Once and a while a WordPress plugin comes along that I consider to be a “game changer”.  The Like plugin is one of ‘em.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/like/

One of the great things about Facebook Pages is that they can become viral.  It may take you a month to get to 100 “fans” (I guess they’re now considered “people that like your Page”), but you could easily reach 1000 in the next week and 100,000 a week after that.  This is due to the Facebook engine that automagically suggests Pages to your friends, and your friends’ friends, and so on and so forth.  And of course it helps that many Facebook users are addicted and will click “Like” to anything they see.

Well, the Like plugin helps to make your WordPress posts and pages viral too!

See the buttons at the top and bottom of this post?  Those are from Like.

One super cool feature is that it works with the new Facebook Open Graph API which makes it very easy for developers to integrate Facebook applications into websites.   I suppose this is furthering Facebook’s goal to take over the world…but you could at least join them for the ride and get more visitors on the way!

Here’s what the plugin settings look like:

As you can see, it also hooks up to a Facebook application, although I haven’t tested this myself yet.

So what are ya waiting for?  Download and install this wicked plugin and join the viral train.

Note: This post is related to my ongoing experiment to determine which Google prefers more – Fresh Content or Quality Backlinks

Well after a quick browse through ClickBank I stumbled across this -> Double Your Vertical Leap.

The World’s Top Selling Vertical Jump Enhancement System Is Back, Better Than Ever. 6 Months Of Extensive Testing – And A Mouth-watering Offer – Has Produced A Website That Converts At 5-7%… Every Single Time! Look For More Updates Shortly…

It’s got some decent numbers:

• $89 / sale
• 51% commission
• 93% referred
• 12.05 gravity
• And a 5-7% conversion rate on the pitch page

After searching for “vertical jump” in good ‘ol Micro Niche Finder, I came across a particular phrase that had solid results.

“jump higher exercises”

• Search Count = 1,300 (how many times per month people are searching on Google for this phrase – this is a tad low but not terrible)
• Exact Phrase Count = 13,200 (how many total results there are for this phrase in quotes – under 20,000 is good)
• Commercial Intent = 29% (how likely a person searching for this phrase is to BUY something – this is bad but I’m not doing this to make money)
• Strength of Competition = 14 (this is excellent, it means the competing sites don’t have very good backlinks)

So I’m all set!  The next steps are to create two subdomains, setup WordPress, and then work on the initial content.

Lately I’ve been wondering what Google favors more – fresh, unique content or quality (PR 4 or higher) backlinks.

There’s oceans of people that are on either side of the argument.  Some say it’s best to have lots of one-way backlinks from respected, authority sites.  Others say it’s best to be constantly adding new, unique content.

Personally I think both are useful in their own way.  But the nerd inside of me wants to figure out the “magic formula”.  Should I spend 50% of my time on each, or 80% on content and 20% on backlinks?  It’s quite the quandary.

So I’ve decided to perform a test.  The parameters and execution of the test won’t be perfect, as there’s only one of me and I’m not a robot.  But nevertheless, I’m hoping it can provide some useful insight into this problem.

Here’s what I aim to do:

• Site A (CONTENT)
  
  • Niche topic to be determined
  • A subdomain of an existing generically-named domain that I own (primary keyword subdomain name, with “A” on the end)
  • WordPress template with all SEO-related plugins activated
  • Initial content will be 2 or 3 posts, keyword-rich, appropriately tagged
  • After indexed by Google, I’ll add one new article a day for a month
  • Each article will use the keywords that I’m targeting
• Site B (BACKLINKS)
  • Same subdomain setup as Site A, but with “B” on the end
  • Same WordPress setup
  • Same initial content, but each post rewritten to be unique
  • After indexed by Google, I’ll add one high-PR backlink a day for a month
  • No new posts

Sounds like fun, eh?   Does anyone have a prediction on which site will rank higher with Google at the end of the month?

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As you can probably tell, I’m a big fan of WordPress.  I’ve used a few other Content Management Systems (like Joomla, Drupal, PHP-Nuke, etc.).  But I’ve found that for internet marketing, WordPress is simply hard to beat with its ease-of-use, maintenance simplicity, and the huge community support of free plugins and themes.

So, here’s the list of plugins that I routinely use with each WordPress installation:

Akismet

• Catches spam Comments on your posts or pages.
• I find that it’s very accurate.
• You do have to enter a WordPress API key though to activate it (which I’m not a big fan of doing…why does WordPress need to know what spam I’m receiving?).
• Does anyone know why it has such a strange name that has nothing to do with spam?

All in One SEO Pack

• I call this thing “Search Engine Optimization For Dummies”
• You don’t really have to know much about SEO to get some serious benefits from it
• It can do custom HTML headers like keywords, descriptions, titles
• You can even set “noindex” for different types of archives so you won’t get hurt by having duplicate content

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator

• An easy-to-use HTML sitemap generator
• Tons of features, super configurable, but not complicated

Exec-PHP

• Occasionally with some sites I need to execute PHP within posts, this plugin makes it extremely easy
• If you don’t know what PHP is skip this one

GoCodes

• URL shortener and click tracker all-in-one!
• Simple interface
• Great for hiding affiliate links (instead of using http://youraffiliateID.vendorID.hop.clickbank.net you can use http://yourdomain.com/go/FriendlyProductName)

Google XML Sitemaps

• Rather than creating an HTML sitemap, like the plugin I mentioned above, this one creates an XML sitemap
• It also notifies many popular search engines when changes are made
• Tons of options, but works great out-of-the-box

Thumbnail Viewer

• Sometimes I like putting image thumbnails in my posts so visitors can click the thumbnail hyperlinks to see the full image
• That’s exactly what this bad boy is for
• It’s very simple and fast (full images load real quick)

WordPress.com Stats [Edit - June 30 - Now I like "StatPress SEOlution" better!]

• If you’ve ever used WordPress.com to host a site, you’re familiar with their admin “stats” page
• That’s exactly what this plugin emulates, except it works for sites you host yourself
• You must enter your WordPress API key to activate it (you can get this for free from WordPress.com)
• My only complaint is that it doesn’t show unique visitors, only “views”
• It tracks UNIQUE VISITORS and other cool stuff like which countries visitors are from and search engine spider stats

Yet Another Related Post Plugin

• Dynamically determines which posts are related to each other
• Places links at the end of each post so visitors can then view the related posts
• Lots of options, and easy to use

If you’re not sure how to find or install these plugins, you have two options:

1. From the WP admin panel, go “Plugins” > “Add New”, then use the “Search” form to find the plugins you want
2. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/, download the ZIP files, then FTP the contents to your web server root/wp-content/plugins directory

Here’s a bunch of pointers that I gathered from various sources and use myself for each WordPress site I create.  It’s assumed you have a decent understanding of web servers, FTP clients, and IP addresses.

Ya never know when you might write a post that pisses off some random hacker in Czechoslovakia who decides to delete all your work or just post naked pictures of himself to scare your visitors.  Better safe than sorry, right?

1. Add Secret Keys to your wp-config.php file
   • Go to this site – http://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/
   • FTP to the root of your WordPress installation (ie. www.yourdomain.com/)
   • Copy and past the 4 rows into your wp-config.php file (anywhere should be fine)
   • Upload the updated file back to your web server
   • You may need to log out and back into WordPress for the keys to get picked up
2. Delete the Admin account
   • Backup your database (always a good idea when making drastic changes like this)
   • Create a new user with Admin privileges
   • Login to the new user account
   • Delete the “Admin” account (I would recommend checking the “Attribute all posts and links to…” radio button)
3. Protect your “plugins” directory
   • FTP to your WordPress installation root/wp-content/plugins folder
   • Upload an empty file called index.html (you can create it in Notepad)
     
   • This makes it so that people can’t browse your plugins directory and possibly figure out how to exploit certain plugins you have installed
     
4. Secure your “wp-admin” directory
   • FTP to your WordPress installation root/wp-admin folder
     
   • Upload an .htaccess file (if you can’t create the file on your Windows PC, you can upload another empty file, like bla.txt and rename it on your web server)
   • Make the contents look something like this –>
     
   • Of course the xx.xxx.xxx.xx IP address must be replaced with your actual IP.  If you aren’t sure what it is you can go to www.whatismyip.com
     
5. Hide your version of WordPress
   • In the WP admin panel, go to Appearance > Editor
     
   • Open the header.php file
     
   • Browse for something like this and delete it:   <meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress <?php bloginfo(’version’); ?>” />
   • Save your changes
   • This prevents a would-be hacker from targeting your specific WP version for attacks