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A Bit of SEO Won’t Hurt Your Blog

By on November 15, 2012 in Blogging Talk, Tips & Tricks

Nor would it require too much effort.

That’s what I found out anyway, after almost 6 years of blogging. When I started out blogging, SEO was alien to me like how articulating arm wall mount are alien to me. I thought it was some techie whachamacalit that I shouldn’t really bother with. I mean, you can’t really fault me on that (as well as a lot of newbie bloggers too) because to be honest I was just too busy trying to figure out how Blogger works (and more so if you use WordPress) to think of something like SEO.

I was also too preoccupied with too many things and ideas that I wanted to blog about. But after awhile, my crazy burst of excitement died down, and I was a calmer and rational, I have decided to stick to some particular topics for each blog. Not exactly a  micro niche but I think I was able to pinpoint what exactly I wanted to write about in my first blog.

From there, it was a natural progression and a learning process and along the way I have learned slowly how to integrate those things I learned to my blogs. One of which is SEO. If you are a newbie blogger, my advice would be not to beat yourself on the head trying to do too many things at the same time. Better pace yourself, learn and experiment.

So what exactly is SEO and how to do a little bit of it so it can help your blogs? A foreword: I am not an  SEO expert (there are countless others there calling themselves gurus, just google and pick up from their tips and tricks). These are just simple SEO tricks I have learned as I waddled my way into the blogging world.

  • SEO is search engine optimization. Unless you want to publish a private blog, then I’m assuming you want a fair bit of traffic to your site. One of the best sources for good traffic is SEARCH ENGINES. It’s free traffic, after all. You must remember that when someone searches for a term related to your blog niche, you would want to have your blog up there on the search results. It’s common sense (and studies have also proven) that 1st and 2nd page search engine results bring around a lot of traffic.
  • Remember too that there are millions of websites out there competing to get into that results page, so that is now the goal of SEO. To get you a good place in the search engine results.
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On Static IP’s and SSL Certificates

By on April 27, 2012 in Blogging Talk, Tips & Tricks

Here’s what I’ve been seriously mulling about for several weeks now. I’m taking time to think about it coz this thing involves some expense and its not as easy as buying switch plate covers. I’m talking about getting Dedicated or Static IP’s for my web blogs.

Why am I contemplating doing this for my blogs? I have several blocks of websites which earn from text link selling. And dedicated IP’s command higher prices and more opportunities compared to blogs on shared IP’s. In short, the blog would have increased value if its on a dedicated IP. Also, dedicated IP’s are great for security as well as to avoid being in a bad neighborhood. If you’re sharing an IP with another website deemed to be ‘bad’ then you may be tagged too as being in a bad neighborhood and having a static IP is a great way to avoid this.

However, getting a dedicated IP is a costly business. My webhost charges $50 per year for a dedicated IP. Which I think is expensive but reasonable coz to get a dedicated IP you need to have an SSL certificate which also costs a lot.

Anyway, after several weeks of studying my options, I have learned a few things.

  • As I’ve mentioned, if you want a dedicated IP, you need to have an SSL certificate. This is the only valid justification to request for a dedicated IP for most webhosts.
  • Domain validated SSL certificate which includes a Dedicated IP address usually costs $50 per year up.
  • Company validated SSL costs $150 up but for a simple blog this isn’t really needed. More for those who need a really secure site like online shops.
  • If you find the $50 per year expensive, you can also purchase a third party SSL certificate for more option when it comes to prices and available certificates. The lowest I’ve seen online for positive domain validated SSL is about $9/yr.  Read this for more info about Cheap SSL Certificates.
  • If you choose to purchase a third party SSL certificate, you can then request to have the dedicated IP address and certificate installed in your webhost. Third party SSL certificate installation fee usually is about $10. Then you also have to pay for the dedicated IP monthy charge of about $2 per month or $24 per year. The average total cost for a third party SSL cert + server installation + IP address would be like $43/year.  Cheaper by a few dollars than going direct but this requires a little bit of work on your part, but I think its worth it specially if you have a lot of blogs you want to place on a dedicated IP.
  • Lastly, its a very good choice to upgrade to a Reseller Hosting account if you are managing a lot of blogs and want it with a dedicated IP each. Personal and business hosting accounts usually just allow 1 dedicated IP for each account and you have to share these among your multiple blogs, which is not bad. But if you want 1 IP per 1 Blog, then it makes sense to get a Reseller Hosting and create 1 Cpanel for each blog, so each can also request for a dedicated IP.
All that said, right now, I’m saving up and will be upgrading my current business hosting plan to a reseller account soon and will be migrating all my blogs to a dedicated IP each soon.
If you’re looking for a webhost, I highly recommend this:

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Stressed? Check Out Compassion Pit

By on October 26, 2011 in Cool Stuff, Pop Culture, Social Media, Web Talk

Wanna vent? And you have no one around you who would care to listen? Then check out Compassion Pit. Where you can spill your guts to a random chat partner.

Or if you are in a helpful mode, then choose the listen mode and help out somebody who needs to some compassion.

This is a totally cool concept. And worth checking out. And I’m definitely bookmarking this for those ‘ I wanna scream and lose control’ days. Who knows, I might save lots from therapy fees with this. Lol.

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