10 +1 Ways to Get More Comments on Your Posts

Need More Comments Beginning bloggers always tend to sweat the lack of comments in the beginning. They tend to think that because the blog is on the internet and they show at least some traffic that someone would inevitably comment.

This however is not always the case and in order to get a regular stream of comments, you might have to work at it.

Here are 10 ways to get more comments on your Posts.

1. Invite Comments - This might sound simplistic but ask your readers what they think? Invite them to offer their opinion. Many newer bloggers hesitate to leave comments as they don't want to sound stupid or invite ridicule. you can overcome this by asking them to participate.

2. Ask Questions - If you don't have all the answers, ask your readers to help. If you include specific questions in your posts then of course your comments will go up. Everyone likes to have the answer.

3. Leave Room for Development - This may not sound right but don't cover the topic to the Nth degree. If you answer every question imaginable or cover every base then their really isn't much left to comment on. Write your posts so they are thorough but leave room for discussion and topic development via the comments section.

4. Interaction -Be active in your own comments section. Answer your readers and take an active role in the discussion in your comments section. By being the blog admin you have some sort of authority on the topic and your readers will enjoy interacting with you.

5. Spam Control - Make sure your comment thread isn't overcome with spam or pingbacks. If you are being linked to on a regular basis then consider separating your pingbacks from your comments.

6. Don't take it personal - Inevitably you will find readers that challenge your thoughts or even downright disagree with you. Sometimes they will do this in a manner that can be very easy to respond to harshly. Don't take it personally and be above all that stuff. Being humble and mature is the way to go.

7. Humility - Show your readers that you appreciate them. Thank them for the comment, offer to help them with a project or offer input on something that is important to them. If you show an interest in your readers, then they will show one in you.

8. Controversy - Everyone loves controversy but not everyone likes Jerry Springer. It's a fine line between being controversial and just being ridiculous. It never hurts to challenge the status quo and play devils advocate but make sure you don't push too far.

9. ‘Reward’ Comments - There are many ways to reward comments and we will discuss one of them below. Many of the steps above will reward commenters but you may also consider a "Top Commenter" type plugin. People are competitive by nature and like to see how they compare.

10. KISS - Make it Easy - Keep your comment section simple and easy to use. If it is laid out well and is self explanatory how it works then your readers will be more tempted to use it.

I mentioned a plugin above that would help you to reward your commenters. This might sound difficult but as usual Wordpress makes it a snap via a simple plug in. The plug in is Comment Luv and what it does is seek out the last post written on the blog of the commenter and it posts the title and link right under the posters name. This is a simple and easy way for a commenter to include the title of a post without coming across as Spammy.

Well what do you think? Anyone have any other tips to use? Go ahead and feel free to try out my Comment Luv plugin, it's as easy as leaving your opinion in the comment thread.

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The Mystery of the “Post Slug”

What’s a Post Slug Have you ever wondered what exactly a Post Slug is? When you write a post you see it to the right of the WYSIWIG and if you are like me, you simple don't mess with it. Everything seems to work just fine without touching it so better left alone right?

Well maybe. The Post Slug is something that 99.9% of Wordpress users probably just don't bother messing with, but it does have a purpose and you may find it useful. The Post slug basically becomes part of your permalink. Normally your permalink is made up of your post title depending on how you set them up in your options.

Let's take this post for example...normally my permalink would look like http://bloggingessentials.com/the-mystery-of-the-post-slug. For this example I am going to put "post slugs explained" in the post slug title. You can see the permalink becomes http://bloggingessentials.com/post-slugs-explained

Why might this be useful? Well it has its place I guess, if one wanted a shorter permalink than the post title would allow you can use a one or two word post slug and this will become part of your permalink. Sometimes we get rather wordy with our post titles but would prefer a more concise permalink for that post.

Whatever use you might find for it, at least now you know...."The Mystery of the Post Slug."

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Six Killer Wordpress Theme Sources

Killer Wordpress Themes Here Bloggers of all shapes and sizes tend to obsess over their theme. Your WP theme is a reflection of you, it reflects your personality in many ways. I know when I first started out on my very first blog ever, I obsessed over finding the perfect theme.

I am not one for colorful, frilly, fancy themes which is why I like the clean, white look to the current theme I am using here. Tastes vary of course, so you can find a little of everything in the links below.

In any event I wanted to share with you some of the best sites I have found in my travels to find Wordpress themes. You can check them out below:

Free Themes

http://www.briangardner.com/themes - Brian is the author of this theme along with many others. Super clean code that is very easy to understand if you want to make modifications. I am holding a contest to win one of these themes at my other blog here.

http://wpthemez.com/ A great site where designers from all over the web post their themes and users Vote on them. A great way to eliminate some of the clutter surrounding free themes and get right to the good stuff.

http://www.wpthemesfree.com/ Thousands of free themes at this site. A lot of clutter but chances are you can find the theme that suits your personality.

Premium Themes

http://www.adii.co.za/ Adii is putting out some killer wordpress themes. I haven't had the pleasure of using one of them yet but I know the time is coming. He designs nice stuff and seems to be pretty active in the blogging community. Seems like a good guy for lack of a better word. Good guys usually stand behind their stuff. Check him out.

http://www.solostream.com/ Michael Pollock is the genius behind the scenes at Solostream. Some killer wordpress themes are coming out of his studio and his support is second to none. Most of his themes have videos posted on his site showing you how to modify different things. Hard to beat that for support.

http://www.uniqueblogdesigns.com/ You can find a lot of premade templates here for under 100 dollars that look fantastic or you can pony up some real coin and get a custom template designed for you from head to toe. This company rocketed to stardom when they redesigned www.JohnChow.com and www.ShoeMoney.com almost back to back.

That's it....my collection of my favorite killer wordpress theme sites....I am sure I have missed a number of talented designers so feel free to add them via the comment section. That way this article can become a resource for newbies for years to come.

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Being Social is Critical for Newbies

Whether you are just getting started on your blog or are a seasoned blogger, being active socially is critical for the success of your blog.

The more like minded people you can put your blog in front of, then the higher the likelihood that you will garner new readers.

Developing new readers and maintaining existing readers are what its all about for those who are taking their blogging seriously.

You I am sure have heard of the normal social channels such as Digg, StumbleUpon, delicious etc but I want to make sure that you are aware of another site that I have had a tremendous amount of success with, and that is www.blogcatalog.com.

Blogcatalog is a social forum where you can register your blog, join discussion groups, build friend lists etc in order to socialize with like minded people who might find either you or your blog interesting. There is even an entire category devoted to "Shameless Blog Promotion."

I have had my other blog registered there for a while and I just put this one on there tonight so traffic is non-existent at this point but I am sure within a day or two I will have a steady stream of traffic coming to see my pad. A site like blogcatalog can drive a lot of traffic to you daily or very little, it will depend on how much effort you put into it.

It costs you nothing, so I would invest the 10 minutes it would take to check them out and see for yourself. You won't regret it.

Anyone reading this already belong?

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5 Plugins for a New Blog

I am continuing my previous article on setting up a new blog and in this article we will discuss a few must have plugins that you should install right out of the gate.

If you haven't yet discovered the world of plugins when it comes to Wordpress, then you are in for a treat. Plugins allow an incredible amount of versatility and I would urge you that anytime you are trying to figure out a way to do something with your blog, do a Google search for your issue and add "wordpress plugin" to the search string. Chances are someone has already developed a solution.

Wordpress comes packaged with a great plug in and that is Akismet. It is a SPAM catcher and won't allow a bunch of junk comments to pollute your blog, but their are a few others you should really consider. Wordpress should package them with the zip file in my opinion but for some reason they don't. They are:

All-in-One SEO Pack - A must have plugin for any blogger. SEO pack allows you to add keywords and a description to your post so that it fares better with search engines. The description is useful so that you can describe your posts rather than the search engines just using the first couple of sentences from your post. If you want to read a detailed article on it's use then read this article here from one of my other blogs.
Feedburner Feedsmith - Forwards all Wordpress feed entry clicks to your feedburner feed. This plug in makes maintaining your feed a snap. RSS subscribers are a sign that people like your style and want more...don't make it hard for them to subscribe.
WP Database Back-up - I recommend that everyone back-up their blog’s at least once a month. With this plug-in it couldn’t be easier to do this. Think of the work lost if you crash and lose all of your posts?? That would bring a tear to the eye of some Bloggers.
Subscribe Remind - Inserts text and a link at the bottom of every post reminding readers to subscribe to your RSS feed. Again...subscribers are the foundation of your blog. Make it as easy as possible.
Related Posts - This allows you to posts links at the end of your articles to archived posts that may be relevant. It decides what is relevant by tagging your posts or choosing to just pull from a relevant archive category. If a reader did read all the way to the end, then with this plugin activated they might read another article, rather than clicking out of your blog.

These are the basic plugins that I would install on day one. You will find dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of plugins available for Wordpress and just as many opinions on which ones you should be using. Be aware that plugins can cause problems if you are not careful installing and/or the author of the plugin isn't competent in programming.

Use the backup plugin above frequently and stick to the common and popular plugins at first until you get a better idea of what you are doing. You will run across a zillion "My Top xx Plugins" posts around the blogosphere, just tread lightly and be cautious.

These are my must haves.....what are yours?

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Permalinks for Newbies

If you are launching a new blog then you no doubt have your work cut out for you. It seems like no matter how hard and long you work at it, the site is never the way you want it to be. Rest assured this is perfectly normal and you aren't alone.

This article is intended for those who are just starting out with Wordpress as we will discuss some of the basic steps you should take once you have your blog set up. I am not going to cover anything to do with uploading, installing etc but rather the things you need to do to get your blog "ready" to be on the worldwide web.

Time spent early in this stage will pay off for you in the long run.

First thing right out of the gate....change your permalink structure. If you look at your "links" that show up in your browser window you will see see that Wordpress defaults to a funky looking link, this is awful for SEO (search engines) purposes and will make your blog difficult to navigate and difficult for search engines to categorize. Take a look at the example below.

What you want to do is go to your Dashboard, click on the "Options" Link, click on the "Permalinks" link and then review.

You can see what I have done; click the Custom box at the bottom and type /%postname% in the field and save your update. What this will do is create a permanent link to each of your posts that contains the postname. You have other options that will include the date, postnumber, etc, but it seems to be pretty widely accepted to use the postname as the permalink.

It is much more user friendly to both readers and more importantly Search Engines. This is what that ugly link above will turn into.

Much prettier....and again, much more search engine friendly. If you wait until your blog is established and has a lot of content, then making this change becomes a major pain in the butt....so set it up correctly right on day one.

My next article will discuss the plugins that you should install when starting a new blog so make sure you grab my feed - it's an article you won't want to miss!

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Newbies Guide to PageRank

If you listen to some bloggers you would think PageRank was like the Holy Grail but in reality, PageRank is a numeric value that is assigned by Google as a measure of how important a page is on the web.

Google calculates this rank using the number of your sites inbound and outbound links (an inbound link is another site linking to yours, and an outbound link is one that you are linking to yourself).

Google figures that these links are in essence casting a vote for that other page, as they figure that if the page had no relevance then why would you be linking to it? The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be, at least in the eyes of Google. It isn't quite that simple and we will discuss it further, but this is the definition in a nutshell.

The links are not all created equal in the eyes of Google. An inbound link from a PR5 site carries more "weight" or "influence" than an inbound link would from a PR2 site. The higher the value of the opposite page, then the more value the link carries.

You should also be aware that not all links are even counted by Google as they have a fairly sophisticated system for filtering out links from known link farms or link directories. They have recently become very stringent in regards to paid links as well.

Paid links were a pretty common practice in prior times, if a new blogger wanted a higher PR then all they had to do was buy a few links on a higher PR site and voila. This is a practice that Google frowns on these days and they often dole out penalties for those who partake in this practice. I have heard of PR5 sites being reduced all the way to PR0 overnight.

How is PageRank calculated?

The only formula that I have been able to find on the web to calculate pagerank is shown below and it is quite complicated. I am not sure that the average blogger gives a rip as to how, they just care more about what to do and what not to do to make it happen.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

This is the original equation that Google published back when they first started using PageRank and I have not been able to find anything different. The formula could very well have changed but you can get the basic premise of it here if you are a bit on the sadistic side.

In the equation above 't1 - tn' are pages linking to page A, 'C' is the number of outbound links that a page has, and 'd' is a dampening factor, usually set to 0.85; but again this may have changed since the time this formula was published.

A simpler way of looking at it:

PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a "share" of the PageRank of all pages linked to it)

"Share" = the linking page's PageRank divided by the number of outbound links on the page. So in theory a PR6 site with 100 outbound links might not give you the same value that a PR3 would give with only say 2 outbound links.

This is another reason to avoid link farms and directories; even though they have high PRs, they have hundreds if not thousands of outbound links. You don't get as much juice as you might elsewhere.

Very few topics get as much heat going on the blogosphere as PR and I am sure some have different theories than , but now you have a pretty decent understanding of how PR is calculated and what is involved. It's pretty simple - write good content, write a lot of content, drive traffic to your site, comment on other people's blogs, and you will likely see your rank raise in no time.

If you want to know where you stand right now then this site has a lot of great tools to monitor the health and well being of your site. You can check your backlinks, current pagerank, predicted pagerank etc.

What's in YOUR PageRank?

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100 Really Cool Wordpress Plugins

As I sit here for hours on end trying to get my blog to look, feel and smell the way I want it to, I found myself constantly googling plugins.

These may not be the only plugins out there but through my searching they grabbed my attention when reading about them.

I have not tried them all but I do recognize many of them from other people's blogs...so at least now I know how they did that.

If I missed one of your favorites then please feel free to let me know via the comment section.

Enjoy.

WP Database Back-up - I recommend that everyone back-up their blog’s at least once a month. With this plug-in it couldn’t be easier to do this. Think of the work lost if you crash and lose all of your posts?? That would bring a tear to the eye of some Bloggers.
Permalink Redirect - Did you start your blog before you knew what good SEO format was? If so, just use this plug-in so that you can change your permalink structure without having to lose the search engine rankings of the old posts.
Popularity Contest - This plugin will help you see which of your posts are most popular. Views, comments, etc. are tracked and you can configure the settings in any way you desire to show which of your posts are most popular.
Wp-Contact Form - This plugin gives you the ability to post a contact form anywhere you’d like on your wordpress blog with one simple snippet of code. This is handy so that people can contact you without you actually having to post your email address for spammers to harvest.
Subscribe to Comments - Ever post a comment on someone’s blog and you were curious to see if anyone replied? Ever forgot which blog you posted the comment on? This plugin allows you to subscribe to comments for that particular thread. It will send you any responses to your comment via email.
Related Posts - This allows you to posts links at the end of your articles to archived posts that may be relevant. It decides what is relevant by tagging your posts or choosing to just pull from a relevant archive category.
Time Zone - Have you ever noticed that even though you’ve selected the right time zone, Wordpress is still an hour off? That’s because Wordpress doesn’t recognize DST (daylight savings time). This plugin fixes that.
Gravatars - This plugin allows commenters to upload a picture to the Gravatars website, and this picture will appear next to their name when they post a comment on blogs that allow gravatars. Great plugin… I’m getting ready to try this one out!
Ultimate Tag Warrior - Allows you to tag your posts so that sites like Technorati have an easier time indexing them. Could potentially bring a lot of visitors!
Adsense-Deluxe - AdSense-Deluxe is a WordPress plugin offering advanced options for managing the automatic insertion of Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) ads to your WordPress posts.
Pod Press - Are you a podcaster? Pod Press makes it really easy to post your podcasts, and even includes an in-line media player.
WP-Notable - This plugin includes links and pictures to major social bookmarking sits such as del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Newsvine, and Digg. It includes these links at the bottom of every post, making it easy to submit your articles.
Digg-This - This wordpress plugin is a plugin that detects incoming links from Digg.com to your wordpress post and automatically display a link back to the digg post, for people to digg your story.
Get Recent Comments - It allows you to show your most recent comments in a widget so that others can check it out.
WP-Cache - Stores a cache file of your Wordpress blog so that it loads faster.
flickrRSS - Integrates photo’s from a flickr RSS feed so that you can show flickr photo’s on your website.
Update Manager - Checks for updates for all of your existing Wordpress Plugins.
WYSIWYG Plugin - Makes your write/edit screen an advanced WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. Makes for easy formatting of posts. Great plugin.
Paypal Donate - Similar to the Buy Me A Beer Plugin, only without the beer.
One Year Ago - Shows posts that were written one year ago.
Comment Relish - Sends a thank you email to first time commenters.
Show Top Commenters - Adds a widget to your sidebar to show who leaves the most comments on your blog. You can set it to clear daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.
Threaded Comments - Allows users to respond to each others comments directly under the comment they are referring to. Sort of like a forum thread in the comment section.
Math Problem Spam Protection - This plugin makes users answer a simple math problem to prove they are human and not computerized spammers. Simple little addition...between this and Akismet you will not have a spam issue.
Link Love Plugin - This plugin removes the rel=”nofollow” tag from comments after a user has commented on your blog 10 times. You can adjust this to as many times as needed.
Trackbackers - This plugin is like the “top commenters” plugin only it shows the “top trackbackers”. Basically the more times people link to you, the higher they are on your list. Completely customizable.
Batch Image Uploader - Allows you to upload multiple images at once.
WP-Polls - Allows you to seamlessly integrate polls into the sidebar of your Wordpress blog.
In Series Plugin - This plugin allows you to link posts together to form a series of related articles.
All-in-One SEO Pack - A must have plugin for any moneyblogger. SEO pack allows you to add keywords and a description to your post so that it fares better with search engines. The description is useful so that you can describe your posts rather than the search engines just using the first couple of sentences from your post.
Feed Footer - Allows you to customize your RSS feed by adding a copyright notice, rotating banner ads, and enables you to show HTML in your RSS footers.
Robots.TXT - Allows you to easily add a robots.txt file to your template for easy searching from search engine spiders.
Feedburner Feedsmith - Forwards all Wordpress feed entry clicks to your feedburner feed.
Ultimate Google Analytics - This plugin allows you to easily integrate Google Analytics risking the source code.
Live Wordpress - Allows you to check out your visitors every move while they are on your site.
WP-Ultimate Gamers Pack - Allows gamers with wi-fi access to view your site from their PSP, Nintendo DS, or Nintendo Wii.
Feedburner Standard Stats - Installs the Feed Flare script on your Wordpress blog so that Feedburner can track your statistics.
Image Manager Plugin - Allows you to upload, crop, rotate, and re-size images from your Wordpress Admin panel.
Got Banners - Allows you to rotate your banner advertisements so that your readers don’t get “ad blind” by the same ad panels they see everytime they visit.
Homepage Excerpts - Allows you to post excerpts of your posts rather than full text on all pages except for the homepage. Makes for easy archiving of old posts.
Instant Upgrade Plugin - This plugin allows for a one click update to the newest version of Wordpress.
Add Related Posts to Feed - Adds related posts to your RSS feed. Similar to the Related Posts plugin, only for your RSS feed.
Do-Follow - Removes the re=”nofollow” tags from comments. This allows links left within a comment to be counted as an incoming link by search engines and Technorati.
Super Edit - This plugin allows you to push a button on the “write” screen to use a full screen version of the text box. Writing in full-screen mode is much nicer and it includes some extra editing features that the standard WYSIWIG does not.
Full Text Feed - A plugin that allows your RSS feed to show up as full text even if you use the <!–more–> tag in your posts.
No WWW - This plugin won’t allow users to visit the WWW version of your site. Instead it redirects them to the non-www version, which eliminates the chances of being double indexed.
Subscribe Remind - Inserts text and a link at the bottom of every post reminding readers to subscribe to your RSS feed.
About Me Widget - This plugin allows you to create an easy “about me” section in your sidebar.
Category Excluder - Allows you to make some categories private so that readers can’t see them.
Blogroll Auto Linker - Creates a link in your posts anytime you use a name from your blogroll.
Front Page Excluded Categories - Allows you to exclude certain categories from your homepage.
Post Notification - Sends an email alerting everyone in your database about new posts.
On This Day - Links to post which share the same calender date.
NAVT - A Wordpress navigation tool that allows you to customize your Wordpress navigation links.
Simple Graph - Allows you to create graphs for your sidebar or posts.
Word Tube - A media center plugin for Wordpress blogs.
DMS Guestbook - Creates a guestbook for your blog.
Semi-Secure Login - Increases the security of your Wordpress blog by using a better encryption.
New Posts Pop-up - A plugin that displays a pop-up window above the fold to show recent posts and comments.
De-link Comment Author - Allows you to remove the link from a comment authors name without removing the entire comment. If someone is taking a shot at you....at least you don't have to link back to their site.
Upload Plus - Allows you to upload photo’s inside of the admin panel and customize their display names.
Mini-Slides - Allows you to create a minimalistic slideshow from your uploaded images.
Find Us - A plugin that integrates Google Maps into your Wordpress Blog.
DBD Footprints - Allows you to track visitors from the admin panel of your blog. Easily customizable.
Adman - Lets you insert Adsense code before or in the middle of your posts.
Ad Wrap - Uses section targeting to try and get relevant ads from Adsense.
Disclosure Policy Plugin - Allows you to disclose your policies as a blogger. For example, I won’t write a sponsored review without telling my readers that it’s a paid post. This plugin makes it easy to create and display your blog’s policies.
WP Footnotes - Easily create footnotes at the bottom of your posts.
Sexy Comments - Uses forum like styling for your comment section. A great way to liven up the comment field.
WP Table - Easily create and insert tables for your blog posts.
Members Only - Only makes your posts viewable to members that are logged in. Everyone else is denied.
Order Posts - Allows you to put your posts in any order you’d like. Great for those who don’t want their posts appearing chronologically.
AWSOM - This plugin displays an announcement or featured post above all of your other posts. It’s easily editable and stays on top for as long as you’d like. Pretty neat!
Random Posts - This widget displays links to random posts in your archives.
KB Linker - Links to phrases that you specify. For example, everytime you mention Dell it would link to Dell.Com. If you're a page rank junkie...be careful of this one.
Flickr Tips - Shows a pop-up thumbnail image everytime you mouseover a link to a flickr image.
FeedStats - Simple statistics for RSS.
Bot Tracker - Allows you to track search engine bots and spiders when they crawl your site.
Post Teaser - Creates a snipper or “teaser” of your post before prompting users to click a link to read more.
Running Time - Shows how long your blog has been live. Displays days, weeks, months, and years.
Google Pagerank Plugin - Displays your Google PageRank.
Alexa Ranking - Displays your Alexa ranking in your sidebar.
Add To Any Bookmark Button - A plugin that allows users to bookmark your posts using the most popular bookmarking sites.
WP Definitions - By including the [[definition]] tag in your post, it will allow you to define the term at the bottom. All definitions that you use will only have to be defined once, and then they are stored in a database for future use.

Anybody who read this far will realize that 84 doesn't equal 100...that's because I am counting on you to share your favorites that I might have missed here. Just reply in the Comments section and I will add your plug in to the list.

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