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1. Host and IP addresses Backlink Checker
Purpose: Check how many backlinks you have to your website and who links to you..

2. Google Adwords Preview Tool
Purpose: Check how many competitors advertise the same keyword as yours in Google. Can customize by country and Google domain (google.com.my, google.co.uk)

3. Convert Any Document to PDF
Purpose: Convert any document to PDF and vice-versa.

4. Let Them Eat Spam
Purpose: Give it out. Use it in webforms. Post it on forums. Use it any time you need an email address but don’t want to be spammed for eternity.

5. Unicode Converter – SUPER USEFUL!
Purpose: Convert any wording to unicode.
For example:
Extended Roman: ê ü TO “& # 2 3 4 ; & # 2 5 2 ;”
Chinese: 京 仅 TO “& # 2 0 1 4 0 ; & # 2 0 1 6 5 ;”
Esperanto: Ĉ ĉ Ĝ ĝ Ĥ ĥ Ĵ ĵ Ŝ ŝ Ŭ ŭ
Russian: Я говорю
Greek: Αυτου οι θανατον μητσομαι

6. Maxmind Geolite City
Purpose: Implement to your website so you can differentiate visitors from different location and provide them different content. Good for geographical advertisement.

7. Social Maker
Purpose: Social bookmarking is a powerful tool in promoting a website. This free service designed to reduce the time and effort needed to socially bookmark a website.

8. Google Keyword Research Tool
Purpose: Research keyword using Google huge database. (You can go details to every single country)

Tips 1 – A good backlink and bad backlink.
GOOD = Original post from Useful Tools
BAD = Find Original post from Here

To Google, the good backlink is the link with meaningful tag.
See the GOOD backlink, the tag is “Useful Tools”. (Yes, your keyword here, people might search “useful tools” in search engine)
See the BAD backlink, the tag is “Here”. (Nobody going to search “here” in search engine.)

Tips 2 – Keyword Research
Combine tool#8 and tool#2 give you a very efficient keyword research.
Example – Use tool#8 to grab your keyword. Use tool#2 to see how many competitor on the google search result (left bar). Remember to set your country preference, this affect a lot on the result.
Some keyword search a lot by US doens’t mean search a lot in Malaysia wink.gif

Tips 3 – Chinese characters in html?
When you create an html or whatever file in the internet, you don use the “REAL” word you see. I mean when you able to see “? ?” it doesn’t OTHERS will be able to see it because there are many types of characters encoding.
Using tool#5, you convert the character into unicode and I’m SURE that words on most systems.
This tools is extremely useful when you try to post some characters that you totally has no idea what it says, like hindi, russian, etc. You don even know after you save your post the characters still spell out correctly not.

My choice of blogging is WordPress.

1. WordPress is free
- most blogging free -.-” (okok)

2. WordPress has lots of Free Theme
- Theme makes your blog looks nice.

3. WordPress has lots of Free Plugin
- Plugin makes your blog POWERFUL.

4. WordPress has good SEO structure.
- Good SEO helps you rank higher in google/yahoo/msn, I mean search engine.

I’ll start with an example.
Geo wants to start a blog about food and travel.

DOMAIN
The very first thing for me to do is to pick a nice domain.
So I’ll go to http://domains.yahoo.com/
Search for foodandtravel.com
Oops, domain occupied.
Let see what are the suggestion for similar domain name.
Yahoo suggest FoodAndTrip.com
Okay, I’ll take it.

Yahoo charges $9.99 per domain
A little bit too expensive, hm…
Never mind, try this magic.
Go to this url and search for FoodAndTrip.com again.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/?p=BESTDEAL
Voila~~~ It’s $1.99 now

WEB HOSTING
Next, I’ll need a web hosting to host my FoodAndTrip.com
Since this is my first blog, I don think I want to spend too much on it. Just an experience afterall.
I’ll pick a CHEAPEST host, perhaps a free one.
But I’ll make it comes with cPanel control panel.
Why? Because cPanel usually comes with a addon call Fantastico.
And Fantastico is kind of script center where you can install more than 40 popular scripts with 1 click, include WordPress.
Fantastico will even handle script upgrade.
Currently the WordPress version is 2.7.1.
When 2.8 or 2.7.2 is released, you will only click “Upgrade” and your script will be automatically upgraded to the latest version.
Here is the link for Free Web Hosting that comes with a cPanel control panel.
And here is my Recommend Web Hosting with comes with a cPanel control panel and more powerful features.

NAMESERVER CONFIGURATION
So now you have a domain, you have a host.
Your web host sent you the account information, ftp, nameserver, etc…
The next thing you need to do is POINT your domain to the server.
All yo need to do is logon to yahoo small business, domain control.
Change the yahoo nameserver to the nameserver your web host sent you.
For example, from yn1.yahoo.com to ns1.jaring.com

INSTALLING WORDPRESS
Logon to your cPanel, and find the fantastico icon.
Fill in some details and install WordPress to your domain.
Now you should know why I love cPanel + fantastico.
It helps you from upload scripts, setup database, etc…
After you finish the installation, go to FoodAndTrip.com and your blog is ready

WORDPRESS SETTING
Login to the admin panel, FoodAndTrip.com/wp-admin

Go to general setting, change the wordpress url from http://foodandtrip.com to http://www.foodandtrip.com
Just my personal preference, I prefer a domain with www in front.

Go to permalink, tick on Custom Structure, type in /%postname%
This setting improve your blog SEO.
Before this change your blog url will be something like http://www.foodandtrip.com/?p=28
After this change your blog url will be sometihng like http://www.foodandtrip.com/your-post-subject

Now you should go explore all features available in the admin panel before we continue.

WORDPRESS THEME
The next thing you going to do is to find a nice and suitable theme for your blog.
Go to google search “free wordpress theme” you’ll get millions of results.
But my favourite free wordpress theme is all here, http://www.blogohblog.com/
It’s more important to make sure your blog is neat and tidy. Don make it too complicated and too many images will cause your blog to load slowly.
Pick 1 and follow the instruction comes together with the theme, upload the theme and activate the theme.
Congraz, your blog is getting prettier and you are ALMOST there

WORDPRESS PLUGIN
Still remember 1 of the reason I choose wordpress rather than blogger?
It’s about plugin.

These are my MUST HAVE plugin. Find them from google and install accordingly.
1. Akismet
By default All wordpress should have this – to fight spam.

2. Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO

3. PingPressFM
Allows you to spread your wonderful blog to 10+ social networks via Ping.fm. Now with support for scheduled posts and custom triggers

4. Platinum SEO Pack
Complete SEO solution for your WordPress blog.

5. Simple Tags
Solution for tag. Autocompletion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags.

These are some plugin I’m using to make my blog more powerful. Find them from google and install accordingly.
1. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
Returns a list of the related entries based on a unique algorithm using titles, post bodies, tags, and categories.

2. Add Sig
Add a custom signature to the bottom of posts with the author’s information

3. Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button
Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button

4. Contact Form 7
ust another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.

5. Feed Statistics
Compiles statistics about who is reading your blog via an RSS feed and what they’re reading.

6. Subscribe2
Notifies an email list when new entries are posted.

7. WordPress Database Backup
Nothing worse than you lose your blog database. On-demand backup of your WordPress database.

WORDPRESS SEO AND PROMOTION
Let’s talk about traffic and getting index by Google.
Once establish a new blog, I’ll add below ping list in the setting.

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

I’ll then login to my ping.fm account(1 of our plugin), and create account for each and every bookmark/social websites available in ping.fm.
When I create the account for bookmark/social websites, I’ll find a place to display my blog url(usually in profile or bio).
Benefit 1 – This will create 1 way backlink to my blog which is good for SEO.
Benefit 2 – At the same time, every post I made through my blog will automatically posted in ALL these bookmark/social websites, fantastic right!
Benefit 3 – My blog will surely indexed by Google within 24 hours.

Below are a few more sites I’ll submit my blog to for the similar objectives, backlinks and promotion.

http://pluskit.net/_scuttle

http://www.socialmarker.com

http://pingler.com/

That’s all for today.
Enjoy.

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