The following article was written by Ryan from Blogging4Everyone dot Com.

Page Rank should be made a thing of the past. I am a blogger, who blogs for the pure fact that my blogs are fun for me to maintain. I NEVER feel obligated to blog on a day where I am sick, too busy, etc, as long as it doesn’t keep happening day after day.

I have had Page Rank on numerous blogs sucked away by Google. Sure, I deserved it. I admit I did PayPerPost on my blogs and I didn’t make it nofollow. However, PayPerPost slapped me back in the face with a wet noodle when they told me I had to have X page rank to take an opportunity.

Great news however from PayPerPost. Ted Murphy, IZEA’s president(PPP’s parent company) has announced that Page Rank has been eliminated from their new product, Social Spark. Blogs with bigger communities and more traffic will benefit under Social Spark, according to Murphy. Ted Murphy also disclosed that they are kicking Page Rank out of the current PayPerPost system after their new product, Social Spark is live.

Alright, so maybe that is just one reason to get rid of Page Rank. Here are some more;

• Bloggers shouldn’t feel tied to a mythical number
• Bloggers shouldn’t have to be pressured to conform
• Blogging should be your choices, and your choices alone.

The list goes on and on. However, the point remains, Google has the money. Will you let them continue to tie you down with Page Rank or will you base your blog on something better. Your community, traffic and I thank you!

A while back I was featured on Weblog Tools Collection for my post on Ten Reasons to Choose Wordpress. Well, I don’t want to beat a dead horse and copy over ten reasons, but here are three great reasons that make Wordpress the best.

3. Wordpress is FREE!
That’s right you can get one of the most versatile blogging platforms for FREE. Why on Earth would you not use something that could let you express yourself, let you earn some extra cash, and that is FREE. Wordpress has far less problems than any other blog software that I have used and has a great support community that is also FREE.

2. Wordpress is SIMPLE!
Whenever you want to do anything, you want it to be as simple as possible. This is why Wordpress makes it easy to install with help available if you need it. They provide detailed instructions and even videos to show how to install it. Plus, when it comes time to upgrade/maintain it, all you have to do is delete the old files and add in the new ones, no messing with your data, it stays safe in the database!

1. Wordpress is all around YOU!
Wordpress is everyone on the internet today, according to Weblog Tools Collection, it is used on 0.8% on the internet. Who knows how much further that could go. Everyone from famous baseball players to Harvard students use Wordpress.

Hope you enjoyed my shortened list. To check out more of my Wordpress and Blogging related ramblings visit me at Krispy Blogs and Blogging 4 Everyone. Take care everyone.

If you are smart about how you use tagging (now natively supported in Wordpress 2.3!), you can land on the first few pages of Google results. I have done this a couple of times when I covered a story about Kyla Ebbert and another about Melinda England.

.

Whenever you post a story, you should always tag your posts with the a couple key things. All People, Places, Companies, should be tagged. PPC, easy enough to remember right? If you tag more than a key amount of PPC items, you run the risk of Google thinking you are trying to tag your entire article. DO NOT DO THIS. This is why Google has a spider, which you can tell to visit your site daily via the robots.txt file if you want to.

Also, use search friendly urls. This helps you get Google to recognize what in the world you are talking about. Google can’t see what http://asfjnkfas.com/?p=283 is from the url but it can see http:/sasfhadfs.com?p=customurlthatcanbesetupinwordpressadminpanelbutdonotmakeittoolong.

This is where upgrading to Wordpress 2.3 will really put you ahead of the competition, so if you have not upgrade, upgrade today! If you follow all these steps, you might not have as successful traffic as getting 759 Google hits for one article, but you definitely will have SOME increase in your traffic. You’d be amazed what a little tagging can do!

Ryan

With the new version of Wordpress being released this past Monday, this week might be your first chance to upgrade. Here are a few tips to help you with the process. First off, if you are one of those bloggers who procrastinates doing site maintenance, this is a very easy process and will take between 5-30 minutes depending on FTP speed. Second, don’t forget to backup your wp-content folder, because if you lose that, you lose all your uploaded pictures, themes, plug-ins, basically the flare of your blog!

Wordpress has a codex document that spells out how to upgrade if you do not know how. I highly recommend backing up your database as they suggest, also why not install a automated backup plugin at the same time to save yourself in case your site ever crashes?

The most obvious reason to upgrade Wordpress is that your admin interface will get a couple nifty new tools such as Google incoming links, and the ability to sort posts more efficiently. Scheduling posts is much easier in 2.3 and any blogger who hasn’t used them should be sure to in 2.3. It is really amazing at the rate you can manage your posts with 2.3! You also have the ability to tag, which is a key element of Web 2.0! Oh, and Matt don’t forget to upgrade Blog About Your Blog as I see while writing this post that you are still using 2.2. I will try to help you if you have any questions about upgrading, just drop and give me a comment.

This post was written by Ryan of Krispy Blogs.