The importance of your signature file

Your signature file which is that spot at the end of your forum posts and your emails is a great place to give yourself some free advertising for your web site or blog.

I post on many forums around the Internet and my forum URL and blog address are on as many as I’ve remembered to do as of this writing. It’s not a guarantee of anything but then again what is? I think you should put as much thought into your signature lines as you would a paid advertisement.

Of course, if you are a regular poster on a particular forum you do stand a better chance of attracting visitors. Don’t just go to any forum that you will never go back to and make a signature file or link there. It’ll probably get you nowhere. At the very least put a signature in your email client.

I think sometimes it is more attractive to make your signature an actual clickable link as opposed to just your URL in bold, colored letters for example.

By providing your signature at forums you frequent you will give people an opportunity to click on your URL. How cool is that? Just be concise, clear and do not write a novel or try to confuse people. Keep it simple and short.

Hopefully, they will click through and find an interest in your site and you have gained a new visitor, member, or subscriber.  

Good luck and I hope your click through rates rise.

Popularity: 18% [?]

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Adding Google Analytics to vBulletin

Here I’ll show you how to add Google Analytics to your vBulletin forum.

This is for Joomla 1.5x

  • Login to your Administration Control Panel 
  • AdminCP > Styles & Templates > Style Manager > Click on <<>> to expand the templates. 
  • Select and double click on the footer template.
  • ** IMPORTANT** If you were given a choice when you signed up for a Google Analytics account to choose between the new tracking code (ga.js) or the old tracking code (urchin.js) choose the new tracking code.
  • Scroll all the way to the bottom of the code and add the tracking code by itself on the last line of the template. 
  • Press “Save”
  • I suggest you now go to Google Analytics and check next to your site’s URL. Hopefully you will see “Gathering Data” and you’ll know you were successful. If you see “Tracking Not Installed” try it again.

Good luck. That’s all folks!

Popularity: 89% [?]

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Use vBSEO for search engine optimization

If you are a web master and/or owner of a vBulletin site such as I am, www.dumontnjforum.com, please seriously consider purchasing vBSEO for your search engine optimization needs.

Out of the box vBulletin uses .php files with a string of numbers after it to distinguish what you are looking at. These are called dynamic links and while this is wonderful for humans search engines prefer what is known as static .html links.

Even a default installation of vBSEO will do wonders for your forum. vBSEO is a complete SEO solution. I have tweaked many settings of mine to get the optimal results for my forum. And, I do plan on changing more settings when the situation arises. The search engine optimization plugin changes the characteristics of an existing vBulletin forum. The simple 5 minute installation will help you build relevant incoming links, improve Adsense earnings, and attract more visitors. And these are just a few of many different features.

Popularity: 20% [?]

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Adding Google Analytics to Joomla

Here I’ll show you how to add Google Analytics to your Joomla website.

This is for Joomla 1.5x

  • Login to your Joomla Admin
  • At the top select “Extensions” > “Template Manager”
  • Select your (default) template and click “Edit”
  • Click “Edit HTML”
  • ** IMPORTANT** If you were given a choice when you signed up for a Google Analytics account to choose between the new tracking code (ga.js) or the old tracking code (urchin.js) choose the new tracking code.
  • Scroll all the way to the bottom of the code and just before the </body> tag paste your Google Analytics code.
  • Press “Save”
  • I suggest you now go to Google Analytics and check next to your site’s URL. Hopefully you will see “Gathering Data” and you’ll know you were successful. If you see “Tracking Not Installed” try it again.

Good luck. That’s all folks!

Popularity: 23% [?]

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Adding Google Analytics to WordPress

Here I’ll show you how to add Google Analytics to your WordPress blog.

  • Login to your WordPress Admin
  • Under “Appearance” (on the left side) select “Editor”
  • If you have a custom template you will be using index.php otherwise you will be using footer.php.
  • ** IMPORTANT** If you were given a choice when you signed up for a Google Analytics account to choose between the new tracking code (ga.js) or the old tracking code (urchin.js) choose the new tracking code.
  • Immediately before the </body> tag paste your Google Analytics code. 
  • Click “Update File”
  • I suggest you now go to Google Analytics and check next to your blog’s URL. Hopefully you will see “Gathering Data” and you’ll know you were successful. If you see “Tracking Not Installed” try it again.

Good luck. That’s all folks!

 

 

 

Popularity: 15% [?]

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Sitemaps

Is it necessary to have a sitemap on your website? The answer is no. Is it a good idea to have a sitemap on your website? The answer is yes. What is a sitemap? A sitemap provides a top-down view of your overall site contents. This is an easy way for webmasters to alert search engines about URL’s on their site that are available for crawling. A sitemap is an XML file that provides a listing of URL’s for a site. It also includes additional information about each URL. A sitemap allows web crawlers to crawl your site more intelligently and efficiently.

Google introduced XML sitemaps which enable web developers to publish lists of links from across their sites. This is beneficial to sites where webmasters use Javascript or Adobe Flash which are not normally crawled because they do not include HTML links.

The four biggest search engines Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask all support the same protocol so having a sitemap lets the big four have your updated page information.

XML sitemaps have replaced the older method of submitting to search engines. It is worth noting though that sitemaps supplement and do not replace the existing crawling mechanisms that search engines use. Also there is no guarantee that your web pages will be included in search engines but as I mentioned earlier you are providing web crawlers with a better, more comprehensive method of gathering information about your site.

Popularity: 2% [?]

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