3 Must Read SEO Resources for WordPress Bloggers

A lot of fellow bloggers have asked me in the past how I got my start as a SEO professional for WordPress. WordPress is a wonderful CMS, and it does give you a good chance to get ranked higher on search engines if you know what you are doing. SEO for WordPress is not that much different from regular SEO. It’s just that WordPress has some known issues (e.g. duplicate content, permalinks, …) that you could fix easily if you have a basic knowledge of search engine optimization. For more advanced tactics, you won’t need to look for a WP specific resource. The are plenty of powerful SEO resources that give you a basic knowledge of search engine optimization, but if you want to get your hands on one that teaches you everything you need to know to optimize your WordPress blog for search engines and beyond, here are 3 courses you should consider picking up:

SEOBook: the best search engine training program on the web bar none. It got me started with my own journey in the world of search engine optimization, and it can help you gain a deep understanding of SEO over time. There are plenty of training modules and videos you can watch to pick up all kinds of tips. Add SEO tools that are available on this site, and you get a lot of bang for your buck. (more…)

4 Cool Twitter Resources To Help You Become a Tweetmaster

Twitter has quickly become “THE” community to be a part of. Not only it’s a great community to network with others and build relationships, but it can help drive lots of traffic to your blog as well. So if you have a WordPress blog, you can’t afford not to be involved on Twitter. But Twitter is more than just talking about what you are doing every minute or what you plan to eat for lunch. It’s about connecting with others and providing them with content that makes them want to come back for more. Perhaps the best way to get a handle on Twitter is learn from the masters. Thankfully, many top Twitter experts have written books or created courses on this very topic. So as long as you are willing to spend some time to get through them, you should have no trouble becoming a tweetmaster.

If you are looking for a killer resource to take your Twitter game to the next level, here are 4 cool resources (and books) you should consider reviewing:

The Twitter Book: a book by the legendary Tim O’reilly. It’s one of the best Twitter books around. The book shows you how to get started with Twitter and how to effectively push your business and brand on Twitter.

Twitter Power: Joel Comm needs no introduction. His Adsense books dominated the best sellers charts for long. Twitter Power shows you exactly what you need to do to dominate the world of Twitter. (more…)

Become a WordPress Design Master with Total Training

I am a serial book reader. Every new book that comes to the market, I try to get and read as soon as possible. You can always catch up with the latest developments in your industry by following blogs. But design books are also a solid choice if you want to learn the latest techniques and find out about the latest developments in the design world. But a lot of people prefer listening, watching, and seeing things done than just reading about them. That’s exactly what you get with interactive video courses on the market. Video courses are particularly useful if you want someone to walk you through a new technology in the shortest time possible. I personally prefer learning the basics in video format before moving to more advanced topics in advanced books and blogs. But your taste maybe different.

Total Training (and Lynda.com) are the two video training services that I have used on a consistent basis in the past few years. I admit that I am not exactly a master in Adobe products, but I have picked up a lot of good stuff from these training videos. Total Training courses are especially impressive as they teach you how to do things and show them to you in a straightforward manner. So you never miss a step and won’t have to spend time trying to figure out how to do things you just watched a video on.

Total Training courses are designed for newbies and intermediate designers. They keep you up to date with the latest technologies such as Web Expression, Flex, CS4, and beyond. They also show you how to master Photoshop and Elements. These are technologies that you will need to know about if you want to make it as a designer. So if you are hoping to get started with a career in design, Total Training courses come in handy. (more…)

Best Resources To Get Started With WordPress Development

I have been writing this blog for a while now, and while I have tried to cover a whole lot of WordPress topics, I have not posted on how to get started with WordPress and go from beginning to advanced fast. There is just too much to learn and no matter how advanced you are, chances are there are more things you need to learn about WordPress. That’s why I have decided to create this list to discuss tools and resources you can refer to take your WordPress game to the next level.

WordPress for Beginners

• WordPress Entrepreneur: learn how to setup, customize & use a WordPress website. Easy to read and makes you dangerous when it comes to WP.
• WordPress Foundations 2.7: Second Edition: a great book that shows you what you need to know to find your way around WordPress.
• WordPress for Dummies: the best book to get started with WordPress if you have no idea what you are doing.
• Easy Guide to Blogging (vol.1 ): a good video training course that teaches you how to get started with WordPress blogging. Excellent for beginners. Don’t want to read a book? Then, this is for you.

Theme & Plugin Development

• How to Theme WordPress: learn how to develop a theme for WordPress fast. Learn what you need to do to develop attractive themes. Great video course.
• WordPress Theme Design: a complete guide to creating professional WordPress themes fast. A smash hit by Packt Publishing.
• How to be a Rockstar WordPress Designer: this guide shows you how to create your own themes and make money online from your art work.
• WordPress Plugin Development: another Packet Publishing book that covers WordPress plugin development. Lots of sample code and clear instructions on how to write killer plugins.
• WordPress On Crack: if you need someone to take your hand and show you how to write cool plugins from start to finish, this is the guide you should read. Comes with video training movies as well.
• Total Training Library: a great way to stay on the top of the latest developments and technologies in the world of design. Master everything Adobe with Total Training video training.

Advanced: Programming and API

WordPress Blogging

• Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read: you may get real good with WordPress but if you can’t write a blog the right away, then you are not going to get a whole lot of visitors. No one wants to know what you have had for your lunch. So instead of writing about that, read this book to find out what works.
• Blogging To the Bank: more advanced tactics to write killer blog posts and make a living online from blogging.
• WordPress for Business Bloggers: if you are working for a corporation and have been asked to take over their business blog, then this is the book you should read. It shows you what you should do and not to do with a business blog.
• ProBlogger: written by legendary blogger, Darren Rowse, this book walks you through everything you need to know to develop a community around your blog and make money online.

WordPress as a Business

• Start Your Own Blogging Business: if you plan to start a business around your blog, you need a guide to walk you through the steps you need to take to build and grow your business. This books shows you what you need to keep in mind when starting your business.
• How to be a Rockstar Freelancer: if you plan to start your own WP consulting business, you need to read this guide to learn what you need to do and avoid to make it big.

WordPress Hosting

• DreamHost: my current web host. They are pretty decent and the support is wonderful. The one click WordPress install is very useful ($50 off coupon: WPJEDI)
• Wpwebhost: tailored towards the needs of WordPress site owners. Supports WordPress MU as well.
• Blue Host: used by a whole lot of small businesses for blogging, pod-casting, and …
• HostGator: another top host for WordPress sites. Compatible with many third party services.
• Yahoo!: Yahoo! web hosting is a top hosting service for all types of websites. You can’t go wrong with Yahoo! (Coupon Code: WHMS35OFF).

WordPress Themes

• Business themes: 45 cool premium themes that get you started with your WordPress corporate site fast.
• Blogging Themes: 52 premium themes for anyone interested in blogging professionally.
• Vlogging Themes: 12 best WordPress themes for video bloggers. Allow you to post your videos to your vlog easily.

Social Media

• Twitter Power: a killer book by Joel Comm that shows you how to get the most out of Twitter.
• Twitter Hacks: learn everything there is about Twitter on this Twitter-exclusive Squidoo page.
• Twitter Tips, Tricks, and Tweets: another book on Twitter that teaches you how gain and grow your follower list fast.
  
• Facebook Marketing: learn how to take advantage of Facebook to push your WordPress blog.

Tools

• Bookmarking Demon: if you need free traffic for your blog, this is one killer tool to try. Let’s you submit your blog posts to social media sites fast.
• Social Maximizer: a service that will automatically submit your blog posts to social networking sites. It’s 19 cents per submission which is pretty cheap.
• Social Submitter: submit your sites to social bookmarking sites easily with Social Submitter.
• EzineArticles Marketing: learn how to use article marketing to drive traffic to your WordPress blog.

There you have it. Whether you are a complete beginner or fairly advanced with WP, you can still get a lot of value from the above resources. The good thing about being a WordPress user is that you will have to be on your toes all the time and never stop learning. It’s all fun though.

Your turn: please feel free to share your favorite WordPress tool/guide here.

How To Become a WordPress Freelancer

If you haven’t been paying attention, the U.S. economy is in the dumps. Companies are expected to cut even more jobs. If you are in a stable job, you probably belong to a exclusive group of folks who have survived the job cuts in the past few weeks and months. A lot of companies are hurting and if you lose your job, there is a good chance that you are not going to find a job that easily. But if you have WordPress skills, you should definitely consider starting your own freelance business. You can spend months looking for a job and not find one or just start building business and earn money in the process.

How To Become a Rockstar Freelancer teaches you exactly what you need to know to build a super freelance business fast. The authors own a very popular blog on the very same topic. In this book, you are going to learn how to:

• Take the first steps: you want to quit your job or you have just lost your job. It doesn’t matter. You are going to learn exactly how you need to prepare yourself for a career in freelancing.
• Brand yourself or your business: how to create a brand that lasts a life time. You’ll learn the pitfalls in your way towards creating a killer brand
• Interact with clients: you want to provide real value to your customers? Not sure how to brief them or how to approach your leads? You can gain valuable insights here.
• Run your business: whether it’s writing the proposal, getting the right fee, or hiring folks to do a job for you, you are going to learn them all in this book.

If you are planning to start earning money from your skills, the time is now. Even if you are working, you should prepare yourself for the worst. There are not many stables jobs in these tough times, so don’t expose yourself to the risk of unemployment.

Download your copy here.

Learn PHP with Simple PHP

One of the biggest challenges that WordPress newbies face is mastering the art of PHP. You don’t have know anything about PHP to get your WordPress site up and running, but you’d be surprised how much more you can accomplish if you know your PHP. Now, if you have never programmed in your life, picking up PHP may seem very difficult. After all, not only you are going to have to figure out how to program in PHP, you are going to have to learn how to work with mySQL and Apache.

Simply PHP is a training course that is designed for those who are new to WordPress but want to learn enough PHP to be dangerous. You don’t have to be the best PHP programmer to customize your WordPress pages or even tweak your existing plug-ins. You just have to pick and choose your spots — be a PHP hacker if you will. The same can be said about mySQL and Apache. Simply PHP is designed specifically for PHP beginners and teaches you how to get things done without subjecting you thousands of pages of LAMP theory.

Simply PHP shows you how to:

• personalize your WordPress pages
• set up your own auto-responder
• optimize your .htaccess file for your WordPress site
• use Javascript on your blog to enhance its functionality
• code simple games and online tools (awesome for link-baits)
• set up cron jobs on your server
• work with mySQL and myPHPadmin to change and backup your DBs

The fun thing about Simply PHP is that you don’t have to be a super geek to learn what you need to start customizing your WordPress blog. I know a lot of folks rather hire someone on rentacoder.com to do the job for them, but you shouldn’t really hire someone to install a plug-in on your WordPress blog. You are also provided with all kinds of scripts and examples that you can just grab and plug-in to your WordPress blog.

Verdict: B+. I found Simply PHP to be a very useful course for folks who are new to the world of PHP and WordPress. You are going to learn everything you need to know to customize your WordPress and work with databases. This course is not going to make you a PHP guru, and that’s a big plus. Your goal shouldn’t be to become a programmer but rather do what you do best. By learning the basics of PHP, you can things done faster than before without having to hire anyone to do the simplest things for you. Who wouldn’t like that?

Flip Your WordPress Blog with Site Rush

Many folks use WordPress to create and manage their blogs. But WordPress is not just good for blogs. You can create fully-fledged websites (e.g. business, retail, …) with WordPress without any major issues. Better yet, WordPress makes things so easy that you can buy a domain, set up your content, and sell your site in a fairly short period of time.

Building up assets and selling properties are nothing new in this era. Folks have been doing it in the real estate business for years. Real estate pros buy a regular place. They build it up and sell it for big profits. You can do the same with your WordPress site. Site Rush is a course that is designed to specifically show you how to flip your WordPress sites fast and make some cash in the process.

Creating a comprehensive niche website can take a lot of time and effort, but that’s not how the pros do it. Many pros claim that they work so hard, and that is why they are successful. In truth, these guys know how to take shortcuts and do more with less. Site Rush shows you the tools that you can use to:

• choose the right domain for your site
• optimize your sites for search engines
• optimize your content
• create websites fast

You also learn where to look for content and how to come up with your own. So what makes Site Rush different from other courses available on this topic? It’s pragmatic. This is not just one of those courses that doesn’t show you how to get things done. It actually shows you practical ways of flipping sites left and right.

Verdict: 4.5/5. Overall, if you are looking to get into the business of Internet real estate, you can learn a lot from Site Rush. Site Rush teaches you how to flip sites fast and sell them for a fortune on sites such as SitePoint. I strongly encourage you to visit SitePoint.com to get an idea what sites are selling well. And if others can do it, you can do it as well.