With Wordpress quickly becoming the best blogging platform, it only makes sense that there are people living in their mother’s basement creating backdoors, bypasses, and will be trying to hack your blog. Lately, a popular yet equally sneaky hack that a person can do to your Wordpress blog is add invisible links to your blog, increasing their search engine rankings and pagerank. Though it may sound harmless as they aren’t effecting your readers, it is effecting your Google & Blog Relationship.

The point of the post is not how Google Pagerank works (This page may be of some use to readers that are wondering about that), it is about how you could screw yourself in terms of Search Engine Rankings. When you link to random websites that don’t relate to your website, that raises some red flags in the Google Indexer and you could be labeled a “Spam” website/blog. This ultimately lowers your Google Pagerank (they could think the links were paid) and your search return results for keywords that you choose.

With a hacker gaining access to your blog, whos to stop him/her from placing 2000 invisible links to viagara, twinrex, adult, cialis and all of those wonderful spam links that you get Akismet filtering daily? Nothing is the correct answer and the person will make a couple hundred bucks.

How to figure out if you have been hacked is really quite simple:

1. First, Update your Wordpress to 2.5.1 to fix any bugs or security fixes.
2. Secondly, Get Firefox to check the links of your website.

Once you have Firefox running, open up your blog URL and do the following:

Open up the “Tools” Menu.

Click on “Page Info”

The Page Info Menu Shows Many Things About Your Website.

Look over the “Links” tab to see if there are any weird URLs. If not, then you haven’t been hacked and have nothing to worry about.. Looks good for mine!!

It never hurts to do periodical checks - just to be on the safe side!!

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To emphasize my point about leaving your .blogspot domain, I’ll start off with a riddle:

A person is trapped in a room. The room has only two possible exits: two doors. Through the first door there is a room constructed from magnifying glass. The blazing hot sun instantly fries anything or anyone that enters. Through the second door there is a fire-breathing dragon. How does the man escape?

The answer is at the bottom of the post in-case you want to figure it out! However when you are on a .blogspot account for your blog, YOU ARE TRAPPED. The only thing you can do on the blog is write and make money off sponsored posts, however, I bet that you didn’t know that you cannot sell or transfer ownership to anyone else.

When you sign up for a blog, you check the “I agree to the Terms & Conditions”. Seeming as nobody bothers to read them, I’ll pick out the part that says you cannot sell your blog to other interested parties:

7. No Resale of the Service. Unless expressly authorized in writing by Google, you agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade, resell or exploit for any commercial purposes (a) any portion of the Service, (b) use of the Service, or (c) access to the Service.

What does this all mean? All the work that you do to build the blog with links, content and readership will either have to be transfered to another blog or not moved during the blog’s life on the internet.

So If you’re at all serious about starting a blog and want TOTAL control over how you want to run it (Perhaps selling it later in the road) - fess up $100 bucks for a domain name and 2 year hosting and see how far that gets you. If you write some good content, you’ll easily recoup those costs in advertising sales and sponsored posts.

Answer To The Riddle: Wait Until Night Falls

Although I still say that blogs should have their own special design created for them, sometimes that simply isn’t an option for most people that start blogs have the following issues:

• They don’t see a long-term commitment to writing blog posts
• Their budget isn’t enough for a designer to create a template
• Are unsure if “Blogging” consistently (With Quality) is what they like to do.

So if you are tired of Wordpress’s default “Kubrick” theme or simply would like to spice up your blog with a new look, I have compiled a list of 100 designs that surely stand out from the others.

Blog Theme That BradBlogging.com Used Before The Custom Design:

A very professional looking template that focuses the reader’s attention on the content.

Wordpress Blog Template Location: Available Here

5 Designs That Excel Your Blog From The Others:

A slick blue and grey design that has a unique look to it.

Wordpress Blog Template Location: Available Here

This Vertigo Blue template is very simple with a interesting colour scheme.

Wordpress Blog Template Location: Available Here

A Newer Wordpress Template that uses a Dark Blue theme to showcase the content. It also blends the sidebar in with the other shades, so it attracts the visitors eye to the post first.

Wordpress Blog Template Location: Available Here

A dark green Wordpress Blog Template that is easy on the eyes. This blog template includes the date of the post as well as a black background for the post title.

Wordpress Blog Template Location: Available Here

Dark Blue Wordpress Template. Simple and to the point.

Wordpress Blog Template Location: Available Here

Subscribe Now For Part Two - Part Four! You will not regret seeing some new Wordpress templates that you can use for your unique blog.

This will not be a long post, as it is merely just a question.

Considering how many people like to take a break from their weekly routines, will you bother to write content for your blog on the weekends.. considering how some of your readers go away on vacation/family visits?

My Answer: If there is one person that is going to read the content on the weekend, why not give them something to read? Obviously it won’t be as long as the posts during the week as thats when the most people will see it, but it never hurts to throw in odd little rants and raves about different things happening on the blogosphere.

Our blog has been staying steadily at 180k - 185k for an Alexa Traffic Ranking and now has increased to 195k. The thing that struck us the most is that our blog traffic had increased exponentially since we started our techonrati exchange and aiming for different keywords for S.E.R.P.S.

“Alexa toolbar users’ interests and surfing habits could differ from those of the general population in a number of ways, and we described some of those possible differences on our website. While the vast majority of sites’ rankings were unaffected by such differences, we’ve worked hard on our new ranking system to adjust for situations in which they could matter.

The new rankings should better reflect the interests and surfing habits of the broader population of Web users.”

Looking at that statement they made on their “Official” announcement, We could help but think to ourselves that they were referring to blogs as that is what more and more people each day are reading/creating. So that could explain why numerous blogs got slapped by Alexa when they started implementing their new algorithm.

We have noticed the change on our blog, has anything happened on your blog? (Good or Bad)

Ahh, How embarrassing. While our team was tweaking the blog design, our internet service provider decided it would be a perfect time to tweak their services and have a little down time. We edited our blog at 4:30 and then our internet crashed at 4:37, so we would like to formally apologize for anything that you saw that would appear unusual and the problem should be fixed by now.

On a happier note, our Technorati train has had undeniable success in the blogosphere with 17 blogs participating. Not only has everyone’s technorati authority increased a small portion (Let me remind you that we only started that post 4 days ago):

“WOW BRAD, this is awesome my authority has raised 4 thus far!! This was such a great idea. Now for the back links to kick in!! So fellow technorati fans: THIS IS WORKING!!! GET IN ON IT~~~”

We are now ranked 4th on Google.ca for “Daily Blog Tips” (Competing with the infamous dailyblogtips.com ) we are also 8th position on Google.com for the same term.

The most impressive thing is that we used to be on the third page for that term a week ago.. So we suppose that the train that we have going not only increases your Technorati Rank, It increases your S.E.R.P. (Search Engine Rank Position)as well! So if you haven’t checked it out yet, We highly recommend it.. Simply click the button on our sidebar or scroll down to our post.

Anyhow, We are lining up some quality content for the rest of the week so be sure to subscribe via RSS to take full advanatage of what we have to offer!

As a blogger, you may think about what your going to write about tommorow, perhaps create a week’s lineup worth of posts inside of your head… but have you ever considered what your blog will be like in a year? 2 years?

Wouldn’t it be nice if this post could tell you what your going to see happening to your blog in the future? Don’t you wish there was some equation that could tell you what was to be?

The facts to be successful in the future are this:

• Your blog will get more popular with age.*
• Making Money Online will be an option when your blog has a decent reader base.**
• Your blog design needs to be stand out from the rest.***

The *’d details are these:

• *(Only if you put posts on your blog that people want to read about)
• **(If you start to blog about how to make money online by jamming sponsored posts into every other space of your blog, don’t expect readers)
• ***(Meaning those free ones aren’t going to cut it in the long run.. Consider hiring somebody to create that perfect look for you)

In an attempt to sum everything up, I’ll create that equation I was talking about earlier:

Time = Money –> Blogging = Time –> Good Blogging = Readers –> Good Blogging + Time + Readers = Money