The redirect feature on a Semiologic blog is quite simple and works very nicely if you don't have a long blog address. Here is how I created a redirect to my reference link for Semiologic:

1. I verified that the redirect manager plugin was activated. You can activate it if it is not activated.
2. Then I added a new page. I gave it a short and direct name – Semiologic.
3. I entered nothing in the content area and scrolled down to the lower side where there was a box for the redirect URL. Here I entered the destination URL.
4. Saved the post.

That's all. Now if I type www.rentablogger.com/blog/semiologic, it gets redirected to my reference link for Semiologic blogging system. This is a 301 redirect, comes with my blog URL and therefore promotes my brand instead of the URL-shortening service's brand.

If I ever had to change the target URL, I can easily do so from my site.

Note: If you don't want to have this page included in the Sitemap, you should tick on the options shown here.

For example, check this URL for this blog post:
http://www.rentablogger.com/blog/2009/03/12/avoid-duplicate-penalty-on-blogs/

Now someone may link to this post with his affiliate URL:
http://www.rentablogger.com/blog/2009/03/12/avoid-duplicate-penalty-on-blogs/?affid="A02"

And if Google discovers both the pages, they will think we have duplicate content here and at will, index one URL and ignore the other.

Webmasters and blog owners have been stuck with this issue for long. However the big 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) recently agreed on the specs for a special meta-tag that will help them them identify the real URL. You can specify this in the head section (I shortened the URL to fit the window):

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.rentablogger...on-blogs/" />

This is a message to the search engine that we prefer to get this page listed under this URL. Please note that you are not ordering them to do so. They may act otherwise if they see a large number of places linking otherwise. Also you cannot point the engines to URLs under a different domain.

You can get a simple plugin to tackle the canonical URL problem here (courtesy - Joost de Valk)

While this does not directly help in SEO of your blog, once you get to know which keywords people are using to land up on your blog, which search engines are sending you the traffic and other such information, you can make a plan to make suitable posts to serve these people.

I personally look at the bounce rate of the various pages on a high priority. If some pages have a high bounce rate, I check that to see if I can introduce some hooks to get people to stay longer on that page. You can add the related posts plugin to add some stickiness.

Don't forget that your home page may have a high bounce rate because the repeat visitors will just read your latest post and go away.

In admin section, you can click on Settings and then choose SEO to enter a title and some other parameters for the home page. I have got a nice improvement in rankings of some of my client blogs by this change alone.

While wordpress is a great content management system and the most popular blogging platform, a large number of users find it very cumbersome to upgrade their blogs. If you are a techno-shy user or just don't have the time for these upgrades, we can upgrade your blogs at a nominal $25 per blog per upgrade.

Just send us the FTP details (preferably the control panel details so that we can back up before the upgrade) and your payment by Paypal to arun AT ebizindia DOT com. I highly recommend you to take a backup of your blog – we take all precautions before and during the upgrade but it never hurt to take preventive measures.

Step 1: The site was on Cpanel, so I took a full backup of the site to avoid chances of a major disaster happening if something went wrong (you know the Murphy's laws, don't you?).

Step 2: I upgraded the current blog (at /wordpress) to the latest version so that the database structure will be up to date.

Step 3: I downloaded all the files in the root directory to a local folder so that I can replace the overwritten files, if any are required.

Step 4: I then uploaded a full copy of the blog software to the root directory (public_html folder as this was a cpanel site). If there are any special plugins used, you should download the software from the previous location and then upload this in the new location so that the plugin files are also uploaded.

Step 5: I uploaded the wp-config.php fie in the root directory so that Wordpress will refer to the same database.

Step 6: I accessed the database through PHPmyadmin and opened the wp_options table. Updated the values of the site_url and home options to http://www.domain.com by replacing http://www.domain.com/wordpress.

Step 7: Now I accessed the blog through the root URL and it opened fine. However I noticed that the posts were still being linked to www.domain.com/wordpress/postname/id. 

Step 8: I accessed the admin console and recreated the Permalinks so as to update all the post URLs. 

Now the whole blog was working fine without any issues.

Lastly, I needed to make sure that Google and other search engine would redirect the old indexed /wordpress/post URLs to the new ones. For this, I edited the .htaccess file in the root directory.

Inserted the following code before the # BEGIN WORDPRESS section (if you don't keep this code out of the WORDPRESS section, Wordpress will remove this when you update Permalinks or do any other act that works with .htaccess file).

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
rewriterule ^wordpress(/.*)? $1 [L,R=301]

This effectively creates a permanent redirect for all files with /wordpress/something name to /something names.

Bingo! The blog is now accessible from the root directory of the domain. You may like to rename the /wordpress directory to /oldwordpress directory and keep it for a few days, then delete it when things have stabilized.

Now you can move your blogs around as and when you wish. However if you are techno-shy or don't have time to play with all these wordpresses and PHPmyadmins, feel free to assign your "move my blog" cases to us. You can write to me at arun AT ebizindia DOT com (you know how to convert that to a working email address).

By now, it is clear that I recommend blogging for people who own ecommerce sites. A client owns multiple blogs which act as the funnel to his main site and he has been very successful in increasing his online sales with blogs. Let us see what you can write about on your blog.

• You can make a blog post if you have introduced a new range of items on your site. Discuss why you introduced this range (there was a popular demand, customers frequently asked me to carry this range etc), what is the special feature of this range and who can buy and how will they benefit.
• You can announce your periodic promotions through your blog.
• You can answer important and frequent customer service questions on your blog. Of course, you should also include them in the FAQ section.
• You can highlight some recent testimonials received from satisfied customers. This is a powerful social proof (others are liking this range, so it must be good).
• You can blog about how to use a complicated or uncommon aspect of your products. Some of your customers might not be able to take maximum advantage of your products because they cannot use a particular feature easily. You can create a short video or carry some snap-shots that will show how to use that feature.
• You can publish important industry news with your take on it. This positions you as an industry expert. You may comment on some government policies affecting your trade. Generally you should add your opinion and not just report the news.
• The ecommerce sites are quite mechanical generally without much human element. As you might know, "people do business with people and not companies." If you talk about a few key people of your company, post their photographs, highlight some personality traits (don't get too personal, just talk about how he serves insistent customers with a smile, how he solves complicated service problems in a few minutes), some prospects and customers may find an increased traction towards your company.
• You can highlight any awards or recognition you got recently. This will increase the brand value and increase customer confidence.
• People love stories. Why don't you make some posts about how a customer averted a major crisis in his life (personal or business) by using your products or because you shipped same day despite receiving the order late in the evening?
• You can run periodic customer surveys and ask them what part of your products and company they like most or use most. You will be surprised at the answers you get – it may not be what you thought and will give you an entirely new aspect to highlight in your marketing.

With a little bit of publicity like a link from your main site home page and submission to some top blog directories, you can stake your claim on another ranking position in the search engine results page. I strongly recommend you to link to your internal and most relevant pages rather than link to the home page always.

If you want to get some help in setting up an optimized blog for your site, please check this out.

If you setup a blog where you share your experiences with handling complicated situations, demanding customers, technical challenges and whatever else that matters for your position, your prospective employers will definitely treat you in an entirely different way. You will quickly stand out from the crowd with the polished resumes. Yes, you need to have your resume too but include the vital details and refer prominently to your blog – and see the jobs rain on you. Stop looking for that job and start posting on your blog. The jobs will start looking for you!

If you are at a loss about how to setup that blog, you can contact Rentablogger, the blog setup professionals.

We can upgrade your Wordpress blogs to the latest version (currently version 2.5) for a nominal $25 per blog. We refund 100% of the payment if the blog upgrade cannot be carried out for any reason. You can pay the fee by Paypal to arun AT ebizindia DOT com and send me the FTP information. The blog upgrade will be carried out within 1 business day (much sooner mostly).

Happy blogging!

1. Visit the Blogrush site and register for a FREE account.

2. Once you have logged in, click on the Get Code button.

3. You will get some Javascript code. It will look like this:

<script type="text/javascript"><!–
blogrush_feed = "13565253";
//–></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
  src="http://widget.blogrush.com/show.js">
</script>

4. Click on the code on the Blogrush site (similar to the code displayed above – DO NOT select this code or I will get the credit) to select it. Copy it to the clipboard by pressing ctrl-C or right click and then choose Copy.

5. Now login to your Wordpress blog. After logging in, click on the Presentation menu and then Widgets under that.

6. You will see a sidebar and a few widgets listed there. Drag and drop the Text1 widget from the bottom pool into the sidebar (any one sidebar if you have multiple sidebars).

7. Now click on the small picture on the Text1 widget. This will make the whole screen gray and a small window pops up. Paste the code you had copied above by pressing ctrl-V or right click and then choose Paste.

8. Click anywhere outside of the text box and you will see the button labeled Save Changes. Click on this button to save your changes.

9. At the top, you will see the blog name and a link in brackets (view site). Click on this to see the Blogrush widget displayed on your site with some posts from other sites.

Bingo! You have done it.