Basic Blog Tips for New Bloggers

After one year I started BASIC BLOG TIPS!

Today is the one year anniversary of Ms. Ileane Speaks! The year went by quickly and it seems like I spent a great deal of it learning how to blog.  The first road block came with the realization that WordPress and WordPress.com are NOT the same thing.  Since I’m using WordPress.com here at Ms. Ileane Speaks, I constantly struggle to find tutorials strictly for WordPress.com!

Lynda.com To The Rescue

Lucky for me, I gained access to a 30-day free pass to the Lynda.com online learning library. Right away I completed the module called WordPress.com 2.7 Essential Training and wrote the post 5 WordPress Secrets You Need To Know. But more importantly, a seed was planted and I felt the need to share what I learned.

Blogger vs. WordPress.com

I soon discovered that Google offers free blogging software that rivals WordPress.com so I established Ms. Ileane’s Blog. It started out as a challenge from my friend Kissie to prove the superiority of WP, yet I was surprised to learn that arguments can be made on both sides. First and foremost, I was able to easily access TONS of tutorials, tips, themes and hacks dedicated to using Blogger.

Basic Blog Tips

After one year of learning the ropes of using free blogging software I decided to acquire a domain and hosting provider as a gift to myself.

I’m super excited to tell you that Basic Blog Tips is now open for business!

The goal of Basic Blog Tips is to provide one central location to find tips, tutorials and resources for WordPress.com AND Blogger users. I want this site to be the one I was looking for this time last year.  Happy Blogging Anniversary to me!

But Basic Blog Tips is  also my gift – to you.

UPDATE: Currently the most popular post on Basic Blog Tips by far includes a video tutorial and it’s called Install CommentLuv on Blogger

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Buzz Besties – BuzzerList, Bit.ly Quick Tip, Blogger Bon Voyage

Image via CrunchBase

This post lists a few highlights from Google Buzz from the previous month. The list includes the best buzzes, and buzzers that I found in my Buzz stream during the month. [tweetmeme source =”Ileane”]

• Two Chrome extensions for Buzz were introduced – BuzzerList and Troll Remover extensions are two good ones to install
• I buzzed a tip from Steve Rubel about how to create a bit.ly shortened URL’s right on the address bar of your web browser, with this one step process,  just enter “j.mp/” or “bit.ly/” before the address of the page you’re on
• Google Buzz Team announced the ability to “Reshare” in Google Buzz
• YouTube Goes Fully Social and Challenges Facebook by incorporating Google Moderator on your YT channel
• There’s a new search engine for Buzz called Buzzzy
• The Wibiya Toolbar adds a Google Buzz widget that will help keep your bounce rate down
• Google Reader Goes Public and Ping.fm gets Buzz which means posts shared via Google Reader no longer have comments disabled.
• There’s a Buzz Users Group on Orkut
• I stayed on top of the updates concerning Google I/O 2010 by following the official Buzz account
• And lastly, Siobhan Quinn Exits Blogger, Checks In At FourSquare

Now it’s your turn to share  your “Buzz Besties” for the month.

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Google Page Rank on a WordPress.com Blog

[tweetmeme source=”ileane”]Using free blogging software from WordPress known as WordPress.com, such as I do here on this blog Ms. Ileane Speaks,  is a great way to get started with blogging.  I discuss the debate about blogging on WordPress.com over other free platforms like Blogger over at Ms. Ileane’s Blog, but using any free blogging software platform has several disadvantages. It’s much better to register a domain name, acquire a web host and download the software for a self-hosted WordPress blog.

I won’t list all of the disadvantages for using WordPress.com here, but one of the primary arguments against having a free blog is the fact that you cannot use plugins or various themes that can improve your SEO and Page Rank with Google, Bing, Yahoo! and other search engines.

For those of us that continue to use the free WordPress.com service you can rest assured, there is still hope.  This morning I checked the page rank for this blog using Google Page Rank checker and I was pleased to see a score of 4 out of 10.

This is a pretty good score considering I haven’t applied many SEO strategies. I mentioned previously in Top 5 Blog Topics, that page rank has not been a huge concern for me on this blog.

In the upcoming year, I’ve made a resolution to learn more about SEO.  I’m finding some of the SEO techniques pretty easy to do and you can get started today. Here’s a short video from Chuck at CyberSmartMarketing called Link Surfing Your Website for On-Page SEO to give you a hand.

If you are considering the move to a self-hosted WordPress blog or website, contact Chuck at CyberSmartMarketing. You can also follow him on Twitter @MrCyberSmartSEO

In the meantime, take a look at your page rank and leave a comment to let me know where you stand.

Smooches!

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