When used on a Blog, Tags can serve multiple purposes, You can use them to categorize your blog posts, link posts together in a series or set of articles, or use them as a means of promoting your favorite posts.

Think of Tags as Sub level categories or keyword specific links to all posts that contain a specific keyword.

How you initially set up your site will determine how you use Tags.

You can use tags to categorize your posts instead of using sub categories, Or you can use both sub categories and tags to structure and categorize your content.

Tags are especially useful if you write an article that would fit into more than one category or subcategory.

You may notice on this site that I have posts that are in different sub categories but are tagged with similar tags.

The reason is, I could of potentially placed the post in at least two categories, but I had to decide which was the most suitable category at the time of publishing, so the article is placed in a top level subcategory but assigned to a sub level tag.

To explain that last sentence in a way that someone would actually understand, Just think of tags as sub categories.

Wordpress does allow you to publish a post in more than one category but this is not a very good practice for structuring your site.

Tags are a great use of Keywords.

I have seen many articles listed in the search engines because of the Tag related to the article.

It’s a good Idea not to overdo tags, as they are really a way of categorizing and structuring your content and every time you add a new tag to a post you are potentially adding a new page to your site.

So if every post has a specific tag that is only used once, what you are creating is a new page that may in all likelihood be a duplicate of the original posts page, which may be detrimental to how the search engines view your site.

I recommend using specific tags that relate to specific posts and always try to use a Tag that can be used on multiple posts.

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• What Is Keyword Research?
• What Is The Browser Address Bar.
• What Is Feedburner?
• What Is An XML Sitemap?

Typically the term implies that the Researcher is looking for the number of searches performed in a specific time period, using a specific search command or query.

Keyword research is mainly used to find highly searched for phrases, that will produce high levels of traffic to a website.

A person who is performing any type of Keyword Research could use the data for any number of reasons.

The following list is by no means comprehensive but will give you an idea of how you can use the information gathered from Keyword Research.

• Purchase Keyword focused domain names.
• Article and blog post titles.
• Category and subcategory titles.
• Tags used on blog posts for categorizing content.
• Meta data for page titles and descriptions.
• Hyperlink titles and on page link text.
• Localized or area specific search data.
• Market and product research.
• and so on…

Keywords help Search engines determine the content on a webpage, so when a person types in a specific search command, the search engine will provide the best possible result based on the Keywords and related synonyms found on a particular web page .

This is why so many people focus heavily on performing Keyword Research.

Keyword Research is vitally important for building a website that is targeting free search engine traffic and to keep your costs down when running a paid advertising campaign such as Googles Adwords.

There are plenty of tools available to perform keyword research, Google has a great Free Keyword Research Tool, and is my personal favorite for providing quick and easy results, The Google Keyword tool is perfect for gaining a basic understanding of Keyword Research techniques.

More On This Topic...

• What Is A Tag?
• Googles Free Keyword Research Tool
• What Is The Browser Address Bar.
• What Is Feedburner?

The address bar is a text area in the web browser that displays the location of the webpage your are viewing.

The text or web address inside of the address bar is commonly known as the webpages URL.

In simple terms the Address Bar contains the address of the web page you are viewing at any specific time.

The address bar can also be used to view files that are located on your computers harddrive within a Web browser.

To view the files stored on your hard drive in your Web browser, simply right click on the file and open it with your Web browser of choice.

You can see how the file address looks in the address bar of your Web browser in the image below.

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• What Is A Web Browser?
• What Is A Tag?
• What Is Keyword Research?
• What Is Feedburner?

Feedburner takes an RSS feed and converts it into a format that can be read, or translated by the majoraity of RSS reading services.

Feedburner also provides it’s users with important statistics about their RSS subscribers, such as…

• The number of people who subscribe to the RSS feed.
• How many people are actually reading the feed content.
• The number of people clicking on the links in the feeds.
• The location of the subscribers who are reading the feed.
• and How people are reading and recieving the feed content.

By using the Feedburner service to deliver RSS content, you are also taking some of the load away from your webserver.

Feedburner is very userfreindly and easy to set up.

Your Feedburner account can also be added to your Google account, so if your logged into your Google account you can access your Feedburner account without having to log into a seperate service.

There is not a lot of technicle skill involved in adding your blogs RSS feed to your Feedburner account, nor is there when adding Feedburner to your website.

Feedburner also lets you set up multiple feeds on the one account, which means if you have more than one website that distributes content through RSS, you can set up Feedburner to manage all of your feeds.

Feedburner also provides multiple options for your feed to be delivered, One of those is email. which means your content is delivered directly to your subscribers email inbox.

You also have the ability to place Google advertising inside of your feeds.

Feedburner will also send out images, videos and podcasts, basically whatever you post onto your blog feedburner will send, even bookmarking links are included with your Feedburner content.

You could say that feedburner is like an all in one webhosting, delivery and analitycs account  for your RSS feed.

More On This Topic...

• How To Add Your Blog To Your Feedburner Account.
• How To Log Into Feedburner.
• How To Sign Up For A Feedburner Account.
• What Is Google Analytics.

They are not the type of sitemap your websites visitors would find useful for finding content.

Instead of having nice looking, well categorized and laid out hyperlinks, an XML sitemap lists content by it’s URL in order of the date your content was added to your site or when your content was last edited.

Your XML sitemap provides information to the Search engines about the meta-data associated to the content on your site and it’s web-pages.

For example,

• When the content was added to the site.
• When your post or page was last edited.
• and…
• How often the content on the page is likely to be changed and updated.

The XML sitemap will also give the Search engines a good indication of the importance of certain pages on your site.

In a nut shell an XML sitemap informs the search engines on content added to your site and makes it easier for them to spider or crawl through your site indexing your content by it’s relevance and importance.

Having an XML sitemap however, doesn’t automatically mean that your web-pages are going to hit the number one spot in the search results.

There are way too many factors that come into play when it comes to where your content gets ranked, it just means that the search engines are aware of your content, and will display your content when the need and relevance arises.

The four major search engines that support the Sitemap protocol are…

• Google.com.
• Bing.com.
• Yahoo.com.
• and Ask.com.

Since the addition of XML sitemaps you no longer need to manually submit your site to the search engines, although when your first getting your site online, it is a good idea to submit your site to a feed aggregator to help your site initially get indexed.

If you are using Wordpress for your Content Management System, an XML Sitemap can be added to your site by simply installing and configuring a plugin.

Otherwise you can use the sitemap generation tool to Build your XML Site Map online.

More On This Topic...

• What Is A Sitemap?
• What Is A Tag?
• What Is Keyword Research?
• What Is The Browser Address Bar.

It is basically the same concept as an index in a book.

A good quality site-map will provide direct links to all publicly viewable content in a well structured and ordered list.

Common items listed on a site map are usually…

• The websites pages.
• The blog categories.
• The blog posts.
• The blog archives.
• The tags used on the site.
• and the RSS feed for the site.

Depending on the size of the website the site-map can be one page or many.

Sitemaps can benefit both the human or robotic visitors of your site, by robots I am referring to search engines crawling your website for new content to index.

A good practice is to have a link to your sitemap in your main page navigation, making it easy for your visitors to find specific pages without having to search through different categories or archives.

There are two main types of sitemaps your website should have.

1. XML Sitemap.
2. .html or .php sitemap.

An XML sitemap is purely for search engines to spider or crawl your site, whilst the .html or .php sitemap is for your human visitors.

To give you an example of how the two sitemaps are different and why you wouldn’t send your human visitors to your XML sitemap have a look at my XML Sitemap Here.

Then compare that by looking at my PHP sitemap.

More On This Topic...

• What Is An XML Sitemap?
• What Is A Tag?
• What Is Keyword Research?
• What Is The Browser Address Bar.

You can recognize a Re-tweet by the capital RT before the @username

The idea or concept behind Re-tweeting really epitomizes the social aspect of Twitter.

When Re-Tweets are done properly, Every one wins.

For example…

The person who gets Re-tweeted, or in other words the person who originally posted the Tweet wins, because their message now gets read by a list of people that would never of seen the Tweet unless it was Re-tweeted.

The people who received the Re-tweeted message win, because they get to read a Tweet from someone they weren’t following and now have been introduced to someone that they may have similar interests with, who they can now follow.

and You win, because your the guy who brings all parties together and you get to share great content by doing a small amount of effort.

Re-Tweeting can also be a great way to attract new followers to your twitter account.

By sending out regular Re-tweets, It shows the Twitter community that you are not single minded with your approach to sharing content on the web, People may see you as a means of getting their content Re-Tweeted.

Re-Tweeting can also be a great way of getting noticed by someone.

As an example If I see someone who starts Re-Tweeting my Tweets, that person will show up in my feed and I will almost always start to follow them back.

I think where people make the mistake when Re-Tweeting, is they send out a continuous barrage of Re-Tweets with nothing more than a list of twitter user names, thinking they are doing these people some kind of favor, when in reality they are just bordering on spamming their list of followers.

The typical message I’m referring to could look something like this…

RT @twitteruser1: @twitteruser2 @twitteruser3 @twitteruser4 @twitteruser5 @twitteruser6 @twitteruser7 Thnx 4 RT

I personally don’t see the value in sending something like this to my list of followers.

If you really want to thank me for Re-tweeting your Tweets, Then go to my blog and Tweet about one of my articles, or Re-tweet one of my tweets about an article I wrote.

I also think your Re-tweets should stay relevant to your main goal or focus.

Ask yourself why you want to build a list of followers on twitter?

This can be a major factor on the type of content that you will Re-tweet.

If you take a look at the way I use twitter, I align my twitter use with my end goal, this helps me to focus on my Twitter activity and also helps in my efforts to build a targeted list.

Which is to provide a quality resource to Christians who want to learn how to effectively use the internet in their ministry or business.

As a result 95% of my Tweets will be related to Social media, Wordpress, Prayer requests, or Scripture.

Where as the remaining 5% of Tweets are usually responses or conversations I have through my public twitter feed.

As a result, whenever I have something  come through from someone I follow that falls in line with my end goal and I think it is worthy of sharing, I Re-tweet it.

When it comes to Re-tweeting, It’s important to remember that your list of followers is a list of real people. Assuming you haven’t used some random follow me, follow you program that automatically starts following every twitter bot online.

So think about who your true followers are, with Twitter don’t try to be all things to all men and Re-tweet every single thing that comes your way.

More On This Topic...

• What Is Twitter?
• What Is A Tag?
• What Is Keyword Research?
• What Is The Browser Address Bar.

It is now a free service provided by Google.com for website owners to track and measure traffic to and on their websites.

The data measured in the analytics includes…

• How visitors found your site. (traffic Sources)
• The keywords people searched for to find your site in the search engines.
• The location of your visitors. (Country, City and Town)
• The time spent on your site.
• The number of visitors to your site over a day week or monthly period.
• How many pageviews your site has received.
• The average time a visitor spends on your site.
• The percentage of new visits.
• The bounce rate of your site.

Plus a continuous stream of new features that are constantly being added to the Google analytics service.

The information collected by Google analytics can really help you to see and understand what is happening on your site, what pages are more popular than others and what people are looking for when they found your site.

This information is invaluable and can give you an insight as to the type of content you could be adding to your site.

To start using analytics you need to set up an account with Google, my preference for setting up an account is to open a free Gmail account then simply add any additional services (Analytics for example) to that particular Google Gmail account.

But before you can start collecting data with your analytics, you need to add your websites URL to your Google account, Google will then give you some Java Script code to place into your site, it is this code that allows Google to see what is happening on your site.

Google will then track any visitor information and display that information within your Google analytics dashboard.

I have found the data from Google can have a time lag as much as a 24 hour delay, I don’t expect any immediate data to show up before this time has lapsed.

For More Information About Google Analytics Visit The Official Google Analytics Help Page.

More On This Topic...

• What Is Feedburner?
• What Is Gmail?
• What Is A Tag?
• What Is Keyword Research?

In most cases, the most common area within your Wordpress theme to be Widgetized is usually the sidebar, but depending on your theme, you can often have Widgetized areas in almost all areas of your theme.

To give you an example of a theme with multiple widget areas the following screen shot is taken of the Hybrid Theme from Justin Tadlock.

Usually by default, your theme has certain elements coded into your sidebar, It’s usually your Blogroll, Meta area, Categories and Pages. Widgets allow you to change these default settings without having to mess with the code within your themes .php files.

For example if I only wanted to display my categories and popular posts without listing any pages or links to my Admin area in my sidebar, all I would need to do is add the Categories and Popular Posts widgets into my sidebar widget area.

To access your widgets, log into your Wordpress admin, and click on the Widgets link under the Appearance section on the left sidebar within your Wordpress admin.

After clicking on the Widgets link, your widgets admin area will open up, this will be where you see all of your Available Widgets and the Widgetized Areas for your theme.

1. Available Widgets
2. Widget Areas within Your Theme.

To activate an Available Widget all you do is drag the particular widget from the Available Widgets section into the specific Widgetized Area where you want the widget to be visible on your theme.

Sometimes additional settings are needed to set up and customize your widgets even further, save all changes and your done.

Wordpress usually comes pre-installed with some widgets, but if you require additional widgets for your site you can search the Wordpress Codex for more available widgets.

More On This Topic...

• What Is A Wordpress Theme?
• What Is A Wordpress Plugin?
• What Is Wordpress?
• What Is A Tag?

To put it simply, a Wordpress theme is the design of your blog or website. The theme literally determines how your website looks, it’s what you see when you look your website or blog.

Each theme usually has it’s own specific characteristics, which means not all themes are the same.

You will find some of the more complex themes have multiple widget areas and different templates for various pages, which means you can change the layout and look of your themes design.

Whereas the more basic or simple themes would be more uniformed throughout the entire theme with less options to change the layout or look of your blog or website.

There are numerous options available when deciding on your themes layout, the most common seem to be the two and three column theme layouts.

To try and explain how themes work without getting to “Techy” I would have to say that themes are made up of various php template files and rely on CSS to pull all of the pieces together.

These individual php files can basically be divided into various sections or components, which when called on by the CSS are all joined together to make up your overall theme.

Below is a very basic example of some common php files you would find in most if not all Wordpress themes.

• Header.php
• Footer.php
• Sidebar.php
• Post.php
• Page.php

Wordpress themes are freely available from all over the web, but it’s important to note that not all themes are created equal. Some “Free” themes can literally be more trouble than the free price tag associated with them.

There are a lot of themes that have been poorly written and contain a lot of coding errors, this can be detrimental to how well your site performs in the search engines, (Google, Yahoo, etc…) So it’s important you choose a theme that has been produced by an experienced Wordpress coder.

Wordpress.org offers a free theme directory where theme authors can share their themes with the Wordpress community, if you want to use a free Wordpress theme then I wholeheartedly suggest downloading it from the Wordpress Codex or website..

Usually the only condition to using one of these free themes is, the author of the themes ask you to leave the attribution link in the footer of the theme, this is a way the theme authors can promote their themes and build traffic for their blogs.

You can even create your own themes by using software’s that build your themes for you. A good example of such a software is Artisteer, I have tried the free trial version of Artisteer but I wasn’t totally sold on the product, Feel free to try it out for yourself, It is very easy to use and can also be a bit of fun, from memory it’s PC only.

Then there are what are known as “Premium” themes.

These themes are often built by experienced web developers who sell their themes as a source of income.

In a nutshell, Premium themes are themes you have to pay for.

Usually these are sold in two ways, you can purchase a single user license, which means you get to use the theme on a single domain name or website, and a multi or developer user license, which means if you pay an additional fee, you can use the theme on multiple sites including sites you build for paid clients.

As an example of a premium theme, a very popular theme is the Thesis theme, I personally haven’t used Thesis, but there are plenty of top bloggers around the world who do, that is why I mentioned it here, it is a very popular theme.

There are numerous benefits of paying for a theme, the main one being the quality of the code that makes up the theme, and then the quality of support .

An interesting concept that I recently come across is the Themewars.com website.

Every week they have two new theme authors competing on who can produce the best Wordpress theme. This is a great idea for giving the theme authors some exposure and you, an opportunity to purchase a unique web design for a great price.

But like all themes, the quality of your theme depends a lot on who created it.

Currently I am using the Hybrid News theme by Justin Tadlock.

It’s a free theme that you can download from Justin’s site, but for a small fee of $25.00 per year, you can get fantastic support access to Justin through his forum.

It’s a great community of Wordpress users who all use the Hybrid theme. In my opinion it’s the best $25.00 I have spent online.

I love Wordpress themes, I have literally spent hundreds of hours sifting through the web looking at themes and honing my skills modifying and playing with the code that makes up a theme, and although I will admit I still have a lot to learn I can tell you I have enjoyed 99% of time learning what goes on behind the scenes of what makes a good wordpress theme work.

For any new comer to the web who wants to get started without any coding experience Wordpress themes are, In my humble opinion a Godsend.

More On This Topic...

• What Is A Wordpress Widget?
• What Is A Wordpress Plugin?
• What Is Wordpress?
• What Is A Tag?