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[Peter Cruz Contribution Level: 1]

I finally have a blog site up and running and was hoping to get some eyes to look at it. I have more to do I'm sure.. but my brain is suffering from Wordpress overload... LOL!!!

I would appreciate some feedback on the site/setup.. and if there are some widgets? or other items that may make my blog site better, more effective.

THanks, here's the link:

http://www.peterjcruz.com

Thanks again.
Peter

[Cenay Nailor Company: Nussentials Contribution Level: 2]

Hey, great startup blog! I really like the theme.

You were asking about plugins for your Wordpress blog, so I will mention a few that help with the SEO side, and bringing visitors back or commenting on your content. All of this assumes you are putting something out that someone will want to read, of course.

I use all of these plugins currently, but this list isn't every plugin I use. If you are interested in the entire list, let me know and I will forward that along.

All In One SEO Pack.
This plugin requires a little extra from you at the time you create your post, but heaps benefits on your blog-head all throughout the life of your blog posts. Basically, it allows you to use the normal, short post title (keyword rich of course), and then specify a second title to be used at the browser title. For example, let's say you wrote a post and titled it: 7 Ways To Reduce Blog Spam. In your SEO title, you would put something like: 7 Ways To Reduce Blog Spam | A step-by-step guide to eliminating blog spam. If the difference and benefit of this step isn't immediately obvious, you need a little more education on SEO. It also allows you to create a short description that Google (or other search engines) will use to display the *summary* of the link they are displaying. Make this the reason they should click the link to read. In other words, the benefit to them. Finally, it adds a section for keywords. It will add these keywords to the meta tags of the page.

CommentLuv.
My next recommendation is about getting folks to comment. This little plugin does something wonderful for you and your readers. It rewards them in a way they can understand for commenting on your blog. When they include the URL in the comment section, CommentLuv parses out their last blog post (if the link is a blog) and includes an anchored text link to their last post. Again, the benefits here should be obvious. If they know they are gonna get a one-way link to their blog, they are more likely to comment.

SEO Post Link
This little gem will take a long title, and shorten it to just the keywords for the perma-link. For example, the title What Everyone needs to know about blogging for dollars, and why they should be doing it today will create a terribly long *pretty link* with the entire title (separated by dashes instead of space). SEO Post Link will shorten the *link* to something like domain.com/category/blogging-for-dollars. It does this by removing the unnecessary words and focusing on the keywords.

Subscribe To Comments
This plugin places a checkbox beneath the comment area to allow them to subscribe via email to the comments on that particular blog post, without them having to complete any additional fields. Once checked, and their comment is complete, this plugin will email everyone who has it checked whenever anyone new comments on the blog post. This encourages your visitors to return by reminding them about the post. Curiosity will cause a good many to come back to see what additional comment was added, just in case someone said something about them!

Wordpress Tweaks
There are a LOT of tweaks in this little gem, too many to cover and do it justice. One of the main sets of features I like about this plugin is that you can control if the NOFOLLOW tag will be added to comments, or if you want to auto-open in a new window/tab.

Homepage Excerpts
Love this one! Normally, when you set your blog up to include the full text for the first one of two posts, and then excerpts on the rest, Wordpress has an annoying habit of not formatting the text. It even goes so far as to strip off the formatting you have in there! This plugin allows you to display excerpts and keep the all important formatting.

Okay, those are just a few of the one's I really love for either the SEO or reader benefits. Great job taking action and what a good start your blog is. I can't wait to see the content you put out.

Cenay'

[Forest Marie Contribution Level: 4]

So many great plugins posted above. I'm going to check out commentluv.

Also, you may find it very helpful to get a plugin with a captcha form to make commenters post in a code.

If you don't, you might wake up to hundreds of spam comments.


See you at the top,


Forest

[Mark Worthen Contribution Level: 2]

Awesome post Cenay! You should turn that into an article if you haven't already as it demonstrates your expertise and value to potential customers quite well.

All the Best,

Mark

[Kay Somji Contribution Level: 1]

Nice blog so far.
I heard that search engines are very effective at picking up things from blogs, are there any other ways that people use to drive traffic to their blogs or is that not a tactic that's used?
Sorry I don't know too much about blogging.

[Cenay Nailor Company: Nussentials Contribution Level: 2]

Awesome post Cenay! You should turn that into an article if you haven't already as it demonstrates your expertise and value to potential customers quite well.

All the Best,

Mark

Took your advice and created an article out of that in the Newbies group. It was a composite of several posts I have made over this past year on my regular blog. I love Wordpress!

Thanks for the kudo's...

[Ginny Lee Company: Web Prosperity Contribution Level: 3]

Hi Peter....looks great did you do that with Google?

[Jen Patton Contribution Level: 2]

Looks great! I give you a lot of credit. I could never get the hang of Wordpress and still stick with my Blogger. Time and energy well spent.

[Peter Cruz Contribution Level: 1]

Thanks ladies. No I did it with Wordpress which I hate to use but its a "turnkey" and seems well supported. I USED to be really good with Front Page... but that was 10 years ago.. and I can't find my FP disc (in storage maybe?).. and that was before the age of the BLOG. I would imagine a blog site would be really DIFFICULT to setup from scratch so I picked WP. I'm still clueless but it's a lot of trial and error... I'll figure it out eventually (and then go move to the next version and change everything right?? =) LOL!!!

[Peter Cruz Contribution Level: 1]

Just another favor if I could... I just did some "tweaks" and added 3 more "plugins." Let me know what you think? I also have an MS add on the left where the Google ads were before.. and further down on the right I added a BlackBelt ad. Too much?

Nachos garcias.

Peter