you write on your blog. Just pick up a niche area that you are specialized with and start blogging for the fun of sharing it with the community. You might start with a small set of people, but once people know your passion for blogging, the community will get bigger and then you could be making money online without even realizing you are making it.

So, how much money do you make online by selling WP themes?
You think people can make money by selling WP Themes?

Yes they can. Actually there are people selling their WP Theme for $100 and such. While it is definitely possible to make good money, it also takes a lot of patience and commitment to keep things rolling.
Sometime back, Small potato wrote these tips http://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/11/27/premium-theme-buying-tips/ for people buying a premium theme. I suggest this list to anyone trying to sell WP themes.
You should also be on top of the future WP releases and make sure your theme is compatible with and supports the new features with each release.

Are you into any other money making ventures?

Not right now. I only make money by selling WP themes and by selling text-link-ads on my sites.
There is a potentially huge market for “theme customization projects”, and I get many of those offers through my contact form, even though I said “I am not available for such projects” right at the top of the contact page. If I am not working on the day job, I would have taken many of such offers, but unfortunately I can not.
If one of your visitors is capable of taking such projects, I can gladly forward the projects that I can not take.

Tel me something about your new e-book? What is it and who is it for?

Actually I wanted to make it a printed book, but the process of getting it into print is time consuming.
Also the problem with getting such a book printed is that the content will become out-dated in a few months as newer versions of WP are released.
It is basically a “Do it yourself” kind of book, where a fairly knowledgeable person can read the book and customize his website. It is not a tutorial for creating a new theme, but it will offer useful tips and tricks for an intermediate to advanced user. You can read the first few chapters at http://wpthemetips.com

And, what is your advice to young designers?

1. Get a local installation of WP on your machine. Installing XAMPP will help for Windows developers and MAMP if you are a Mac user. This will be a good playground for building and testing the themes.
2. Play with various WP themes, preferably themes that are done by different people.
3. Spend some time at the support forums like http://wordpress.org/support/ and if possible, help other people solve
their issues.

What is the future according to you in designing as a career?

As I mentioned earlier, there is a huge potential for theme customization projects and if you are ready to take up such challenges, you will grow a lot. Remember, “one happy customer” will lead to more happy clients.

So there you have it. I must confess for not asking him more design related issues out there but it’s in the bloggers interest that I asked more about online money making. Hope you all enjoyed it. Get Sadish’s WP themes here.

What’s common between Bloggingfingers, Cashquests, 5xmom, and Blotrepreneur.com?

Yep, you guessed it right. They are all “Make money online” blogs, and that they are all on sale/or sold already!

So, it’s a fact that all are eyeing on the big money and short term goals and dumping all the blame on “personal reasons”. I thought this might be the right time to discuss about things to look into when buying a website.

Honestly, I’m no authority to discuss this. I can probably give you a lecture on SEO aspects one should look into before buying a domain, but I thought it might make more sense to get advices from experts in the domain.

I went around asking all the experts about their opinions on things to watch out for before buying a blog. Let’s see.

1. Chris Garret from ChrisG says -

The main thing I would look for are verifiable details of the traffic and subscriptions. What you don’t want to find is you have bought a site thinking it gets 20k visitors a month only to see that 99% of the traffic is from one or two front page diggs and all the links disappear because they were rented.
Also be cautious of earnings claims, get details. A lot of sales show monthly earnings based on one-off affiliate deals, like new product launches, negotiated commission deals you could not continue yourself, or things Google is clamping down on such as selling links and paid reviews.

2. Daniel from DailyBlogTips says - 

The first thing you need to consider is what kind of content is going on that blog. Blogs that publish too much personal stuff lose a point here. You must make sure that the readers go to that blog because they are looking for the usefulness of the information there contained, and not because they like the opinions or style of the author. If that is the case it would be very hard to keep the momentum of the blog going after the sale.
The second aspect is the monetization one, given that many of these blogs that go on sale claim that they make good money. Make sure that the revenue sources are stable and legit. If they have direct advertisers, for instance, it would be a good idea to confirm that they would stay on board even after the sale (just ask the contacts and talk to them directly). Be careful with blogs that used to generate money via PayPerPost and similar as well, because that source is not stable.

3. Amit Agarwal from Labnol, suggests -

1. Check for any traces in the archive.org database
2. Check if google ads are not banned (through Adsense preview tool)
3. Ask for raw server logs before closing the deal

4. Emma Jean from Blog about your blog says -

If I was to purchase a site I would want to know about the history. How long its been established and if the domain has ever been dropped. If its been dropped and has a PR it could be affected the next update. Therefore the value isn’t as high.
As you can see with the recent sales of blogging fingers and cashquests is the branding and the blog. People know them just by the name.. “Oh Cash Quests ya that blog is about etc.”
The most important thing I would consider is the ability to expand and earn. If you are buying a site and must pay 10 months revenue, you want to be able to earn back your investment. If you can’t it’s essentially a waste.

5. Patrick Altoft from Blogstorm says -

1. I would want access to the sites Google Analytics account. If that wasn’t possible I wouldn’t buy.
2. Also I would check as many pages as possible from archive.org to see if the site sold links or anything in the past.
3. Check every page on the site and every link using Yahoo Site Explorer.

6. Mohsin Naqi from Bloggingbits says -

Essentially, I’ll give top consideration to the blog’s niche and its earning potential before checking domain’s age, its  google and Alexa rank, and other similar factors.

7. Ankesh Kothari from BlogClout says -

 * Current cash flow.  Is the site profitable?  $$ it earns.  Followed with: page views / unique visitors it gets.  Subscribers / members it has. 
 * Future potential.  Whats the current strategy of the website.  Is the seller selling because of some impending legal / technical reasons or maybe because of increasing competition?  Can I improve upon the strategy and the business model?  How much time, effort and money will go into it?  Will the site work without its current owner?
The price I would pay is 6-8 times the current monthly cash flow.  Plus $1-2 per subscriber.
This changes if the site also owns intellectual property (patents / exclusive softwares).  Also if the site sells a tangible product and I have to buy its inventory too.
I don’t look at the site age.  Or the participation on it.  Or its page rank or alexa rank or any such 3rd party ranking that has no effect on the bottom line. 
Google backlash comes under future potential - which I check for (For eg: if a blog whose business model upto this point has been earning via payperpost only - then I would think about buying it.  And go for it only if its price is lower than I would otherwise pay for it.).

8. Monika Mundell from Writer’s Manifesto says -

For starters I would look at the following stats:

Alexa ranking
Google page rank
Age of the blog
Active Subscribers
Blog Layout (is it designed to display ads effectively)

If the blog doesn’t qualify through this I will not go further. It would be silly to think that buying a so called established blog with no rankings and no subscribers will be justified. If the blog qualifies, then I will apply some deeper scrutiny, such as looking for income revenue. If the blog currently provides the owner with a monthly income either via adsense, direct advertising, pay per click or anything else, then my first point of evaluation would be how much income there is per month. If the sales price exceeds the blogs monthly earnings x 24, then it would be considered too expensive or over ambitious.
Example: Blog currently earns $400 of monthly revenue.
$400 x 24 months = $ 9,600 then this figure is the maximum I would pay.
Also another important step is to look at the current spending habits of the blog owner to get those $400/month. Naturally if the cost is considerably high, I would keep my fingers from it. One kind of blog I would never buy is a self branded name blog. Buying an established blog can be a great decision for any serious entrepreneur. But we mustn’t forget that the future growth of the blog will only happen if we choose the right niche for us and keep the blog
updated. It is no good spending $10,000 on a dog blog if we intend to write about cats in the future.

9. Kevin from BloggingTips suggests -

1 ) With regards to traffic. You need to see as many stats as possible. Ask for screen prints of analytics, webalizer, awstats and any other stat scripts the current owner is using. You should of course be interested in the current level of traffic however more importantly you need to look at where this traffic is coming from.

   * If a lot of traffic is coming from other sites the owner owns then you need to ask if these links will remain up after the sale and if so, for how long. Likewise, if traffic is coming from an advertising campaign, when does the advertising campaign end?

  * Has a lot of traffic come from social networking - eg. digg. If so, you should bear in mind that these traffic spikes were most likely due to the blog owner working hard to get posts dugg and unless you do something similar yourself you wont receive traffic in this way

  * What sort of search engine presence does the site have? What sort of keywords and search terms are bringing in the most traffic? Can you improve the SE presence the blog has?

2) The most important thing you need to pay attention to is how many subscribers the blog has but I believe it’s also worth checking out the growth of the feed. An easy way to check this is to view the feedburner feed graph. Big jumps in subscribers may have been of a result of an advertising campaign or even a guest post. It’s worth noting how much the feed count grows on a ‘regular day’.

3) Make sure that the income stats the blog owner is giving you are true. Try and get as much proof as you can. Many website owners exaggurate how much money their site makes in order to make more money from the sale. This is something which is unfortunately very common. Another important factor is how is the advertising generated. Does the blog make money from direct ad sales or through a CPM ad network etc?

You should also find out how long the blog has been live and how long the domain has been live on the net (sometimes not the same) and you should think about the design of the blog - are you happy with it? If not, how long would you spend working on a new theme, or, if your not a designer, how much would it cost to get a design which suits the blogs needs.

Finally, it’s worthwhile doing a background check on the seller. Check the previous posts from the seller - is he a trusted member of the forum community? Has he sold before - if so, what did the previous buyer think about them as a seller.

10. Skellie from Skelliewag.org says -

My primary concern would be that the content is transferable or not. Sometimes a blog and its author are virtually inseparable, and people visit and subscribe as much for the author’s experiences, advice, personality and style as they do for other aspects of the content. A blog like that(with strong personal style) may well flounder if it’s handed over to new authors.
Site age wouldn’t matter much to me. Some people take three months to grow as much as another blogger might grow in a year. PPP would actually devalue a site as far as I’m concerned as it’s not something I’d personally want to pursue. As for Google backlash, I’d want to take over a site with high quality inbound links but wouldn’t be bothered about PR and that sort of thing.

So essentially, there are a few things in common that’s interesting.

10 things that you must check in a website/blog before buying it.

1. Traffic is stable or not
2. Had there been a Digg effect recently?
3. Was the blog thriving because of the authors personal branding?
4. Get the detail report of their earnings. Make sure it’s not PPP or any affiliate sales.
5. Contact the existing advertisers to see if they will continue the ads if you buy the site.
6. Make sure the site hadn’t got a backlash from Google because of PPP or text link ad sales.
7. Check if Google ads are banned.
8. Check in archive.org for recent drop in Google ranks (PR drop).
9. Monitor traffic and cash flow for a longer period than specified.
10. Check if you are comfortable with the blog Niche and there’s future potential to it.

Some SEO aspects you must check before buying a blog/website(Just my two cents).

1. Age of the domain, from Archive.org. If the niche is promising, then you can compromise on the age, but the more the age, the better.
2. Incoming links on Google, Google blog search and Technorati. The more the merrier.
3. Quality of incoming links - Are they bought from link farms or are they genuine from blogger’s review?
4. Recent Google backlash? Google page rank drop?
5. Had the site offered PPP and paid text links?
6. Outgoing links - Does it link to malicious sites(mainly from the sidebar/footer)?
7. Content has duplicate content or not?
8. Has it got supplemental results on the SERPS? The less the better.
9. The frequency of posts to links ratio. An even ratio is better.
10. Spiderability of the site. Test with a spider simulation test to see if the contents are poperly seen by Google, or else you may have to go for a template change.

If you had been knowing the website for too long all this factors won’t really matter, but if you can probably negotiate with the seller if you find something interesting here on the above factors.

So there you have it! All the factors you must check before buying a blog. Hope they are also useful for bloggers who plan to sell their sites. Because you heard it from the experts.

I’ve been repeatedly emphasizing the importance of a professional looking theme for your blog in some of my recent posts and I really mean it.

When I see amateur themes on blogspot hosted blogs, it’s very disturbing because they all have great content, but due to their not-so good theme, they fail to attract visitors. ANd very often, they have all the plugins and widgets loaded to the side bars which just stick out and spoil the whole show.

Even if you can’t afford a custom webdesign, using a good looking, no frills, no nonsense theme can do the trick!

And, more than just attracting people, templates can do a lot more to your blog.

• It shows how authoritative your blog is.
  With a professional looking, standards based, valid markup theme, any visitor gets an impression in the first look itself, that the blog carries some authority.
• It shows how dependable you are.
  A not so good looking blog cannot convince the reader of it’s information authenticity while a good looking blog can.
• It shows how organized you are.
  In real life you may be a very disorganized person, but when it comes to your blog, your readers would want you to be one, because the information you have presented should make sense. Having a good theme shows how organized you are in terms of the information you have on your blog.
• It shows how much you value your visitors
  A visitor can easily judge form the first visit on your blog, whether you have taken the pain to arrange things for readers benefit or not. If you not have, you might have a bad theme, but if you really think your readers should read the information you have, you probably should use a good theme.
• It brands your blog.
  With that unique design, readers can instantly associate with you visually. Although this is more appropriate for custom design blogs, you can definitely make an impression with a free blog design as well.

I would certainly give more weightage to having a professional looking theme, along with having great content, as the two factors that will decide the success and popularity of your blog to anything else. And I strongly recommend all the blogspot users and wordpress free users to go for a good professional looking theme if they want people to read their blogs regularly and remember them.

I’m not trying to promote custom design themes here at all.  It is not necessary to have a custom design for your blog, you can very well manage to have a good impression with a free blog theme (like this one). You may have to tweak the CSS and styles a little bit to make it distinct, but that little effort will count much, believe me.

Well, if you need any further proof on this. I’m a good example I think. DailySEOblog had the new design implemented on October 27th and see the impact it as made in terms of reach and readership.

Well, some of that hike you see there in Oct start is due to SearchCamp, but the second hike you see is sure due to the new design. I had also seen a huge increase in the number of comments too with the new design. It was almost 200%, and I’m happy with it.

Here is the list of 10 must have plugins for bloggers using windows live writer users. These tools will help your blogging experience better. They are all helpful to reduce your blogging time, reduce the number of steps before publishing a post, and reduces the number of applications you have to use to write an article.

Using these plugins to the new windows live writer will help you to do almost all your regular blogging activities from live writer itself and will save your time.

1. Screen Capture tool
   This plugin will help you to take screenshots from your PC, you suggest. Works fine like the “Print Screen” option, but more effective and manageable. Now no need to run Photoshop side by side, when you blog. This is particularly useful when you are reviewing an application and blogging side by side.
2. Screenshot/Thumbnail creator of a website
   This plugin will help you create a thumbnail of another website that you suggest. Just give the URL and it gives you the full page screenshot/thumbnail of that webpage. Now no need to take screen shots and join pieces together.
3. Insert images from Flickr
   Many of the bloggers upload images to flickr and picasa, hotlinking it from there, so that you save on bandwidth ad save from the “Digg Effect”. But it has always been a tedious task to upload the image, copy the URL etc. Now do it all from WLW. Give your user name and this plugin will show all the images from this user name, just like how flock shows it’s media window. Just drag and drop your required image and you are done!
4. Insert your BOX.net files to your post
   Just like the image insertion from flickr, this plugin allows you to insert your Box.net files form a small box to your article. Simple as a drag and drop. No issues and time waste!
5. A simple De.li.cio.us plugin
   That will help you to incorporate delicious tags to your post. A must have if you are a delicious fan.
6. Technorati plugin
   A tiny plugin that will help you to add technorati tags to your articles. Simple and easy to use, but very effective in getting relevant traffic to your blog.
7. Insert Youtube or Google Videos to your post
   Another powerful tool that saves lot of your time by helping you insert a Youtube or Google video into your post.
8. Save typing the same link over and over again
   With this teeny weeny plugin, yo can save a lot of time, as it keeps in memory your previous links and next time when you use the same anchor text, it suggests you a previous link.
9. Save on typing the same text again and again
   Just like the link saver, this plugin helps you same time by not typing the same text over and over again. For example, a subscribe to RSS feed, link or reminder text that you use at the end of every article can be stored in a template file and called up any time during the post. 
10. Picasa Image plugin
    With this plugin you can easily insert images you have in your Picasa Web Albums into your blog. You are able to upload new images into existing albums or create new albums.

So there you have it. 10 most powerful plugins for improving your your blogging efficiency. NOw, there’s one plugin I wish was available, the All in One SEO pack.