Since July 2007, I have published over 1800 Blog Posts ( atleast 1 post per day is my target)

Recently, I’m making sure all the blog post will make readers Take Action or Do Something.

I try to come up with an action and request readers to do that after reading the post. Something like

• Read this related post
• Buy this book
• Write your comments or feedback

Result

• Increased Page Views
• More Book Sales
• More comments per post

Does your blog post request readers to take action and can you list examples of few such actions?

BBpress is light weight forum created by makers of WordPress. It’s easy to install and has the same interface as WordPress.  Displaying Adsense ad within bbpress takes about 2 minutes.

Follow the steps to display adsense ad just above and below the Page Navigation

Sample Adsense in bbPress

Steps to Insert Adsense Code in bbPress

Instructions below is for the default theme kakumei.

• FTP into directory where bbpress forum is installed.
• Navigate to /example.com/bb-templates/kakumei
• Open the File topic.php
• Find the following line of code that contains php_topic_pages (array…… )
• Insert the Adsense code just below that  line
• This will display the ad above the forum topic, before posts starts
• To insert the ad after the posts (before navigation page)
• Insert the adsense coede below the line that contains “class=rss line…..php topic_rss_link”
• Refresh the Topic in the fourm and you should see the ads.

There are 2 plugins that will allow to insert adsense code in bbpress. If you want to insert the code between posts then use adsense for bbpress plugin.

Average Time Spent by visitors on the site depends on type of sites  ( Blogs, Forums, Shopping Site, …). But, over period of time one can recognize the pattern establish a pattern and data will speak for itself.

In one of my blog, Average Time on site was around 3  Minutes, but I started testing Adsense  Link Units in various places and found a placement ( color and size) where visitors tend to click the links many times.

After testing the link unit  at new placements for 2 months, Average Time on Site decreased from 3 Minutes to 2 Minutes and 50 Seconds. It was interesting to see that  single Link Unit can lower the Average Time on Site by 30 seconds.

Last 5 days, after removing the link unit, Average Time on Site increased to 3 Minutes and 15 Seconds. That has impact on revenue, but increase of 45 seconds is huge.

For now,  45 seconds is much more valuable than revenue generated from the adsense link unit.

Next – I’m going to explore ow to maintain/increase Average Time on Site with link units ( or other ad units) present.

List of WordPress Database related articles

• WordPress Database Backup and Restore – Quick Online Tips
• Daily WordPress Database Backup Quick Online Tips
• Blog Backup Strategy David Risley
• Manual wordpress Database Backup

After updating WordPress to 2.8.4 version, Comments and Contact form email notification was not working. I’m using Contact Form 7 for Contact Page.

Problem –

Looks like php mail function is not working properly after wordpress update or it could be because of your hosting provider disabled PHP Mail functionality.

Fix -

Configure WordPress to use SMTP instead of PHP Mail function. This can be easily done by installing the following WordPress Mail SMTP Plugin. Install the plugin and follow the instructions.

I was searching in Google and noticed change in Google Search results page layout. They have moved the Sponsored Links on right end of the search results page towards the search results. Is this going to be permanent change or just me seeing some test version? Can we expect new search features soon?

Or it’s just me who is seeing the added padding on right side, which was already there?

]]> http://www.lifestrikes.com/change-in-google-search-results-layout/feed/ 0 http://www.lifestrikes.com/10-daily-wordpress-blog-health-checks/ http://www.lifestrikes.com/10-daily-wordpress-blog-health-checks/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:13:21 +0000 Raghu http://www.lifestrikes.com/?p=270

If you are a blogger, then every morning it’s required to run a quick health check on the blog. I do the following checks as soon I jump out of the bed

1. Check the Home Page and open the latest posted article
2. Check page views ( it’s easy to know the page views that should have registered at particular time of the day)
3. If there is spike in traffic, check the  source.
4. Check the RSS Count
5. Check WP- Super Cache pages
6. Read and respond to comments
7. Check Email and label the email’s that have  to be take care ASAP
8. Check your earnings ( Adsense, Affiliate and others sources)
9. Post new article if any important event happened while at sleep in your niche ( Google Alerts and RSS Reader)
10. Check resource utilized in last 8 hours ( if you are using private servers)

What is your daily blog health check routine?

Top 10 search terms for Week ending 08/01/2009.

1. facebook 1.03%
2. myspace 0.99%
3. craigslist 0.66%
4. youtube 0.59%
5. facebook login 0.39%
6. myspace.com 0.35%
7. ebay 0.34%
8. facebook.com 0.23%
9. yahoo 0.20%
10. mapquest 0.18%

More Stats and Data at Hitwise.

Landing page is also referred to as Squeeze Page. Sometimes Sales Page will also serve as Landing Page. Landing page in wordpress can be created by two ways, depending on design of  landing page.

Landing Page in WordPress

1. Landing Page Blends with WordPress Theme
2. Typical Unique Landing Page (lengthy sales page)

What is Landing Page

• A landing page serves as a tool to give an introduction to the new visitors
• A way to promote your products
• A way to promote your contents
• A way to convert visitors to subscribers
• A welcome page for visitors quest for exploring your blog.
• It draws the visitors in and and leads them into the depth of your blog content.
• Can act as sales funnel

Landing Page Design for Increased Conversion

Landing page must NOT distract visitors, they should not be given any options,to navigate to other pages. Providing links ( or distractions) in the landing page will lower the conversion rates.

If you create a landing page that blends with your blog post, it will have lots of distractions like navigation menu, side bar links, that could drive visitors away from landing page. So, try to avoid creating a landing page that looks like wordpress blog post or pages.

If you like to have same feel of blog template, have the page template customized. Remove sidebar and header with navigation bars. WordPress 2.7+ allows call to different header for each page. Create a new page template, call a new header file and remove sidebar. This will create a full width page with your message.

Implementing Custom Landing Page wordpress

I will show how to create a typical sales page ( lengthy and boring usually) using wordpress. Follow few simple steps below to create custom landing page for wordpress hosted blog or any other website

1. Download Sample Landing Page Template ( 1 HTML File)
2. Unzip landing-page-template-1.zip and you will have landing-page-template-1.html file
3. Upload landing-page-template-1.html to the root directory, where the blog is installed.
4. Access the landing page using www.yoursite.com/landing-page-template-1.html ( www.lifestrikes.com/landing-page-template-1.html )
5. There you go. You have your customized landing page up and running is less than 2 minutes.
6. Edit the html file using Textpad or HTML editor according to your need.

I had posted about configuring Googler Website Optimizer for WordPress self hosted blogs and I have completed two landing page tests. In the first landing page optimization test – Variant 1 was clear winner. In second test, Variant 1 from Test 1 was tested against and new landing page.

• Google Website Optimization For WordPress – Test 1

New Landing Page

• Variant 1 from first test had just the sign-up form and 3 point list explaining the benefits of joining the newsletter in bold font.
• New Landing Page had the same details + image of the front page of the e-book. Surprisingly Variant 1 from the first test was the winner again.

Landing Page Optimization - Google Website Optimizer - WordPress

In the above screenshot Combination 1 – Variation 1 corresponds to the Variant 1 from Landing Page Test and it has 99.9% better chance to outperform the landing page with image of front cover of the ebook.

That is an interesting result. I expected the landing page with image would perform better. In next test, I’m going to try adding an image of a person ( smiling face looking directly at the visitors).

Overall Google Website Optimizer is wonderful tool and it will just take 30 minutes or less to configure. It will help you to dramatically increase the conversion for the products you sell or for newsletter signup.