RORY HANSEN

When launching a new WordPress blog, one of the first questions you have to ask yourself is:

Do I use a free theme or pay for a premium theme?

What I’ve learned over the years is that, depending on the niche that your blog is targeting, it’s often very cost-effective just to purchase a premium theme and get your content online as quickly as possible.

For personal blogs, sure, use a free theme. But if you’re launching a blog targeting a professional or corporate audience, buy the premium theme and you’ll be happier in the long-run. It’ll be easier to gain the trust of your blog audience, plus you’ll be pleased with the raw power that many of these premium themes have under the covers.

New Corporate Themes for WordPress

Here are a few corporate themes that caught my eye at ThemeForest, arguably the top premium WordPress theme site on the web.

Debonair Corporate WordPress Theme [View Demo]

I think Debonair looks fantastic. The green and grey color scheme is totally trendy for corporate websites these days. I was this close to buying it today, but instead, decided on Glide which is shown just below.

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I’ve collected over 80 “Your Ad Here” 125 x 125 banners from Google as examples of what you can use on your website to fill those blank ad spots. Use them on your blog or website to entice potential advertisers to learn more about your site and ad rates.

Note: Each of these 125 x 125 banners are owned by their respective owners; none of them are my own work.

Click into the article to browse through the gallery of “Your Ad Here” images.

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It’s key for all bloggers to have a basic understanding of search engine optimization and how simple SEO drills can increase site traffic and search engine rankings. Even if you’re blogging for pleasure rather than profit, regularly spending at the very least a few minutes each month on SEO activities is the first step to taking your blog to the next level.

I present to you the 5 Minute Long Tail SEO Drill. You’ll learn how to quickly and easily implement some simple on-page SEO techniques to improve your Google search ranking positions (SERPs) and, ultimately, boost your blog’s traffic.
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Even if you aren’t a fan of the Alexa Traffic Rank, you can’t deny it’s influence on the web for ranking and comparing website traffic. Along with Google Page Rank, the Alexa Traffic Rank is one of the key Internet indicators of website authority and overall success.

It’s for this reason (and for the fact that I’m near dead-last on the list of Internet Marketing Top Blogs) that I’ve been experimenting with ways of improving my Alexa Traffic Rank.

And I must say, I feel that I’ve been successful. Over the last 2 weeks, my Alexa Traffic Rank has improved significantly.
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Market Leverage is running a brand new contest with Zac Johnson and a few more bloggers, giving away prizes such as a Flip Mino HD, an iPod Nano, an Amazon Kindle and gift certificates. It’s easy to enter; just write a blog post or create a YouTube video.

The idea is to choose one of Market Leverage’s CPA offers and share how you’d market the idea. From the submitted blog posts, a few winners will be chosen: 1 winner by Zac, and the rest by Market Leverage.
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In October, my buddy Keith launched his 1-Week PageRank Experiment for his KickJoey.com domain.

The Goal
To attain a Page Rank of PR1 within 1 week.

The Reasoning
Although from a search engine perspective, Page Rank may be losing relevance, from a marketing perspective, Page Rank is still a useful and necessary indicator of website authority. For folks offering paid links or posts from their blog, the Page Rank value is not only important, but often necessary even to get the conversation started.

Keith’s goal was to begin using the KickJoey.com domain as a platform for paid reviews, so, attaining a Page Rank was deemed a necessity.

The Result Read more »

Happy Cyber Monday everyone!

If you haven’t heard yet, you can use coupon code 99DOMAIN over at GoDaddy.com to purchase .com/.net/.org domain names for 99 cents!

Update: The $0.99 domain name deal is dead, but you can find current GoDaddy.com coupon codes here. Before purchasing domain names, you should always find a working GoDaddy coupon code first, as it’ll save you an easy 30% off your domain purchase.

This is a smoking deal for anyone looking to start the New Year fresh with a new blog/website. Even if all you do is buy a domain for $0.99 and flip it for a few dollars on SitePoint or DigitalPoint, that few dollars is nearly pure profit!

To make the deal even more smoking, as always, if you purchase 5 or more domains from GoDaddy, they’ll throw in free Privacy Registration (a $11 savings on each domain!).

Keep in mind, this is just for 1-year domain name registrations. I’ve got a handful I’ll be registering tonight. Lemme know which domains you end up picking up!

Just wanted to thank the fine folks who’ve contributed to this site by way of comments. The top commentators for the month of November are:
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This week’s Dot Com Pho was at Pho Trang An, where we had 12 people show up to gab about life, politice, blogging and making money online. This included the usuals (John Chow, Stephen and Ed) as well as some new faces.
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One of the WordPress plug-ins I use on my blog is the great Show Top Commentators plug-in, which displays the top commentators each month on the blog sidebar. I feel it really helps to create a sense of community and even GIVE BACK to the community of readers by rewarding those readers who help to keep the dialog going each month. Each of the top commentators receives a site-wide link back to their website/blog, which is essentially a free (unpaid) text link ad.

Half-way through November, the top commentators on my blog are:

Stew Babcock

Heather in Beautiful BC

PuReWebDev

Annalise

This is a really easy way to advertise your website and generate a little more traffic. So, if you have something to add, please leave a comment!