Category: Web Development

Complete Beginner’s Guide In Building Quality Backlinks
This article is written thanks to the latest Google update. Due to the Google update, more bloggers and webmasters are starting to understand the importance of quality backlinks.

So, what do you know about backlink?

According to Wikipedia, backlinks can easily be definite as incoming links to a website or a web page. Make any sense? See the picture below:

Backlinks can easily be defined as external links that is pointing back to a website or blog

People says a picture means a thousand words. What does the picture above implicates?

Don’t worry if you do not understand what backlinks are. Referring to the above, backlinks are links pointing back to a certain article, page or website. In the eyes of search engines, the more backlinks a website gets, the better the chances that the website is offering good content.

Quality backlinks means that those blogs or websites pointing to your sites are either established, well known and could have a good page rank all together.

Ways to build quality backlinks

When it comes to link building or building backlinks, there are only two very obvious methods which are the white hat and the black hat methods. Let’s do a quick recap on what both the above are, shall we?

Black hats SEO is basically building backlinks using the illegal method. Guess the word ‘˜black hat’ pretty obvious huh?

Black hats SEO methods consist of a variety of methods such as getting paid backlinks through .gov and .edu websites. In fact, there are many people who told me that why should bloggers bothers since by spending a little money, they are going to save months of hard work just to get a good page rank.

Personally, do I really want to pay for backlinks that do not guarantee me a good ranking that will stay? No thank you! I know how hard it is to build backlinks but trust me, I rather have 10 quality backlinks than 100 low quality backlinks.

White hats SEO on the other hand is…of course, doing things the opposite way compared to black hats. White hats SEO actually consist of months and years of hard work to build a network of strong backlinks with genuine websites.

Does this mean anything to search engines like Google? Yes indeed! Google themselves are updating their algorithm nearly every month nowadays and there will not be any sign for bloggers. For those who uses black hats SEO, I wish them all the best as it is going to be tough!

Building backlinks from scratch

When you talk about SEO, backlinks and stuffs, I definitely prefer doing it the right way. When it come to building good quality backlinks, it all takes not only effort but as well as, tons of patience.

Let’s assume you are brand new to this industry and you are definitely looking to start on the right path right? This is what I call the Golden Period for you to build great backlinks from scratch.

Assuming (one more) that you are looking into the blogging industry, you can easily build healthy bonds with other bloggers around the world thanks to social media and the various networking platforms.

Building backlinks from scratch will actually offer you a better chance not only to avoid any penalty slapped by Google but at the same time, keeping you in a very safe spot when it comes to future updates from Google. A little example is Google had an update around April – May 2013 and many bloggers are penalized due to using black hat SEO methods.

Of course of those bloggers who are using quality backlinks, some of them (not all) received a small boost of ranking in search engine result pages (SERPs).

Through my experience, the best way to increase the number quality backlinks back to your blog is by commenting on other blogs which are related to you. Yes, only blogs that are related to your topic!

Search engines such as Google has another algorithm which detects backlinks coming from low quality and non related blog topics. Are you ready to get ‘˜slapped’ for such as beginner mistake?

Link building method that works (guest post)

For me, this is probably the best way to increase links building to your blog. I read an article at TrafficGenerationCafe that we should focus a good deal of time in both our sites and other related blog sites.

That made me puzzled. I was wondering what she was talking about. Ana Hoffman’s simply quote actually made me thought of it. If I am going to write 100 quality articles on my website, who will be the readers? Where’s my market?

Basically my market is going to be:
- Myself 80%
- Friends and family 10%
- Crawlers 5%
- Lucky traffic 5%
As you can see the above, it is definitely not good right? So I decided to turn the table around and head towards this direction:
- Traffic 85%
- Crawlers 5%
- Others and myself 10%
Yes you got it right now! Having myself seeing my own blogs (with a whopping 80% traffic) isn’t going to generate me money or any money at all from my blogging. Of course, unless you can to perform click bombing on your sites then, I would have nothing to say!

Okay, the point is this. You want traffic coming from outside and you want search engine to tell readers that ‘Hey, this (blog name) is good!’. That’s what you want right?

So, the only and fastest way to build good traffic is by getting good articles up on your site first (make it 30, 50, 100 or more high quality articles). Once you are all done, head over to other blogging related sites and apply for guest posting.

If you think that is all, then you are wrong. The job doesn’t stop here but it has just started buddy!

Thinking of writing sub quality articles (or even worst spinned ones) and submit them to other blogging sites? Please don’t! Instead, writing really…really good articles and submit them.

You see, when you submit an article to these sites, they are going to promote for you. Remember that these blogs will not only be promoting your bloggings but also your website name and your reputation.

When it comes to guest posting, always do it 101% or don’t do it at all

Authority sites are a good source of quality backlinks for bloggers

Quality backlinks will bring many advantages to bloggers and webmasters.

When I started blogging, I knew ‘˜content is king’ and I was so focused to create quality articles on my blogs. Okay, you might have done this or even thinking of doing this. Let me tell you now. It won’t work!

I am not joking when I say that, writing quality content will not make you a magnet. Period!

If you want to build backlinks and even really good quality backlinks, then you need to write on authority sites.

Referring to the above, we had discussed on guest posting right? Yes, you are right buddy! Guest posting on various blogs can be considered authority sites.

Authority sites means selected websites which has a good page ranks as seen by search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. If you are able to write on authority sites and have a link back to your blog, you are going to have a very good chance of getting very good quality backlinks.

At the same time, you have to remember that one good quality backlinks can easily equivalent to 50 or 100 low quality links. So, bear in mind for that alright?

You will notice most authority sites has NoFollow attribute. Trust me when I tell you that they are still worth something!

Do not over do backlinking

When it comes to link building, I noticed a huge number of bloggers do the same mistake over and over again. Don’t worry as you are not alone. I had done that as well. When we over do our backlinks, there are few implications that may fall upon us.

For new sites, you might not be ready to take on so much traffic at one time. Too much backlinks pointing to your blog and search engine might consider you are using link farm services. Furthermore, if too many links are coming from low quality sites, your blog or website might easily get penalized.

Therefore, the biggest question now is, “Are you doing the right backlinking method for your blogs and websites?”

Tell what you think using the comment form below.

*If you like this article, could you please share this for me using the red Google+ button below?
December 21, 2023
5 Facts About Make Money Blogging You Must Know
I recently read an article published on Yahoo Finance that blogging is definitely not dead. From the way I see it, most people people think blogging is dead simply because they might not be able to make money blogging or even generating enough traffic to keep the website running. So yes, let me tell you a few very important principles you should know before you can actually earn your first dollar blogging.

*Disclaimer: You can find the link to Yahoo Finance here.

The term ‘˜make money blogging’ is indeed a very famous word in search engines. It doesn’t matter if you are full time or a part time blogger, all of us want to make money through blogging.

Let’s start by by asking ourselves the reason we create a blog. Those reasons can varies from making money online, blogging as a hobby and even expressing feelings towards the world. I love blogging because I love to share my ideas and experience with the world. It might cost me a few hundred a year just for blogging, but I really enjoy it.

Another important disclaimer: You can easily start a free blog without needing to spend a single penny (referring to what I just last said).

Before we sway too far off from our main goal today, here are some things you can definitely do to get the money rolling into your blog.

One thing for sure is that money is hard to earn

1. Blogging on things you really know
You will learn:
1. How to blog properly
2. How to blog a blogpost that attracts readers
I know this goes against the principles of many bloggers but it is true. If you want to blog, always make sure the content is genuine and rightful. I know many bloggers who thought they could make fast money online simply by blogging hot topics.

Well, I used to be one of them previously and does that works? Yes, it does!

Huh??!!

Blogging hot topics will give you moderate traffic and probably generating some money online. However, if you are planning to become a serious blogger, then this is definitely not the way to go and let me tell you why!

Hot topics or trends as what Google call it, is always short term basis. You may earn enough to last for the season (maybe), but you might be out of business for the rest of the year. Let’s face it my fellow bloggers. Hot topics are not meant to stay (and will never stay). Imagine it as a gossip instead. Blogging these might bring you just that far but it won’t be doing much good for you. Trust me on this!

Instead, start blogging on things that you actually know and have interest in. For example, I love blogging and websites, thus creating this website as a portal for bloggers around the world to get a nice inside scoop of blogging and to find good blogging tips, SEO techniques and even WordPress guides.

2. Making fast money through affiliate programs
You will learn:
1. How to make money being an affiliate
2. Simple techniques to sell or promote a product online
This is really something that makes me pissed off big time. I see so many websites promoting a product which they hardly use! Furthermore, these sites are basically ‘˜copy and spinning’ articles around just to make it unique.

One concept that I will always live by is that when you sell an affiliate product, make sure you know about it and give genuine review on it. Isn’t that obvious that in order to have a good review, you need to try the product first?

Yes you get my point. Personally, I have been writing several reviews in the past and trust me that they are tough to construct if you have no hands on experience in it.

One of the best tips I can offer to bloggers who wish to make some money by selling affiliate products is that you need to decide yourself if that product is worth your time selling. Some products offers a huge commission but it has zero quality for that while others might have a lesser commission base but has better quality.

If you want read more, you can check out what Darren Rowse wrote on ProBlogger Secrets to Six Figure Income.

3. Blogging is never about making money online
You will learn:
1. How to blog better
This is one phrase I always use in nearly every blog, articles or website I write. Blogging is never about making money online. If you think that blogging is a get rich quick business, you are wrong. Sorry mate!

For bloggers who started out fresh, you got to focus to put up one hell of a show (good content), attract readers and then focus in generating money through blogging, not the opposite.

Many people (and even bloggers) who think that blogging is dead simply because there are tons of websites and blogs out there to compete. Good Lord they are wrong.

Competitions and competitors doesn’t make it impossible but both of these only make blogging more challenging. What I love best about of these is the fact that they makes me better in my blogs and yes, it can really sharpen my blogging skills at the same time.

4. Improve blog traffic with great content
You will learn:
1. How to improve blog traffic
2. The effect of quality contents
I am not sure if you are aware on this but the only way to gain more money is through having a good amount of traffic to your blog. For me, I always believe that more traffic means more income.

Readers only want to read good article and not some lame stories. So, gaining a good amount of traffic especially repeated visitors will actually improve the chances of you making money through blogging. I wouldn’t want to go in too deep on that but always remember that you can generate money not only through advertisement clicks but as well as total number of impressions received.

Content writing or content blogging is important to create good traffic to your site. You have to remember that traffic is not created overnight but it takes time and lots of effort. Of course, the first step is to provide good content to your readers.

You do not need to write a thousand words article like I do in most blog articles but always make sure that each article is packed with quality information. Readers like you and me will only return back to the blog if they have good articles that worth reading.

Here’s a few example of websites offering quality contents:
- 2createawebsite
- BloggingWizard
5. Increase your blog earning with the RIGHT banner
You will learn:
1. How to monetize your blog
2. How to further improve your ad revenue and convertion
I know people make tons of money with Adsense and some doesn’t. In fact, it is not the number of banners visible to your visitors that count. Instead, it is all about using the RIGHT banner at the right place which counts!

One of the biggest mistake most bloggers do when it comes to monetize their blogs is placing too many ad banners. If you are one of them, remove those banners right now!

Yes now!

Google had realized banner’s hotspot few years back and many are still using it. As time passes by, everything changes and so does the click rates and banner location. I am not saying that we should not use Google guide in banner placement but we should improvise from it.

From time to time (and thanks to having many websites), I am lucky enough to test the different types of click rates I could have. The biggest and most obvious differences is the layout colour, size of fonts and yes, placements of each banners.

Basically, larger banners like those 250 x 250, 3300 x 250 and 336 x 280 has better click rates when placed in the starting and ending of an article page. In other words, placing on the first and last paragraph is definitely a good choice if you want to generate some earnings from Adsense. Furthermore, these large banners usually fetch a very high cost per click (CPC) rate.

The right advertisement location will boost click rates

Another good banner which many people fail to use them is the link units. These link units provided me pretty good click rate. Yes, maybe the cost per click (CPC) is rather low for most bloggers, having at least one of this advertisement units on your blog will definitely increase the chances of your earnings.

In order to make money blogging, I often see most bloggers placed more than 6 types of banners on a page. For the sake of God, please…I beg you…please don’t do it to your poor blog.

C’mon guys! People visit your blog to gain experience and gather information. They are not here to click on your banners! I get it and I really do. We all bloggers (including me) would love to see at least some earnings on your Google Adsense. What you can do is place them wisely.

Personally, I would recommend not more than three banners visible on one page itself. At times, it is alright to be greedy and place slightly more than three banners on high traffic pages thought. You might get lucky but do not over do it if you do not want to kill your blog traffic.

Let’s recap what you have read above using SlideShare, shall we?

Back to you…

I hope you enjoy this article as much as I do and feel free to contact me if you have any inquiry on the topic. At the same time, I appreciate your feedback and you can do so by filling up the form below.

If you like this article, could you please share this for me using the red Google+ button below?
December 21, 2023
Best Way To Increase Blog Ranking Using SEO Keywords

SEO keywords and traffic are like bolts and nuts in the blogging industry. It is a fact that we are obsessed with methods to increase blog traffic and use the right keywords. I don’t think there is a serious blogger who doesn’t give a damn about the almighty blog traffic and keywords.

People say and talk about using the right keywords, keyword density and all those words with keywords in it. Does it make any sense to you? Sometime, I felt that keywords usage are overkill in most situations.

Before scrolling down, ask yourself what do you know about keywords?

Not so sure? Don’t worry! Maybe this slide can show you a thing or two …

What is SEO keyword all about?

This would probably go back to centuries back, you know … during the Romans … okay, kidding! Keyword is one or more words that have value to (not humans) search engine bots (more on that in a minute). Keywords are not chosen words and they are obviously, just like any other words.

Referring to the above, what makes keywords (or SEO keywords) so important that you can see nearly all blogging tips are emphasizing heavily on it? Here’s what I think in my own terms.

Keywords are words ranged between one to five words which are seen important by search engine bots (some call it spiders, crawlers, you got the drill).

Don’t get me wrong on this. SEO keywords is selected words which are seen highly valuable to these search engine crawlers and in terms of SEO. However, for most of us, these are just another bunch of words.

In blogging, keywords can be considered words which can describe what the whole sentence is all about in just a few words. Let’s take a quick example below:

Search for: Ways to increase blog traffic

The keyword for this could possibly be blog traffic 0r even increase traffic. These are what called as SEO keywords.

Okay, I know it sounds complicated. So, take a step back. Breath in and head below. Let’s go with another approach for those who want to understand more.

If you are searching for blogging tips (for example) on Google, you will probably see these:

Blogging Tips is considered SEO Keywords

Do you notice the words which are bolded above? Whenever you type blogging tips, articles or blogs with high usage of the words will be ‘˜picked up’ by search engines. Don’t fuss over this first. What you need to do is to understand the concept behind the importance of keywords in terms of SEO and search engines.

Differentiate quality SEO keywords with low (or no) quality keywords

Like it or not, we are the one who determine the value of keywords. Let’s see it from this approach, alright?

500,000 people search for blogging tips
500 people search for best blogging tips

Which do you think is the better quality keywords? Blogging tips is actually the clear winner here. I know and I am definitely sure there are like 50% of bloggers will be against this but hear me out first.

Since blogging tips has a higher search value, it will automatically beat any other competitors in terms of quality. Period.

Even if you are going to pay for Google Adwords, the keyword blogging tips will be more expensive than best blogging tips.

Congratulation! You had just learned how to find quality SEO keywords! Grab yourself a beer or a cup of coffee. The next part is going to be long.

Finding better quality keywords for blogs

Keywords play a vital role in terms of SEO

I hope you had a good break earlier (if you have not, go bookmark this page and take a 5 minute break). In this article, I basically promised you how you can increase your blog traffic with SEO keywords right? Here’s how you can do it.

If you are going to choose blogging tips as your keyword, that is absolutely fine. In fact, it is a good SEO keyword honestly. However, you are going to compete with thousands if not millions of websites who is using blogging tips as their SEO keyword as well.

Now, Google and other search engines had thought about this as well. So, there comes another term, long tail keywords. Heard about it? Maybe yes, maybe not.

For those who have not heard about long tail keywords, you came to the right spot as I am going to explain to you what that means. For those who know what it means, don’t go away! Have a read what I have to say and maybe you can share with me your idea using the comment form below.

What are long tail keywords?

Long tail means, long tail obviously. Is that so god-damn obvious? Indeed! But when it comes to keywords, it could also mean using longer keywords. For easier understanding, see below.

Quality SEO keyword + other words = long tail keywords

Long tail keywords are usually three words or more. Try not exceeding five words thought. Too long and you basically drop the value of the keyword in terms of SEO.

When you talk about increasing traffic to blog, you talk about using the right keyword. You want to get the more audience, traffic and search engines to point to your blog. And probably make them drool over the keyboard when they look at your blog. Whoa! Too much graphic!

I just want to say that to build good traffic to your blog, you need to focus on all types of keywords, well…basically just a few types only right? I like to go 70-30 or 80-20 where bigger chunk of keywords goes to common keywords people use and the small minority goes to high quality keywords and SEO keywords.

Long tail keywords doesn’t mean that these are low quality keywords. However, a part or a huge part of these long tail keywords are consist of some high quality SEO keywords which search engines determined them as important. Basically, normal words which ‘˜hang around’ with those famous words make them all, long tail keywords. Got it?

Recap on using SEO keywords for traffic boost

SEO keywords is important when it comes to building blog traffic. I said above and I will say it again. Striking a balance of keywords in your blog and article will actually determine how well the blog will rank on search engines.

Do I believe the hype on what SEO keywords people are talking about? Not really but I do believe that SEO keywords play a huge role in the success of an article, blog or website.

What do you think? Feel free to reply to this using the comment form below. If you like this article, could you please share this for me using the red Google+ button below?

December 21, 2023
Top 6 Blogging Tips That Helps Building Blog Ranking
Blogging is an ever growing business and what we are to do yesterday, might not be able to work today. Well, like it or not, that’s the reality of life! I often ask myself what are important blogging tips as I managed to grow my blogs at Blogspot (some call it Blogger) with hundreds and thousands of viewers a day.

Lucky for you, the answers are right below. So, let’s dive in now and I hope you enjoy this post! Feel free to contact me if you have any question though.

Hold on! This article has more than 1,800 words! Feeling lazy? Don’t worry mate! I even prepared for you a slideshare PowerPoint just for you!

Important blogging tips: Blogging is all about content

Let’s face it guys. You could probably not go far without content. You may spend thousands of dollars (and time) on marketing and social blasting but without content, you are basically nothing.

Good bloggers maintain their blogs. Great bloggers on the other hand, make blogs even better.

Let’s take a moment and see how famous people do with their blogs:

Darren Rowse from ProBlogger.net. He created great blogs because he had great ideas. He did his own book, and even had writers trying to get into his blogging business. He didn’t started big but he did created a path for himself. Good for you Darren!

Now you see, he didn’t get famous simply by blogging nor he was some great blogging tips like this. He became famous by providing good content and articles to his readers. He started from scratch just like all of us.

Lisa Irby from 2createawebsite.com. I followed her recently and I totally love the way she blogged. She started blogging just with an intention to help out others. She did not ‘˜just blog’ but she did quality blogging. All her blogs are filled with important information on blogging and creating websites.

The above two are pretty clear examples in my books. For those who think that SEO has taken over content in blogs, think twice. You are wrong!

Good content attracts people and that’s what you need to target!

I even wrote how you can boost your blog or website content optimization just by using this SEO tool: Simply The Best Content Optimization Tool for Bloggers.

Don’t just blog blindly

I don’t know you but I used to blog blindly. I am not sure if this is a very common term but for me, it means creating an article but has very less content. Consider this as quantity over quality.

Yup, you got it right there. Most readers don’t read articles because they want to but the fact is that they need to. Huh?! Let me explain below.

Where comes readers? Websites or articles are usually visited by others because readers (like you and me) need to find for information. If the blog has very less information, you are going to lose potential traffic within the first 10 seconds!

Keep your article or blog as simple as possible but packed with information. Avoid blind blogging anytime of the day if you want to be a successful blogger.

Importance of Search Engine Optimization a.k.a. SEO

Do you know what SEO really do?

SEO basically means the ability to be ‘˜visible’ in the eyes of the public. Good SEO skills will bring the website to fame. Seriously.

You can’t learn or master SEO, not today and not in the future. So, how can you probably be an SEO expert?!

If you want to be good in SEO, then make sure you understand how SEO works. Most bloggers (and even myself few years back) made the same ol’ mistake. Focusing too much in SEO!

At that time, I thought I could understand SEO and make my website great. Well, I was wrong big time. I came to realized it when I came across an article written by one of the local guys in my country, Malaysia.

That article really struck me like a train hitting me face first. I thought to myself, ‘I made the wrong approach and it took me years to realize it!’. Yes, I wasted probably a few years but I learned from it.

Understanding the SEO concept will actually help you in the blogging career. SEO is needed to create good blogs but it takes more than just that to at the top of search engine result pages.

My tip here is if you are just starting off writing, then focus in your blog contents first. As time passes by, slowly go with SEO approach way.

You can check this article out for more information, Boost Your Website Ranking Using SEO Keywords.

Understand what and how blogging works

One of the best blogging tips I ever learned is blogging is not a one day business. Well, I wish! I am going to admit it, at times, I wish I could start up a blog and make it to the first page of Google. Well, probably in my dreams.

One of the best blogging tips I ever learn is blogging takes time. It is like growing a fruit tree from scratch. Nurturing and taking care of the tree for a few years and then, you might see the tree bearing fruits.

For me, the biggest mistake done by most bloggers is that they assume that blogging is a quick way to make money. Well, you could but chances are pretty slim buddy! Of course, this eBook written by Darren from ProBlogger on how you can earn a six-figure income just from blogging.

I am a very ‘˜karma-person’ and thus, I believe that one can actually make money blogging if they are devoted to help others. From the example way above, both Darren and Lisa are great writers who love to share their ideas.
And, what do they get in return? A pretty smooth sailing blogging career and making money through blogging!

I consider blogging as a full time work where you would need to devote your time and passion into the business. If you want to grow your blog, then ask yourself (first) why you blog. Then work from there with your reason.

Blogging is not about yourself…literally

This is a little tricky and I will try my best to explain. Blogging is not (everything) about yourself or making money online. You need to help others as well, so to say.

I bet you have came across more than one famous blogging website. Do you notice anything in common? Okay, here’s the hint; guest post.

I am going to repeat myself. Blogging is not everything about yourself. If you want to start a blogging business, you should focus a great deal of time in your website and at the same time, other websites!

Websites are nowhere without some help. Let’s face it guys. If you want to have a website with good traffic, then you need to publish your name to the world.

Instead of publishing 10 great articles on your blog, how about publishing 9 great ones on your site and another one in other blogs? You see, sharing one great article might sounds a lot to you (even to me). But, do you know how much traffic you are going to convert?

Yup, you hear me now and I really hope you do. When I contributed my first guest post, I really thought if that is really a good idea. At times, I thought that was a wrong idea. Thankfully, I was able to stick to my ground long enough to see the traffic growth on my own site.

Important blogging tip here is that when it comes to blogging, it is all about giving back to the community. Sharing is caring and in this case, you are opening your doors to even more possibilities just by sharing ideas with others.

Who knows, you might even have followers dying to write for you instead in return!

Build your blogging career correctly

Starting a blog on the right track is important to ensure that the blog will be successful

This is probably the best blogging tip I have for you in this blog. If you want to be somebody in this blogging industry, then you need to make sure that you start the right way. And when I mean starting correctly, it doesn’t mean that you should start a blog on a free website.

I know you might be looking for this. So, here are a few places you can start blogging for free:
- Bloggers or Blogspot
- WordPress.com
*p/s If you want to go pro or serious in blogging, you should get a website instead of those free blogging sites.

To start a new website, you need to buy domain name and hosting services. Here are list of recommended companies:
- NameCheap (domain names)
- GoDaddy (domain names)
- HostGator (hosting company)
- WP Engine (hosting company)
Oh yes, this is the biggest mistake young and experience bloggers make. You may start blogging on a free blog and that doesn’t kill you. However, it is going to affect you in the long run. I know how easy it is to rank well and faster using Blogspot than a website. Now, imagine that you continue your blog for the next 3 years and you grow your audience. Your blog could probably be PR 3 or maybe higher.

I am sure back there somewhere in your brain, you are tempted to have your own brand. Now, moving everything to a new website is easy but building your traffic back? Okay, that is a whole different story.

Don’t get me wrong. You can still make it through without any issue but you are going to waste precious time. It takes months and years to build a brand and it doesn’t come cheap. What I am saying is that if you have plans to develop a blog and probably become a serious blogger, then I would suggest you to get a self hosted domain even from scratch.

Don’t be like me as I wasted a few years with free blogs provided by Blogger and WordPress. I developed my blogs so much that it is a hassle to transfer them over to a self hosted domain. I wasn’t willing to lose the traffic anytime soon and I wish I had started everything with my own website and not with a free blog.

I have to add these useful blogging tips even if there is a gun pointed at my head right now as I type. When you have your own website, you can design it anyway you like. You can publish anything and you are not tied down to any terms and conditions. You are basically the king and the people as well. You can design your website to look anyway you like without having to worry about what others would think (literally).

Final words

I hope you enjoyed this blog post as much as I had writing it. Pardon me for such a lengthy post though and I truly hope that these blogging tips will serve you well in the future.

Feel free to tell me what you think about this post and if there is anything I could improve for the next article simply by replying using the comment form below or using this contact form.

If you like this article, could you please share this for me using the red Google+ button below?
December 21, 2023
Guide For Dummies: How To Setup Your WordPress W3 Total Cache Correctly?

W3 Total Cache is one of the world’s most renown cache plugin for WordPress and you are probably finding the best setup guide for WordPress W3 Total Cache right?

Before that, let’s see what W3 Total Cache actually is and how it functions. It provides close to everything you would need to make your website load blazing fast but most of the time, these settings could be very misguiding and complicated for bloggers and even new website developers.

In this guide, I am going to try my best to provide you a step by step guide in setting up your W3 Total Cache. This post is a little lengthy but trust me, it will definitely worth your time especially when you are going to get the best setting for your W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin.

Here’s the slide which I had created thanks to SlideShare (for those who want to avoid reading the wall of text) ~ Enjoy!

Setup guide for WordPress W3 Total Cache

Firstly, head over to the plugin page and search for W3 Total Cache. Very easy and very straight forward right?

Setting up your W3 Total Cache the right way

The famous W3 Total Cache setting tab

1. You should be able to see a new tab labelled as Performance on the left side of the screen on your WordPress dashboard. Click on that.

2. Next, you will see the Dashboard for W3TC and this gives you a general outlook of the plugin. You see the option to select General Settings and select that. General Settings works as a master switch for W3TC. You can enable or disable a certain option with just one click of the button.

3. On the General Settings page, scroll down a little and you will see Page Cache.

Page Cache: Enable

Page cache method: Disk: Enhanced

You do not need to press save at the moment. I will explain to you after this on why I rather save later than now.

4. Scroll down more and you will see the Minify option.

Minify: Enable

Minify mode: Manual

Minify cache method: Disk

HTML minifier: Default

JS minifier: JSMin (default)

CSS minifier: Default

5. Next is Database Cache option.

Database Cache: Enable

Database Cache Method: Disk

6. Scroll down a little to Object Cache.

Object Cache: Enable

Object Cache Method: Disk

7. To the next option, Browser Cache.

Browser Cache: Enable

8. For CDN settings, you may disable it first.

Setting up W3TC plugin could be time consuming but it will make your website load at blazing speed

9. Reserve Proxy disable, Cloudflare settings disable, monitoring disable, miscellaneous disable and debug disable all. Now, you may save all your settings. After saving it, W3TC will ask you if you would like to clear the cache which you can select yes. The reason to save once you have done the whole page is to avoid inconvenience. You may save one by one but it is totally a time consuming process.

10. Select Page Cache on the left of the screen.

You should enable cache front page, cache feeds, cache SSL and don’t cache pages for logged in users.

Cache Preload: Enable automatic prime

Update interval: 907

Page per interval: 7

Sitemap: http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml (change your domain to your own site name)

Save all settings and you may ignore the rest of the options on that page.

11. Select Minify button on the left.

Enable rewrite URL structure and for HTML minify settings, select enable, inline CSS minification, inline JS minification and line break removal.

As for JS minify settings, select enable, before (combine), after (minify) and before (combine). Enable preserved comment and line break as well.

As for CSS minify settings, select enable, preserved comment and line break removal.

Go for save all settings again and clear the cache.

12. Now, select Database Cache button on the left

Enable don’t cache queries and save the setting.

13. You can exclude Object Cache as nothing needed to change there. Select Browser Cache instead.

Under General, enable everything except do not process 404 errors.

Under CSS & JS, enable all the options there. The only changes you need to do is change the value of expires header lifetime to 31536000 seconds.

Under HTML & XML, enable everything as well.

Under Media & Other Files, enable everything and set the value of expires header lifetime to 31536000 seconds.

Finally, save all settings and clear cache if needed.

CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE ALL DONE!

You can basically forget the rest of the options for now. These settings should serve you well with or without a Content Delivery Network. You will notice your site gets loaded up faster than usual. Remember to clear all the cache at least once to make everything stays for good.

And for the record, I have tested these settings on various websites now and all of them are giving them very good response time. Certainly hope this works well for you as well and good luck.

If you like this article, could you please share this for me using the red Google+ button below?

December 21, 2023
Cloudflare vs Incapsula: Which Is The Best CDN Provider?
Content Delivery Network is one of the most important tools when it comes to maintaining a website. CloudFlare and Incapsula are both very renown for their CDN services. Let’s discuss deeper on both CloudFlare vs Incapsula for the best CDN provider.

As for the record, this review is done with some testings and cross referencing the results with other sources to ensure that you are getting the right information.

What makes both Cloudflare and Incapsula different?

Related read: 3 of the best Content Delivery Network providers for bloggers

Introduction to Cloudflare and Incapsula in video form

Cloudflare:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yspfTsidzs&feature=youtu.be

Incapsula:

Here are what both can offer:
1. Free Content Delivery Network (CDN) with servers across the globe
2. Optimizer which helps increase website loading speed
3. Security features for websites which includes firewall
4. Analytics that give you an insight of how many attacks, bandwidth used etc
5. Other free and paid productivity apps you can mix and match
So what makes them so different? How to choose the best free CDN for my website?

Security features

If you would like to compare, both basically offers pretty good security features. If you would need to compare them neck to neck, Incapsula offers a better protection against all types of DDoS threats. Cloudflare does a pretty decent job when it comes to protections but it comes short if you are looking for a CDN which offers great defense against unwanted threats.

Winner: Incapsula

Analytics and monitoring

Both Cloudflare and Incapsula offer their users reports to show the progress of the CDN. The reports range cover much of the basic information such as bandwidth used, threat experienced by the site, the number of bots and even the number of unique visitors visiting the website. When compared, I would personally prefer Cloudflare’s report as it is more detailed and offers slightly more information that I required in just one glance. Basically, I give the winning score to Cloudflare as the layout is easier to see and users do not need to navigate any further to get additional information.

Winner: Cloudflare

Optimizer anyone?

When it comes to optimizing, Cloudflare seem to be able to optimize my sites better than Incapsula. Various tests were done after installing for 48 hours to give a fair detail of time. After running those tests, it is pretty clear that (if I would give a score of 10), I would give Cloudflare a score of 9 and Incapsula a score of 7.

Winner: Cloudflare

Which offers a better page loading speed?

I am pretty sure most of you guys are interested on this part generally. Cloudflare is definitely the winner here with a faster load of an average 0.5 seconds. As little as this seems, it is everything for many search engines and even high traffic sites. Cloudflare could have won this battle at this time of the writing because it has more servers around the world compared to Incapsula. At the moment, Cloudflare has 28 servers around the world and Incapsula has only 14 servers. This could be the main reason why sites using Cloudflare could load slightly faster than Incapsula.

Winner: Cloudflare

Related article: How To Configure CloudFlare Page Rules?

My take in CloudFlare vs Incapsula For The Best CDN Provider

Generally, Cloudflare seems to be working better out of the box compared to Incapsula. For a basic usage, Cloudflare really works well in terms of user-friendliness, moderate defense and very good loading speed for a free Content Delivery Network service.

Why not you try them today and give me your feedback?

For those using either one of them, which is your favorite one among both?

*If you like this article, could you please share this for me using the red Google+ button below?
December 6, 2023