Tag: blog software

Blog Tech Guy Now Runs On Headway

You probably haven’t noticed (at least I hope not) but the Blog Tech Guy website now runs off the Headway theme for WordPress. Headway tries to take the programming and technical challenges out of customizing a theme and each version it gets better and better.

Headway Themes — Manage your website with drag and drop layout editing and more!

My design is a wonderful custom design by Nate from Unique Blog Designs and I didn’t want to lose that. With Headway I didn’t have to and hopefully not many people have noticed that I’ve even moved.

So why switch?
There were a few reasons. Being a geek I wanted to see if it was possible. Not just from a technical standpoint but from my own abilities. I customize sites all the time for clients and I wanted to see if what I thought I could do, I could. I’m glad to say I was right!

I also recommend Headway to a lot of people and I wanted to get more hand on experience on how it works and what it does when you ask it to do something. I also wanted to see how easy it was for others to change elements. With 1.7 things are getting easier and easier, and more intuitive.

Can you transfer your site to Headway?
I’ll be lying if I said my transfer was easy. It was straightforward, I had a list of things that needed to be done, and with a few minor hiccups I achieved them. But it wasn’t easy and took about 6 hours. However it’s unlikely that you will be transferring to Headway and wanting to keep exactly the same theme as you have now, like I have. The beauty of Headway is that you can easily make a different layout or design to what you have now and you have ultimate control over colors, fonts, layouts and more.

You can see a video of me taking a quick look at the new features for Headway 1.7 (early September) below. Additional features include a quick start wizard, leaf templates, automatic upgrades, SEO improvements, speed increases and much much more.

Why Bother Guest Posting?

Most of us at some point or another have thought about the possibilities of guest blogging, or may even be doing it right now. Guest blogging is the exchange of information (content) from one blogger to another, for a site which is not your own.

It can be hard enough coming up with original content for your own site, so the idea of writing for someone else on top of your usual routine probably fills you with dread. The thing is, there are a number of advantages to lending your services out as a guest blogger. Here’s the lowdown…

Gain exposure on the web

This one is a bit of a no-brainer. The more you put yourself out there on sites and blogs, the more publicity you get to showcase yourself and your services. By taking some time to write for another person, you get the opportunity to introduce yourself to new people and potentially increase your own customer base and contact lists if they like what you have written.

Get subscribers to your own site

Without subscribers to your blog, your site will end up being a lonely and ignored affair, which makes you feel as if you are posting up messages in to the ether. Having a broad range of loyal readers is the equivalent of going to a party and knowing everyone there – it makes you feel as if you are doing something really worthwhile, and your blog is well liked. By posting up quality content as a guest blogger, you enhance your prospects of gaining a wider readership for your work.

Generate more links

Hyperlinks are the friendly and helpful powerhouse of the internet. To enhance your ranking on Google and other engines, you need links. They help you to be recognised as an expert in your field, direct traffic to your site, and increase your visibility on the web. Guest blogging helps you to quickly and easily develop custom anchor-text and back links to your blog. It’s a free and highly effective way of driving your marketing strategy forward.

Direct valuable traffic to your site

We are all ultimately in competition for our readers. If we don’t stay ahead of our game, people will leave our site and look elsewhere for their information. High traffic means high recognition, and high awareness – invaluable if you are selling products through your blog. Sharing your blogging services enables you to generate more traffic. Which enables you to generate more sales. Simple!

Guest blogging is a great way of helping other people, and gaining from it in return. Blog owners gain free content for their site, and you benefit by generating traffic, links and subscribers for your own blog.

If you write quality content that is completely original, use images and research your platform, you will be able to write effective articles which really enhance your personal brand. If you’re lucky, you’ll get asked back to post. You could also ask people to post on your site, and take the day off from writing! Remember that as a guest blogger, this is your chance to showcase your knowledge and encourage people to support you.

If you write good content for other sites, you’ll get all the benefits that guest posting has to offer. If, however, you produce poor-quality writing, you run the risk of doing more harm than good for your own business.

To learn more about guest posting check out Chris Garrett’s Guest Posting eBook ($10).

Scribe SEO – 5 Ways To Improve ScribeSEO Plugin

First, Scribe SEO is a brilliant tool. It’s a premium (aka paid-for) WordPress plugin that will help with SEO for your blog posts. It attempts to make SEO copywriting much more simple than it is now, and while you still need to pay attention to creating good headlines and interesting content, it may help with the final optimization steps that you’ve been missing.

One of my clients called it “one of the best tools I’ve ever bought” and I wholeheartedly agree. It’s not often something as easy and useful as Scribe SEO comes along. If you haven’t checked it out yet, there is a free trial on the website. Like with anything great out there, I think it could be even better, so there are a few things I would do to improve it.

1) Have the Review window open in a new browser window/tab. The hover over window is no good to anyone, it opens up over the content you’re editing and areas that you need to alter, so you need to close it to alter then go back to it for the next section and so on – I end up opening the post in another window so I can edit it there without switching back and forth. At least give me the option.

Scribe SEO Review window

2) When it tells me I need my primary keyword near the start of the title, it should tell me what my primary keyword is and say “Move Primary Keyword Scribe SEO to the beginning of the Title”. Otherwise I have to look it up to see if it’s different to what I think it should be. Lazy of me I know, but it’d be a time-saver of at least 5 seconds.

3) The Tags page/tab of the Review window should allow me to edit tags right there with the list of suggested tags. Even an “Add all tags” button would be nice and handy.

4) The SEO Best Practices page is the same on every review. I know that’s not a criticism, it’s a comment, but it is. Why it bothers me I have no idea as it’s a gold mine of useful info, but perhaps it could be linked to and stored on the settings page or something. I won’t lose sleep if that one is never addressed though…

5) The Scribe Settings page tells me how many evaluations I have left as of today, but when do they expire? So having 20 evaluations left as of today is all very well and good, but will that need to last me 25 days or 5 days? [Side note: For those wondering if evaluations rollover to the next month, they don’t.]

Yes, some of them are picky and personal, but when a tool (and an SEO tool at that) is this great it’s the little things from using it that can make it that little bit greater.

You can watch my quick video of Scribe SEO here, or take a look at the Scribe website here.

%d bloggers like this: