Why my site ranked 3 already in such a short time?

This site, overscaled.com, is only 3-week-old, even the domain is not older than 2 months either as I am writing this post today, but why the site’s page rank on Google already hit 3? What special thing I did on this site that made this happen so quick in such a short time?

There are many sites over on the web talk about Page Rank and how it works and how to get a higher rank. But none of them makes any sense to me why it gets 3 on a site that is only 2-week-old and never done any SEO on it.

One possible logical thinking top in my head is that it may be something to do my overscaled page on twitter which is ranked even higher at 4 on Google right now. Twitter recently changed its title tags that may in result get ranks higher for your twitter name. And searching for the keyword “Overscaled” has both this site and my twitter page listed on the first page. So that got me to believe that having the keyword “Overscaled” as part of my domain somehow makes Google to think the relationship between this site and my higher ranked twitter page, which helped getting higher rank in result.

That makes to believe that keywords in URL weight much more in ranking than in page self. And it doesn’t seem to matter whether the keywords are part of the domain name or the URL, as long as they show up in the address bar, which is also why I recommended choosing the “Month and Name” as the permalinks setting for your blog in my last post, a checklist of preparing a working WorkPress blog.

And that also proves that social media websites do help in some way when it comes to SEO. Time I spent on twitter for the last couple of month somehow got paid off in some way, if my possible logical thinking is right.

A Checklist of Preparing A Working WordPress Blog

The work is not done yet after setting up your self-hosted WordPress blog. There are still number of things you need to configure before it actually fully works. Here is a quick short checklist of things that need your attention, most of them can be easily done through the awesome WP admin control panel.

General Settings

This is the first place you would go right after you have your blog newly installed, in where you can name your blog title, sub-title, URL, date format, and email address, etc.

You can get to that page by clicking the Settings link at the left panel when you are in the admin panel. In case you don’t know how to get into your admin panel, this is the address can get you there.

http://yourblogaddress.com/wp-admin/

Permalinks Settings

IMO, having a link with your post name embedded is more search-engine-friendly, and helps to get your page ranked better, because having the keywords embedded in URL weights more from search engine’s point of view. Option Month and Name is my preferred permalinks option.

Clicking Permalinks under Settings at the left panel in admin panel can get you there.

Remote Publishing

If you are a person like me who prefer blogging through desktop client like Windows Live Writer or iPhone App, enabling XML-RPC is a no-brainer. And most Blog This link on a lot of websites that allows you blog their content right from their own page requires you have this enabled as well.

Remote Publishing setting is also located under Settings on your admin panel.

IMO, if you are a Windows user and haven’t heard or used Live Writer I urge you doing so right away. It’s a ultimate tool you will ever need for blogging, which makes your blog life so much easier and enjoyable. And most importantly, it’s a free tool from Microsoft that gets updated constantly. The same feature from Live Writer is also included in the latest MS Word version 2007.

Theme

Picking a theme is not as easy as it sounds. You should not judge a theme only based on its looking. The feature and flexibility are also very important factor that you need to consider. A good theme should provide you a set of options to play with. For example, a convenient place where you can put static tracking codes or ad codes, either in footer or the sidebar. Ultimately, you can inject these codes right to the PHP page but it’s always good you don’t have to do that.

There are tons of good designed free themes out there you can choose.  And you can customize them to get your own unique looking one, if you know a little bit CSS and PHP.

Traffic Stats Tracking

Most of the tracking service will provide you an easy implement javascipt code that you can easily embedded into your website. If theme you choose has the static code box option ready you can simply insert these codes in. Otherwise, you will need to manually add them into one of the PHP page in the theme you pick, i.e. footer.php.

If you are using Google Analytics, this plug-in is a must-have. It saves all the hassle adding the code manually. All you need to know is your Analytics Account ID for the blog you want to track.

Feedburner Setup

You will need Feedburner to help you track your feeds subscribers. Burn your feeds first on Feedburner, if you haven’t done so. And add both Feedburner feed URL and email subscription link to your blog, either through theme option or editing directly to PHP file. You also need to make the change on the feed link on the page header section, or you won’t get all your subscriber tracked. A lot of people like to subscribe the feed directly from the address bar, right than through the link on the page self.

It used to a place in older version that allows me just simply put the FeedBurner link but I couldn’t find it in the version 2.7.1. If you know, please let me know in the comments.

And that’s it. If you read all through and get the point where you read now you are good to go.

Enjoy and happy blogging…at least, I am.

New Seller updates on eBay

Just received an email from eBay informing me that there are some new seller updates coming in June. I quickly took look at them. Most of them are quite positive, at least from a seller’s point of view. Here are some of them that I think are very good move.

The new eBay item page

The new eBay item page includes 4 important changes:

• Bigger, better pictures, with photo zoom coming later this summer
• Real-time countdown timer for Auction-style listings
• Key information right upfront
• Cross-merchandising: Sellers’ relevant listings show up on other each other’s item pages.

New eBay product pages

A new way to get your products more exposure to the buyers. See more details here.

List items with multiple variations such as size and colors

A new type of multi-qty fixed price listing that will allow sellers to consolidate variations of a product in one low-cost listing. Very useful. Unfortunately, it will be only available in Men’s and Women’s shoes first and other Clothing, Shoes, & Accessories later. Not include the products I am selling.

Package tracking info

Package tracking links right from My eBay—print labels on PayPal and tracking links will show up automatically, or you can upload your own tracking information.

Return policy and handling time

It will be required in the listing in June. However, the deadline for updating your Good ‘Til Cancelled listings extended to mid-September.

Customize item specifics

To help make sure interested buyers find your listings, eBay is now making it possible to create your own Item Specifics when the current choices don’t cover your item.  However, it also suggested that always use the eBay item specific choices first, and add your own only when there are no appropriate alternatives.

Seller manager will be free to all sellers

Good news for the small sellers but doesn’t impact the ones who have the eBay store because there is no overlap here.

Check and Money Order will be banned

That means all transactions will have to go through Paypal. There will be no other way around. Good and smart move, eBay.

Overall, it doesn’t look like as big as they did last year but these certainly are the good changes to the sellers. Hopefully, they keep that way and think about sellers a little bit more, IMO.

You can also see the full coverage from the following link.

http://pages.ebay.ca/sell/April2009Update/Overview/

Setting Up Self-hosted WordPress Blog on IIS

Well, I said this blog will be strictly for business stuff but since this is the first WordPress blog I have set up I got quite excited. I have learned many many times how easy it is setting up a WordPress-blog but I was still quite impressed the whole process.

WordPress.org has all the information you need to set up a self-hosted WordPress blog. Because I am a tech geek, I followed their famous 5-minute install and had this blog set up a little over 5 minutes. Here are the basic steps, mostly for my own references.

1. Download the latest version of package and up-compressed it to the local hard drive.

2. Create a mySQL database on the hosting server, as well as a user that has all the rights for updating the database.

3. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php, and open it in my favorite text-editor, Notepad2.

4. Change the database connection section, only 4 settings that need to be updated. The DB_Host is the URL that hosts the mySQL database created on step 2.

5. Grant the full-permission access to IUSR_username if installing WordPress on Windows-based IIS web server, in where username should be the same as the webhost username but may be different depending on the hosting company.

6. Access http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php from any browser. If connecting to the database successfully, the following page will pop up.

6. Type in the blog title and email address into these two boxes, and click Install WordPress button.  All information can be changed later on in the control panel.

7. Once succeed, this will pop up.

8. Make sure copy the password before pressing the Log In button, and update the password once logging in the first time.

That’s it.

Hello world!

Welcome to Overscaled. This is my first post published automatically when the blog was installed. I edited it but thought may be better not deleting it.

Quite excited about finally getting it set up and it’s on the hosted latest version of WordPress too.

Let’s get ball started rolling, and start blogging!

Here is the picture of the snowing on April Fools Day, not a joke though.