If you are a coding newbie, jump to the tutorial

I’m sure some of you want to copy and run. If you came for the code only- here you go:

<h3 class="rss-promo"><!--?php _e('Recent news from Some-Other Blog:'); ?--></h3>
<!--?php // Get RSS Feed(s) include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/feed.php'); // Get a SimplePie feed object from the specified feed source. $rss = fetch_feed('_RSS_FEED_URL_HERE_'); if (!is_wp_error( $rss ) ) : // Checks that the object is created correctly      // Figure out how many total items there are, but limit it to 5.      $maxitems = $rss--->get_item_quantity(5);
// Build an array of all the items, starting with element 0 (first element).
$rss_items = $rss->get_items(0, $maxitems);
endif;
?>
<ul>
<!--?php if ($maxitems == 0) echo '
<li-->No items.
';
else
// Loop through each feed item and display each item as a hyperlink.
foreach ( $rss_items as $item ) : ?>
<li>
<a href="<?php echo $item->get_permalink(); ?>"> title='<!--?php echo 'Posted '.$item--->get_date('j F Y | g:i a'); ?>'>
<!--?php echo $item--->get_title(); ?></a></li>
<!--?php endforeach; ?--></ul>

and the CSS

.custom .rss-promo h3, .rss-promo a { font-size: 0.75em; }

Tutorial

Before we begin, you need:

• Text editor (Notepad for Windows, TextEdit works for Mac)
• Custom.css from your theme (style.css if your theme does not have a custom stylesheet)
• Single.php from your theme
• Loop.php from your theme
• RSS Feed URL of the site(s) to cross-promote

1. Paste the CSS
2. Copy the PHP
3. Change the heading
4. Change the feed
5. List length
6. No items option
7. Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Paste the CSS

The gray lines you see on this screen will be altered.
Copy and paste this line into your custom.css or style.css

.custom .rss-promo h3, .rss-promo a { font-size: 0.75em; }

Copy the PHP

In your loop.php and single.php files, paste the code after

If your are have Thesis with Thesis Openhook, put it in thesis_hook_after_post and select Execute PHP on this hook.

<h3 class="rss-promo"><!--?php _e('Recent news from Some-Other Blog:'); ?--></h3>
<!--?php // Get RSS Feed(s) include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/feed.php'); // Get a SimplePie feed object from the specified feed source. $rss = fetch_feed('_RSS_FEED_URL_HERE_'); if (!is_wp_error( $rss ) ) : // Checks that the object is created correctly      // Figure out how many total items there are, but limit it to 5.      $maxitems = $rss--->get_item_quantity(5);
// Build an array of all the items, starting with element 0 (first element).
$rss_items = $rss->get_items(0, $maxitems);
endif;
?>
<ul>
<!--?php if ($maxitems == 0) echo '
<li-->No items.
';
else
// Loop through each feed item and display each item as a hyperlink.
foreach ( $rss_items as $item ) : ?>
<li>
<a href="<?php echo $item->get_permalink(); ?>">        title='<!--?php echo 'Posted '.$item--->get_date('j F Y | g:i a'); ?>'>
<!--?php echo $item--->get_title(); ?></a></li>
<!--?php endforeach; ?--></ul>

Change the heading

Return to tutorial list

Change the feed

Input your site’s RSS feed link

Return to tutorial list

List length

Set your item amount up to 5.

Return to tutorial list

No items option

Show a backup link if no items are pulled.

Return to tutorial list

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Pimp all your work by repeating the code between <?php and <?php endforeach;?> with as many as you like. Keep the lists short if you want multiple sites listed.

Enjoy! Questions and troubleshooting welcome in the comments.

Facebook Like Button

Let your readers quickly share your content on Facebook with a simple click.

Google Friend Connect Integration

Create a social community using Google Friend Connect. Easily add many different gadgets.

WP Greet Box

Display a different greeting message to your visitor depending on which site they are coming from.

TweetMeme Button

Adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts.

WP-Ban

Ban users by IP, IP Range, host name and referrer url from visiting your WordPress’s blog. My coup de grace.

Extended Comment Options

Allows you to close or open comments on batches of posts. You can schedule this automatically, too.

CommentLuv

Reward your readers by automatically placing a link to their last blog post at the end of their comment. Encourage a community and discover new posts.

TwitterLink Comments

Allow your commentators to include their Twitter username along with their comment so a follow-me link can be displayed with their details on the list. The plugin I have been using the longest, love me some @fiddyp.

ReplyMe

Brilliant! Send an email to author automatically while someone reply his comment.

Greg’s Threaded Comment Numbering

Nested and numbered. Numbers comments sequentially and hierarchically; handles comments which are threaded, paged and/or reversed. Coders can call the function directly.

Advanced Excerpt

Several improvements over WP’s default excerpt. The size of the excerpt can be limited using character or word count, and HTML markup is not removed by the excerpt editor.

Feedburner Feedsmith

The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.

Google XML Sitemap Generator

This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog.

Fast Secure Contact Form

A super customizable contact form that lets your visitors send you email. Blocks all automated spammers. Packed with settings and features.

WordPress.com Stats

You can have simple, concise stats with no additional load on your server by plugging into WordPress.com’s stat system. You can have simple, concise stats with no additional load on your server by plugging into WordPress.com’s stat system.

WP Super Cache

A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static HTML files. This plugin generates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a HTML file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

Google Analytics for WordPress

Track your WordPress site easily and with lots of metadata: views per author & category, automatic tracking of outbound clicks and pageviews.

WP-Auto Add Tags

Just install it and configure it through the plugin interface located in the Settings panel. As you publish or edit a post, the plugin gathers and sets the tags suitable for your post based, on your content.

Vlingo

Intelligent voice recognition app includes SafeReader. Your incoming text and email messages are read to you while you are on the go.Search the web using Google or Yahoo, call a friend, update your Facebook or Twitter status, and send a text message to other Vlingo BlackBerry users in the free version.

Download at Blackberry App World

Weather Channel

Detailed conditions and forecasts, radar maps, local and national severe weather alerts, airport delays and more. You can even access the weather from your calendar or address book, and forward alerts to friends and family.

Download at Blackberry App World

WordPress

Write posts, upload photos and videos, edit pages, and manage comments. Both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.9.2 or higher) sites are supported. Start blogging on the go in no time.

Download at Blackberry App World

Google Mobile

Stay connected on the go with BlackBerry apps by Google. Read and send emails on the go from GMail. Search for any email saved in your account. Search Google using your voice and your location. Search for local businesses, and get driving, transit, or walking directions on Google Maps. Automatically synchronize your Google Calendar and Contacts to your BlackBerry with Google Sync.

Download at Google Mobile

Google Voice

Make calls from your Google Voice number, read voicemail like email, and more. Google Voice integrates with your phone’s native address book or Google Contacts. Voicemails are automatically transcribed to text so you can read them like email. Send and receive text messages through the Google Voice app for free.

Download at Google Voice

Paypal

Monitor your account on the go. Log in, enter the amount and the recipient’s phone number or email address, and the rest is a snap. You can even send money in 23 different currencies. You can choose to send money with PayPal directly from your contact list.

Download at Blackberry App World

UberTwitter

UberTwitter is a geo-location Twitter client with photo integration, embed videos in tweets, tweet shrinking, URL shortening, twitter lists, changing your twitter avatar, saved searches, conversation threads, twitter profile editing, view who is retweeting you, and a plethora of other features.

Download at Blackberry App World

I.C.E.

When you can’t give rescue personnel your vital, medical information, I.C.E. provides EMTs with critical personal and medical data: your name, emergency contacts, blood type, allergies, physician’s name and number, your medications and medical conditions.

Download at Blackberry App World

Starbucks

Enter your Starbucks Card number and your BlackBerry becomes your Starbucks Card. Register your card, check your balance and track your earnings toward free beverages through your My Starbucks Rewards account.

Text GO to 70845

ScanLife Barcode Reader

ScanLife turns your camera phone into an all-in-one bar code reader so now it s easier than ever to quickly access websites, product pricing & more. Scan Datamatrix, EZcode, QR and UPC!

Download at Blackberry App World

BlueState Converter

Features include setting a default unit, and a Save Calculation feature. The number of decimal places display is configurable, and converting the sign of input amounts is easy. The free version includes the following categories: Area, Length, Time, Volume, Mass/Weight, Temperature – and includes Imperial and metric units. Each category contains many unit types.

Download at Blackberry App World

Vlingo

Intelligent voice recogntion app includes SafeReader. Your incoming text and email messages are read to you while you are on the go.Search the web using Google or Yahoo, call a friend, update your Facebook or Twitter status, and send a text message to other Vlingo BlackBerry users in the free version.

Download at Blackberry App World

Weather Channel

Detailed conditions and forecasts, radar maps, local and national severe weather alerts, airport delays and more. You can even access the weather from your calendar or address book, and forward alerts to friends and family.

Download at Blackberry App World

WordPress

Write posts, upload photos and videos, edit pages, and manage comments. Both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.9.2 or higher) sites are supported. Start blogging on the go in no time.

Download at Blackberry App World

Google Mobile

Stay connected on the go with BlackBerry apps by Google. Read and send emails on the go from GMail. Search for any email saved in your account. Search Google using your voice and your location. Search for local businesses, and get driving, transit, or walking directions on Google Maps. Automatically synchronize your Google Calendar and Contacts to your BlackBerry with Google Sync.

Download at Google Mobile

Google Voice

Make calls from your Google Voice number, read voicemail like email, and more. Google Voice integrates with your phone’s native address book or Google Contacts. Voicemails are automatically transcribed to text so you can read them like email. Send and receive text messages through the Google Voice app for free.

Download at Google Voice

Paypal

Monitor your account on the go. Log in, enter the amount and the recipient’s phone number or email address, and the rest is a snap. You can even send money in 23 different currencies. You can choose to send money with PayPal directly from your contact list.

Download at Blackberry App World

UberTwitter

UberTwitter is a geo-location Twitter client with photo integration, embeded videos in tweets, tweet shrinking, URL shortening, twitter lists, changing your twitter avatar, saved searches, conversation threads, twitter profile editing, view who is retweeeting you, and a plethora of other features.

Download at Blackberry App World

I.C.E.

When you can’t give rescue personnel your vital, medical information, I.C.E. provides EMTs with critical personal and medical data: your name, emergency contacst, blood type, allergies, physician’s name and number, your medications and medical conditions.

Download at Blackberry App World

Starbucks

Enter your Starbucks Card number and your BlackBerry becomes your Starbucks Card. Register your card, check your balance and track your earnings toward free beverages through your My Starbucks Rewards account.

Text GO to 70845

ScanLife Barcode Reader

ScanLife turns your camera phone into an all-in-one bar code reader so now it s easier than ever to quickly access websites, product pricing & more. Scan Datamatrix, EZcode, QR and UPC!

Download at Blackberry App World

BlueState Converter

Features include setting a default unit, and a Save Calculation feature. The number of decimal places display is configurable, and converting the sign of input amounts is easy. The free version includes the following categories: Area, Length, Time, Volume, Mass/Weight, Temperature – and includes Imperial and metric units. Each category contains many unit types.

Download at Blackberry App World

Then, there is reality. Most of us do not have time to site down and write a new post everyday. It isn’t necessary with the publish dating feature in WordPress. That box on the right-hand side is your time saving ticket to daily content.

1. Edit the date
   
2. Remember to use 24 hour time – add the P.M. time to 12 to get the right number.
   
3. Save the date! Note the Publish button changes to Schedule

Voila! If you are industrious, you can post a week’s worth of posts in a weekend.

PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance. Source

Google and other search engines use “crawlers” to travel through the internet. Crawlers are a software agent that systematically copies (index) all the content in every page of every website. They also have an operation called spidering that follows the outbound hyperlinks of each page, evaluates it and adds them to the destination’s PageRank. The entire process is complicated. Google updates it regularly to keep it relevant to the changing internet landscape. If you have

Now let’s apply this to your website. PageRank applies to blogs in several ways. Having a search engine optimized (SEO) site give your site a higher chance to be shown on the first page of a potential readers keyword search. For instance, do a search on Google for “the percentage of politicians that i think are honest is:” and a post I wrote in November 2007 is the third on the list. I’m first for “swing shift sucks” most days. Rankings like this keep my little blog with only a few dozen subscribers at PageRank 4.

This PageRank brings more unique visitors to my site. This benefits my site in two ways:

1. It makes my Google AdSense clicks pay higher. Ads clicked from visitors who come from direct links pay a small fraction of the fee paid when you have new visits from search engines.
2. It makes PR reps take notice of my site. PageRacnk and traffic stats are the two most commonly requested metrics from companies looking for blogs to advertise on.

While no method is foolproof, I have found several things to be much more important than others pertaining to blogs and PageRank. Blogs are a different animal than a business website.This list will help you cover all your bases. I refer mainly to self-hosted WordPress blogs for tools and plugins as it is the most common platform.

1. Own your domain. The plain truth is that search crawlers don’t pay close attention to blogs in that end in blogspot.com or wordpress.com. If owning a self-hosted site is not in your budget right now, at least buy a domain through your current platform.
2. Sitemap: Giving the search engine bot a schematic of your site so it can index all of your posts.
   1. If you are in WordPress, use the Google XML Sitemaps Plugin.
   2. Link to sitemap.xml in the footer of your site.
3. Register your site on Google Webmaster Tools and Quancast.
   1. Google Webmaster Tools puts your site on the crawler’s automatic queue. It will scan for new posts, comments and links to index without the need for pings.
   2. Quantcast is a public analytics site. Whenever you have a PR inquiry, they can look there for real time stats. You can also embed the charts into your media kit.
4. Use “pretty permalinks” for your posts. For WordPress, select Custom and input
   1. %postname%/ this turns your title “Oh Happy Day” into /oh-happy-day
   2. %post_id%/%postname%/ this adds the post’s numerical identifier before, making it /9435/oh-happy-day/. I suggest this for people who are prone to using the same titles unwittingly or have more than 3 years of posts to rename.
   3. While you’re at it, name your photos with keywords. girl-with-a-daisy.jpg is going to get more attention than IMG_9094.jpg

Google updates PageRank scores every quarter. You can monitor your score at Google PageRank Checker. Don’t despair at a low score. PageRank is difficult. Most Website Administrators consider a 4 as great, 5 is outstanding. Only about a dozen sites achieve a 10. I recommend using Website Grader by Hubspot. It will give you an in-depth analysis of your site. Don’t sweat the score. Look at the suggestions. We all have room for improvement. This is the internet, we’re all learning as we go.

1. Get rid of your Uncategorized category

   Naming all your categories gives search engine crawlers one more scent to sniff you out better.
   Go to Settings > Writing > Default Post Category and choose a new default category.
   Then go to Posts > Categories > delete “Uncategorized” from the list.

2. Add metadata to your site

   I’ve explained this in detail on another post.
   Basically, go to Appearance > Editor > header.php and replace the existing metadata:

   <META NAME="description" CONTENT="one sentence summary of your content">
   </meta>
   <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="five keywords. TIP: choose 2 that appear in you analytics traffic keywords">
   </meta>
   <META NAME="author" CONTENT="your name or username or twitter handle">

3. Dump your admin username

   Admin usernames are both security risks and anonymous. Give search users a chance to find you by your handle.
   If you want to use the email listed in your admin file for your new username, go into Users > Authors & Users > and change the admin email to another. Then, create a new user profile in Users > Add New. Be sure to make this one Administrator.
   Then you must logout, login with the new username and go back to Users > Authors & Users > and delete the admin.

When you create your blog in WordPress or Blogger, it creates metadata with your title and tag line. This is good, but put a lot of importance on that tagline. It throws out all those witty quips you wanted to use.

Now you can do both with a simple code embedded in your template. A little copy and paste will help you add common keywords that relate to you. Change what is in the CONTENT quotes and keep everything else.

<META NAME="description" CONTENT="one sentence summary of your content"></meta>
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="five keywords. TIP: choose 2 that appear in you analytics traffic keywords"></meta>
<META NAME="author" CONTENT="your name or username or twitter handle"></meta>
<META NAME="creation_date" CONTENT="date of your first post"></meta>
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="all, index, follow"></meta>
<META name="copyright" content="© year of first post to current year the you name"></meta>

WordPress (self-hosted)

Go to Appearance > Editor > header.php > Insert the code before the tag

Blogger:

Go to Layout > edit html > insert the code before the tag

There are several ways to get you URL on these lists. Spending an hour to sign your blog on to some update services will give you an edge on search engine page rank.

In your WordPress blog :  to Settings > Writing >; and scroll down to Update Services. You will see “http://rpc.pingomatic.com/” in the box. Take a minute and add the below list into the box to bulk up your update notifications.

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

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

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://ping.feedburner.com/

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/

http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx’

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

http://blogupdate.org/ping/

http://www.feedsky.com/api/RPC2

For Blogger users, you’re SOL for the automatic notifications. It all has to be done manually or through an external service. I hear there is a script in the works to add in.

1. Naming: Use your keywords in your image title. Use hyphens between words. This image is “baby-rabbit-in-grass.jpg”, get it?
2. Title: This is for visually impaired viewers using screen readers and those who have dial up. It’s the placeholder text for your image. This one is title=”baby rabbit in grass”, spaces are allowed. Keep it to less than 5 words.
3. Alt: Keywords! Use words that relate to the image and your post.  I added alt=”using images for SEO” and we’re done!

The instructions are for WordPress users, but it’s pretty much the same in all blogging platforms.

1. Upload your image into WordPress, insert it into your post and click the Edit Image button.
   
2. Go to the Advanced Settings tab
   
3. Add your text to “Edit Alternate Text” and “Title”
   
4. Or just code it in from the HTML tab

   <img title="images html code" src="http://site.com/images/wordpress/code-for-image.png" alt="images search engine optimization" />