Domain Authority, what is it?

Domain authority (MOZ) is score which ranges from 0 to 100 (100 being the best score) that tells us about the ability of internet site to rank in search engines. The higher the Domain Authority (DA) score, the higher chance for a site to rank well on search engines and vice versa.

The importance of DA

“Google” does not exactly state that DA is connected to sites ability to rank well on search engines, but based on the research done by many professionals, the sites that rank well on search engines have high DA score as well.
DA has mostly replaced Page Rank (PR), since many professionals claim that the PR ranking system is outdated and irrelevant, nowadays.

Domain Authority Factors

Although there are over 100 factors to calculate the DA, most important are:

• Backlink count and their quality
• Refering domains count
• Domain age
• Social signals
• Site performance
• Quality of site’s content
• Moz trust

How to improve DA?

In short we need to check our Domain Authority Score. Then we need to optimize the internal links of our site. Once that is done, we need to enrich our site with high quality content. After that we need to start with gaining good quality backlinks.

It’s not a rare thing that you hear that a site is “suffering” from Google Penalty.

I had a lot of clients contacting me because they had their sites penalized by Google, and lost all of their rankings except for maybe few keywords that no one wants to rank for anyway…

In this post i will tell you more about Google Penalties and how to check if your site is affected.
Lets begin!

Google Penalty definition

One of the definitions could be: “The Google Penalty is an action taken by “Google” according to its search algorithms or manual actions against your website (or its rankings on google search pages rather)”. Usage of Black Hat SEO techniques is the usual suspect.

There are many other definitions, but our clients are more concerned about their site loosing rankings. Thankfully there are many actions you can take in order to remove the mentioned penalty!

Difference between Google penalties and filters.

In short, google filter is a part of the google’s main algorithm (such as Panda), which can by used to suppress your site on google search results, if the site has low quality in the eyes of Panda (and it is an automated action).
Google penalty is a manual action, rather than automated (which is the case with filters), on the google’s side.

How do i check if my site is affected?

To check if your site has a Google Penalties, please login to Search Console (Webmaster Tools) and navigate to: SEARCH TRAFFIC / MANUAL ACTIONS if you are using the Old Search Console (as shown at the image below).

If you are using the new Search Console, navigate to: SECURITY & MANUAL ACTIONS / MANUAL ACTIONS (take a look at the image below).

Hope this helps you understand Google Penalties (and filters) better!
In the next post, i will show share with you the list of the most common types of Google (filtering) Penalties, and the difference between them. You will also learn how to get rid of them!

Further reading: Learn more about SEO.

Its a known facct that Divi is a very popular wordpress theme, but did you know that you could deactivate the Gutenberg using the theme’s options? If you need to find out more about Gutenberg, please read this article.

Ok, so what you need to make sure is that you have the latest Divi version installer, in order to reactivate the old editor!

Go to your wp dashboard and click on the DIVI tab, which is commonly located to the bottom left of the dashboard.

After that click on the „BUILDER tab“, and then on the „ADVANCED tab“ and activate „Enable Classic Editor button“, as shown on the image below.

If you activate the „Enable The Latest Divi Builder Experience button“, you will still have the old editor activated, but the divi builder interface will be slightly different.

Hope that this article has helped you deactivate Gutenberg, if you don’t wanna use it, for any reason!

If you ahve any questions or suggestions for the subject of my future posts, feel free to leave a comment and share this article on social networks, so that your friends could deactivate Gutenberg with ease (if they are using the Divi theme, which they might be 🙂 ).

You were probably very nervous when you first saw a new wordpress editor on your site?

I guarantee you that you are not the only one, judging by the number of negative comments we can find at almost every step where this editor is mentioned (there are praises as well, to be honest).

The good news is that things do not look as bad as you think!

In this post I will try to clarify and simplify the whole story related to this new wordpress plugin, which has caused so many negative reactions.

I will answer questions related to the definition, alternatives, advantages and disadvantages that accompany this wordpress editor.

Many are wondering if they can use the old editor instead of Gutenberg ?! The answer is YES, as you will soon find out how!

What is Gutenberg?

Gutenberg is a new visual editor (some also call it Block Editor), which replaced the one that we have been used to and used over the years.

Where does the name come from??

This editor is named after Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press. Learn more here.

What is the difference between the old and the new editor?

In addition to a clear visual difference (see the images below), there is a difference in the way it works. While the old editor looked and had the same functionality as Microsoft Word, Gutenberg uses “Drag and Drop” system that allows us to build a “layout” of the page/post faster and allows us to add widgets directly to the page with ease, among other things.

Old WordPress editor

Gutenberg

What to me seems to be the biggest drawback for Gutenberg (looking from a UX perspective) is that it can create a problem for those who use Screen Reader (such as people who have problems with eyesight) while surfing, negatively affecting the sites UX (Accessibility).

How to install Gutenberg?

It’s actually really easy to do, just update the wordpress to the latest version or install the plugin with the same name (if you want to learn how to install the wordpress plugin, I suggest you look at this post).

Can i use the old editor instead of Gutenberg and how?

Of course, you only need to install Clasic Editor Plugin.

Just wanted to go over the basic as i will discuss some specific Gutenberg techniques in detail, in one of the future blog posts 😉

There are several ways, but lets take a look at 2 of them:
1. Using wordpress dashboard
You can achieve this by clicking on the “Appearance / Themes” tab and then click on “Add New” option.

After that a new page will appear, where you can upload your theme from your computer (upload theme button), and it should be in .zip format (or .rar as far as i know). After the upload all you need to do is activate the theme.

You can also install one of the free wordpress themes by typing the themes name in the search form on the same page.

After you choose your theme do not forget to activate it!

2.FTP installation

This option requires a bit more work and an FTP client/program, such as Fillezila as well as the required logins. In this case we do not upload compressed theme(.zip) but rather the extracted folder contained within it. All you need to do then is to upload that folder to your site. The location where you should upload it is the Themes folder (located under WP-CONTENT folder).

Dont forget to activate your theme after the upload!

The chances that you have heard about WordPress are big as it is probably the most popular website management and blogging system out there, with more than 60 million websites being supported by it. Created by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, it was introduced on May 27th, 2003 and since then 32 other versions have been released. An interesting fact is that every version that has been named after a certain jazz artist (Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, just to name several) as WordPress core developers state that they “share a love of jazz music”. The idea of the creators was to associate the software with a printing press, referring to reporters, journalists, columnists, photographers as the press, so the name WordPress was coined by Christine Tremoulet.

Another fun fact is that it didn’t have a logo until 2005 when Santa Maria designed the famous ‘W’ logo.
Almost half of the top 1 million websites in the world are created with WordPress (49%), whereas a mere 5% use Drupal and an even lower 3% use Joomla, which are the closest competitors that WordPress has.
WordPress developer was the most requested job qualification in the world in 2014, and in order to be more accessible to more people around the globe, WordPress is available in more than 72 languages. It has more than 50,000 plugins which allow all web designers and owners plenty of custom functions and features so they can create the desired look of their website or blog.

The list of brands and businesses which use WordPress to power their websites is quite long and it includes giants like: The New York Times, Samsung, eBay Inc., Forbes, Sony, Coca-Cola, etc. The most profitable WordPress companies are Automattic with a revenue of $1.2 billion, Envato with $94 million, and, of course, WPEngine with a revenue of $73 million.
TechCrunch for $30 million, Bankaholic for $15 million, Deadline Hollywood for $14 million, and Wonkette for $12 million are some of the websites powered by WordPress that were sold for huge sums of money.
The facts above show us why WordPress has become the leading open source tool to create a webpage or a blog, used by millions of people and companies in the world.

This excellent infograpic illustrates up to 51 amazing fact you probably did not know about wordpress, so feel free to check it out.

If you have read a post titled “WordPress Plugins”, it is time to learn how to install them. The process of installing WordPress plugins is very simple. At wordpress.org, we can find a large number of free plugins, whereas in other cases there is a free trial version with some options that are included in a premium version, so this way you can test a plugin before you buy it.

The simplest way to install a plugin is by using the Add New option located on the WordPress dashboard

After choosing this option, enter the name of the desired plugin in the search field and select the one you are looking for.
When you find the desired plugin, it is necessary to click the Install button

and thereupon the Activate button as well.

After all this, the plugin will be activated on your website.

Welcome and thank you for the interest shown in this course!

The following chapters are intended for all those who want to learn the basics of WordPress. The whole tutorial is thematically organized and adapted for beginners and non-professionals.

At the very beginning, we will deal with the characteristics and installation of this powerful CMS. This will be followed by creation of pages and blog posts, selection of WordPress themes and plugins… Aside from standard WordPress solutions, I will try to write about things from my personal experience and, using practice-proven techniques, present solutions for various problems that may occur.

I invite you to share your experiences, advice and critics in the comment section, and I will try to respond to all in a timely manner. Once again, bear in mind that the whole tutorial is intended for beginners and therefore don’t be a harsh judge if some things are oversimplified or if there are better, and yet a lot more difficult and complicated solutions, which are not presented here because they cannot be understood by beginners.

Course information:

•  Chapters: 12
• Level: Beginner

WordPress is one of the most popular tools for website development. Based on data published in late March 2017, this CMS (Content Management System) is used in more than 25% of all websites. The reason for this lies partly in a big and loyal community of users, of whom many are also developers who constantly work to improve functions and capabilities of WordPress, its themes and plugins…

Once used solely for blogging, this fantastic CMS is today utilized in almost all types of websites. Due to its popularity, most hosting companies support the famous option of “Installing WordPress in just a few clicks,” knowing that a large number of clients use precisely this CMS.

One of the greatest advantages of WordPress is its simplicity (user friendliness) which enables clients to continue maintaining their websites after completing a simple training or with the help of a user manual. No coding knowledge is needed.

Like any other CMS, WordPress has both certain advantages and shortcomings.

Advantages:

• It’s free
• It’s simple to install and use
• Flexible e-commerce options
• Optimized for mobile devices (this implies utilization of a responsive WordPress theme)
• Supports blogging functionality
• There are many free plugins (for almost every functionality)
• Because of a large community of users, numerous forums and specialized websites are at your disposal where you can get answers to questions related to WordPress…

Shortcomings:

• It requires frequent updates of themes, plugins and WordPress versions
• If you use a premium – and in some cases, also free – theme, the theme settings can be inflexible, which makes it hard for beginners to customize the look and functionality of their websites to their needs
• It is not suitable for large online stores.

Because of its popularity and low system requirements, almost every hosting company supports WordPress and offers ready solutions for its installation. This brings us to the first and the simplest WordPress installation method. You need web hosting in order to implement it.

Option 1: Installing WordPress using Auto Installer

This is one of the easiest and most used installation methods. The proceedings may vary, but these are generalized steps:

• Log in to your Control Panel (hosting cPanel)
• Find the Auto Installer (sometimes it is available as a WordPress icon, and sometimes you must first start Softaculous or some similar application so as to get to the WordPress installer) and run it.
• Some installers display the most popular icons and you can usually find the WordPress icon among them, but if that is not the case, type “WordPress” in the search field.
• After that, you must fill out the data related to the website you are making (URL, language, user name and password (site login), admin email, site title…)
• In the end, press Install. WordPress will soon be installed.

Here are some video tutorial that might help:

Option 2: Manual Installation

You must have heard of the famous “WordPress Five-Minute Installation.” Well, the good news is that the whole thing can also be done in three to four minutes :). The process is quite simple and all you need is the latest (if possible) version of WordPress and FTP client (or a file manager in case that you don’t want to do this via FTP client).

If you haven’t already done so, download the latest version of WordPress from wordpress.org. Once the download is finished, upload the files to the desired destination (website root), be it public_html or some subdomain. To upload, you can use FTP or a Hosting cPanel.

Required fields for database setup

WordPress keeps its data in a MySQL database, so one must be created for that purpose. Most hosting cPanels have a MySQL database field where you can create a new database. At one point, the Auto Installer will require certain data related to the newly-created database (database name, user, password, database host (in most cases, it is enough to enter “localhost,” but there are exceptions) and prefix tables).

If the entered data are correct, the installation will be successfully completed. The only thing left to do now is to log in with the data you entered during the installation process. The login address is:

http://www.vašdomen.com/wp-admin  or  http://www.vašdomen.com/wp-login.php

WordPress can also be installed on your machine. This is mostly done with the help of programs such as WAMP, XAMPP, LAMP, Bitnami…
If you want to find out more about the installation of WordPress on your local machine, check out the following tutorials:

using WAMP

using XAMPP

using BITNAMI