Upon discovering that the appearance of individual WordPress blogs could be changed and modified, I found a huge volunteer based community of designers who dedicate their free time to developing and designing WordPress themes. This gave me such a surreal feeling of commitment, dedication, teamwork and unity. Needless to say, I wanted in! I wanted to be apart of this group that gives so much to the community.

After two years of learning and gaining experience with WordPress and WordPress themes, I am proud to unveil my very first public release titled, Digs’em.

The Digs’em WordPress theme is a very powerful search engine optimized WordPress Theme designed for search engine marketing. Digs’em actually stands for Digg and SEM. The Digg look and feel to my theme was inspired by Digg.com. The SEM stands for, Search Engine Marketing.

As I mentioned above, I am a full time professional blogger who has made the career choice to run a home based blogging business. My focus since day one has been in search engines. Many people have different reasons for blogging and many people have different avenues they pursue to get traffic to their blogs. For me, I focus on gaining traffic direct from search engines. My area of expertise is in getting my content indexed, ranked well and seen in the major search engines.

In the two years time I have used WordPress, I quickly discovered that having WordPress out of the box gets you half way there to ranking well in the search engines. Unfortunately, the second half doesn’t come easy. That falls into the department of WordPress theme design. Many WordPress theme designers as professional as they may be, truly lack in the SEO and SEM department. It is not their fault and I don’t criticize them one bit. Again, not everyone blogs to score ranking and traffic in the search engines.

With that being said, I quickly noticed that there was a huge lack of free search engine optimized WordPress themes. The ones that I did find available were tainted with sponsored links and or the coding isn’t quite up to what I would consider standard. In the business of SEO and SEM, just like with many blog niches, unfortunately we are presented with people who claim to be an expert in their trade of interest, where in reality, we soon discover that this isn’t quite true.

Needless to say, I will not admit to being an SEO or SEM expert. However, I will admit to having the experience, skill and advanced ability to get my content indexed, ranked and seen in the major search engines. In order to be successful in the SEM business, you have to have a SEO blog or website designed to be friendly with the major search engines. From there, the level of quality in your content, level of popularity and the number of links that point back to your blog will reflect on how well you rank in the search engines. It all starts with the design. You can have the most creative, entertaining, popular and unique content on the Internet; however, if your blog or website isn’t search engine friendly, no one will find you when they do a relevant keyword search in the major search engines.

Why The Digg.com inspired design?

You may wonder why Digg.com inspired me to create Digs’em. The reason is fairly simple but somewhat complex to explain. I’ll take a stab at trying to explain.

In my 10 years of study and experience with SEO and SEM, in my opinion, Digg.com is a very search engine friendly website. It’s not just luck that has carried Digg.com into high levels popularity. In the early days and even still today, Digg.com capitalizes on the power of gaining free traffic from the major search engines. In a case study of their website design and coding structure, I discovered that their design style and HTML formatting structure is very similar to what I have proven to myself in many of my owns sites to be successful with gaining traffic from the search engines.

As beautiful as Digg.com appears on the front end, the coding and HTML structure is even more beautiful on the back end. Digg.com doesn’t over complicate things and their back end HTML structure is very simple and maintains a style that has been proven to be successful for many years. Digs’em WordPress Theme carries forth the same level of back end coding and HTML structure as Digg.com but is mashed up and fully compatible with WordPress.

Download and License Information:

Digs’em is a WordPress theme that has been developed after many years of experience studying search engines and many years of running very successful websites that capitalize on the free traffic that search engines can provide. Digs’ems is a free WordPress theme and can be used and shared among users in the WordPress community. Commercial use of the Digs’em WordPress Theme is forbidden unless prior written authorization has been granted by designer and Intellectual property owner Garry Conn. The Digs’em WordPress Theme is governed with a Creative Commons License. When you download and use the Digs’em WordPress theme you automatically accept responsibility and agree to comply with the terms set forth in the license. To learn more about the Creative Commons License, you can view the information and links made available at the bottom of the page.

- DOWNLOAD Digs’em Version 1.0

Use the comment form below to speak your mind or if you have questions related to the WordPress theme. I will be here to actively respond to your comments and provide support where needed.

SEO Isn’t so darn complicated.

SEO is the practice of designing or re-designing a website, or blog so that it is very friendly for search engines to quickly scan and index the content from within. There is nothing complicated with this process. The only complication that many people face is the fact that they lack the ability to build a website or blog that is friendly for search engines. This is no different than taking an individual who has never flown an airplane and expect them to fly a Boeing 747. If you are a Boeing 747 pilot, you may feel that the processes involved in flying the jet come easy. In reality, it may very well be easy. However, again, if you’re not a pilot and you’ve been put into a position to fly the jet, you’re sure to crash it.

The same thing can be said for SEO. The good news though, making a blog or website search engine friendly, the process is actually a lot easier than flying a Boeing 747. I spent a week snooping around many of the, what the majority of people call, well known and trusted SEO blogs. My findings were overwhelming and I left with a headache and not learning a damn thing.

How Do I Make My Website or Blog Search Engine Friendly?

First I must say, and as mentioned above, the process of learning how to build a search engine friendly website or blog doesn’t happen over night. Your options are to (a: learn how to do it yourself or, (b: hire someone to do it for you. With the latter option, I can not personally recommend anyone for hire. Secondly, and to be honest, I am a hands on type of guy and I believe that by encouraging individuals to learn things for themselves, they can excel further in what they want to accomplish rather than hiring something out. Some could consider this a weakness, others could consider that admirable. Make no mistake, I have no problem passing the buck and paying someone to do something for me. However, before I do that, in most cases I would like to learn the skill or at a minimum educate myself before having someone else do something for me. Maybe this behavior has come by my many terrible experiences dealing with crooked auto mechanics. One thing is for sure, if you’re an Internet publisher, commonly called a blogger, I feel that it is in your best interest to understand SEO or at least have a trusted friend who does and is willing to help you for a fee or free.

SEO isn’t complicated. My advice to you would be to stop what you’re doing right now and begin educating yourself. Admittedly, I have never really communicated this publicly, I invest a huge amount of time into studying and learning about search engine. I am an avid book reader and I take what I learn in books and apply it into real life (or dot Com) situations. Yesterday I returned a comment submitted in from two readers. In this comment, I kind of pour a little of my heart out. I would recommend reading it.

To answer the question, “how do I make my website or blog search engine friendly” I think it would be a wise decision to visit your local book store. Of course, you can shop online; however, I prefer visiting my local book store. Frequently, during basketball practices or during many of the other free taxi services I provide for my children, I visit bookstores. I am able to pass a little time away from computers and sit down in a very comfortable chair and listen to very relaxing background music in a very quiet environment, while I scan through various books I consider for purchasing.

Many people shun books and I don’t understand why? Books are one of the key elements to education, the other is a teacher. However, there are books published and designed to rule out the teacher, thus having the creation of “Self-Help” books. I can’t imagine children not having books in the education system. Secondly, I can’t imagine children not having teachers. However, as adults, our minds are fully developed. We can self-teach and learn from our own powers and motivations. This is true for learning SEO.

If you are interested in learning SEO, I would recommend getting a good book. There is nothing wrong with books, but many people don’t like them because they don’t supply the instant fix that many desire. There is NO instant fix with SEO and just like many skills that have to be learned in life, it takes time. If you are blogging or publishing for the long haul, if you want to be more successful with making money online, you can’t deny the power of the free search engines. Understanding how to utilize the search engines as a publisher and understanding how to build websites, pages and blogs that are search engine friendly is the root key to my success. If you follow and read this comment, at the bottom, you’ll see two books that I personally recommend.

Good luck with your dot Com ventures, I hope that you have found this post to be helpful, inspiring and motivational. Feel free to drop me a comment, I’d love to hear from you.

First off, I want to recognize how wonderful of a job she has done with her blog. The current design and theme is something to be very proud of. It is obvious that she works hard towards the success of her blog. I absolutely love her skillful use of the Google Adsense Leaderboard positioned very carefully on the top of her page, directly below her main navigation menu and directly above her post content. Perfect job!

There is no doubt in my mind that a site like this can’t make money! The only thing needed is traffic.

Looking at a more recent post she wrote titled, Redskins Coach Joe Gibbs Resigns. A post like this should rank on the front SERP on google for an exact title phrase search. However, in her case it does not. Here is why:

The above screen shot shows how Google has indexed her post. Look at the post title, it reads:

Million Dollars Journey Dot Com >> Blog Archive >> Redskins Coach…

When I write a post using a WordPress blog, the post title I give the post is my chosen target keyword phrase for search engines. It is that simple. There is no mystery to my tactic. If you want to know what keyword phrase Garry Conn is targeting, just read my post titles. What you see is exactly what I want someone to type into the search bar to find my article.

Now, in Laura’s case, it would be ideal if her posted pulled up within the top ten listings in the SERPs for this phrase:

Redskins Coach Joe Gibbs Resigns

Unfortunately, at the time of writing this post, she doesn’t. Look at the screen shot above and you’ll see that I highlighted the portions of the titles that content the words of the search.

Now, take a look back at the other screen shot and you’ll see that Google has truncated most of all the important keywords from her listing.

Again, we’re looking at this:

Redskins Coach…

Google did not successfully record her title completely because she wasted character space which was filled with this:

Million Dollars Journey Dot Com >> Blog Archive >>

In fact, every post that Laura publishes will look the same way.

It doesn’t matter if she has 1 post indexed in Google or 10,000 pages indexed in Google. Her individual post pages are the best kept secret on the Internet because they will never be found when a user types in the keywords that match her post title. In the rare situations that a post does pull up as one of the top ten results, a user will not click on it because it doesn’t look appealing and attractive.

With this being explained, let me show you some examples of articles on a few of my websites:

Toys R Us Free Shipping Sale

Here is a screen shot of one of my websites that has a post titled, Toys R Us Free Shipping Sale.

Here is a screen shot of the page that is indexed in Google:

And here is a screen shot showing you that I rank #2 in within the top 10 results:

Barrel Rolling A Cessna

Here is a screen shot of one of my websites that has a posted titled, Barrel Rolling a Cessna.

Here is a screen shot of the page that is indexed in Google:

and lastly, here is a screen shot showing you that I rank #1 for that exact keyword phrase:

How Do I Make My WordPress Titles Search Engine Friendly?

The following information is the stuff that many SEO experts would want to shoot me for giving away for free. The process is so simple, it will blow your mind…

… and to be honest, I would rather blow your mind than having mine blown off! LOL!!!

Make a backup copy of your header.php file.

Open your header.php file and copy all the text from <title> to </title> and delete it.

Here is an example:

Simply replace it with this text:

<title><?php if (is_home()) { ?><?php bloginfo(’name’); ?><?php } ?><?php if (is_single()) { ?><?php wp_title(”); ?><?php } ?><?php if (is_archive()) { ?><?php wp_title(”); ?> - <?php bloginfo(’name’); ?><?php } ?><?php if (is_page()) { ?><?php wp_title(”); ?> - <?php bloginfo(’name’); ?><?php } ?><?php if (is_search()) { ?><?php the_search_query(); ?> - <?php bloginfo(’name’); ?><?php } ?></title>

Ideally, it would be better to download this file and copy all the text in it instead.

- Download Search Engine Friendly WordPress Titles

After you have replaced your old title information with the new search engine friendly WordPress title information, simply save your header.php file and upload it back to your server.

I hope that you (Laura) as well as the millions of other WordPress bloggers find this post to be helpful. If you enjoyed this tip and feel like your readers will also enjoy reading it to, take a moment to write a post about it on your blog. This is not mandatory but more of a suggestion that can allow you to help your own readers become more successful with their blogs.

If you should have any comments, questions or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to drop a comment or contact me by email at garryconn@gmail.com

from letutor language services <xxxxxx @ letutor.com>
to Garry Conn <garryconn@gmail.com>,
date Jan 16, 2008 4:00 PM
subject Re: Garry Conn dot Com Contact Form
mailed-by gmail.com

Garry,

layout questions. I’m looking for advice in regards to creating a informational blog that gets the best conversion / click through rates for adsense and affiliates. I’ve done some basic observations of some other successful site owners and am looking for some additional advice. Here’s what I wrote in my first email to you.

I’ve been a reader for a couple of months now. I’ve visited your aircraftdeals.net site and have followed it’s progression. I have quite a few good domains that I want to develop into informational sites that serve adsense and affiliate offers. I am in the process of commissioning a customized wordpress theme to try and offer my readers the best experience and get the best click through / conversion rates. Would you mind sharing some of your sites addresses so that I could do a cases study of layouts or offer some specific advise on layout psychology?

One thing I am curious about is whether or not a left hand sidebar with adsense ads gets better click rates than a right hand sidebar. The reason I ask this is because we read left to right and I would naturally think that ads on the left hand side would get more attention. Specifically if you you adhear to the F pattern that most readers use to scan a page. Additionaly, I am thinking of using a central ad box like on truckerhub.com a site by www.noviceseo.com.

Not sure if you’ve done split testing in regards to how effective a leader board ad is directly below the header image I would appreciate your comments on this as well.

Aaron Kuroiwa
Le Tutor Language Services
Office Hours: 9 am - 6 pm
(office) 480.626.5180
www.letutor.com
www.letutor.com/blog - A Guide to Foreign Languages

Website design is VITAL towards the success of your blog, site or informational media network. The design has to be balanced in a way that is friendly for search engines yet cosmetically appealing to end users. Secondly, the design also has to look good in the many different web browsers, computers, and screen resolutions available. To complicate matters even worse, today we have people accessing the Internet with PDAs, cell phones, Nintendo Wii’s and more.

When I design a website I make it very simple. Typically I have the most success when I keep my designs very basic and limit the amount of options per page.

I like to use traditional link color schemes as they are widely accepted. (aka: blue = hyperlink, purple = visited, red = active/mouse over hover link)

I keep things at a very high contrast level.. the best contrast level is white background with black text.

As you mentioned, people read left to right.. So most of my sites will have a left sidebar with a 336×280 Adsense unit directly on the top of the sidebar.

Below the Adsense unit, I’ll most likely provide site navigation options, etc…

I love the Adsense leaderboards… they aren’t as widely used and found on the mass majority of sites and because of that, there isn’t as much “ad blindness” with these formats.

Typically, I use <h1> size fonts directly above the leader board followed with a <br/> tag below the <h1> title which gives a nice amount of space between the title and the leaderboard.

I rarely use right sidebars. My main personal blog is an exception as I am more focused on showcasing my content rather than try to score Adsense clicks.

Another effective method for me is using the 200×200 or the 250×250 rectangle Adsense unit in the post page.

Typically I like to float the unit to the left and wrap the text around it with a little bit of padding.

A simple way of doing this would be to add a few line of style code prior to the Adsense code. This is typically something I would do:

<div style=”float: left; padding-right: 5px;”>
ADSENSE CODE GOES HERE 250X250 OR 200X200
</div>

I am not a very complicated guy and I don’t really analyse things in depth. I focus on site wide reporting… If and when I have a poor performing site, I’ll dip in and figure out why it is performing poorly. I don’t invest time into tracking whether the leaderboard is more or less effective than the rectangle. I only care to make sure each site is making money and maintains around 10% CTR and has a decent eCPM level.

I hope this was helpful.

Best Regards,
Garry Conn

• Choose a product you believe in. When you join a program such as ClickBank, you are instantly presented with a huge list of products at your disposal that you can sell. Instead of diluting your campaigns by flooding your blog with hundreds of affiliate based products, hand pick one or two products that you like the best and beleive it. If you like the product and believe in it, then so will your readers when you blog about it, promote it and speak from the heart.
• Don’t just add a banner to your blog! Banners for the most part are really old school. They are the least effective form of Internet marketing and don’t deliver many results. Even the most inexperienced computer users know NOT to click on banners. If you must add a banner, be sure to do more than adding a banner. Try alternative ways to promote sales of the product you are marketing.
• Bring Out awareness of your product. Do your readers even know about the product you promote and approve of? If you have only included a banner graphic on your sidebar, then your readers might not know that you have a personal recommended product. Blog about the products you want to sell. You can also increase awareness by adding a brief promotional ad at the bottom of your posts.
• Learn about the product you want to sell. If you know a lot about the product you are selling, you will be better prepared to answer questions from your readers. If you research the product or even buy it yourself, you will have a better chance with helping your readers decide on whether they should purchase the product.
• Own the product yourself. Now I don’t mean buy it yourself… that is optional. When I say “Own the product” I mean to say become an extension of the product. Brand it so that the perception of this product is actually an extension of yourself and your blog.

I hope you enjoyed the few brief tips here. Drop me a comment if you have some specific questions or feedback.