For example, imagine I want to control my name “Jack Smith.” I’d not only run a blog at randfishkin.com, but I’d also strongly consider starting a cooking blog or a sports blog or a travel blog at randfishkincooks.com or the like. Yes, it will take work to set it up, author some real content and build up a web profile for the new domain, but if I can tie it to something I already do and love sharing, the references will come fast and furious.

Be sure, when doing this, to leverage your existing network for blogroll links and share via Twitter/Facebook/etc. You’ll be surprised how friends, family and business contacts will come out the woodwork to link to your new property.

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 Imagine installing a new, untested WordPress plugin directly inside your hosted, live web server, just to find out that it screw the whole blog? Imagine another situation – switching to a new WordPress theme just to find out that it doesn’t work nicely with your favorite WordPress plugins? There is a way to solve all of this problem – by doing all of the above in a test environment, accomplished by having a nice WordPress setup mimicking your live server, inside your own local PC .

Steps to Install WordPress on a Local Apache Web server

1- Make sure you have installed Apache web server with PHP and MySQL support. If you have not yet done so, you can follow my Windows guides regarding Apache and PHP Installation. Rest assured that my guides passed the basic requirements needed to run WordPress (PHP 4.2 or greater + MySQL 4.0 or greater).

2- Download the latest WordPress zip package from here.

3- Start your Apache and MySQL service. Make sure you can access your locally setup homepage.

4- You need to create a MySQL database for WordPress. In this guide, I use PhpMyAdmin (find out how to install PhpMyAdmin). Login to your PhpMyAdmin (or any software that you use) and create a MySQL database with a name of your choice (I choose “wp”).

5- Make sure your “wp” database was successfully created. Example:

7- Extract the downloaded WordPress zip package to your Apache root directory. If you follow my guide, the path is C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs\ . This will create a “wordpress” folder inside the “htdocs” directory.

8- (optional) You can rename the “wordpress” folder to anything. Some people changed it to “wp” or “blog” so their blog address will be “http://<hostname>/blog” or “http://<hostname>/wp” instead of http://<hostname>/wordpress .

9- Open your WordPress folder (wordpress / wp / blog ), copy wp-config-sample.php to a new file called wp-config.php. I changed mine to “blog”.

10- Edit wp-config.php with any text editor e.g. Notepad. Change the things that I have marked out in bold. Don’t forget to save the file afterwards.

define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘your-wordpress-database-name‘); // The name of the database
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘root‘); // Your MySQL admin username used to manage the database above
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘root-user-password‘); // …and password
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value
define(‘DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);
define(‘DB_COLLATE’, ”);

11- Fire-up your web browser. Type in your web server name plus your WordPress setup path (http://<your-webserver-name/blog/wp-admin/install.php), for example:

http://www.syahid.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php

Remember! “blog” can be “wordpress” or “wp” depending on what you put on step 8. Default is “wordpress”.

12- If the previous step was successful, you will be shown a WordPress initial start page. Click “First Step“.

13- Insert your Weblog title and your email account. Don’t worry, both are changeable after setup. Click the big, bold “Continue to Second Step” button.

14- You will be given an initial password to access your blog account. Copy it somewhere safe. You will need it later. Click the “wp-login” link to access your WordPress login page.

15- Enter “admin” as Username and the “password given to you before” as Password. Obviously, click the “Login” button afterwards.

16- You had successfully installed WordPress if you get a page similar to the picture shown below.

17- You can view your initial blog with the not-so-wonderful default theme by clicking on the “View Site” link.

18- Don’t forget to change your password! To do so, click “Users” –> “Authors and Users”. Then select “admin” by ticking the box under “ID” and click the “Edit” button.

19- Enter the new password of your choice TWICE and click “Update User“. Test your password by logging out of WordPress and log in again with the new password.

You have successfully installed and run WordPress on Apache web server locally! Now you can mimic your live WordPress site by installing a similar WordPress theme, plugins and more. The next time a wonderful themes or plugins seems relevant to your blog, safely test it on your local WordPress server before applying it live on the Internet. Better be safe than sorry!

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Previously third-party commenting platforms like Disqus or Facebook comments are implemented in JavaScript – which is not visible to search engines – making it difficult for your pages to get any SEO juice from the comment section.

Today Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, confirmed that the Googlebot – the search software that crawls webpages – now has the ability to “execute AJAX/JavaScript to index some dynamic comments.” This means that web publishers with a Facebook Connect-enabled commenting system will begin noticing comments appearing in search results.

It’s now more important than ever to manage your comments. This update could bring more traffic to your site through search queries, but it also means that everything said within the comments will show up in your site’s results as well. It’s especially important to monitor spam. It’s still unclear if Google will go back and index older comments.

Currently it appears that Livefyre and Disqus are the only other comment platforms with the ability to be indexed by Google. If you’re using either, it’s time to start paying extra attention to what’s being said in your comments.

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Bounce rates gives clues about your website design
High bounce rate possible causes:
     – an unattractive design
     – slow load time
     – unappealing music.

Bounce rates give clues about your pay-per-click accounts
High bounce rates possible causes:
     – click fraud
     – misleading keywords
     – misleading ads
     – link points to the wrong page (home page instead of wedding page)

Bounce rates give clues about directories
High bounce rate possible causes:
     – click fraud
     – unsuccessful directory

Bounce rates give clues about e-mail marketing
High bounce rate possible causes:
     – a misleading subject line/newsletter
     – a poorly written “blast”

What is the average bounce rate?
Upon looking at 30 different clients and their bounce rates for given campaigns, we find the following averages:

     Pay-Per-Click Accounts      42%
     Directories                       27%
     E-mail Blasts                    32%
     All Campaigns Together*    37%

What can you do?

If your bounce rate is higher than average, use this information to your advantage. While there will always be people surfing the web who click in and out of a website so quickly that they hardly see it load, refining your efforts can ensure that your site’s bounce rate hovers at a reasonable level. Pre-qualify site traffic with well written ads that lure those truly looking for what you have to offer, and hold their attention with an attractive and user-friendly website design.

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What are RSS readers? Basically, it’s a way to clump all your RSS feeds from various websites into one handy dandy little interface. Here are my picks for the top three RSS, or feed, readers on the Web:

 This video is the best explanation of RSS in plain english

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1. GO to the privacy button below once you locate yourself, and new window will open.
2. Type in the URL for your + email address and the code.
3. Go back to your email (Junk folder) and open the message.
4. Open the link that they have sent. THis will confirm your profile has been removed.
5. Then go to tools at the top, internet options and delete all the cookies so you can’t be tracked.
6. Once you’ve deleted yourself, begin to delete family members that show up on it. Then pass the info on to other friends so they can delete themselves. 
 
 
It’s a paid service so anyone really wanting to search for you can pay and it may provide real information about you.

It is basically  an online phonebook that has a picture of your house, credit score, profession, age, how many people live in the house. Remove yourself AND ANY AKA OR SPOUSE by the Privacy button on the bottom right. (passing along, scary stuff!) I have personally checked it out …. and it is really there!

Okay, here’s the deal. Spokeo.com is basically a search engine that aggregates information pertaining to individual names, email addresses, and phone numbers from online public sources such as phone books, real estate listings, and government records, plus profile entries from websites like Facebook, MySpace, Amazon.com, LinkedIn, Flickr, and many others (the Spokeo site lists upwards of 50 potential data sources).

To protect your personal data on social networking services, you must either refrain from providing it to sites like MySpace and Facebook in the first place, or adjust your privacy settings on each website accordingly. Also, if your phone number and address are listed in the White Pages, that information is publicly accessible online, as are some government records (accessibility varies by state) and real estate listings.

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 What’s Zen Cart?

Zen Cart™ is an open source e-commerce application written in PHP and using Mysql database. For more information on the project, features, etc. Zen Cart™ was orginally based on osCommerce code from June 2003 and has undergone rapid development since that time. It has released three major point releases, and over a dozen minor point releases. The current release is 1.3.8.

What’s osCommerce?

Zen Cart Features:

• Works on the popular combination of PHP and MySQL technologies.
• Secure – no one but your administrative personnel can access your customer/catalog data.
• Easy to install – our helpful installation program guides you easily through the setup process.
• User frontend is validated to XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
• Advanced template system using stylesheets and images.
• Any PHP coding changes can be protected during upgrades by using the built-in override protection system.
• Built in WYSIWYG page editor for modifying non-database pages.
• Advertising banners – show information about your business colleagues and track banner link activity. Banners can open in new windows so that customers never really leave your site.
• Meta tags keywords and descriptions can be controlled at the per-product level, all from the administrative interface.
• Developers toolkit helps quickly locate a setting or text string to be customized.
• Shipping options – multiple carriers are supported, including hold for pickup, free delivery in an area, and most major couriers and postal services.
• Customer access control – you can set up your shop to only allow customers access to pricing or pricing but not buying until after being authorized by an administrator. You can restrict them from browsing at all too, if desired.
• Automatic detection of search engine spiders.
• Intelligent generation of metatags content for search engines.

osCommerce Features:

• All features enabled by default for a complete out-of-the-box solution
• Object oriented backend (3.0)
• Completely multilingual with English, German, and Spanish provided by default
• Compatible with all PHP 4 versions
• Administration area secured with a username and password defined during installation
• Contact customers directly via email or newsletters
• Easily backup and restore the database
• Print invoices and packaging lists from the order screen
• Statistics for products and customers
• All orders stored in the database for fast and efficient retrieval
• Customers can view their order history and order statuses
• Customers can maintain their accounts
• Dynamic product attributes relationship
• HTML based product descriptions
• Automated display of specials
• Control if out of stock products can still be shown and are available for purchase
• Customers can subscribe to products to receive related emails/newsletters
• Flexible tax implementation on a state and country basis
• Set different tax rates for different products
• Charge tax on shipping on a per shipping service basis
• Weight, price, and destination based shipping modules
• Real-time quotes available (UPS, USPS, FedEx, ..)
• Free shipping based on amount and destination

In addition to this,

there is also wordpress e-commerce plug-in which has limited set of features which might be applicable for small business owner.

You can read more about that here

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The thing about article marketing is that it’s all about volume. If you’re only throwing in a couple articles a week you’re not really going to get anywhere.Article marketing is a great source for free traffic, but please remember that you need volume to see tangible results. Writing one or two articles will not really cause your traffic to spike up, you need to submit probably at least 3-4 daily over a few weeks to see appreciable results.

You don’t need stellar quality articles, just serviceable and easily read/understood ones that get your point across and have a strong call to action. You don’t need some masterpiece article, but you DO need to have a reasonable number of decent articles distributed throughout the web to generate a good level of traffic.

You need to write about 5 articles a day. If that is too much for you than try and start with 3 a day but jump up to 5 as soon as possible. The more the better again it’s all about volume.  Submit your articles to as many directories as you can.There are softwares that can automate this process but when you’re talking free you have to do it manually. It can be a bit time consuming but it’s worth it and once you make some dough you can get the automated software.

A lot of times directories won’t allow you to directly promote a product or service  so you will need to point your articles at some blogs that then point to your web page where your offer is.

Again, volume volume volume is everything here: If you do a search for something and the first ten results all pointto one web page or blog then you will automatically assume they are the authority on the subject, so will everyone else.

 Create a schedule for writing and submitting articles daily (or at least several times a week), and stick to it. You will see results over time if you do this, period!

Article marketing is a great source for driving traffic and  the more you can get out there the better your efforts will help you.

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Here are a few tricks we have used on YouTube for ourselves as well as for our customers to leverage YouTube successfully for marketing.

First thing is to clearly state your objective with the video. Are you looking to build brand recognition or is the video more of a direct sales demo? Being clear gets you more views.

You should also remember to keep it short, 3 minutes or less. If you have more to say make more than one video!

Once you get it up on YouTube one of the most critical things people forget to do is to add a description, tags and title that accurately describe the video and utilize as many keywords that people will use to find you. If you don’t do this you won’t be found!

Lastly, now that you’ve launched the video online. How do you let people know about it? All of those other social networks you listed are a great distribution place to start. Blogs, social networking sites (such as LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter) will help you extend the reach of your videos on YouTube. Where applicable, send bloggers a link to your video or comment on other people’s blogs and include a link to your video there, as long as it is relevant.

Most importantly, add the video to your website, make it part of your email marketing campaign, add a link to the video in your email signature, add it to your blog – if someone sees the video on YouTube and then views it again on your website…this only helps to increase your brand recognition.

These are just a few things we learned through trial and error.

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1. Don’t Make Posts frequently ( Post between the gap of 2 or 3 days).
2. Be Patient. Many new Bloggers do hard work for overnight successes, but if you look back in their archives, they’ve been creating content for a long time.
3. Be yourself. Just be yourself, don’t pretend to be anyone you’re not, and people will love you for it. I promise.
4. Take action every day. Just get one important thing done every day and eventually you’ll start getting traffic.
5. Find people with blogs at a similar level to yours and help each other out.
6. Be consistent. You don’t need to blog every day but try to stick to at least some sort of schedule.
7. Make your Blog easy to navigate.
8. Think Different , Do Different – Write what other Bloggers missed to write.
9. Avoid too many outbound external links.
10. Make your Text font attractive and readable.
11. Learn about your Competitor Blogs and Improve yourself.
12. Start a Post Series (which contain at least 5 or more posts).
13. Help & Guide other Blogs in your niche.
14. Don’t do copy of other Blogs. Do something unique.
15. Use Post excerpt in your homepage other than displaying whole post content

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