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Resources for Bloggers

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My #1 plugin to speed up blogs

For bloggers who want to go pro (or already are), site speed is HUGE. And it’s one of the things I’m asked to help with on blogs weekly. There are SO many factors that go into site speed, and I plan on blogging about a lot of them, but I wanted to start with my […]

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Why your blog visitors leave and never come back–and 4 ways to fix it

Want to know why your first time visitors leave your blog and never come back? Let me tell you a first-hand story. I recently clicked a Pinterest pin to a read a blog post about a specific hair problem I’ve always had. It was a fantastic tip. I was excited. So I went to see […]

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How to add categories to your blog

Categories are super important to your blog. Unfortunately, almost nobody tells that to new bloggers (especially those “Start a blog in 20 minutes!” posts). Special side-note request since I can’t help it: please don’t ever start your blog in 20 minutes. Take a proper amount of time, do research, and plan before you dive in […]

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What categories you should use on your food blog

Short cuts: The right structurePlan your categoriesFree printable category planner When most bloggers start blogging, categories are kind of an afterthought.  Nobody explained how or why to set up categories strategically and so many food blogs end up with a disjointed list of both broad and narrow subjects. It’s never too late to get your […]

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The difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org

Don’t care about details? Skip to the 2 second summary. It’s a little tricky to understand at first, but I’m going to try to make the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org easy. Let’s start at the beginning. Forget about .com and .org right now and let’s talk about WordPress alone. What is WordPress? WordPress itself […]

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Black Friday Deals to Upgrade Your Blog

Guys.  Does your blog need any upgrades?  4 of my very favorite website and business tools are having huge Black Friday sales.  And I may be jealous if you get to take advantage.  Here they are (and they are affiliate links): SiteGround If your site is slow, if you’re having security issues, or are just […]

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How to add meta tags or tracking codes to your blog

At some point, you will receive a meta tag or tracking code that you will need to add to your blog. If your site is built on the Genesis framework, as all the ones I build are, adding that code is super-easy. In your dashboard, just hover over “Appearance” then click “Customize.”  In there, scroll […]

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How to get rid of “The post appeared first on”

You got your RSS feed set up (woohoo!). But when you test it, there’s a line at the bottom that says “The post appeared first on”  It shows in your MailChimp emails, MailerLite, in feed readers. And it’s annoying.  Mostly because you can’t where it’s coming from. So where did the text come from?  The Yoast […]

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The easiest way to display a series on your blog

A blog series is a great way to build engagement and create repeat visitors for your blog. What exactly is a series?  Remember how TV shows used to occasionally end an episode in “To be continued…”?  And then you couldn’t wait until next week to see what happened?  Each episode was still an episode, but those […]

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The Best Recipe Plugin for Food Bloggers

UPDATE: While Tasty Recipes is a fine plugin, I do now definitely recommend WP Recipe Maker over it. While it’s still not quite as easy to set up, there are SO many more options for customizing it, and the customer service is AMAZING. Plus, there is a free version you can get started with. Before […]

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How to change your DNS information

Before I tell you how to change your domain name’s DNS info, I want to give you a quick explanation of what it all means.  That way what you’re doing will make sense and if the particular company you’re using does things a little different than my instructions, you’ll be able to figure it out […]

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Move contact form labels to inside fields

Moving the labels on a contact form to inside the fields is as easy as replacing the word “Label” with the word “Placeholder.” Really. We’ll use a simple Jetpack contact form as our example, but it’s basically the same procedure for MailChimp sign up forms or any other forms you can access the HTML or […]

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Why aren’t my latest blog posts showing?

On average, I get an email about once a month asking “Why aren’t my latest blog posts showing on my home page?  The blog post is there, but it won’t show up on the home page.”  It’s a maddening issue that is becoming a pretty common problem.  Every single time someone has asked me that, […]

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Change “Read More” link into a button

When you use the Read More links on your blogger blog, it just adds a tiny text link to the bottom of your posts that can be pretty easy for readers to miss.  And it’s not very pretty either.  By default, the Blogger read more link will look like this: Not very noticeable.  Click on […]

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How to add Pinterest to your Blogger sidebar

It’s pretty easy to add your Pinterest profile to your Blogger sidebar.  (If you prefer to watch me do it rather than read, there is a quick video tutorial below the instructions!) To add Pinterest to your Blogger blog, we’ll first create the Widget on Pinterest’s website, then we’ll just copy and paste the code […]

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How to add an Instagram gadget to Blogger

In this quick tutorial, I’ll show you how to add your Instagram pictures to Blogger.  It’s free, it’s fast, and it’s easy. (If you learn better from watching, there is a video tutorial at the bottom of the post.) Here are the instructions for adding Instagram to Blogger: First, we’re going to create the widget […]

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How to use affiliate links

I am asked fairly regularly by clients about affiliate links, what they are and how to use them, so here are the basics of how it works, along with my recommendations. When you are an affiliate for a company, you advertise their products.  If someone purchases something, or signs up for something from your advertising, […]

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How to make a square image round

If you have just one or two images that you want to be circles instead of squares, there’s a really simple line of code you can add to the image.  It will be much faster than editing your image in Photoshop. If you remember from this post, you’ll remember that the code to add an […]

Helpful resources:

The best hosting for bloggers
Speed up your site
The most reliable recipe plugin
NerdPress for monthly WP support
The best SEO courses

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