How To: Simple Image Link

This weeks How To is about the popular sidebar widget “Simple Image Link”

Simple Image Link is a powerful little widget that will allow you to place any image into your side bar, and give it a link, header, title and some other parameters. Its got a lot of great uses but the best we’ve seen so far is using it to link to your blogs RSS, to connect to your social network profiles (twitter, facebook etc) or simply to link directly to one of the neighborhoods within your IDX map.

Using Simple Image Link is a breeze, Here’s How To:

• Log into your IDX Blogger site
• Upload* or find the image you wish to use in your sidebar
• *If uploading an image, navigate to Write, Post. Click the “Add image” icon from the post editor and upload your image, Once the image is uploaded, Copy the URL of the image and close the upload window.
• Navigate to Design, Widgets
• Drag the simple image link widget to your sidebar and click “edit” to bring up the options menu
• Give the image a title and select if you wish the title to be displayed within your sidebar
• Paste the image location you copied earlier from the upload image box (or the URL of the image thats already online)
• Type or Paste the Link location (where visitors will go when they click the image)
• Click “Change” and your widget will now be saved, you can drag and drop it around your sidebar to position it and reorder where it appears.
• Click “Save Changes” from the widget menu and your done!

Here is a great example of a site using Simple Image Link connecting all kinds of content from the sidebars. A video tutorial will be coming later next week so stay tuned!!

Tracking Your Traffic – Optimizing Your Content

We recently installed Google Analytics to our platform, I just wanted to touch on the importance of tracking your website’s usage and the ability to optimize content based on the analysis of your visitors/traffic.

One of the key aspects you should focus on is the bounce rate, displayed on the Google Analyitcs dashboard page.

Bounce rate is a percentage given based on visitors who simply leave your website after landing on it. Ideally, you’ll want the bounce rate to be low – around 15-25% is a very good number.

Bounce rate will give you an overview of content consumption – adding new content, changing your navigation and layout will all have a pretty big effect on your sites overall bounce rate, make sure the pages your visitors are landing on are well layed out, clean and written well with good spelling, grammar and good use for formatting (bolds italics etc)

Improving your bounce rate over time will lead to more conversions. Next weeks tip will cover other aspects of Google Analytics and tracking. stay tuned!

Tags and Categories – What You Need to Know

We’ve been getting a lot of questions asking the difference between Wordpress Tags and Categories. So:

• Categories are the fundamental way WordPress displays and organises content. Categories are used for navigation within your site and its design, Categories are often used in Top level navigation (the nav bar in your website) as a way to easily get to related content quickly and efficiently. A category is singular and can only have one purpose.
• Tags are a way of connecting related content within WordPress. Use Tags after you have Categorized. Apply tags to content you wish to link, then – depending on your design or theme, users can navigate between your posts from tag to tag and obvious connection can be made. Tags can be applied to multiple posts and as frequently as desired.

Google Sitemaps Now Installed!

Hey Folks, wanted to give you an update with some of the new features we’re rolling out over the next few weeks, and the reasoning behind them.

The first new feature that’s gone live today is an automatic process that builds your XML sitemap and submits it to google.

A XML Sitemap is a file that lists all of the pages and posts within your website in a certain format which the search engines can quickly access, scan and move on. Its incredibly important to have a well formatted sitemap submitted to google on a regular basis and we’re taking care of the whole process for you!

Any questions just drop me a note.

Custom Header Sneak Peak

Good morning IDX Bloggers!  Just wanted to give you a sneak peak at the custom header service we have been working on, you can check it out (and even pre order yours!) at the custom headers page.

This is a truly unique service only available to HomeQuest subscribers and will be exclusive for IDX Blog users only. Completely custom, 1 off design for your IDX Blog site including full CSS and web styling at an incredibly affordable rate. Starting at just $500!

Head on over to the custom headers page and take a look what we have in store! Any requests can be sent directly from the contact us page

How To: Keep your IDX Blog Pretty

One thing agents keep asking me is how to use images and video to spruce up blog posts and pages. Well, in today’s “How To” I’m going to give you some tips on keeping your blog as pretty as the day you started it.

The first thing you want to do when inserting images into your posts is to set a size (usually width) for the majority of your images and for consistancy. Lets say 300px for this example. Now, for each image you put into your blog, always resize just the width to 300 px and keep the aspect ratio. (when resizing the width the height should automatically resize to the new proportions)

For thumbnails, use the same practice – try not to resize the image within the WordPress editor, this will distort its quality and generally look bad for everyone viewing and make your post/page look unprofessional.

When you write blog posts within a text editor (like Microsoft word) be careful when pasting them over to your blog, you will need to strip all of the code these text editors add, to do this simply paste the text into notepad, then from notepad into your blog post editor. Notepad strips all the code and just pastes into plain text.

When using widgets to add functionality to your IDX Blogger sites, try not to go overboard. a nice, clean – easy to use layout will be much preffered by your potential clients than a bunch of widgets and tools all over the place. Widgets are difficult to style and just using a couple of them can quickly turn the look of your site prom a clean, new blog to a cluttered mess. Experiement with the layout of your widgets, changing the order of them might change how they look on the page, renaming them could also help.

Thats all for this weeks How To – keep your feedback rolling in and stay tuned for some big updates over the next few weeks!

Now Importing from a Blog Near You

Great news folks! 

We now have the ability to import your current blog into the IDX Blogger system. If you are maintaining a Wordpress blog elsewhere and would like to transfer it to your IDX Blogger domain simply follow these 3 steps:

• Within the Wordpress you wish to export from, navigate to Manage then Export
• Export your Posts and Pages following the steps on screen
• Email us the XML file to import, along with the URL and any instructions / requests.

Back to Basics

Wanted to write a quick post for all the new comers to the IDX Blogger system, firstly – welcome aboard, I hope you find this blog useful, If there’s anything you’d like to see implemented into the IDX Blogger system, don’t hesitate to let me know!

So, you have just signed up for an IDX Blogger site, where do you begin? well, the good news is we’ve got a detailed “how to” guide which can be found here that covers everything from creating new pages, posts, mapping blog posts, optimizing your blog for search engines and more! 

Remember to bookmark the How To page, each time we do an update to the system, add a new feature or make any changes – we’ll also update the guide and give you a heads up via this blog.

Another tip – you can also read this blog via your dashboard within IDX Blogger. Simply log into your HomeQuest account and navigate to the websites tab, then click “site admin” the news posted here will also be fed directly to your dashboard

Custom Headers and Beyond

At the beginning of February We’ll be adding a new product to our IDX Blogger lineup – Custom header design. Take a look at our current theme library and imagine the possibilities. Our in house designers will transform the look and feel of your IDX Blogger site for a one time fee. 

This new service will be on a first come first serve basis, Keep an eye on this blog for the official announcement and get working on any ideas you would like for your new custom header!!

On a side note, We’re working hard on the feedback and wish list’s we’ve been given so far, some exciting things to look out for include:

• The ability to rename your widget titles
• The ability to set your map extent and zoom level
• An updated dashboard / RSS 
• New widgets!!!

All in One SEO – What is it and Why do I need it?

This weeks feature spotlight is All in One SEO, you can find this feature within your IDX Blogger back end, under the manage then go to All in One SEO.

Firstly, a little about this awesome little tool. All in one SEO is a wordpress plugin that makes your content (pages and posts) completely search engine friendly, automatically. After you have set the basic parameters the plugin will do the rest and the search engines will thank you.

Lets take a look at the important fields:

• Home Title
• Home Description
• Home Keywords
• Re-write Titles

When configuring All in One SEO these 4 fields are essential to the success of your IDX Blogger site within the major search engines. Your Home Page title is probably the most critical element – when writing your title, take into account the words and phrases people might use to find you, your company, your agency, specialty etc. Take into account your company / team name and any other important information you would want to be found under. Prioritize your target phrases towards the begining of the title. here’s an example title that’s very successful within the search engines:

“Real Estate IDX – IDX Blogger from HomeQuest – The Ultimate Blog and IDX Web Platform“

This puts the most emphasis on our target key phrase “Real Estate IDX” while covering all of the other important terms we would like to be found under within the search engines.

Home Description and Home Keywords are generating “Meta Tags” for your pages. Sometimes (randomly) the search engines will show your site on a results page and generate a random description based on the users search term and content on your page. Other times, the search engines rely on you for providing an accurate description of your website. Type a description that best fits your sites content, its purpose and use terms you would expect to be found under. The Keyword field is used exactly the same way – simply enter 15-20 key phrases you wish to be found under, make sure they are relevant and what a potential client might search for.

The last option is to Re-Write Titles. This is important, if you wish to use your blog post or page title as the actual title of the page, keep this box checked, otherwise you will need to write a page title each time you make a new page/post.

Phew – Thats it for this week on All in One SEO. We have already configured the rest of the settings for you to be optimal within the search engines, you may thank us later! As usual, any questions, comments, feedback… feel free to leave comments or you can email me directly! simon@pdxhomequest.com

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