Reginald Chan

Tag: wordpress tips

  • Long Tail Pro Review, Features And $20 Discount Code

    Long Tail Pro Review, Features And $20 Discount Code

    Long tail keywords had become a way to gain search traffic and probably one of the best tips for SEO 2014. While there are many proven theories that long tail keywords is a great way to achieve better SERPs, many bloggers and content writers are still having issues trying to find untapped keyword niche.

    Years back, long tail keywords are usually used for niche blogging only; very specific blogging topics and today’s world, everything had changed. In other words, gone were the days where you try to rank for only one to two letter words. Your main focus now is to find for longer and more specific keyword terms instead of very general terms.

    The importance of long tail keywords
    How can long tail keywords affect blog traffic?

    Not only the value of long tail keywords had increased dramatically, they continue to be a powerful way to leverage search traffic especially with the growing competition for high value ‘core’ keywords.

    What is a long tail keyword?

    Long tail keywords are keyword which are mainly unpopular and usually have lower competition. This means that ranking for these keywords on search engines would be easier.

    Check out the image below for better understanding:

    Difference between long tail keywords and general keywords
    Do you see the differences between both boxes in red?

    The term ‘blogging’ easily lead to around 14,800 searches in a month and long tail keywords such as ‘blogging websites’ has around 1,900 searches only. Chances are that there are more visitors trying to find for longer search terms instead of the generic term of ‘blogging’.

    So, what is the easiest way to find long tail keywords?

    Performing keyword research using Long Tail Pro

    Long Tail Pro is the brainchild of Spencer Haws and if you have no idea he is (still), he is the man behind Niche Pursuits. While there are tons of keyword research tools out there in the market, I was in love with Long Tail Pro immediately after using it.

    I got to admit that I am not a niche blogger and usually Google Keyword Planner is the only keyword tool I use. After using Long Tail Pro, I knew it is the best keyword research tool ever created. Period!

    Do you believe that Long Tail Pro (or LTP in short) makes keyword research looks so easy? Here are 3 reasons why I would highly recommend it to anyone who is serious in finding the best keywords for niche blogging.

    Long Tail Pro feature #1 – Insanely easy to setup

    For those who don’t know me well, I am no fan of complicated tools setup. This means that I usually ditch the manual (not recommended) and start immediately.

    Yes, I give no second thought on that!

    With Long Tail Pro, it is extremely easy to setup. All I need were:

    1. Add a new campaign name
    2. Add Google credentials to LTP
    3. Adding Moz access ID

    And I am all done. Yup … under 5 minutes flat.

    Long Tail Pro feature #2 – Custom keyword research software

    I love to consider Long Tail Pro is a advanced Google Keyword Planner. With LTP, I am able set additional keyword filters such as:

    1. Specify global search volume
    2. Domain availability
    3. Google title competition
    4. Bing title competition
    5. Average local searches
    6. Average CPC
    7. Number of words
    8. Search up to 10 keywords at one time

    Basically with Long Tail Pro, you are able to multitask and complete each task in a very short time period. Personally, these features make it as one of the most efficient keyword research tools I ever used.

    Long Tail Pro Keyword Research Tool

    Long Tail Pro feature #3 – Competitor analysis

    One of LTP’s most popular features is the one-click competitor analysis. Once you have specify a keyword generated from the Keyword Research option, LTP allows you to analyse the ranking factor.

    This means that you will get a full report of the top 10 sites which are listed on Google with that keyword. The report consists of several important ranking factors such as:

    1. Page authority
    2. Page links
    3. Juice page links
    4. Domain authority
    5. Moz ranking
    6. PageRank
    7. Site age

    When it comes to finding profitable keyword, these features offered by Long Tail Pro could possibly be the best thing a niche blogger would require. For this particular feature, it gives a perfect outlook on the chances of ranking that specific keyword.

    Do I need to mention that it is extremely important factor?

    With proper SEO strategies, you would be able to find low competition but profitable long tail keywords.

    Long Tail Pro feature #4 – Rank checker

    This is one very powerful LTP feature which is often underused by many bloggers. With just a click of a button, you would be able to determine how your website is ranking for specific keywords. While there are many keyword research tools which can do that for you as well, it is great to see this is included in Long Tail Pro version.

    Basically, all you need to do is to:

    • Enter the URL or web address you can to check
    • Input the specific keyword

    LTP Rank Checker doesn’t only check ranking on Google but as well as Yahoo and Bing search engines as well.

    Question: Is Long Tail Pro really worth it?

    The answer is yes. Among all the keyword research tools I had used, Long Tail Pro is definitely one of the best software that worth your money and highly flexible. If you are doing niche blogging, it is an absolute no brainer to have Long Tail Pro as one of your most powerful SEO arsenal.

    Now, let’s take a look at LTP’s pricing:

    How much does Long Tail Pro cost?

    All plans comes with a 10-days free trial and no credit card required.

    Over to you

    By far, Long Tail Pro is one of the best keyword research softwares out there in the market. It totally change the whole keyword research experience (especially for me). I hope you find this article useful and tell me what you think using the comment form below.

    And wait! One more surprise just for you below!

    Bonus: Looking for Long Tail Pro discount code?

    Well, I bet you are about to do this right now (probably you done that already). You don’t have to look any further for Long Tail Pro discount as I have a great offer for you right now.

    Sign up for Long Tail Pro using the link below and get an instant $20 discount off the total bill. Yes! This means that Long Tail Pro costs you only $67 instead of $97.

    Try Long Tail Pro for 10 days trial plus $20 discount today!

  • Blog Engage: RSS Syndication and Blog Marketing Services

    Blog Engage: RSS Syndication and Blog Marketing Services

    RSS Syndication

    Traffic is the lifeline of any blogs and bloggers are always fond of finding more ways to boost the number of traffic. While there are many conventional ways to increase blog traffic, there are also several new and very effective ways to multiple your blog traffic which are using RSS syndication and blog marketing.

    While you may be wondering what is RSS syndication or why would you even need a blog marketing service, allow me to share some light with you. RSS syndication and blog marketing are processes where they automate the latest blog posts in the form of RSS feed to various parties. Indirectly, this means that they help to increase blog visibility and most importantly, sending the right signals to eager readers.

    While there are many blogging communities out there, Blog Engage is one community no bloggers should never leave home without. Blog Engage or BE in short is run and managed by no other than Brian Belfitt. It is home to over 2,955 members (and still increasing) including several top of the crop such as Zac Johnson, Ileane, Hesham Zebida and Brian Hawkins.

    4 reasons why you must participate in Blog Engage community

    Blog Engage offers several ‘mouth watering’ features such as:

    • Content Syndication
    • Automated social media marketing
    • YouTube video syndication
    • SEO and backlink assistance
    • HashTag marketing

    And that isn’t all. There are probably half a dozen more features as we speak but the above are the main ones which are useful for bloggers and traffic generation.

    I joined Blog Engaged around 5 months back and many thought I was crazy enough to pay £19.90 for a standard account. After sometime, I realized the potential in this blogging community and I was soon surfing on it’s Platinum plan instead.

    Now, if you are already thinking 101 ways why you shouldn’t join this, I dare you to continue reading. Seriously.

    1. Blog Engage RSS syndication (manual and automatic)

    Users can easily submit their latest blog post to Blog Engage for syndication. As Blog Engage is a high pagerank blog, rest assured your articles will be indexed even faster by search engines.

    For a standard Blog Engage account, submissions are done manually. This means that you would need to share one link at one time to Blog Engage.

    For Platinum plan and above, RSS syndication is done automatically and all you need is to provide your RSS feed link to Blog Engage. After that, sit back and Brian will do all the blog marketing you ever need on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

    2. Influence building with Blog Engage groups

    If you are planning to build influence, there are many groups you can join. Here, you can share ideas, blog posts and even tips in nearly every possible topic.

    Bear in mind that some of these groups are moderated by famous bloggers and you could easily get backlinks from them if the article is worth sharing.

    3. Blog Engage live chat

    If you love Facebook chat, you are going to love the live chat feature on BE. The live chat feature on BE is powered by Comet Chat. Now, if you think that is all … you are terribly wrong!

    You can easily integrate Facebook and Google+ chat with Comet Chat at Blog Engage just by authorizing or providing the relevant permission.

    Now, tell me. Killing two birds with one stone?

    4. Member’s spotlight for traffic boost

    Member's spotlight on Blog Engage
    I was lucky to get featured at Blog Engage

    Giving back to the community is probably one of Blog Engage’s vision. Every week, Brian will share one of his members to the public. This is extremely helpful especially when it comes to introduction, building influence, increase traffic to blog and of course, providing a warm welcome to new members.

    Want to be featured on Blog Engage member’s spotlight? Start being active and become a healthy contributor!

    Is Blog Engage really worth it?

    I know this is probably one of those questions you have in mind. Personally, I love Blog Engage and I couldn’t think of anything bad about it. It is extremely useful especially when you need traffic boost or increase in the influence market.

    So, what to do if you are still undecided?

    Blog Engage comes with several plans that you can choose from as below:

    1. The most affordable plan – Blog Engage standard account

    • Manual submission only
    • Just Retweet bonus (3,000 points)
    • £19.99 (one time payment) for lifetime license

    2. Professional bloggers – Blog Engage platinum account

    • Automatic content syndication (1 feed)
    • SEO enhancement
    • Social media marketing
    • Youtube video syndication
    • Just Retweet bonus (3,500 points)
    • £9.99 per month

    3. Business bloggers – Blog Engage business account

    • Automatic content syndication up to 3 feeds
    • SEO enhancement
    • Social media marketing
    • Youtube video syndication
    • Hashtag marketing
    • Just Retweet bonus (4,000 points)
    • £19.99 per month

    4. Corporate users or serious bloggers – Blog Engage business plus account

    • Automatic content syndication up to 5 feeds
    • SEO enhancement
    • Social media marketing
    • Youtube video syndication
    • Hashtag marketing
    • Just Retweet bonus (4,500 points)
    • £29.99 per month

    5. When everything else is not enough – Blog Engage ultimate account

    • Direct to front page feature
    • Automatic content syndication up to 8 feeds
    • SEO enhancement
    • Social media marketing
    • Youtube video syndication
    • Hashtag marketing
    • Featured spotlight
    • Contest giveaway
    • Just Retweet bonus (5,000 points)
    • £199.99 per month

    Give Blog Engage a try by clicking here or using the link below.

    RSS and Marketing Services

     Are you a Blog Engage member already? Tell me what you think about it using the comment form below and let’s discuss!

  • 4 SEO Methods I Used To Achieve PageRank 2 After 5 Months And 24 Days

    4 SEO Methods I Used To Achieve PageRank 2 After 5 Months And 24 Days

    Google PageRank update took place on December 6, 2013 and probably, the last PR update for the year. Now, if you have yet to check on your PageRank, you can check your ranking here.

    Today, this blog is 5 months and 24 days old. After the Google PageRank update, I received a nice Google’s pat on the back by getting Google PageRank 2.

    Thank you Google for that!

    It is indeed a long road with all the Google surprises we had encountered during this year especially with Google Hummingbird and Penguin 2.1.

    Finally, I truly understand the meaning of “hard work paid off”.

    Now, let’s take a look at how my blog did in the past 5 months as of today:

    • PageRank 2
    • Domain Authority – 45/100
    • Page Authority – 52/100
    • Root domain links – 357
    • Total links – 7,950

    Google PageRank Update

    The secret recipe to get high PageRank

    There are probably thousands of ways to achieve high PageRank and over the course of 5 months, I really tried to think out of the box. I wanted to be different and I ended up creating my SEO blueprint.

    For those who had no idea what SEO blueprint is all about, allow me to explain to you in simple words. I created my own SEO strategies and start working out from phrase to phrase. Here are several techniques I did according to orders:

    1. Build at least 50 quality blog posts on my site
    2. Practice internal linking among all related articles
    3. Building reputation and engage in the influence market
    4. Guest postings on high PR blogs and related niche

    If you think I did all that in just under 2 months, you are wrong. I did that for months (every single day). I do skip some days from time to time … hey, I am also human right?

    1. Building the right blog content and not applying with guest posting (yet)

    For me, content is everything and when I mean everything, it means A to Z.

    My ‘A to Z’ means that publishing the right blog content with has high value and quality. Don’t even think of creating evergreen blog posts as I don’t believe in that. What works yesterday might not be useful in tomorrow’s world.

    The keyword here are focus, focus and focus. Focus in building a blog full of resources and not only that, focus in building a blog which is outstanding. Why would you want to build a blog which offers the same information with probably a dozen blogs out there?

    If you have less than 50 quality posts on your blog, you can (literally) forget about guesting posting. I know hundreds or thousands of bloggers out there who are looking for guest posting but have they ever thought what would happen if they don’t have any quality blog post to share?

    For example, you may be able to publish a post on some PR 5 blog but what do you want to backlink to? Linking back to your above average blog post? Hell no!

    You want to link back to your crazy and epic blog post, you know … creating the wow factor and start building more readership.

    I took the road less taken and decided to focus on quality content over guest posting for starters. Building quality content isn’t easy and I found out that most readers dislike reading articles over 1,000 words.

    Wait a minute! My blog posts are usually over 1,500 words and how?

    The solution is simple. Creating hype and work from there. Feeling mushy and lost? Here’s an example:

    Title: Opps! I Accidentally Increased Google+ Traffic By Over 700% ‘¦ But How?

    Content: Make the introduction short and straight to the point. Then, provide images and stats to proof your point.

    When I shared this on one of Google+ community, it became (almost) the hottest topic of the day. Readers are responding, sharing and discussing over it. Now, that’s what I call epic blog post.

    Out of 100 readers, 50 would probably click on it due to the title itself while 30% will still click on it while believing it is just a scam. This is where quality content and images (stats) close to the introduction paragraph will ‘bribe’ them to continue reading.

    Of course, you will have around 20% who wouldn’t even given a damn and not even bother clicking it but guess what? It doesn’t matter because you already have 80% of the reach!

    Here are some of my favorite posts that you can dig in:

    2. Practising proper SEO with internal and external link building techniques

    Link building techniques affect Google PageRank
    Backlinking is like building a bridge and connect two different areas at the same time

    If you are focusing on external link building only, you are definitely missing something really big. You need to focus on internal backlink as well if you want to have a higher PageRank.

    Matt Cutts said sharing backlink ranking from one article to another is possible as long as it is legit. So, what I did were on my own blog:

    • Find the top 5 blog articles that gain the most organic traffic
    • Place 2 to 3 related backlinks (each) on the top 5 posts
    • Repeat the process on lower traffic blog posts

    With the above, I am able to share my ranking score from highest traffic blog to moderate and low traffic blog posts.

    The truth is, I had over 80 blog posts and there is no way I could cover them all. Therefore, choose the right blog posts to ensure that you are making both search engines and visitors happy.

    For those who are asking, I focus more on internal link building prior to external link building. This is to ensure that my blog is always prepared in case if I ever get a backlink or trackback from a higher PageRank site.

    Here’s a full list of SEO strategies and resources for your reference.

    3. Getting involved in the influence market and the effects on blog ranking

    I am a huge fan of social media and from the first day of blogging here, I am always focusing on referral traffic.

    Before we proceed, do you think that influence market can affects your PageRank?

    I didn’t want to be just like the other 164 million blogs out there. I wanted to build my brand … the ‘Reginald Chan’ brand name. So, I started to spend time on several, high profile sites to build my brand name on a daily basis.

    Through my experience, building authority and influence could easily be achieved with social media. All you ever need are timing and the right planning. Before you even decide to go into influence marketing, ensure that you know everything about that niche or else, you are going to destroy your reputation.

    The biggest misconception about influence marketing is that it is a short term ‘investment’. Building an authority takes time and patience. Personally, I have been doing blog marketing since day one until now. Not even a day rest!

    To help you get start with influence marketing, here is one article I recommend you to read; 5 Steps To Become An Influencer In Your Own Niche Like Brian Clark.

    4. Guest posting and its effects on Google PageRank

    Advantages of guest blogging
    Proper guest blogging will help boost backlink and increase PageRank

    For me, guest posting is a privilege and forever it will be. So, only invest time and effort into guest posting when you have complete the first 3 steps above.

    We all know that guest posting is a great way to build backlinks but the biggest question is … how do you do guest posting correctly?

    Guest posting works in two ways; Building authority and backlinks. However, that wouldn’t be possible if you do not have quality content to share right? This is where the ‘quality content’ part as said above is very important.

    Here’s an example. I noticed many guest bloggers who applied on my site are either submitting spinned articles or low quality ones. For Christ’s sake, please avoid doing so. Instead, submit an article which you had spend hours constructing and are high in quality.

    If you are spending 1 hour in writing a blog post for your own site, take 3 hours or more to do a guest post. Guest post must always be more than just good. It has to be epic and it has to be really, really that good.

    The truth is that submitting 100 guest posts will not guarantee you a better Google PageRank. Instead, focus in submitting quality guest posts to ensure that each one of them counts.

    Bloggers, don’t make the same mistake over and over again. Stop submitting countless guest posts just to build backlinks. Instead, provide quality articles and you would definitely get more than what you ‘asked’ for ~ Self quote.

    When it comes to guest posting, this is my guest posting checklist to ensure high chance of approval and building reputation.

    What do I think about Google PageRank update?

     

    For me, Google PageRank is a great way to measure how much work you had done to your blog and when I say “work”, I mean real work such as guest posting, quality contents and a dozen more SEO techniques. While it is just a way to determine how your site rank in the eyes of Google and search engines, I got to admit that it certainly felt good to see a boost in PR. It shows that hard work paid off.

    In a nutshell, Google PageRank is determined by various factors such as the number of backlinks, SEO enrichments and a dozen more factors. It is not advisable to over focus in getting higher PageRank as it will easily cloud your jjudgment

    So, how does this recent Google PageRank update affected you? Tell me using the comment form below.

  • How To Become A Website Designer Without Coding Skills (And Still Make Money)

    How To Become A Website Designer Without Coding Skills (And Still Make Money)

    If one of your primary money making strategies is to serve more Google Adsense banners or affiliate marketing, stop. You could get more money from one piece of stellar monetization method than months of praying and playing the hoping game.

    Yes my friends, I am talking about becoming a website designer.

    Before you even think of giving up due to thousand and one reasons, at least hear me out and who knows, you might be smiling at the end of this article. So tell me if this post gives you the ‘ah-ha’ moment.

    Why is a website design important?

    A good website template will portray your business brand
    Website layout provide the first impression for your visitors

    You might not have notice the difference if you are running a small and leisure blog. However, it is very different when it comes to blogging for business. As a matter of fact, I had recently published an article on how the right business website template turned my leisure blog into a full-fledged business … which I highly recommend you to read it, 3 steps to design the best business website templates.

    In short, a website design portrays your professionalism and of course, you wouldn’t want to be an average Joe (and just like the other 60 million blogs out there).

    For professional bloggers, you would probably want to have your own brand and logo. A website design is one of your brand.

    Now, it you think that novice bloggers aren’t going serious with this, think again. I know many bloggers who are trying hard to build a great website design but many aren’t knowledgeable (coding works) like me.

    Lack of coding or CSS customization makes building a website theme sounds so impossible. And of course, don’t forget that hiring a web developer could cost you at least $1,000 for a really good theme.

    Do you see the opportunity here? Yes, the industry is still new and rather untapped by the big guns (yet). And I am not joking when I say that you can earn from a few hundred bucks to thousands of dollars as a web developer.

    So, what happens if you do not know coding skills? Sounds like the end of this dream?

    Not really … thanks to technology and a little passion.

    Making money as a website designer without coding knowledge

    How to become a web designer without coding skills?
    With the right tools, you do not need coding skills to build beautiful web templaets

    Yes you hear me right. The Internet is blooming and the market to find a good website designer is growing rapidly.

    So, the biggest question is how do you leverage from this phenomena?

    The goal here is to become a website designer without the knowledge of coding. As crazy as it might sound, this is very doable … and I done that before.

    Being a website designer is all about having good imagination and of course, knowledge in coding. Yes, basically two simple elements that can make or break your designing business!

    You need:

    • Truck load of ideas
    • The right developer’s tools

    How do you get the ideas rolling in endlessly?

    Ideas can be found anywhere especially with the help of the Internet
    Where does your ideas originated from?

    For me, this is probably the easiest part of all. Remember that Internet is your best friend. Scout around for the best header, navigation bars or even layout. Mix and match them to build the prefect web design.

    As easy as it sounds, you need to ensure that those ideas are workable. Keep in mind that you are copy-pasting ideas from around the web.

    Use these information you gathered to spark a new design.

    When I say copy-pasting, it doesn’t mean literally copy and paste. What I meant was use those ideas and modify them. Typically, I uses other website themes of other popular sites as a guideline or base for my template.

    This makes imagination on the ‘outcome’ … yes, much easier!

    Two resources that I use to get more designing ideas are:

    Bear in mind that the above are just examples. Feel free to mix and match anyway you like.

    The sky is your limit, my friends. Yup, that’s the beauty of running your own business.

    Related post: 6 methods to choose the best child themes

    Turning your ideas into beautiful website templates

    How to do you turn ideas into a work of art?
    What are the tools needed to turn your ideas into great website templates?

    By now, you should already have the ideas at the back of your head and the only thing that holds you back is the lack of CSS knowledge.

    I simply overcome it using two separate building tools which are:

    1. Dynamik Website Builder
    2. Genesis Extender

    In short, both of these tools help you to build a website template from scratch (literally) … without the need of coding.

    Want to change the fonts or probably increase the size of the navigation boxes? Both Dynamik Website Builder and Genesis Extender can do it for you using dropdown buttons.

    Of course, Dynamik Website Builder is a great choice when you are thinking of building a website template from scratch while Genesis Extender performs wonders by customizing the current Genesis child themes layout.

    The above two tools are just examples which proves that you doesn’t need any computer knowledge to build a stunning website design.

    As for the record, a friend of mine in Romania recently got himself Dynamik Website Builder and he turns his passion into a part time business … you, you guessed it right! Web designing.

    Recommended post: Building a WordPress theme with Dynamik Website Builder [Review]

    So, what if you know some coding knowledge?

    Okay, you probably have been blogging over 5 years now and could have some knowledge about CSS and those mind-blowing stuffs.

    If you are interested to test your knowledge on CSS, TIm Bonner had wrote a great article here; CSS for Beginners.

    Believe it or not, it is even easier for you to make money by designing websites!

    The trick here is easy. Find a nice website template that attracts you and grab the CSS style sheet. Now, you wouldn’t want to be ‘penalized’ or get reported on copyright stuffs and therefore, perform appropriate changes to the theme.

    It could be as easy as changing the theme colour, fonts and layout.

    Personally, make sure that you had changed ‘visibly’ enough before even selling the theme.

    I bet this sounds easy to you right? Again, bear in mind that many bloggers are already doing small changes to the current theme files and resell it out.

    You probably wouldn’t want to do that and never sell your themes if you half-baked it. Sell it as a whole package or don’t do it at all.

    Food for thought: Have you ever thought of becoming a web designer?

    Web designing is a very lucrative industry right now. If you are a blogger who is always trying to make a little more money, why don’t give this a try?

    It only cost you less than $100 to build and design any WordPress theme without any coding knowledge. All you ever need is either Dynamik Website Builder or Genesis Extender.

    If you are a web designer or have experience with this industry, do you mind sharing any tips with me and my readers? Use the comment form below and tell me what you think.

  • Want Blazing Fast Website Speed? Hello CloudFlare Page Rules

    Want Blazing Fast Website Speed? Hello CloudFlare Page Rules

    CloudFlare is the most popular Content Delivery Network (CDN) used by thousands of bloggers. CloudFlare makes it easy for you to integrate with nearly any CMS especially with WordPress and in most hosting environment resulted from CloudFlare partner’s program.

    While CloudFlare is easy to setup and could supercharge your site in less than 5 minutes (as advertised), you could produce even faster website load speed by using CloudFlare Page Rules … which I will explain in a moment time.

    BONUS: Best Web Hosting for Small Business

    What is Content Delivery Network or CDN?

    Content Delivery Network is a service which cache most of your static contents and store them on specific servers around the world. For your visitors, they will be noticed a much faster loading speed as these static files will be served to them from the closest location and for webmasters like you, you would be able to reduce your server loads.

    The CDN servers are highly optimized to provide only one purpose; which is serving your visitors with statis contents and fast … regardless which location they are from.

    For those who are wondering, static files are images (.jpg, .png, .gif), stylesheets (.css), scripts (.js) and many more.

    Why do you need CloudFlare page rules?

    CloudFlare page rules is for those speed junkies like me who wants to get more out of the free CloudFlare service. Basically, page rules allow you to specify which files you want CloudFlare to cache it on their servers. Of course, the more files they cache, the faster your website speed is and you would be able to save more server bandwidth.

    Page Rules is a powerful new set of tools that allows you to control how CloudFlare works on your site on a page-by-page basis. CloudFlare.

    CloudFlare page rules is so powerful that it can:

    1. Cache your whole site
    2. Allows you to setup different cache levels for specific pages
    3. Setup custom cache expiration

    While CloudFlare page rules can be godly, it can easily (literally) destroy your site with tons of 404 errors and slow updates. This wouldn’t really happen in this tutorial unless you are really pushing your luck.

    Most of us are using CloudFlare free account and you are entitle for 3 page rules plans free of charge. Anything more and you would need to sign up for CloudFlare pro or business plans.

    >> Not using CloudFlare yet? Sign up for a free account here! <<

    How to setup CloudFlare Page Rules?

    How to setup CloudFlare page rules
    What do you know about CloudFlare page rules?

    Configuring CloudFlare Page Rules is easy as long as you know which URL pattern to use. This means that very specific page rules settings are applied only to that specific URL’s only.

    So, what happens if you want to set a custom patterns for several strings of URL without using up all your page rule allotments?

    1. Understanding CloudFlare pattern matching URLs

    This is where Pattern Matching comes into play. It is a feature that allows you to create powerful dynamic custom patterns that can match a series of URLs instead of just one. The symbol used is the asterisk (*) character.

    example.com/* matches:

    • example.com/blog
    • example.com/directory

    But does not match:

    • blog.example.com

    *.example.com matches:

    • blog.example.com
    • www.example.com

    But does not match:

    • example.com

    2. Setting up CloudFlare Page Rules

    The first part is adding the relevant URL pattern which you can use from the chart above. Personally, I would advise setting up two specific URL patterns which are:

    • *example.com/*
    • *example.com/wp-admin/*

    In the first string of URL, this is where all the extreme caching takes place. The below are the settings for this specific page rule:

    • Custom caching – Cache everything
    • Edge cache expire TTL – Respect all existing headers
    • Browser cache expire TTL – 4 hours
    • Always online – Default
    • Apps – Optional
    • Smart errors – On
    • Performance – On
    • Rocket Loader – Default
    • Security – On

    Now, for the second string of URL, you would need to make a cache exception for your back-end (wp-admin area). Just follow the settings below:

    • Custom caching – Bypass cache
    • Browser cache expire TTL – 4 hours
    • Always online – Default
    • Apps – Optional
    • Smart errors – On
    • Performance – Off
    • Security – On

    These are some of the very basic and safe page rule settings that will speed up your blog loading speed and ensuring that you wouldn’t face any issue on your admin area. You may change any of these settings to fit your liking or requirements.

    Note:

    • Adjusting the duration of Edge cache expire TTL and Browser cache expire TTL are risky as you may face issues logging in or your visitors will not be able to see the latest post even though it is published

    Additional information:

    Edge cache expire TTL

    Sometimes cache headers are set on the server-side or by a CMS solution like WordPress. If you choose to Cache Everything, CloudFlare will respect these headers unless you choose to overwrite them. By overwriting the headers, CloudFlare will cache more content at the CloudFlare edge network, meaning a decrease in load to your server. To overwrite any default headers, choose a time from the drop-down menu. This is the refetch time for when CloudFlare checks the origin server for a new resource. Common situations where you may choose to overwrite any existing headers:

    • You are experiencing large surge in traffic
    • You are under DDOS attack
    • You are not sure what the headers on WordPress or your server are set to
    • You are using WordPress and want to easily overwrite the default settings

    Browser cache expire TTL

    This setting is how CloudFlare communicates with the visitor’s browser. CloudFlare will respect the headers that you give us from your web server, and then we will communicate with the browser based on the time selected in this drop down menu. For example, your origin server headers may be set to cache for 1 year. You could configure CloudFlare to respect those headers (this is done by default, unless specifically changed), and then choose a different time limit here like 24 hours. What this means is that if you ever had to change the resource over the course of the year, you could know with full confidence that all your visitors would have the new asset within 24 hours, without any additional load to your origin server.

    3. Clearing old caches on CloudFlare and WordPress

    By now, you should have two page rules setup for your blog. The last part would always be clearing your cache on both CloudFlare and on your blog. This is to ensure that the site is running on the latest cache version and updates.

    Once this is done, allow CloudFlare and your WordPress blog to build cache over time. If you are using W3 Total Cache, it could takes up to 48 hours while Super Cache could take around 6 hours or less.

    Help! CloudFlare Page Rules are not working!

    Here are two of the most common symptoms that the page rules are not working properly:

    • Unable to login to wp-admin
    • Newly published post is not visible even after clearing cache

    Through my experience, the biggest culprit for this could be the Edge cache expire settings. If you have set a very strict and long duration such as 24 hours, this means that CloudFlare will only check for new contents once every 24 hours. CloudFlare recommends a duration of 4 hours as the duration is more than enough for a normal (and average) blog site.

    At the same time, it is not recommended to have a shorter duration than what recommended as it could create a lot of resources strain on the hosting servers.

    Help! I am not seeing much improvement after enabling CloudFlare page rules

    This is extremely common if you have a lot of JavaScript and CSS files on your site. Another option is to use CloudFlare railgun which would cost you around $200 per month aka CloudFlare Business plan. If you are running a high traffic website, I would highly recommend this as railgun technology will make your website blazing fast.

    The cheaper and more affordable alternative is using MaxCDN and it only cost you $67.50 per year (with MaxCDN coupon checkout25). For your information, you can integrate MaxCDN with CloudFlare to boost your website speed. MaxCDN is a great tool for bloggers when it comes to serving static contents while CloudFlare ensures that your site is packed with bulletproof security.

    >> Try MaxCDN today and get 25% discount off your total bill! <<

    Does your website takes more than 2 seconds to load?

    If the answer is yes, you certainly got to try the free CDN solution which is CloudFlare. If you are having around 1,000 traffic and below, CloudFlare would be more than sufficient when it comes to make your website blazing fast. With so many hosting companies already partnering up with it, I see absolutely no reasons why you shouldn’t!

    Tell me what you think using the comment form below and if you like the article, I would appreciate a social share!

  • Scrape The Best High PageRank Blog Sites Using ScrapeBox

    Scrape The Best High PageRank Blog Sites Using ScrapeBox

    ScrapeBox or SB in short is already a household name and often considered the Swiss army knife for any black hat SEO campaigns. ScrapeBox is a powerful SEO tool that you can build thousands of links, comments or even scraping articles on the Internet within 5 minutes or less.

    While ScrapeBox is very common on the darker side of the world, it is also a very popular tool for white hat SEO. Even Neil Patel had a guide on how to use ScrapeBox which you can find it here, Quick Sprout.

    This tutorial is all about using ScrapeBox and transforming it from a famous black hat SEO tool into a crazy, devastating and powerful white hat SEO builder. These are some of the very powerful SEO techniques which can either boost your website ranking multiple times (if done correctly) or totally destroy it. You have been warned!

    This article is long and thus, I would recommend you to bookmark this for future reference.

    [Tutorial] Get high PageRank sites using ScrapeBox

    I use ScrapeBox to find high PR blogs which I could leave comments or even applying for guest posting opportunities. Instead of spending the whole afternoon (just assuming) or probably days manually finding quality blog sites with Google or CommentLuv search, ScrapeBox can basically automate the whole process in just a few minutes ‘¦ literally.

    ScrapeBox is an excellent tool when it comes to off page SEO.

    What is ScrapeBox?

    ScrapeBox costs $97 for one lifetime license and if you have more than one computer, you would need to get more licenses. You may contact ScrapeBox support if you would need to purchase additional licenses and at times, you may get a discount from it.

    >> Get ScrapeBox here! <<

    Using shared or private proxies

    If you are thinking of using ScrapeBox, you need to run on proxies. This is to avoid your IP(s) being blocked by Google. Since ScrapeBox does the process a thousand times faster than human, it is a no brainer to use proxies to avoid Google detection and penalization. To run ScrapeBox functions properly, you would require at least 10 proxies.

    You have been warned. You can use ScrapeBox without proxies but your IP will be banned by Google within days. Tested and proven!

    There are two types of proxies which you can use with ScrapeBox which are shared or private proxies. Shared means that that proxy could be shared among 3 to 10 users while private proxies are specific to you only. If you are looking for good proxy company, I would highly recommend Squid Proxies. They have top notch customer service and they assist to setup proxies within an hour or less. I got mine within 5 minutes after completing the checkout and it only cost around $1 per private proxy.

    >> Click here to get Squid Proxies as low as $0.42 each! <<

    I am going to be very honest with you; ScapeBox is not very user-friendly and it would require a little learning curve before you can put it to good use. But don’t frust! This I will be creating more tutorials on how to use ScapeBox and you should bookmark it for future reference.

    Scraping keywords

    Finding high PageRank sites is a 3-steps process when you are using ScapeBox and the first is to find the proper keywords. While you can use keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner or Long Tail Keyword, ScrapeBox has an inbuilt keyword scrapper feature.

    ScrapeBox makes keyword scraping as easy as A, B and C. Each process takes less than 5 minutes to perform which is a huge time saver for marketers and niche bloggers.

    Step 1 – Scraping related keywords

    • We all heard about long tail keywords and the effectiveness of it. The same concept applies when you are using ScapeBox. You want to find both exact keywords and related keywords to maximize your search results.
    • Click on Scrape and select Keyword Scraper.
    • This will opens up a box that has two columns. Key in your keyword on the left column and select Scrape.
    • A list will related keywords will show on the right column and delete those which are unrelated.
    • [Optional] Click on Transfer Left and repeat the first process. Delete off those keywords which are unrelated and you would be able to get a complete list of keywords on your right column.
    • Click Send to ScrapeBox and press Close.

    Scrapebox keyword scrapper tool

    Note: Scraping the related keyword twice would provide you a better and bigger list of related keywords which is highly recommended to improve your search results later.

    Step 2 – Choosing the right footprint

    Footprint is also known as command and this is how to control ScrapeBox to perform a specific task. By default, ScrapeBox comes with several basic footprints which you can use. In this tutorial, you do not need to use any. Instead, I will show you how you can build your own footprint.

    In the Harvester column, key in either one of these codes:

    • site:.com (you may replace .com with .net, .org, .info etc)
    • intitle:keyword
    • inurl:keyword
    • intext:keyword

    For example, using ‘site:.com’ will enable ScrapeBox to search for sites which has the specific keyword and the URL comes from dot coms only.

    Fill the relevant footprint and then, click on Platform. There is a full list of platforms you can choose from but I always go with WordPress only.

    Now, you are ready for the next step.

    Scrapebox recommended footprints and platforms

    Step 3 – Setting up proxies

    The list of keywords will be visible in the Keywords column and now, you need to set up proxies. If you have yet to get any proxies, you can get some cheap but quality proxies from Squid Hosting.

    • Enable Use Proxies.
    • Paste your proxies in the Select Engines & Proxies and click Manage.
    • A box will open up and your proxies will be visible in it.
    • Click on Test Proxies and select Test All Proxies. This is to ensure that all your proxies are working properly. Status of the proxies must be in green which is good while red means the proxies are down. Contact your proxy supplier if you find any of those proxies which are not working and they will provide you with new ones.
    • Press Close.
    • Note: You may select the type of search engine to use and I highly recommend Google, Yahoo and Bing only.  As for the number of results, I usually set it to 150 as anything more than that usually provides low quality results.

    Setting up proxies for ScrapeBox

    Step 4 – Harvesting URL’s with ScrapeBox and find high PageRank sites

    This is where ScrapeBox will do its magic. Select Start Harvesting and ScrapeBox will automatically search for related blog sites which the keywords you selected.

    Depending how fast your computer, proxies and Internet speed are, it will generate a list of blog URL’s which you can start working on. While ScrapeBox would probably return thousands of results, it is time to trim down those links.

    The process of trimming down the links is to find high PageRank sites only.

    This is how you trim your URL results:

    • Select Remove / Filter and select Remove Duplicate URL’s
    • [Optional] You can further trim down the links by using either selecting Remove URL’s Containing or Remove URL’s Not Containing.
    • Select Check PageRank and Get Domain PageRank

    Checking of PageRank would take some time and therefore, leave ScrapeBox running. Once the results are out, you can either export it out using excel using Export URL List and select Export as Excel (.xlsx) or the lazy way (my style) which is to click on the PR button to sort it automatically.

    Find high PageRank sites using ScrapeBox

    Now, you have completed the whole scraping process and you should have a list of quality sites you can start commenting, request for guest posting, communicate with the webmasters in terms authority building etc.

    ScrapeBox is a dangerous SEO tool. You have been warned!

    While SB could do wonders for your SEO campaigns, it is also a very dangerous tool which can kill your blog ranking overnight. For starters, I do not suggest using it directly on your blog. Instead, you could try to use it on your secondary sites to start building backlinks.

    Wait! Do you like this tutorial? I would really appreciate if you can share this article for me using the social icons below.