Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) can be confusing for even the most knowledgeable bloggers and web designers. Here’s Wikipedia’s definition of SEO taken from their article on SEO:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site.

If you’re confused about what SEO is and what it means for your site, don’t worry. A quick Google search will produce numerous articles that can help you understand SEO (I recommend starting with Wikipedia’s overview of SEO first).

But here’s the good news! You don’t really have to understand SEO to start improving your web site or blog (although understanding it certainly helps). Free SEO tools like Website Grader can help you understand where changes to your site are needed to help improve your site’s SEO.

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Popularity: 66% [?]

Adding the Google Analytics Tracking Code (even the new and improved ga.js version) is as simple as downloading the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin from Yoast.com.

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Popularity: 48% [?]

As you continue to tweak and modify the content of your web site or blog, eventually you’ll want to customize your sites favicon. For instructions on how to change your favicon for WordPress 2.5.1 click here. For instructions on how to create your own favicon, continue reading below.

What is a favicon? A favicon is the tiny 16 x 16 image that’s associated with your web page. If installed properly it will show up to the left of your web address as well as in other places like the tabs of a tabbed browser like Firefox.

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I wanted to change the TYsTIPS.com’s favicon (the tiny image associated with a web site’s name/url). It turns out that there are a lot of posts about how to do this, but the method has changed for the newest version of WordPress.org (currently version 2.5.1) so the old methods don’t work. Also, this only works if you are using WordPress.org, WordPress.com users don’t have access to the necessary files to make this change - sorry!

Here’s my generic favicon in Internet Explorer:

And here’s my generic favicon in Firefox (notice Yahoo’s nice little favicon - I’ve got favicon envy!).

Changing your favicon in WordPress 2.5.1 isn’t hard, you just have to make sure you’re following the proper directions for your version of WordPress. So, for WordPress version 2.5.1 here’s the steps:

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Popularity: 39% [?]

In this post I intend to share my user experience with StumbleUpon and answer this question: Does a StumbleUpon Campaign actually work to help drive quality traffic to your site. The short answer - NO. At least that was my experience.

…read full articles of "Does StumbleUpon actually Work? A look at my first SU Campaign."

Popularity: 24% [?]