Tips and Tricks

WordPress Action Hooks and Filter Hooks – An Introduction

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:23:22 +0000

If you’re learning about WordPress and are thinking of doing some plugin or theme development, then hooks are something which you should become familiar with.

Even if you don’t plan on becoming a fully fledged programmer but simply like to tweak themes to suit your needs, then WordPress hooks are also something which you should be aware of.

In this brief article we are going to introduce you to the two types of hooks which are used in WordPress and how you can identify them.

We will also briefly look at you how you can leverage hooks to insert customised code in order to achieve some new functionality.

So what are WordPress hooks?

To put it simply, a “hook” is a certain location in the WordPress code which allows you to attach or run your own code. The word “hook” is an apt description because it literally conveys the act of hooking onto something – in this case hooking your code up to the core code of WordPress.

Another way of describing WordPress hooks is that they are sort of like designated areas within the WordPress code which give you the opportunity to execute your own functions.

If you decided to write a WordPress plugin or if you wanted to develop a theme, then it is almost certain that you will write code which will contain functions which utilize one of the many hooks available in WordPress in order to achieve your desired functionality.

In WordPress there are two types of hooks – Action Hooks and Filter Hooks.

Let’s briefly look at each one.

Action Hooks

Action hooks allow you to execute your custom functions which are referred to as actions.

Action hooks allow you to add additional code to the WordPress core or theme so that you can achieve some new functionality or customizations.

The actions or functions which you would write for your plugin or theme can be run wherever there is a hook available – which may be during the WordPress loading stage or when certain events occur.

Some examples of events where you might want to execute an action are when someone publishes a blog post or when a certain type of page is being viewed.

Each of these “events” will contain an appropriate hook onto which you can attach your action (or function) to.

The definition of action hooks as stated in the WordPress documentation is:

“Actions are the hooks that the WordPress core launches at specific points during execution, or when specific events occur. Your plugin can specify that one or more of its PHP functions are executed at these points, using the Action API.”

So what does an action hook look like?
In the WordPress core system hooks are usually created by writing a function which contains inside of it a command which represents the particular hook.

Let’s look at an example of a very commonly used action hook called wp_head which is used by many plugins and themes to add things such as meta data between the tags of a WordPress page:
function wp_head() { do_action('wp_head'); }
(Note: The above snippet was taken directly from the core WordPress code in the file wp-includes/general-template.php).

The tell-tale characteristic which identifies the above code as an action hook is the presence of the function:
do_action('wp_head');
In other words, the do_action function is how the ‘wp_head’ action hook is created.

A generic way of representing an action hook is:
do_action($tag, $args)
where:
$tag = the name of the action hook (eg, wp_head)

$args = optional parameter(s) passed to the actions (or functions written by you) which register with the particular action hook. Action hooks can have many or no parameters such as the wp_head example shown above.

(Note: You should consult the WordPress code to determine if or how many parameters an action hook has)

Another way you might see an action hook created is via the following function:
do_action_ref_array( $tag, $args );
The above function differs slightly to the do_action function in that the $args variable represents an array of parameters which are mandatory.

Without going into the technical details too much, it is simply enough to know that whenever you see a do_action() or do_action_ref_array() function, then you know that you are dealing with an action hook.

So now we know what action hooks look like, how do we write actions which we can use to hook into these hooks?

When you are writing your custom functions for your plugin or theme, you would typically hook your code into an action hook using a statement like the following:
add_action( 'action_hook', 'your_function_name' );
The above line tells WordPress that you would like to execute your function called your_function_name when the system comes across the action hook called action_hook.

Below is a simple example of using an action hook by creating an action:
add_action( 'wp_head', 'my_actionhook_example' ); function my_actionhook_example() { echo '' . "\n"; } // The end of my_actionhook_example() ?>
The above code is something which you might place in your theme or child-theme’s functions.php file and when it is executed it will simply echo a meta tag inside the head portion of a WordPess page.

The add_action line registers (or hooks) your action (called my_actionhook_example) to the action hook which is called wp_head.

If you recall from earlier we said that an action is a customized function which you create and in the example above you can see the function definition and the code for the function which simply adds some meta data.

The example we’ve just seen uses one of a large number of action hooks available to you in WordPress and is a small drop in the ocean with what you can do with action hooks.

If you are curious and want to discover more of the action action hooks available you can do a global search through the WordPress core code for the following two strings using a code editor:
do_action
do_action_ref_array

The search results yielding the above terms will contain the action hooks built into WordPress where the first parameter will be the action hook name.

Also don’t forget that the WordPress documentation and codex is also a great source of information about hooks too.

Filter Hooks

Filter hooks are another type of WordPress hook and these deal with the manipulation of text and other output.

When defining filters the WordPress documentation says:

“Filters are functions that WordPress passes data through, at certain points in execution, just before taking some action with the data (such as adding it to the database or sending it to the browser screen). Filters sit between the database and the browser (when WordPress is generating pages), and between the browser and the database (when WordPress is adding new posts and comments to the database); most input and output in WordPress passes through at least one filter. WordPress does some filtering by default, and your plugin can add its own filtering.”

So in a similar way to action hooks, filter hooks allow you to also execute your functions known as filters.

As we saw from the definition, the main purpose of a filter is to modify settings or text of various types before “adding it to the database or sending it to the browser screen”.

A filter hook can be identified by either of the following pieces of code:

apply_filters( $tag, $value );
apply_filters_ref_array( $tag, $args );

For example in the WordPress core you will find a line of code like the following:
$title = apply_filters('wp_title', $title, $sep, $seplocation);
The above example shows the creation of the wp_title filter hook. This hook allows you to manipulate a page’s title before it is displayed in the browser.

As for the action hooks, filter hooks follow a similar pattern. The $tag represents the name of the hook and there are also parameters which are passed to filters which are registered to the hook.

Unlike the do_action hook, the apply_filters hook will always pass a parameter to the filter (which is the customized function you write) and your filter in turn must always return the $value parameter back to WordPress.

To create and register a filter you will use a similar approach to creating an action. For example you will write a function (known as the filter) which does something and you will also register your filter to a particular hook using a command such as:
add_filter ( 'hook_name', 'your_filter', [priority], [accepted_args] );
where:

hook_name = name of the hook you want register to
your_filter = the name of your filter (or function)
priority = (optional) integer which represents the order your filter should be applied. If no value is added, it defaults to 10.
accepted_args = (optional) integer argument defining how many arguments your function can accept (default 1) because your filter must accpet at least one parameter which will be returned.

Let’s look at a simple example of creating and registering a filter.
The code below shows something you might add in your customized theme functions.php file to append the site name to a page’s title:

add_filter( ‘wp_title’, ‘mytest_add_sitename_to_title’, 10, 2 );

mytest_add_sitename_to_title( $title, $sep ) {

/* Retrieve site name. */

$name = get_bloginfo( ‘name’ );

/* Append site name to $title. */

$title .= $sep . ‘ ‘ . $name;

/* Return the title. */

return $title;

}

?>

We can see from this example that we are registering our filter which is called mytest_add_sitename_to_title to the wp_title filter hook and we are assigning a priority of 10 and specifying that our filter function will accept 2 arguments.

Also note that our filter returns the $title back to WordPress in order for it to be able to display the modified title to the screen.

In summary we’ve only just scratched the surface regarding hooks and their uses. I hope that this introductory article has at least begun to demystify the subject of hooks and given you a small taste of what they are about and how you can identify and use them.

As always the WordPress codex and documentation pages are a very good place to start when you want to develop a deeper understanding of hooks.



Some Useful Things About WordPress Which You Should Know
admin — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:17:23 +0000
Straight out of the box, WordPress is an amazingly effective content management system and blogging platform.
Within its core PHP interior resides functionality which makes it the most flexible and easy to use platform for creating websites ranging from the simplest blog to a full blown business eCommerce site.
The majority of the WordPress functionality is clearly visible and accessible from the user interface in the administration panel.
However there are also some other less obvious but powerful functional features which are available when you delve a little deeper into the WordPress internals.
This article will introduce you to two common and useful functional features of WordPress which you should be aware of.
WordPress Template Hierarchy
WordPress uses a hierarchical template structure which determines how it renders any particular page or view for your currently active theme.
The mechanics of this hierarchy are quite simple. WordPress will automatically check for the existence of certain template files in your theme folder in a pre-determined order whenever it is trying to render a particular page or view.
For instance let’s take the example of a WordPress page.
 Before rendering any “page”, WordPress will check for the following templates in the order shown until it finds one and it will then display the page according to the code in that template file.
If all checks fail it will simply display the page according to the index.php which is the last check in the hierarchy.
The hierarchy of template files for a page is as follows:
 
 {custom-template}.php → page-{slug}.php → page-{id}.php → page.php → index.php
 
 As you can see from the above, the default “page.php” is well down the list in terms of page template hierarchy and therefore there is plenty of scope for you to customize your theme’s pages by creating your own templates.
For example let’s say we had a page called “Products” with a slug by the same name.
 If we wanted to automatically display such a page in a customized manner, then we can create a template file called “page-products.php” and place it in our theme directory.
In this file we would write our code specifying how we want this page rendered. For instance we might want to remove any footers or sidebars or display a list of post excerpts which are in a particular category.
WordPress will then automatically render the “Products” page according to the code in the page-products.php template file without any other configuration on our part.
A similar mechanism is also available for other view types such as categories, posts, tags etc
For the category group, the template hierarchy is as follows:
 
 category-{slug}.php → category-{id}.php → category.php → archive.php → index.php
 
 Some other template hierarchies are shown below:
Single:
 single-{post-type}.php → single.php → index.php
Author:
 author-{author-nicename}.php → author-{author-id}.php → author.php → archive.php → index.php
Tag:
 tag-{slug}.php → tag-{id}.php → tag.php → archive.php → index.php
Exploiting the template hierarchy characteristic can be a useful and powerful way to extend the functionality of your theme and how it displays particular pages.
For more about creating your own page template see our post “How to Create a Custom WordPress Page Template”.
For an in-depth technical overview of templates please see the WordPress codex documentation.
WordPress Child Themes
Another powerful and useful feature of WordPress is the Child Theme functionality.
As defined in WordPress.org, a child theme is:
“a theme that inherits the functionality of another theme, called the parent theme, and allows you to modify, or add to, the functionality of that parent theme”
For example let’s say you recently found what you thought was the theme of your dreams and you installed this new theme on your site only to find that you wanted to change some of its appearance or functionality.
Instead of hacking the theme’s code and then having to worry about remembering to put the changes back every time you update the version, creating a child theme is often the cleanest and easiest option.
To make your own child theme you simply create a new folder in the /wp-content/themes/ directory with your child theme’s name.
For example if you wished to modify the twentyeleven theme and wanted to create a child theme called twentyeleven-plus then you would create the following directory:
/wp-content/themes/twentyeleven-plus
The only mandatory file needed for a child theme to work is the style.css file which you would create in your child directory.
You must use a convention when creating your style.css file whereby the comment at the top of the file must be in a certain format (see example below).
The following is an example of a typical style.css file for a child theme:
 
 /*
 Theme Name:     TwentyEleven-Plus
 Theme URI:      http: //example.com/
 Description:    Child theme for the Twenty Eleven theme
 Author:         Your Name Goes Here
 Author URI:     http: //example.com/about/
 Template:       twentyeleven
 Version:        1.0
 */
@import url(“../twentyeleven/style.css”);
The comment section shown above contains two important mandatory fields:
Theme Name – this is the name of your theme which will appear in the Appearance → Themes page in the WordPress administration panel. This must match the name of your child theme’s directory (case insensitive).
Template – this is the name of the folder of the parent theme from which your child theme will inherit its qualities.
The other fields are optional but it is still a good idea to put some useful information here because these are also displayed in the administration panel of WordPress.
The last line shown above which is not part of the comments is the “@import url(“../twentyeleven/style.css”);” statement. This is also optional and is usually a good idea to include, especially if you wanted to implement some tweaks to the parent theme’s original style.css file.
This line tells WordPress to import the parent theme’s style.css file which means that if left unchanged, your child theme would render the CSS according to the code in the parent’s style.css.
However if you added some CSS code after this line, then the code for the particular CSS element will override the code for that same element in the parent’s style.css file.
Let’s take an example where we wanted to change the background color of our child theme to a light blue represented by the hex code #cee9f5.
The original code in the parent style.css displays the body’s backgound color as grey as shown below:
 
 body {
 background: #e2e2e2;
 }
 
 Therefore to modify this element we would simply add the following code at the end of our child theme’s /wp-content/themes/twentyeleven-plus/stye.css file.
Thus the contents of the new style.css will look as follows:
 
 /*
 Theme Name:     TwentyEleven-Plus
 Theme URI:      http: //example.com/
 Description:    Child theme for the Twenty Eleven theme
 Author:         Your Name Goes Here
 Author URI:     http: //example.com/about/
 Template:       twentyeleven
 Version:        1.0
 */
@import url(“../twentyeleven/style.css”);
body {
 background: #cee9f5;
 }
The above code effectively means that WordPress will load the parent’s style.css file but it will override the code pertaining to the “body” element with the new code for the body element shown above.
The cool thing about this is that all of the other existing CSS properties are automatically used from the parent’s style.css except for the body element which will use your new code.
We mentioned earlier that the only mandatory file in a child theme’s folder is the style.css file. This file will allow you to manipulate any CSS element pertaining to your theme.
You can also do something similar with template files. That is, by creating new template files (such as page.php) with the exact file name in your child theme directory, you can override the functionality of your parent theme with your customised code.
What if you wanted to further extend the functionality of your child theme, by adding your own functions to the functions.php?
In contrast to the child style.css and template files, the functions.php works a little differently, in that it does not automatically override the parent functions.php but is loaded in addition to the parent file.
That is, the child functions.php file is loaded first followed by the parent functions.php file.
As for the previous examples you would simply create a new file in your child theme directory with an identical name to the original file, ie, functions.php.
The child functions.php file doesn’t require any special comments at the beginning such as for style.css but you still need to honor the correct PHP syntax by placing your code between the PHP tags when necessary:
 
In this file you can add the code of any new functions which are not already contained in the parent functions.php file.
What if you wanted to modify an existing function contained in functions.php in the parent theme?
For existing functions contained in the parent theme, the general rule is that you are not allowed to re-declare the same function name in your child theme’s functions.php file unless it is a “pluggable” function in the parent file.
A pluggable function is simply one which is wrapped in a conditional statement during declaration in the parent functions.php file.
 Eg:
 
 if (!function_exists('theme_special_nav')) {
 function theme_special_nav() {
 //  Do something.
 }
 }
 
 The if statement above containing the function_exists() check effectively means that the “theme_special_nav()” is pluggable.
So before you re-declare any existing functions, be sure to check the parent functions.php file if a function is pluggable. (see the wordpress codex documentation for more info)
One other useful trick when creating your child theme is to include a file called screenshot.png in your child theme directory.
This file contains the preview image of your child theme and will be displayed in the Appearance → Themes page of your administration panel.
Although this file is completely optional, it is handy to include because it makes your child theme look more professional.
In summary, this brief article has only touched the surface of child themes and templates and there is so much more you can learn.
I strongly recommend that if you want to know more, you should read some of the excellent information available on the web starting with the WordPress codex documentation. 


How to Increase Your Online Persuasion Abilities
admin — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 09:18:47 +0000
Persuasion techniques for the Internet are often quite different to persuasion techniques which are used in face-to-face situations.
In contrast to the art of face-to-face persuasion, the online world means you are unable to read physical cues such as facial expressions and body language, which in turn means that you can’t instantly adjust your delivery based on these cues.
On the Internet, your website and its various pages is mainly responsible for the task of persuading your visitors to buy your products or services.
Thus, persuading people on the Internet usually means anticipating what people want or what action they will perform next.
Factors such as the design of your site and the delivery of the content all play a significant role in shaping the user’s experience. In general, the better the experience for your visitors, the greater the chances that they will buy something from you.
Persuading people to carry out an action on your site such as making a purchase is a subtle art-form and there is no magical single way to do it.
However, there are things you can do to your website and the way you present your message which can increase the probability that somebody will perform the particular action you want them to.
Below are three tips which can help to increase the persuasive nature of your website.
1) Reduce the amount of thinking time your visitors engage in, when asked to perform a call-to-action
If you want to maximise conversion rate then you need to make it as easy as possible for your potential customers to perform a specific call-to-action such as clicking the “Buy Now” button or signing up as a member.
At the very least your site’s pages should be constructed in a way which reduces confusion.
For instance if someone landed on your page looking for something specific then give them what they are looking for and make it easy for them to buy/subscribe/join etc.
Internet marketers are now beginning to understand that eliminating or cutting down the thinking time required by the visitor in order to make a decision, greatly increases conversion rates.
One way to decrease thinking time and confusion is to limit the number of choices your visitors have when they are on your page. That is, try to offer just one product/service etc in each of your landing pages. By doing this you are effectively making the decision for your customers and removing any doubts and ambiguity.
Additionally, to enhance the customer’s experience you should always strive to make your call-to-action items such as buttons, images or links clearly visible and obvious to your visitors.
2) Talk about money or price only when your visitor wants to know
When a potential client comes to your site, you are essentially guiding their thoughts and actions through the content and structure of your website.
Therefore if you immediately thrust your pricing info at visitors as soon as they land on your site, you run the risk of eclipsing all other information contained in your sales pitch; leaving only one thought in your visitor’s mind – price.
This is not to say that pricing information should not be presented when asked for, but in most cases, price should not be the main message in your sales copy.
There are exceptions of course such as if you are by far the cheapest in your business niche and you have a reputation for being so, then pitching your sales copy based on pricing might be effective.
Another situation when you might want to make your price the main focus is if you are offering a product or service which a lot of other people are also selling. In cases such as this, most readers know they have many options for shopping around, so price might be one way to win them over.
Clever marketers are well aware that perceived value can often mean an increased willingness by customers to pay the listed price for a product. This is because the perceived value of the product in the mind of the customer far outweighs the price they are paying for it.
Hence, to successfully be able to increase the perceived value of your product, you will need to present your customers with information about the item which you are selling which will induce feelings of pleasure, excitement or promise of a solution.
For instance highlighting relevant information about your product such as the amazing features it has, or the elegant design, or even any bonus material you are offering, will help increase the perceived value in the minds of your clients.
There is however a delicate balance regarding your pricing information, in that, you should not delay the mention of pricing too long either. For instance you may regularly get visitors who need less convincing to purchase your product and hence these people will often need pricing information quite quickly.
You should therefore try and make the pricing information easily locatable such as in your product info page or perhaps in a separate plans and pricing page.
3) Use social media and comments to demonstrate to your visitors that you have a following or readership (even if it’s relatively small) 
Social media and other things which demonstrate your site’s following can be a hugely persuasive factor in getting people to become engaged with your website or blog.
We humans predominantly want to have the sense that we fit in with the majority or to be part of a crowd because by our very nature we are social beings.
Due to this characteristic, it is more likely that your blog will receive “likes”, “tweets” and comments and ultimately conversions, when visitors see that there is a crowd of people who have done these things already.
Conversely, nobody wants to be the first to “tweet” or “like” a site which has only been up for a few months and is completely devoid of “likes” or comments.
Therefore if your site is new and has little traffic, you can either turn off your comments until you start to get some decent traffic flowing or you can encourage your family, friends and colleagues to leave some genuine comments and to also “like” and tweet about your site.
The use of the Alexa, page rank or readership indicators should be avoided in the early stages of your site when you might have minimal traffic and low ranking. You can start displaying these sorts of things when your site starts to mature and gain popularity.
In summary, the ability to be persuasive on the Internet rests mainly on the shoulders of the inanimate entity known as your website. The presentation and delivery of your content and how these shape a visitor’s experience and perceptions are the things which will ultimately determine how persuasive you are as an online entrepreneur or blogger. 


6 Tips to Help Ignite Your Creativity and Increase Your Success
admin — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:01:26 +0000
When it comes to achieving success on the Internet or anything in life for that matter, it probably isn’t a secret that having some capacity of creative spark or talent can increase your chances of attaining your goals.
But what makes some people more creative and successful than others? Is creativity something genetic and does that mean those who aren’t blessed with this gene are doomed to never be creative or successful?
Well the simple answer is that creativity is something which we are ALL born with but some people lose it more than others as they grow older. If you observe young children playing you’ll know what I mean when I say we all start with a propensity for some kind of creativity which is usually fueled by curiosity.
Many people lack a creative spark because they stopped doing the simple things which leads to creative ideas in the first place.
Most people, as they grow older start to develop bad habits or a limited mindset maybe because they are in a job they don’t like or a difficult financial situation. As time goes by, the curiosity they had when they were children diminishes and with that so does creativity.
Instead of using their curiosity and creativity to investigate ways to improve their lives these people give up trying but they also wish things could be different.
A lot of people also believe that to achieve true financial or other success you need to invest a lot of money in the first place or have to go to a top university so that you get the right job in the right company.
The reality is, that at this point in time in the evolutionary scale of technology, everything you need to make you successful is readily available at your finger tips from the Internet in the comfort of your own home. We can even go so far as to say that the Internet is the new “UniversityofSuccess”.
A little over a decade ago you could be excused for believing that you needed to attend some sort of college or university to learn the necessary skills to help you succeed, but now that’s not true anymore.
For a fraction of the cost of a regular university or college course, now you can teach yourself a new skill or get full guidance and coaching online without having to leave your home.
All that is needed on your part initially is some curiosity and action to get you started.
The list of 6 pointers below which I’ve compiled from various successful people will help ignite your creativity and re-charge your motivation:
Try something new for 30 days
 This is a great suggestion which I recently heard in a presentation from Matt Cutts who is a search optimization engineer at google. Trying something new for a month is a fantastic way to re-build your creativity and whet your curiosity. This can also help you discover the thing that you love doing in case you weren’t sure what it was to begin with.
 In terms of the Internet there are countless of free and premium courses and products available in which you can learn or discover a new skill which you can use to enhance your creativity.
Do what you love
 People who make a living from doing what they love instantly have a head-start on those who hate or are indifferent to their jobs. Apart from the fact that you feel good doing what you love, you also have no negative baggage which comes from the stress and resentment of doing something you don’t like.
 If you don’t know what you love doing, then maybe applying point 1 above might help you.
Keep your goals to yourself – at least in the beginning
 Sometimes when you decide to muster up the courage to try something new it’s a good idea to keep your goals a secret initially. This may sound counter-intuitive because most people think that by making their intentions known they can increase their visibility and hence their chances of success because somebody out there might offer some help. Well that’s true to an extent but in a lot of cases the people you might be sharing your goals with might not have the same enthusiasm and mindset as you, and quite often they will try to talk you out of your “crazy ideas” and tell you that it’s just too hard.
 Therefore, unless you’re certain that you are talking to people with a similar attitude as yours, hold on to your goals and plans until you’ve put them into practice.
Be curious
 When you start digging deeper into something out of curiosity, you usually find that not only do you enhance your knowledge about that thing, but sometimes you might come up with creative ideas which you would never have thought of if you hadn’t indulged your curiosity.
 So next time you are reading or watching a tutorial about how to do something for your blog, why not delve deeper and experiment with what you’ve learnt and see what happens.
Improve
 Improving yourself both in terms of knowledge and in general can only serve to benefit you and those around you. Most of us are increasingly becoming aware of the huge economic changes sweeping the world’s societies in terms of employment and what it means to be financially secure. Having a regular job for 20, 30 or 50 years until you retire is a thing of the past. The new reality is that people who can re-skill quickly and who regularly add to their existing skills will be better off in today’s economic climate.
Focus
 The ability to focus determines the outcome of the task you are trying to accomplish. Therefore whenever you set yourself a task, see it through to completion by doing regular highly focused little chunks at a time. Doing small manageable chunks can make the highest mountain seems like a mole hill.
Creativity and success are not just something necessarily reserved for a special few and now with information and knowledge so readily accessible from the Internet, cultivating your creativity has never been so easy. Therefore applying some of the ingredients above to your life will go a long way in maximizing your chances of reaching your goals. 


Choosing The Right Keywords For Your Ad Campaigns (Part 2)
admin — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:38:08 +0000
In part 1 of this article series your were introduced to the important and elementary aspects of keyword research and how they apply to your ad campaigns. We also outlined the various keyword match types and their different behaviours when applied to a search engine query.
In this article we’ll continue with the subject of keyword match types and also talk a bit about evaluating the keywords which you are researching so that you can ensure that you are choosing the most relevant keyword for your AdWords campaign.
There is one very important match type which we haven’t talked about yet but which you need to be familiar with if you want to succeed with your ad campaigns. This is known as the negative keywords match type and it will help you to eliminate the traffic which causes unwanted costly clicks on your ads.
So let’s delve a bit more into negative keywords.
Negative Keywords
So with our understanding from part 1 of the three basic keyword match types and their effect on search results, let’s explore another very important match type known as negative keywords  which can help you protect your ad campaign from irrelevant traffic.
Negative keywords can help increase the relevance of your ads, and as a consequence, increase your quality scores, conversion rates and ultimately improve your return on investment (ROI).
Some web marketers who use AdWords consider negative keywords the most important match type of all due to the fact that it helps to filter out irrelevant clicks which come from unwanted traffic.
After all, wasting your advertising money on clicks or impressions from users who are never likely to buy your product defeats the purpose of showing your ad and also negatively affects your profit.
So what are negative keywords?
Negative keywords operate in an inverse way to the 3 match types we’ve already discussed – and just in case you’ve forgotten, they were the broad, phrase or exact match type.
So previously we were telling google AdWords to show our ad for certain keywords using one or a combination of these match types.
But when using negative keywords, we are instructing google to NOT show our ads for particular search terms.
For example if I am selling high quality leather shoes and I want to aim for people who are prepared to spend over $1000, then I will most probably have the following negative keywords programmed into my ad campaign:
cheap, fake, discount, imitation etc
By using negative keywords like this, I will be able to account for people using search terms such as “buy cheap leather shoes” and make sure that they will not see my ad.
A negative keyword match is indicated by the use of the minus sign (-) in front of the keyword you wish to NOT display your ad for.
(Note: You can even use this technique when simply searching for something using google search and you want to exclude results for certain words or terms)
If you do not account for the irrelevant traffic by failing to use negative keywords, your ad will suffer in more ways than one. For starters you may end up blowing your daily budget quite quickly due to the irrelevant clicks and your quality score will also be affected.
Google defines quality score as:
“A measurement of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad”.
So how can one find negative keywords?
The best way to find negative keywords for your particular search term is to use the google keyword tool which we mentioned in the article in part 1.
Quite often when you are researching your keywords using the keyword tool, not only are you finding keyword ideas to use in your ad campaign, but you will also be able to identify some negative keywords in the displayed results too.
For instance let’s take an extreme example such as the Paris Hilton Hotel in France. If you owned this hotel and wanted to run an AdWords campaign for it, then negative keywords are something you will have to include into your campaign.
For obvious reasons the search term “paris hilton” will turn up a significant volume of irrelevant search traffic because of the huge popularity of the celebrity who goes under the same name.
Thus the majority of the people who are searching the term “paris hilton” will not be interested in the slightest about booking a room at your hotel.
When typing this into the keyword tool to get some ideas for your research, you’ll notice that you also get a huge amount of negative keyword candidates such as:
paris hilton shoes
paris hilton perfume
paris hilton video
paris hilton pregnant
paris hilton youtube
…..etc.
In the example above the words in bold would be considered as your negative keywords because they have no relevance to your hotel business.
So by using these negative keywords in your ad campaign you can exclude your ad from being displayed to the wrong people who are looking for things related to gossip, tv celebrity, fashion accessories, perfume etc.
In other words you want to make sure that your ad is shown only for people who are searching to book a room in your hotel in Paris.
Once you have compiled a list of your negative keywords for your particular ad campaign, you can enter these in your google AdWords interface in the section specifically alloted for negative keywords.
In essence, finding negative keywords should actually be done simultaneously during the keyword research phase when you are looking for your general keyword ideas.
You should always keep in mind that identifying negative keywords is a crucial element to any successful AdWords campaign because it will significantly increase your ROI and save you money by preventing irrelevant clicks and increasing your quality score.
Evaluating keywords
Now that you know about keyword research and how to protect your traffic using different keyword match types, you’re ready to start delving into the types of things that you should keep in mind when composing your keyword strategy.
As discussed in part 1, keywords are basically evaluated in terms of:
Keyword frequency (or size of the search)
Relevance
Competition/cost
Let’s briefly look at each of these concepts.
Keyword Frequency
When we refer to keyword frequency, we’re talking about search volume or how often people are actually typing this keyword into google when they’re doing searches.
If you target keywords that have very little or no traffic, then no matter how high or low you bid you will see no clicks on your ads because not enough people are searching for your term.
You therefore want to make sure that the keywords you target have enough search volume which will allow your ad to be triggered and displayed in front of your potential customers.
You can use the google keyword tool to determine the search volume of your keyword by looking at the “Global Monthly” or “Local Monthly Searches” columns.
Just keep in mind that there is a fine trade-off between frequency and relevance and like we discussed earlier, you also want to avoid wasting money on keywords which have too much search volume and little relevance.
Relevance
Your AdWords success really begins with selecting keywords which are relevant to the products and services which you are offering.
If I sell espresso coffee machines then I want eliminate any person who is not interested in buying my coffee machine. This includes people who are not yet ready to buy and are only researching coffee machines by looking for “coffee machine reviews”.
For instance if someone looking for a coffee machine review landed on my page and did not find a review, then they will most likely leave my site without buying.
However if I used more relevant keywords such as “buy espresso coffee machine” or “buy coffee machine online” then my chances of getting people who are ready to buy a coffee machine to click on my ad are very good.
As mentioned in part 1, the best thing to do when constructing your AdWords campaigns, is to put yourself in your potential customers shoes by trying to see things from their perspective.
The next factor we need to consider when evaluating our keywords is the competition or cost.
Competition/Cost
The way AdWords works is that you’re essentially competing against others in an auction for the keywords which you are targeting in your campaigns.
As in regular auctions, the most popular keyword terms will always be more expensive than the less popular terms. The more people you have to compete with for a term the more money you will need to spend on your campaign.
The good news is however that the most popular and expensive keywords may not always be the best for your business or product. The fact is that most people throw their money at inefficient campaigns because they fail to do their keyword research properly.
For example they might blindly use keywords which are expensive and high in frequency but low in relevance.
This means that you can have an edge on your competition by way of better preparation and research in the way you select your keywords.
Long tail keywords for instance are typically less expensive than single-word or shorter keywords but they can be extremely targeted and very effective in converting clicks.
Long tail keywords are typically characterised by the fact that they tend to consist of more words and are very specific and targeted.
Below is an example of a long-tail keyword:
Buy Panasonic VIERA 50-Inch Plasma TV
You can bet that someone clicking on an ad for the above keyword will be ready to buy that particular product.
As with the previous qualities, there has to be a balance when selecting a keyword based on cost or competition. Even though you may have found a very relevant and well priced keyword, but if it gets no searches per month you won’t be getting any clicks or conversions.
Note that when conducting your research you can use the google keyword tool from your within your AdWords account to get an approximate cost-per-click value for your keyword by looking at the “Approximate CPC” column.
In summary the most important thing to remember when evaluating your keywords is that you need to consider all 3 of the above qualities together. That is, how frequently is your keyword being searched, how relevant is it to the products and services that you offer and how competitive and expensive will it be for you to bid on this term.
That concludes this brief introduction to keywords and how they apply to ad campaigns such as AdWords. Hopefully this two part article has at least given you a stepping stone for finding out more about this crucial Internet marketing tool. 


Choosing The Right Keywords For Your Ad Campaigns (Part 1)
admin — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 08:05:32 +0000
If you are thinking of using an ad campaign such as AdWords to help boost your business’s bottom line then you should be aware that there is nothing more essential to an AdWords or any other type of online ad campaign than your keywords.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re bidding on search terms or deciding which keywords that you’d like your ads to appear for, selecting the appropriate keywords for your campaign will determine whether you will have a profitable campaign or one that drains your money like a bottomless pit.
Keywords which can appear similar to you and me can often have drastically different performance behaviours. A big mistake people often make is to assume that keywords which they think mean “roughly the same thing” will have roughly the same outcome.
Minor variations in keywords can often indicate very large differences on the intent or mindset of the searcher. The subtle variations of the phrasing can even indicate whether the searcher is ready to buy or whether they are simply just browsing and conducting their initial research.
First and foremost, the crucial thing to remember when doing keyword research is to be mindful of speaking the language of your potential customers or clients. This point is especially important in the field of advertising on the Internet using search engines.
The art of advertising on the Internet using search engines is subtly different to say advertising on TV because on the Internet you’re not always trying to force your ad in front of people.
When you are advertising online using AdWords for example you’re responding to what people are looking for which equates to what they are typing in when using a search engine such as google.
So in other words you are not really trying to control or create a market, but instead you want to become aware of what the search terms are which are being entered into the search engine for your product or service.
If you don’t do the due diligence of doing some research about which keywords your customers are typing in, then no matter how brilliant or creative your ads are, they will never serve their intended purpose because they will not get displayed, or even worse, they might be displayed to the wrong people and will end up costing you money for the wasted clicks.
Jargon which you might use regularly in your line of business might not be the terms which the customers use to search for your product. For example, the airline companies might frequently say “low fares” but the average Internet surfer looking to save on their airfares might be typing “cheap flights”.
Even if you’ve done some initial research and you’re comfortable that you’ve found the term which you think that thousands of your potential customers are using to search for your type of product, keyword research is unfortunately a little more complex than simply looking at frequency and volume of your search data.
Sure the frequency is an important quality when you are selecting a keyword to target but it is only one of a number of qualities which you should take into account.
Although keyword research can become quite complex, there are 3 important things you should initially focus on:
Size - The size of the market based on how many searches people are doing around that term.
Relevance - The relevancy of those terms to your business.
Competition/cost - The competition/cost associated with advertising on those terms.
In order to determine the above variables, you can use tools to conduct your keyword research. The GoogleKeyword tool is often the best place to start, because it’s free and it contains many built-in features which allow you to view different performance factors for each search term.
(Note: You can also use the keyword tool from within your google AdWords account and the benefit of this is that it contains more features such as being able to display the approximate cost-per-click (CPC) of a keyword)
Let’s take a brief look at some important factors regarding keyword research and the google keyword tool.
Keyword Match Types
If you have a google AdWords campaign or have used the keyword tool before, then you might already be aware that google uses keyword match types to determine what type of search queries you want your ads to be displayed for and how closely you want to match the phrases that people are typing into the search engines.
You can use keyword match types to control the broadness or narrowness of your search audience. For instance if you’re in the business of selling “motorcycle tires”, you don’t want to waste advertising dollars to irrelevant visitors who are looking for “car tires”.
When one refers to keyword match type in google AdWords or the search tool, one is usually talking about broad, phrase and exact match types.
The google keyword tool allows you to specify which specific or combination of match types you wish your search data to show when doing your research. (see the circled checkboxes in the picture below)
Adwords keyword match types
1. Broad match 
This is the default match type for all keywords and broad match keywords have no restriction – which means that they can potentially trigger your ad to display on even the most remotely relevant thing related to your keyword.
Broad match keywords can trigger your ad if the user types a query in a different order than the specifically targeted keyword. Broad match also covers queries which contain similar words or synonyms to your targeted keyword and plural forms of your keyword.
Therefore even though you may be excited that you are reaching millions of searchers by using a broadly matched keyword, the downside is that you will often be wasting your advertising dollars to irrelevant, non-converting clicks.
2. Phrase match
Using phrase matched keywords will narrow down the search traffic such that all user queries must contain your targeted keywords in the exact order in which you are specifying them.
A phrase match is indicated by the use of quotes “” around your keyword and you can even use this technique when simply searching for something using google search.
Regarding your ad campaigns, if you wanted a phrase match for the keyword “motorcycle tires”, then you are asking AdWords to display your ad only in the cases where people are typing in a phrase which contains the words “motorcycle tires” in that exact order.
For example, your ad is just as likely to appear for any of the following phrases:
“Pirelli motorcycle tires”
“motorcycle tires reviews”
“what are the best motorcycle tires?”
“Bob’s motorcycle tires”
So as you can see, the phrase matched keyword has narrowed the search traffic considerably by requiring your keyword to appear in the same order within the search phrase which someone types.
But in most cases we might require an even more specific match type in order to get really targeted traffic. Which leads us to the exact match keywords.
3. Exact match
An exact match keyword is the finest granularity you can specify for your keyword matches. This type of match ensures that your ad will only be displayed when a searcher types the exact same keyword which you are targeting in your ad campaign.
An exact match is indicated by the use of square brackets [] around your keyword and you can also use this technique when simply searching for something using google search.
Regarding your AdWords campaign, an exact match keyword is telling the system that it should only display your ad when the user query exactly matches your targeted keyword  – this means that the words are exactly the same and in the same order with no other words in the phrase.
So in effect an exact match keyword for your “motorcycle tires” ad would have weeded out all of the other search traffic which didn’t have the exact phrase of your keyword.
This type of match can give you the finest level of control in your ad campaigns and can direct specifically targeted traffic to your ad.
When doing your keyword research you will need to take all of the above qualities into consideration before committing to a particular keyword to target in your ads. There has to be a balance between the volume, relevance and also cost of your keywords.
(We will talk briefly about keyword cost/competition in part 2)
As you can see in this brief article we’ve only just touched the surface of the mechanics of keyword research but I hope it has at least given you an initial overview of things you can think about when you are conducting your next keyword research. If you are new to Google Adwrods then the Recap of Google AdWords Basics is a good article to read.
(To be continued in part 2) 


8 Formatting Tips For Your Blog That Can Help Maximize Your Conversions
admin — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 09:20:47 +0000
When writing blog posts or copy content for websites, the rules of engagement are quite often very different to those for print or other media.
Due to the electronic and visual nature of how web content is delivered, there are certain factors regarding web writing and formatting which make it unique amongst the other mediums.
For instance things like the screen size and resolution can differ greatly for people reading the exact same content, especially now that there are so many smart devices and tablets.
Also there has never been a phenomenon like the Internet which is able to provide on-demand content anytime of the day to virtually anyone.
Therefore if you’d like to increase your chances of converting or achieving your intended goal, your site’s content needs to hold people’s attention and deliver your message in an efficient and effective way.
The highest conversion rates often come from content which is easily readable & digestible
The way you format and write your copy or blog articles can have a tremendous impact on how your readers react to what they’re reading.
Studies about human online reading patterns reveal that most people don’t read every word on a web page – but instead they scan the page in an “F” pattern.
Therefore, copy content that is easily scanned by the human eye is much more likely to efficiently get the point across and is less tiresome to read.
When your readers can find what they’re looking for more easily they will also most probably click the appropriate call-to-action such as signing up to your mailing list or perhaps purchasing your product.
Below are some handy formatting tips you can apply to the pages on your site which will help to make your content easier to read and yield better conversions:
1) Write shorter chunks of copy or content of no more than about 4 or 5 lines at a time.
There are no strict rules on the Internet when it comes to paragraphs so feel free to separate long sentences if you find they take up many lines.
Splitting up your writing like this will increase scan-ability and decrease the chances of your message being lost somewhere in a sea of words. A good practice is to group sentences into chunks of no more than 4 or 5 lines.
Note: Even though there are many orthodox literary conventions that you can afford to break on the Internet, there is one which you should not violate – and that is, always ensure you have the proper spelling.
2) Use a larger and easily readable font
Typography is quickly becoming a valuable skill for Internet marketers and bloggers because using an optimum font and line spacing can be one of the key things which determine how long readers stay on your site.
This is because the more easily and less wearisome your site is to read, the better the experience your visitors will have. Therefore it is a good idea to use a large an easy-to-read font if possible.
3) Use grouping & visuals to organize content
Grouping is where you clearly segment sections of your content using columns and concise headings and messages, together with some visuals such as icons or images.
This type of delivery makes it very reader-friendly and allows your visitors to access the information they need without having to scour your site for it.
The example below represents a perfect case of grouping used by Apple on their iPad page. As a matter of fact you’ll notice that the Apple site contains many examples of grouping in action.
A lot of WordPress themes now give you the ability to create columns and tables which can help you achieve the above format.
4) Use numerals, ampersands & other symbols to shorten headings (or sub-headings)
This is a simple yet effective way to deliver your message concisely. For instance take the following example:
Without using symbols and abbreviation:
 “Earn hundreds of points and get exclusive access to our member specials”
With symbols and abbreviations:
 “Earn 100s of points & get exclusive access to our member specials”
5) Use bolding to highlight what you want your readers to see
The simple act of making a word or words bold can make a message stand out. As long as you don’t overdo it this is a great way to facilitate easy scanning of your pages.
6) Use bullet lists of no more than 5 or 6 items
Bullet lists are great for breaking the monotony of reams of text and a handy way to link related points together.
A bullet list should be no more than 5 or so items so as to ensure that your readers are not overwhelmed with content.
You don’t have to use bullets or dots. Icons and other images are sometimes the most effective if you can keep them relevant to your message.
Your second-best bullet point should be placed last so that someone scanning your list will be surprised and impressed to read it because people usually expect the least useful point to be the last!
7) Use icons and images to enhance your message delivery
The placement of relevant images or icons around copy text can serve a useful purpose of drawing your readers eyes to your message. The key is not to overdo it.
Below is an example of how GoDaddy utilizes icons to get their messages across:
8 ) Ensure your text links are easily recognizable
When you place a link on your page, you usually do so because you want your readers to click it. Therefore, if a piece of text looks like a link then people will more than likely click it.
Most WordPress themes already have an inbuilt ability to colorize and/or underline text links. Sometimes you can add your own touch by crafting your links to look the way you would like them to.
For instance I once saw a successful affiliate site which had its text links formatted as follows:
<== Click Here To See Today’s Specials ==>
The above simple technique is quite effective but might not be for everyone. The point is that you are not limited in how you highlight your text links – as long as you do somehow.
In summary, the above tips are just a hand-full of the things you can do to optimize the readability and convert-ability of your web pages.
The Internet is an amazing communication medium unlike any other in our history but it also contains many distractions which you will have to compete against to win your readers’ attention.
I hope the above tips will at least give you something to help keep your visitors long enough to get your message across. 


How to Use Firebug to Modify Your WordPress Site’s CSS  (Video Tutorial)
admin — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 10:07:35 +0000
In this video tutorial we will show you how you can customize the sytle of your WordPress site easily using a FireFox addon called Firebug. You can do the same thing using Google Chrome’s inspector tool too. We’ll do this by walking you through a live example in which we will make a selection of modifications to a standard WordPress site using the TwentyEleven WordPress theme.
What is Firebug
Firebug is a handy tool which every web developer and blog owner should have in their arsenal. Firebug enables you to very easily investigate or troubleshoot almost any CSS design question or problem. It is an ideal tool for WordPress bloggers because you can use it to assist you in making modifications to your WordPress site’s styling or layout.
What will be Covered in this Video Tutorial
we will show you examples of CSS modifications for properties and scenarios such as the following:
Changing the background color of a page
Modifying the padding and margin properties to achieve a particular spacing between elements
Changing the colors of text such as the main blog title and post titles
Moving a particular element on a page by modifying some of its properties
Use Firebug to Modify Your WordPress Site’s CSS Video Part 1
Use Firebug to Modify Your WordPress Site’s CSS Video Part 2
Alternatively, you can view this videos on YouTube by going to the following links
Use Firebug to Modify Your WordPress Site’s CSS Video Part 1
Use Firebug to Modify Your WordPress Site’s CSS Video Part 2
Hopefully these videos will help you customize various aspects of your WordPress site’s CSS easily. 


What’s New in the Upcoming WordPress 3.3 Release?
admin — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 03:49:34 +0000
The new and improved edition of WordPress will be version 3.3 which is due for official release in November and it contains some exciting new features and improvements.
In this post we will highlight some of these changes.
Cosmetic Improvements
1. Refined Admin Menu bar
The admin bar has been refined but it now also appears as part of the dashboard section too.
This improved version has had some re-arranged items and it also contains new menu items such as the WordPress logo in the top left corner. When you hover over it it reveals some useful links such as an “About WordPress” and also links to the WordPress site, documentation, and support forum.
Some elements in the previous version of the menu bar have been merged such as the Dashboard and Appearance which are now both combined into one menu item which has a label bearing your site’s name.
2. Refined and Improved Menu Sidebar
The menus on the sidebar have also changed and most if not all of the menu changes are actually only CSS3 implementations. For instance in previous versions the sidebar menu items utilized a click-to-expand format.
 Now each component within the sidebar menu contains a neat fly-out menu which appears when hovering over it with the mouse. This was something you would see in previous WordPress versions when the sidebar menu was in the collapsed state but now it is also part of the main menu state.
The fly-out menus greatly reduce the number of clicks a user needs to make in order to locate an item and they also improve screen real-estate. For instance someone might have 30 plugins installed and each plugin might have its own settings menu in the side-bar. In previous WordPress versions you would ordinarily need to scroll down the page get to one of plugin settings menus, but with this improvement the sidebar is a lot more compact and easily navigable.
Having said that the old functionality still applies. That is, you can still expand menu items vertically when clicking on them. See the picture below to see examples of both formats.
3. Dynamic Display Enhancements For Admin Page
Continuing from the above point, another neat feature resulting from the changes made to the admin side-bar menu is that it is now more responsive and adaptable to screen size changes.
The side-bar menu will automatically collapse if required – such as when you re-size the browser window to a small size. This greatly maximizes screen real-estate and also makes navigation easier. (see the example image)
Such an enhancement is very handy for tablets or other mobile devices especially when the user changes the orientation of the screen.
4. New and Improved Help Menu
The help menu has also changed and as a result screen real-estate has also been maximized. Previously when you clicked “Help” from the admin panel you got a wall of text which was not very well organized and helpful.
The improved help menu appears in an economically sized section at the top of your screen and the items are well positioned into tabs which are easy to read and navigate.
This is also great news for developers because this functionality is fully customizable. For instance developers can create their own help menu using these cool tabs to display helpful information regarding a plugin.
5. Postname Permalink Improvements
The permalink menu has been slightly changed and now the “postname” permalink structure also appears as a standard selectable option.
In previous versions of WordPress the postname permalink method was considered a custom structure. It also never really worked very well because this structure bloated the database for cases when there was a large number of posts or pages. As a consequence it also had a negative effect on performance. In WordPress 3.3 this has been resolved and has resulted in improved performance
6. Multi-Media Uploader Enhancement
The multi-media uploader facility has been greatly enhanced in 3.3.
For instance the uploader now features a drag-drop capability where you can select an image or other multi-media file from your desktop using your mouse and then drag and drop it into the uploader box instead of using the “Select Files” button and then navigating to the file.
This new feature utilises HTML5 Silverlight but the uploader can also still use Flash depending on whatever is available.
In addition, the four media icons in the edit post/page have now all been combined into one which greatly reduces confusion.
Some Not-So Obvious Improvements Under the Hood
1. Improved Meta-Data API
WordPress 3.3 also features a new and improved meta API which has now been enhanced to better cater for developers who work with meta-data related to posts, users, comments or other elements. These changes will make it easier in the way developers manipulate, save and sanitize their meta-data.
2. Improved Visual editor API
A lot of the editor components have been re-written into completely new APIs.
 For instance there is a new JavaScript API for the quick-tags and a new PHP API for the editor in general. These new APIs will make it easier for developers to incorporate their plugin’s functionality into the WordPress editor interface.
 The new enhancements also enable developers to do some cool things such as allowing multiple instances of the editor on a page which was always a problem in previous WordPress versions.
3. Improved Performance
As mentioned earlier, previously there were performance penalties which people paid when using a custom permalink structure such as the postname permalink due to the sheer number of redirects and requests to the database.
This version of WordPress has greatly improved in its performance due to the internal changes in the way pretty permalinks are now implemented.
4. jQuery UI Now Loaded Into Core
WordPress has been updated with the latest jQuery UI in core. At the time of writing this article the jQuery UI version which has been added to core is 1.8.16.
So as you can see, WordPress 3.3 offers some really amazing improvements for users and developers alike. This new version will undoubtedly continue to maintain WordPress’ dominance as one of the most superior and flexible content management systems available today. 


Create An Email Newsletter That Makes Readers Want to Return to Your Blog
admin — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 10:06:38 +0000
Email newsletters are a great way to boost traffic to your blog posts and grow a loyal readership. However, you better do email newsletters the right way or you risk having the recipients hit the unsubscribe button without looking back. There is a lot to creating excellent email newsletters and big companies who send them out have teams of writers, designers, marketers and computer programmers collaborating on the newsletter. This can be overwhelming for the one man or one woman blogger, but there are some tried and true methods you can use to quickly create email newsletters that make readers want to return to your blog.
Make It Look Professional By Using a Template
Unless you’re a coding ninja, save your time and sanity by using an email newsletter template. There are several free sources for these templates including MailChimp, CampaignMonitor and PatternHead. There are so many templates with so many different color, layout and theme choices that there is no need to personally customize and design your own newsletter in most cases. Plus, using a template ensures your newsletter will look professional and without misplaced lines of code, which is the most important factor.
Make It Look Not Like Spam
There are a couple key ways to make sure your emails don’t look like spam. First, only send an email newsletter when you really have something important to say. You never want to bombard your readers with meaningless emails and even if you think you have important things to say in daily emails, you still should send emails at most once every few days. Secondly, make it easy for a user to unsubscribe. Spam artists are notorious for not allowing users to unsubscribe or burying that option deep in an email where it’s hard to find. Although, this may sound tempting, mimicking spammers will only serve to decrease your readership.
Email Marketing 101: Getting Readers From Their Inbox To Your Blog
Marketing is a highly refined skill and it’s what will get readers to click on the links in your email newsletter that will take them over to your blog. While you can earn advanced degrees in fields of marketing, here are some of the basics of email marketing to get you started:
Don’t give out all your information in the newsletter, give snippets: If you send out a nice long email with some great content and helpful information your readers will appreciate it and may thank you, but they have no reason to visit your blog again. Rather, display several information “teasers” that when clicked, takes your reader to the full article on your blog.
Make your headlines and teasers outrageously interesting: Headlines and teasers are only a few words to a few sentences long at most. You only have a small window to grab a reader’s attention so you must make the most of it. Spend time crafting teasers that your reader’s can’t ignore. Some common teaser formats that work include any numbered lists, “top” or “best rated” lists or negatives, such as “the worst (product names) you should avoid.” These formats tend to spark interest most of the time, but anything that really relates to your readers on a substantial level or anything that’s truly creative will result in clicks to your blog.
Use awesome clickable images: Pictures really are worth a thousand words sometimes. A great didactic, creative or humorous image can result in more return readers to your blog than you’d probably expect. Filling your newsletter with a few well-placed images and your readers are guaranteed to pay more attention to your email. However, do not use too many images, since users without the highest internet speeds will dislike this and do not rely on images alone, since some of your emails will undoubtedly be flagged as junk mail. These images will not load unless a user un-flags the email. In this scenario your headlines and teasers will be the end all be all of your newsletter.
When all else fails give your readers incentive: Nothing encourages return readership to your blog like giving something away for free or offering something at a steep discount. Put forth a sense of urgency by saying the first “X” number of readers to visit after receiving this email can claim their free “ABC” product.
Track Visits After Sending Out Email Newsletters to Learn Your Readers
Pay careful attention to spikes in visitors shortly after you send out email newsletters. Inevitably, some letters will gain more visitors than others. Realizing which topics your niche readership favors the most will allow you to cater to them in the future, ensuring long term success for your blog.
About the Author: Jessica Drew is a freelance writer who blogs about a variety of technology related topics including web development and design, mobile computing and internet providers in my area.