WordPress has a lot of features and functions built in that most people rarely use. Themes themselves come with a style sheet that pre-sets many of the functions that could be used. One of those functions is the heading tag. These come in the form of H1, H2, H3 and H4.

There are suggestions that if you use these tags for headings in your posts you can increase the headings value when it comes to SEO, for example, having a heading that includes your keyword or keyphrase. Use one of those heading tags and you are telling the search engine it is important.

However, I often find that headings are set for the site and do not always sit comfortably within a post. They are too big, too small or the wrong color. What many writers don’t know is that each heading tag can be modified on the fly so that it does suit your post. Take a look at the following examples:

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Now let’s see what happens when we modify them:

Heading 1

Heading 1

Heading 1

To achieve this result, you need to start with heading tag – for example the h1 tag – these are inserted between <>. To modify this tag you need to use the correct formatting command. These are also inserted between <> tag holders:

font size=”-1″ or -2, +1 +2 etc

You can adjust the size to suit your post. The size of the text in my posts means the H1 tag is far too big – by using the size=”-1″ option it looks much neater and suits the size of the text around it.

font color=”red” or blue or black or white

In the last example shown, I used the font size=”-1″ color=”blue” combination all within the one tag placeholder <>.

A typical command would like the following – to make life easier I have used [ ] instead of the <> to make it easier to read. Remember to replace the square brackets when you try these commands.

[h1] [font size="-1" color="blue"]Your text here[/font] [/h1]

The last two pieces of the command are particularly important. They effectively close the command at that point which means the formatting wont flow through to the rest of your site.

There you go – it’s quick, it’s easier, and you can do it on the fly whilst creating your next super post.

Yesterday I looked at some of the issues that may help you rank better in Google. Today I will follow up on a few more observations. These are all taken from a Q&A session with Matt Cutts and others from Google – in effect, Google are starting to spill the beans on how to gain higher rankings.

A little more on links today. First, for a long time the general advice has been to get links from .edu and .gov sites. According to the Google team, don’t bother. They have no more value than any other link, in fact they will often have less value since few people link into them. Continue reading 'Listen To Google To Rank Better – Part Two'»

My Radical Blogs is heading towards its first birthday – I cannot believe it is nearly a year old already. When I look back at my early work I notice a big change to how I write compared to today. Over the next week or two I am going to spend a little time going over what has, and hasn’t, worked for me; what I have liked and disliked; which posts where popular; and which posts I though were good but failed to spark much in the way of comments.

Today’s review is a mix of the posts that proved popular by way of comment numbers, along with some of my favorite posts. It has been a strange year. I started off a little aimless, took aim with blog reviews which I enjoyed doing, but found most bloggers a little apathetic to them. From there I lost track, and a little focus, particularly when I started writing on other blogs. This has left me a little time poor. I think apathy is a double edged sword. Lack of reader numbers and comments leads to more apathy, the results being less post, poorer quality, and fewer readers.

I have plans to change all that from the beginning of next month having finally decided on the direction I intend to go. As readers, you will either appreciate it, or not. How does that song go – “It’s my blog, and I’ll write how want to” (to the tune of it’s my party – anyone remember it?).

My favorite posts, and some of yours – lets get to them – there were so many. I spend some time learning WordPress inside out and back to front. As I picked up tips and ways to improve my blog, I passed them on. One of the most visited was How to optimize your WordPress blogs for speed, a post that brought numerous comments. I regularly talk about plugins and what has or has not worked along with any workarounds if I find them. This post on Plugins By The Bucketload was extremely popular, at least for the links to everyone else

The most popular posts were the lists. People are right – we all love lists. The first one was a good one showing you how you could Forget Adsense – Here Are 140 Alternatives To Consider.  Another income related blog that brought some traffic was How I Quadrupled My Blog Income, I don’t know why, but visitors enjoyed it.

I also discovered interesting facts about making money online, for exampl, Your Tip N Run Visitors Are Costing You Adsense Dollars, a look at Google and how traffic affects Adsense.

Other list posts that were popular included 100+ Bookmarking Sites To Drive Your Traffic – or drive you crazy - it certainly drove me crazy. Directories can be great for backlinks and increased PageRank so I sourced Free Directories With PR4+ Ranking - enough to keep you going for a week.

That’s my brief roundup of posts from the last 12 months.

I have installed a new plugin to see if it can improve the number of comments I receive. I may even start writing posts worthy of comments now .

The plugin is keyword luv. If you haven’t heard of it before it is quite clever. Instead of leaving your name and url etc, to benefit from the keyword luv you will need to enter your name with an appropriate keyword.

Before I go any further, I think you should think very clearly about your comment link. Most people just enter in their homepage url. This is a waste of a comment link. Find a page you want to promote and that you would like to see rank well in the search engines – remember, search engines rank pages, not sites.

Use the url for that page when leaving a comment rather than your home url. If the url is long, simply copy and paste it. Now that you have the page you want the link juice to flow to, select the most appropriate keyword for that page.

Now, when leaving a comment here or on any other keyword luv site, enter your name with the at symbol then the keyword. EG – les@keyword – then enter the page url, then leave your comment. Now you have keyword rich link to one of your pages. These links are worth far more than a none keyword link to your front page (almost worthless for SEO purposes).

Having said all this, I still moderate comments and will throw out worthless or spammy comments. Leave a good comment and it will stay. I will generally try to visit your site and return the favor. If you have any trouble with the keyword luv plugin let me know.