What is Reddit?
Reddit is a social news site, and bookmarking site, that users can post links to web pages and everyone can vote the articles up or down. (Wikipedia on Reddit). You can join quickly and add bookmarklets to your browser. Once you find a site or article you would like to share you simply click a button in your browser to vote it up / down or save it.

What Does it Look Like?
You will see Reddit buttons on articles like these:

The first thing you will see, before anyone submits is that the Reddit graphic prompts a user to submit this link: , once it is submitted the balance of positive votes vs. negative votes is displayed.

How Can Reddit Help Me?
Many users, myself included, find it a great way to locate content since the top stories, those that have been voted the highest, have already been filtered by thousands of people.

As a blogger and content publisher you can reach a greater audience with your content by having it submitted to sites like Reddit. You can submit the story yourself or let another submit it for you. Once submitted as individuals read your article on your site they can vote it up and more people will find your article via Reddit. Reddit can be a great way to find a broader audience and visitors to your site. An excellent reward for well written/informative content.

Another bonus is that you have additional links in to your site from Reddit and to your article. Also as others find you they may comment and/or link to you. Considering all you have to do is add a simple piece of code to each article, the benefits definitely outweigh the effort.

How to Add The Reddit Voting

Manually. To add the code manually take a look at the Reddit button page which as the three buttons above and code to cut and paste. Simply insert the title of your article and the URL to your article and your done.

Automatically. If you use WordPress, my favorite WordPress plugin is called reddZ-Et and found here at WordPress.org. Simply follow the instructions and the Reddit button, of your choice, will be automatically placed on every article for you.

This is one of many plugins and social bookmarking/news tools to help broaden your reach. Enjoy!

Google Blog Search allows anyone to search blogs and only blogs. Just as you would want your site to be listed in Google search you also want to be listed in Google blog search.

Manual Ping
The quick and easy way to assure you are indexed in the Google blog search is to manually enter your sites URL, what they call a ping by going here and simply pasting your sites feed address. A feed address may appear as “yourblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml”, “yoursite.com/wp-rss.php” or “feeds.feedburner.com/yourfeedname”. Enter your feed and submit. While this is easy it would be ideal to alert Google and others automatically every time your feed is updated.

Automatic Ping
WordPress and others have this set up already, recent versions of WordPress already have the Google blog search set to be pinged. However if you are using an older version of WordPress and do not wish to upgrade or have another content management system that has an XML-RPC client then check to make sure it is set up. In WordPress you navigate to the settings –> writing or in older versions options –> writing, there you will find the Update Services section, check to see if this is listed http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 and if so you are fine otherwise paste it in and save changes. If however you have a rest client the URL is http://blogsearch.google.com/ping.

More detail can be found on the Google Blog Search Pinging Service API page and Frequently Asked Questions about Google blog search.

Here are my Top 10 WordPress plugins if I were to start a new WordPress blog (and I do often) here are the plugins I would immediately upload and activate before all else.

Search Engines & Optimization
Your site needs to be listed in search engines and optimized to be found.

• 1. Google XML Sitemaps : A sitemap will be generated for you and will work with Google, Google is the largest of all the search engines so you need to be indexed properly before you can be found.
• 2. All in One SEO Pack : Once your pages are indexed in Google, and other search engines, you need to be sure to have Title, Description, and Keywords for your site. Just as important is the ability to easily change the Title, Description, and Keywords for every post you make as the topic and discussion is different it is best to have the Title, Description and Keywords match the content. This plugin provides all that and more as you can modify the above when you post or write a page.

Visitor Retention
Make sure your visitors continue to receive your stories after they visited your site and hopefully return.

• 3. Add to Any Subscribe Button : Make it simple for visitors to easily add your feed to their favorite reader and receive your posts, hopefully returning as well.

Visitor Acquisition - Virally
Once you have visitors, the best reference is a friend so have your visitors tell others through services such as Digg and other social bookmarking/sharing services. You cannot beat referrals, they are strong and free.

• 4. diggZ-Et : Adds a Digg button to every post, a simple click and submit from a visitor and you are referenced in Digg, finding a new audience and traffic.
• 5. Add to Any : Share/Save/Bookmark Button or Sociable : As there are many different sharing and social bookmarking services, you want to easily be able to offer the visitors preferred provider, such as Reddit Del.icio.us and others, with a click of a button. These two, pick your preference, provide them all.

No Spam
Comment spam is no fun when you get 100 a day, bots typically spam your site by leaving comments and it is best to block them or make them more easily identifiable then to allow them all and clean it up yourself.

• 6. Akismet : An excellent tool for blocking and highlighting spam comments for you.
• 7. reCAPTCHA : Stop bots from leaving comments by providing a confirmation code that can only be read by human eyes, I am sure you have see the word on a background which is difficult but possible to decifer.

Track Progress
Statistics help you to determine the traffic from your site, where they come from and where they go.

• 8.Google Analytics for WordPress : Google Analytics is a free, and very impressive, statistics package. Easily add the tracking code to your pages with this plugin and track your progress.

Administrative
Here are some plugins to make the administration of your blog easier.

• 9. Wordpress Automatic Upgrade : Every now and then you need to upgrade Wordpress to the latest version, with this plugin you can do so by clicking to upgrade and it is taken care of for you, even backing up your site before the upgrade.
• 10. WP Super Cache : Just in case you site becomes popular, or even on the more reasonably priced web hosting plans they may turn off your site if too much traffic comes and your site is putting too much of a load on the web server, with this plugin a static page is rendered and served up thereby saving server load.

These are incredibly easy to install, just download from the link above, unzip, upload to your /wp-content/plugins directory the entire plugin folder and activate from your plugin menu option within the WordPress admin.

Hope these help, and let me know if you have others you would prefer in your top 10.

This free peel script is easy to install and easy to use. It is also referred to as a page peel, the upper right of the page looks like it is peeled back to attract visitors attention. A small peeled back image can reveal a portion of a larger image or text such as “look here” and once moused over it peels the page back to reveal a larger image. The larger image has a URL associated with it. Most peel script creators charge a fee, but this one is free.

Here is an image showing the smaller peel in the corner of the page.

I found the script here at this Flash and Actionscript Developer Site. The author has done a great job, makes changes, and keeps the versions fresh. They have also created easy to use instructions.I followed the instructions and found them easy to understand and simple to use. You can view it in action at this online meeting focused site. You will create two images, the smaller pre-peeled image and the larger post-peel image, change a couple variables in one file, cut and paste code into your site and upload the files to your site. Sounds like a lot but every new feature would require at least this much, minus the image creation.

This particular script has many variables that are customizable such as placing Place it on the left or right upper corner, speed of the peel once moused over, reflection on the peeled page, and more.

Here is a list of online directories where you can submit your site. You can manually submit to each below to increase your exposure and links to your site.

These have a Google page rank of 4, not that this means the page your site will be listed on will have a rank of 4, nor that the rank is really indicative of anything. I have just chosen to list them this way:

• XDTSL.net
• Xakami
• Submit site web directory
• Web 1 Directory

To assure you are indexed in Google and kept up to date you can submit a sitemap with Google. One way is to submit your sitemap using the Google Webmaster tools. Log into your google account, such as your gmail and click the “My Account” link in the upper right hand corner.

After scrolling down you will see the WebMaster Tools, see image below:

Once you are in the Google Webmaster Tools, which is a great tool, you will see the ability to submit your URL, see image below.

After submitting your URL, you may then submit your Sitemap and you will see a link to do just that.

Typically your sitemap will have a .xml extension. There are many ways to create a sitemap, including adding a plugin for wordpress that creates one for you. By using a sitemap that is generated for you, you will be assured your most recent pages are in the sitemap and therefore indexed by Google.

More on sitemaps and generating one in another post.

Description and keywords are important tags for your website. Search engines look at both of these tags as one of the many ways in which to determine how to rank your sites relevance.

In the Wordpress installations and themes, the keyword and description code is not in the template. The code is simple to copy and paste and looks like this:

< meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword, keyword, keyword” />
< meta name="description" content="description of the site" />

To determine if the template you are using in Wordpress has these tags or not, follow these steps:

• Login to your Wordpress admin
• Choose the Presentation menu item
• Choose the Theme Editor menu item
• on the right hand menu choose the header or sometimes header.php

Now you scroll down through the code to determine if the items above are present. If not, you then place them between the < head> and < /head> tags. To make it easier you may paste them just above the tag.

The keywords should be keywords that you would like your site found under. A tool to help uncover keywords is Wordtracker (get a Free Trial here). Add you keywords separated by a comma.

Next write a concise site description also using keywords.

It is that simple.

If you ever need assistance coding, design, server administration, data entry, anything to help your business, you can find assistance online.

Various sites exist, I have used Scriptlance for years. You simply post your requirements and others bid on providing the work, you choose the price you are willing to pay, check the providers reputation and try one out. Read about Scriptlance in depth here or visit their site to sign up for free at Scriptlance here.

oDesk : “The Global Marketplace for Remote Work”
Recently I ran across oDesk, another site to post your jobs or find others to perform work based on your needs. They have categorized all of the providers so you may browse through the various categories, or post your job requirements and wait for others to respond. You can sign up for free at oDesk here.

Hire Qualified Service Providers
oDesk lets you interview and hire service providers from over 40 countries. They give you each provider’s resume and verified work history. You can interview as many oDesk providers as you like and hire only those that are right for you.

Manage Effectively
Once you have hired your remote team, the oDesk Team Room gives you literal visibility into your team’s activity, and offers collaboration tools for task management, code sharing and email communication. Their weekly timelogs let you verify hours worked and pay your remote team via their automated Payment System.

Features and Benefits

• Hire the best from around the world
• Manage them as if they were in the same office
• Pay only for work performed

Why post a job on oDesk?

• It’s free
• No credit card required
• Reach 31,781 providers
• Get 20+ applicants in 24 hours

Need WordPress installed, need a server set up, need a new unique WordPress , Drupal , or other theme? No matter what the job you can find someone at oDesk, be sure to sign up for free at oDesk here and take a look at their services.

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Knowing what your visitors click on your pages is incredibly useful.

Having the ability to tag links and look up a link in an admin program to determine what is or is not being clicked is one way to track clicks. However with Google Analytics you are able to use a tool they provide that shows a bar on top of each item or link on your page that is clickable. They call this an “overlay”, look at the three bars in this picture:

The bars in this picture are colored in white as no one has clicked the links. The above screen shot is taken from one of the splash pages I am using for RSS subscription campaigns. Using the overlay will show you, and only you (not your visitors), which links have been clicked an how often. Hovering over a bar will tell you

As you can see items are tracked for each link and appear, as in the above picture, when you mouse over a bar: clicks, goal value, and the various goals. Clicks are the number of clicks on that specific link, goal value is the number of times that goal has been met, and the goals can range from 1 to 4 goals and give you a goal description. I will write more about goals, however the short description is an action you want the user to take, therefore a goal may be to click a specific link on your site.

Looking at the graphic above which is mirrored on the homepage, you would see the bar to subscribe to the site via email was clicked much more often than the large orange subscribe. This type of information can help you plan a site redesign.

I am using the overlays to compare various marketing campaigns driving people to the site and hope they click to subscribe.

I highly recommend you use Google Analytics and test out the overlay.