Bulletproof Blogger Chronological Archives
2016 Posts
Duplicate Content: How to Banish It From Your Site Forever
By Alec Watson |
A couple of days ago I stumbled across the Problogger podcast with Darren Rowse. I followed Problogger in the past, but in the past couple of years visited the site intermittently – to the point that I didn’t even know they had a podcast. I’m so glad I “rediscovered” them. With a new, completely redesigned …
Read More Duplicate Content: How to Banish It From Your Site Forever Read More »
How To Optimize Your Blog Posts – 4 Secrets To Success
By Alec Watson |
What does it mean to “optimize your blog posts”? Like many bloggers, I didn’t appreciate completely what it meant to have an “optimized” blog post. Most new bloggers focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I did it too. But here’s the way I approach it now. In the beginning, my goal was to create SEO-friendly …
Read More How To Optimize Your Blog Posts – 4 Secrets To Success Read More »
How to Write Successful Headlines and Get Read
By Alec Watson |
Do you want to learn to write successful headlines for your blog and social media posts? So do I! For the next week or so I’m taking a deep dive to learn as much as I can . . . and I'll be sharing what I learned with you. In the meantime, these are five of …
Read More 
How to Use Apple Dictation to Boost Your Blogging
By Alec Watson |
In my last post, I showed you how you could use dictation in Google Docs to transcribe your blog posts. However, I wasn’t satisfied with Google Docs despite the accuracy and speed of the transcription. I’m not a big user of Google apps, except for the occasional spreadsheet or document. Learn how you can produce …
Read More How to Use Apple Dictation to Boost Your Blogging Read More »
How to Triple Your Blogging Output with Dictation
By Alec Watson |
Are you a writing “multi-tasker”? Do you fall into the trap of editing while you’re writing? It’s one of the biggest challenges most writers face. I know I suffer from it. The most often cited words of advice in the world for writers is, “DON’T WRITE AND EDIT AT THE SAME TIME! Yet, I still …
Read More How to Triple Your Blogging Output with Dictation Read More »
2015 Posts
How to Optimize Your WordPress Site Structure
By Alec Watson |
My last article covered the basics of WordPress search engine optimization (SEO). The bottom line for SEO — make it as easy as possible for search engines to discover and index your content and, in turn, drive relevant traffic to your site. Once SEO has done its job, your WordPress site structure takes over. Your site …
Read More 
How to Get Started with WordPress SEO – Easy First Steps
By Alec Watson |
Get started with WordPress SEO now! If you have just started a new blog or are thinking about starting one, Stop! Stop, what you’re doing and take some time to get acquainted with SEO — search engine optimization. Taking a little time now to think about SEO can save you a lot in the future. …
Read More How to Get Started with WordPress SEO – Easy First Steps Read More »
How to Get Unstuck – Inspiration for Your First Blog Post
By Alec Watson |
So, you completed the ‘famous WordPress 5-minute Install’. Now, what? Are you staring at a blank screen and thinking about writing your first blog post? But what should it be? What’s the headline? Are you stuck? All the experts tell you that you need to write epically awesome killer content to succeed. Thanks, that's not really …
Read More How to Get Unstuck – Inspiration for Your First Blog Post Read More »
Creating WordPress Images: The Ultimate Toolkit for Awesome
By Alec Watson |
As a blogging solopreneur, your time is valuable. You do it all to keep your business running as efficiently as possible, without sacrificing quality. You are the web designer, chief content creator, art director, head of marketing, social media strategist and much more. Blogging as a business is a constant struggle to find and maintain …
Read More Creating WordPress Images: The Ultimate Toolkit for Awesome Read More »
How to Point Your Hover Domain to Your Bluehost Account
By Alec Watson |
If you used Hover.com as your domain registrar and Bluehost as your web hosting service, this tutorial will show how to ‘point' your domain to Bluehost. The process is very easy, but this page is long you show you where each action is taken on Hover and Bluehost. Step 1: Login to your Hover account …
Read More How to Point Your Hover Domain to Your Bluehost Account Read More »
How To Build Your Digital Mind Palace
By Alec Watson |
In my last post, I laid out the creative advantages and power of swipe files. So, I know you’re thinking … swipe files, there’s nothing new, sexy, inspiring or glamorous about them. I get it. I feel the same way. But let's face it, there’s nothing exciting about most tools. Welcome to the Mind Palace …
Read More 
How to Break Through Your Creativity Block
By Alec Watson |
One of the most powerful techniques to unleash your creativity, overcome your creativity block, writers’ block, artists’ block or just that general feeling of being stuck in a creative prison, is the use of a swipe file. A swipe file is a collection of tested and proven advertising and sales letters. Keeping a swipe file …
Read More 
How to Create Picture Perfect Twitter Image Posts
By Alec Watson |
We’ve all seen them. Hastily posted Twitter images. Words partially or completely cropped out of the image. Unreadable quotes. Mangled images. I’ve been guilty of posting them myself — not understanding how Twitter processes an image. It was frustrating. After all, if the author or designer couldn’t take the time to produce an attractive image, …
Read More How to Create Picture Perfect Twitter Image Posts Read More »
How To Do Reliable WordPress Backups Fast and Free
By Alec Watson |
Sooner or later it’s going to happen. Your WordPress site is going to crash. Do you have a plan in place? If not, I’m going to recommend two backup plugins that will automatically backup your WordPress site. Best of all both of them are free. Why just two recommendations? You don’t need a dozen possible …
Read More How To Do Reliable WordPress Backups Fast and Free Read More »
Full-Width EZ Homepage with Dynamik Website Builder
By Alec Watson |
The Dynamik Website Builder (DWB), a Genesis child theme and child theme builder, allows you to build customized website layouts. Want to create quickly a full-width and responsive, single page website site or landing page? DWB’s EZ Homepage menu can do 95% that for you. With just a few mouse clicks, you’ll have a fully widgetized …
Read More Full-Width EZ Homepage with Dynamik Website Builder Read More »
Get Creative with the Dynamik Website Builder
By Alec Watson |
If you aren’t happy with your website theme and want to have more control over its look, structure and feel, then Cobalt Apps Dynamik Website Builder (DWB) might be for you. Why should you consider using Dynamik Website Builder Here are 7 reasons why you should consider DWB: You want to have full control over …
Read More 
10 Essential Books for Freelancers and Entrepreuers
By Alec Watson |
I just started reading Claudia Altucher’s new book, Become an Idea Machine. She’s married to James Altucher, author, entrepreneur and probably the most transparent person in America, sometimes painfully so. If you don’t follow his writing, you should. You can start here. Both Claudia and James have a daily practice to come up with 10 …
Read More 10 Essential Books for Freelancers and Entrepreuers Read More »
Getting Productive with 5 Essential Chrome Extensions
By Alec Watson |
Like many, Google Chrome is my web browser of choice. I use it for 90% of my work and research online. Though I do use Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera, I do so in connection with website design and development. I use over 70 different extensions, but today I thought I would highlight my …
Read More Getting Productive with 5 Essential Chrome Extensions Read More »
My Content Curation Workflow
By Alec Watson |
Let's Create Some Curated Content All bloggers and writers know that information management is critical to our creative productivity. Today, I’m sharing the process I use to collect, organize, evaluate, sort and share original and curated content with my readers. Of course, it almost goes without saying that any content curation workflow is a work in …
Read More 
Pushing Through the Creative Resistance
By Alec Watson |
I’m in the throes of writing a longer article for publication on this site later this week. In preparing it, I came across this quote that Ryan Holiday used in one of his articles last year. The quote is from Ira Glass of NPR’s This American Life. It stuck with me. It reminded me of …
Read More 
How To Find Your Passion
By Alec Watson |
Do what you love. Find your passion. Follow your bliss. Such phrases are common advice from career coaches and life coaches to the question, ‘What's the secret of life?” Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. OK, you’re saying to yourself. I’m in. I get it. Yuh, but how …
Read More 
Getting Ruthless, Big Design and a Portfolio Life
By Alec Watson |
It’s been a few weeks since my last article and I’ve made a few changes in my routine that will have a huge impact on this site. Previously, I was managing a second site that took up some of my time. It wasn’t the time so much that was the concern, but rather the content …
Read More Getting Ruthless, Big Design and a Portfolio Life Read More »
How to Streamline Your Blogging Workflow with Blogo
By Alec Watson |
Blogo, a blogging app designed for the Mac, has the potential to streamline your blogging workflow in WordPress. So just what is a workflow? Simply put it's nothing more than the series of steps necessary to complete a task. Efficient workflows are the life's blood of a writer. They can be the difference between success and failure. …
Read More How to Streamline Your Blogging Workflow with Blogo Read More »
10 Useful Genesis Plugins to Customize Your WordPress Platform
By Alec Watson |
In an earlier article, I recommended the best way for WordPress beginners to add simple customization in order to tweak the look of their WordPress theme. In this article, I’ll tell you about 10 useful plugins for users of the Genesis Framework. As you know Genesis is the framework I use for building WordPress sites. …
Read More 10 Useful Genesis Plugins to Customize Your WordPress Platform Read More »
How To Upgrade Your WordPress Site Search
By Alec Watson |
A few months ago I listened to a podcast by Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. He talked with Dan Norris of WPCurve about the common mistakes people make using WordPress and how to avoid them. I highly recommend listening to it. The interview runs about an hour, but it is time well spent. I …
Read More 
Easy WordPress Customization
By Alec Watson |
When it comes to customizing the look of your WordPress theme you have a dizzying array of options. Some are suitable for first-time WordPress users. Others are for intermediate to advanced designers and developers. In this article I’m focused on the best WordPress customization option for first-time users. Working Assumptions First, I’ll assume you did your due …
Read More How to Create Your First WordPress Page
By Alec Watson |
The process to create a WordPress page is nearly identical to creating a post. The page window uses the same WordPress editor as the post window. To create your first page select Pages > Add New from the WordPress Dashboard. This will open the editor as shown below. You can see the layout very similar to creating a post. …
Read More How to Install WordPress Plugins
By Alec Watson |
WordPress plugins allow you to expand the functionality and features of your website. Plugins can speed-up your website and make it more security. They can expand design features make easier to customize the layout and appearance of your site. They allow you to add forms to your site. They give you the capability to operate a paid membership website. …
Read More How to Publish Your First WordPress Post
By Alec Watson |
In the previous articles in this series you have installed and configured WordPress and installed both your back-up and security plugins. Now it's time to publish your first WordPress post. Writing and publishing a post or article is easy and intuitive. Adding a post is much like creating a new document in a word processor. …
Read More WordPress Security and Backup
By Alec Watson |
As mentioned in a previous post in this series, there are thousands of WordPress plugins to choose from when adding new features and functionality to your website. Wordpress security and backup plugins should be at the top of your list. The two I'm recommending here are absolutely critical. Both are free, though each offers a …
Read More How to Install a WordPress Theme
By Alec Watson |
So, you've selected your new WordPress theme. If you've chosen to use one of the pre-installed ‘official' WordPress themes you can skip down to Step 3 to activate your theme. If you've elected to use a 3rd-party free, standard paid theme or a premium theme framework, such as Genesis or Thesis, I'll show you how to install …
Read More How to Choose a WordPress Theme
By Alec Watson |
A WordPress theme is simply a set of files that define the layout, structure, appearance and features of your website. When you first install WordPress it comes with a few default themes. The WordPress 2015 theme is the most recent theme package in WordPress Version 4.1. These default themes tend to be quite limited in functionality, …
Read More Configuring WordPress General Settings
By Alec Watson |
WordPress General Settings allow you to change basic features about your blog such as the name of the site, your site description or tagline, the site's primary email address and your timezone. To change the General Settings of your site go to your WordPress Dashboard. Select Settings => General and make any changes as needed. Warning: You …
Read More Configuring WordPress Permalinks
By Alec Watson |
One of your goals as a blogger is to attract and retain readership. In order to do that you want optimize your page and post descriptions so Google can quickly identify and classify essential information about your site, the subject and content of those posts and pages. One method for ‘assisting' Google is to create descriptive …
Read More How to Set Up WordPress Usernames
By Alec Watson |
Let's take a few minutes to address how to set up your WordPress usernames. Usernames can pose a significant security vulnerability in WordPress. To minimize your chance of being hacked follow these simple rules: Never use ‘Admin' as a user name. Always use strong passwords. Severely limit the number of users with an ‘Administrator' role …
Read More How to Install WordPress
By Alec Watson |
Now that you have your domain name and hosting service we’ll head back to Bluehost to install WordPress on your new site. Step 1: Select Login on the Bluehost homepage. Step 2: Use your Account Credentials to login to the Main Dashboard for your Bluehost account: Step 3: Navigate to the Main Features on the Dashboard an select …
Read More How to Buy Web Hosting for Your New Blog
By Alec Watson |
If you chose to purchase your domain name from my favored domain registrar, Hover Inc., congratulations!! You’re now ready to buy your hosting service. So how do you buy web hosting for your new blog? I’m going to recommend a specific provider to you and walk you through the complete purchase process. As a matter of …
Read More How to Select and Buy Your Domain Name
By Alec Watson |
Choosing a domain name, e.g www.example.com, is one the most important decisions you will make in building your website. Finding just the right name — one that reflects your purpose, brand or personality — can be a frustrating process. Keep the following in mind when your select and buy your domain name: Choose a ‘.com’ domain …
Read More How to Build Your Bulletproof Blog | An Introduction
By Alec Watson |
Welcome to How to Build Your Bulletproof Blog, a series of articles designed to guide you through the essential steps of setting up a new self-hosted WordPress website. It will cover: Choosing and buying your domain name; How to buy your hosting service; How to install and configure WordPress; How to select and install a WordPress …
Read More How to Build Your Bulletproof Blog | An Introduction Read More »
The Optimal Blog Post Kills Creativity
By Alec Watson |
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated ― Confucius This post by Seth Godin is 55 words. It is simple. Concise. It is a plan of action. Many blog posts of considerably greater length don't deliver this kind of clarity and direction. Many people will read it because Seth wrote it, but …
Read More 2014 Posts
The Art of Social Media by Guy Kawasaki : A Review
By Alec Watson |
If you are using social media in your business, ‘The Art of Social Media‘ by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick, should be sitting next to your computer. It's an indispensable guide packed full of tactics, tips and resources to manage your social media networks like a pro. You could read and follow dozens of social media …
Read More The Art of Social Media by Guy Kawasaki : A Review Read More »
How to Maximize WordPress Page Speed
By Alec Watson |
Updated November 20, 2015: Since publishing this post, I now use WP Rocket, a premium caching plugin. WP Rocket provides a superior result, an extremely streamlined configuration, and doesn't need any additional plugins to achieve great performance. WP Rocket costs $39 and is well worth the value. However, if you are very cost conscious, the method …
Read More Free Genesis Theme for Newsletter Subscribers
By Alec Watson |
I'm offering a free Genesis child theme for new subscribers who sign up for my newsletter. I expect to publish the first issue in January 2015. The bi-monthly newsletter will provide readers with fresh content that will not be published on the website. It will include a feature story related to website design and development or material related to blogging, …
Read More Purchasing Your Website Domain Name
By Alec Watson |
This is the first in a series of articles on building a platform that matters based my lessons-learned building and managing websites. If you are getting ready to build your first website, the first step in the process is going to be acquiring a domain name and finding a hosting service. In this article, I'll cover a …
Read More 
7 Essential WordPress Plugins for Your New Website
By Alec Watson |
So, you have your new WordPress site. You’re excited to write and publish your first article. Stop!! Before you begin writing, step back and let’s do a little housekeeping and make sure your new website is going to run smoothly for many months to come. Adding these plugins will save you a lot of frustration, …
Read More 7 Essential WordPress Plugins for Your New Website Read More »