Category: News & Trends

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WordPress Security Tips

In this ever changing world where hackers look to hide spam links on your blog and hackers try to crack into your blog posts to try to spew their malware out at your expense, it makes sense to keep your WordPress blog secure.

Here are a few thing that I do and recommend that you consider to keep your website and blogsite safe. First, why do I say website? Well, it is not uncommon for a blog to be hacked and used as the springboard to compromise your website. So if you have a blog on your server, make sure you are keeping it secure to protect your website.

I use the following items for our managed blogs:

Login Lock Down
This plug-in protects you from brute force robot attacks that try to gain access to your blog by simply trying a million possible login combinations. This plug-in allows you to set login attempts to a specific number before access is locked for a specific time period you select.

Exploit Scanner
This is a very good plug-in and can actually let you know if your blog has been hacked and where the files are residing. I really like this one and have solved and cleaned up a number of hack attacks with its use.

WP-MalWatch
This is another very helpful plug-in. After installation look for it on the dashboard. It will let you know if your site has been compromised with the Pharma Hack and searches your locales.php file and file ending combinations.

WordPress File Monitor
Oh, I really like this one. Once you have cleaned up after a hack, this plug-in will advise you by email or text message when any of your WordPress core files is changed. This is very helpful if you are having trouble keeping your site clean from problems.

There are other great plug-ins these are just the top three that we use that come to mind. In addition to using scanning application, make sure that your logins are secure, you keep all your plug-ins up-to-date and keep your WordPress version on the most recent version.

If you don’t have time to keep an eye on your own WordPress application, get a blogmaster like  us to watch your blog and scan it monthly or weekly.

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AdWords States Average Rank is for the Auction Silly Not the Ad Position!

Chief Economist at Google, Hal Varian, announced recently that what we had thought all along as the Average Rank was not actually the position of the ad on the page, but rather the average position in the keyword auction. That is very big news! If you are selling on Google AdWords further reading on the AdWords blog is definitely in order.

“To begin with, it’s important to understand that there are two interpretations of the phrase “ad position.” The “page position” refers to the location on the page, such as “top ad 2” or “right-hand side ad 1.” The “auction position” is the rank of the ad in the auction that determines the order of the ads on the page. The critical point is that the reported average position metric is based on auction position, not page position.

Who knew? For years we have all thought the metric in the AdWords control panel that said Average Position was the ad position! And truthfully for years, it may have been. It might possibly be that as AdWords has decided to do away with the campaign setting Position Preference, that it decided to change what data is returned in the Average Position metric in the control panel.

What I find interesting in the blog post called “Understanding the Average Position metric” is that Google finally reveals several very important things that they have previously not clarified. They are as follows:

  1. Position one for your ad is the first position in the colored box at the top above search results. That means that position three or four may actually be the very top ad on the right rail depending on the number of ads in the top colored box.
  2. You can force Google to show your ad in a top colored box by bidding more if there was no colored box before.
  3. By now knowing that your Average Position is really your Keyword Auction position you know have an inkling of what the bids are by keywords and so you may actually be able to effectively decrease your bid with this information.

Hal Varian also revealed additional information that Google has found out about conversions and ad position.

“Some advertisers have asked how clicks from different positions tend to convert. In general, we’ve found that conversion rates don’t vary much with the position of the ad on the page. An ad in a more prominent position on the page will tend to get both more clicks and more conversions than an ad in a lower position, but the conversion rate (conversions/clicks) will tend to be about the same for the two positions.”

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Is Your AdWords Account Too Big?

It is a good plan to structure your AdWords account using themes with a different theme or service in each ad group, but make sure that when you are structuring your account that you plan to grow in an effective way.

I have seen in the last couple of weeks a few accounts that simply got carried away with the idea of creating new ad groups. One account had over 20 ad groups with several competing between themselves, another account did not group products together and had 50 ad groups with some that had only one or two keywords in the ad group. Another I reviews, had so many campaigns that the budget for some campaigns was so ridiculously low that it was no wonder that they had no impressions for the entire month.

If you self manage your AdWords account, you have the opportunity to create as many ad groups as you want, but when you have 15 to 20 ad groups and you want a professional such as myself to manage the program for you, you will pay your account manager to open each ad group and manage each program. It typically takes us three hours of our time per month to work on a program with 10 ad groups and that is on a once a week schedule. That’s after the account is really performing. If you have a program that is not performing, double that time for management – that’s six hours. You can just get carried away creating ad groups that you really don’t need that will bloat your account, parse your budget too many ways, and compete against each other.

When we create ad groups we definitely want themes, but also keep an eye on the budget and the time it will take to manage your program. We want your full AdWords program including management to be an investment in your success not to be an expense.

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Windows Live Writer a Great Blogging Tool

nancy-2011If you blog occasionally or even if you blog a lot, Windows Live Writer may replace creating your blog post in the control panel as your blog editor of choice. I am finding that it is sometimes easier and faster to blog in Microsoft’s free Live Writer application than it is to write in Word when I am on the go or for that matter faster than working directly in my WordPress control panel.

These are the things I like about Windows Live Writer:

  • Ability to work offline and so I can blog while sitting in a waiting room.
  • Ability to easily add images from my clip art gallery to my blog posts.
  • Ability to save my blog post to my computer automatically without thought or a second action if I am working live.
  • I like the spell checker and word count feature. Particularly the word count feature!
  • I like the ability to set up multiple blog accounts and switch between them at will.

I have Windows Live Writer set up on my laptop so I can blog anywhere I go – the soccer field, the waiting room at the dentist, and in the car (if I am not driving). I have found that I like it so much that I am using it more and more just for blogging while I am sitting at my own computer. I find it significantly easier to quickly add photos and style text than when I am working live on my WordPress blog online.

To have it work, you will need your blog admin or user login but that is about it. You don’t even need FTP access.

If you want to check it out, you can get the free download here. You may find out like me that it becomes your application of choice.