Search Engine Optimization – SEO Help

So you want to start a Blog to promote your website

A lot of people have been doing blogs to promote their web sites for years. The search engines love blogs. The  reason is Blogs mean News. New NEWS. Old news is bad New NEWS is good. So of course they index blogs a lot  faster then anything else because they don’t want Old NEWS listed, they want NEW NEWS to show up.  LoL ok  enough… you get the point.

So you decide to jump on the old bandwagon and try your luck. Of course you have been to a blog and read them  and maybe you have written notes on facebook or used the blog feature at MySpace but now you are ready to do  your own.

There are several different software packages to consider. Today I am only going to go into the details of Word Press  as it appears to be the most popular and the easiest to install. It also has a lot of plugins that can be added to help  you out in the search engines.

So how do we get started. There are 2 ways to install it. I prefer to just buy a new domain name and run only the blog  on that site. The other way is to take an existing domain and create a subdirectory there to hold the blog.

From a pure search engine standpoint the stand alone version on it’s own domain will work a lot better, although you  may want to get started using it on an existing domain.

Either way to get started just go to http://wordpress.org/ and download the current stable version. If this is your first  real blog attempt don’t even think about the beta versions. As of the writing of this article the most stable version is  listed on their web sites main page as version 2.7.1

Download it in either zip or tar format, whichever is more comfortable you use and then just copy it into your web  root directory if you are doing a stand alone install or into the subdirectory you want it in if you are using an existing  site.

Ok now you need to create a database in your MySql directory where the program will install all the tables for you. So  just call it WordPress or really anything you want to name it. Create a user for the database and give them all  privileges and rights to the database.

Next you will see a file that needs to be modified. It is called  wp-config-sample.php.

Open this file in the text editor of your choice (notepad or wordpad are both fine) and edit a couple lines of code  there.

// ** MySQL settings – You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define(’DB_NAME’, ‘dbasename‘);

You will enter the name of the database you created above where it says dbasename

/** MySQL database username */
define(’DB_USER’, ‘username‘);

next replace username with the database user you created

/** MySQL database password */
define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ‘password’);

then put in that users password.

/** MySQL hostname */
define(’DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’);

This is sometimes a bit more complex but typically it will be localhost however if you are using Godaddy or another  large hosting provider they may have a designated database server and you will need the server address from them.   Sometimes an IP address is used instead of a name. If localhost doesn’t work just contact your hosting provider and  they can tell you what you need here.

This is really the only thing you have to do to get it running but there is one more advanced feature I would like you  to know about. This is how to run multiple blogs under the same database name.

This is good for some limited hosting plans that only allow you to create a small number of databases or charge you  for each database created. This way you only have one database but can run an unlimited number of blogs under it.

Near the bottom of the sample file you will find this code:

* WordPress Database Table prefix.
*
* You can have multiple installations in one database if you give each a unique
* prefix. Only numbers, letters, and underscores please!
*/
$table_prefix  = ‘wp_‘;

For each blog just change the table prefix to a different value. I usually use either the name of the blog.. like “fishing”  or just increment it up by one for each blog I set up for example wp-1 and wp-2 and wp-3 and so on. This is a really  neat feature to have. I prefer to use names though because in the event I need to fix something in the database tables  or manupulate it somehow I can see the files named fishing a lot easier then I can relate fishing to wp-17, although if  you are an organized person, which I am not, you can have a chart to see which one is which.

Ok now we just save this sample file as   wp-config.php and copy it into our main directory where the blog is located.

That’s pretty much it. You then go to the page in your web browser. The program will see that it is a new install and  just create everything it needs to do to set it up. You may be asked a couple questions like your email address so if  you forget the password it gives you for admin that it can email it to you.

Other then that you are done with the initial install.
WAIT… Before you do anything else now it is time to choose your THEME. This is not only the look of the site but  choosing the correct theme will help you in the search engines. I personally have had pretty good results with both  the Langit Theme from http://blog.eches.net/themes/ and also the ProSense Blue and Grey available at  http://www.doshdosh.com/prosense-adsense-ready-seo-theme/

Once you have chosen your theme you just download it and copy it to the /wp-content/themes directory. Then you  go to your admin dashboard and choose that theme from the Appearance option there.

We aren’t quite done yet. If you want to get maximum exposure from the search engines we also need to down load a  few plugins. Plugins work just about like themes except they get copied into the /wp-content/plugins directory.

The first one you will want to download is called HeadSpace2 it allows you to add custom titles, descriptions and tab  or keywords to each of your postings, categories and pages. The search engines love this. You can download  Headspace2 at http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/.

The next plugin you will want is the Google XML Sitemaps. This builds your xml sitemap each time a post, link,  category or comment is posted to the site. Then it pings that out to the major engines to let them know your site was  updated.

When you do this make sure you follow the link in the install area of this plugin and get your Yahoo developers code.  This can then be pasted into the plugin so that Yahoo will accept the notification of the update to your site. You can  download this plugin at:  http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sitemap-home/.

The last plugin I recommend as a must have is the Simple:Press Forum plugin. It is available for download at:  http://simplepressforum.com/. This allows you to make a forum a part of your blog. It really is neat. You set up forum  topics to mirror your category postings and then each time you post to the blog it will automatically create a forum  post too.

If you are worried about having to manage comments you may want to lock down the forum but I don’t do that. I  allow anyone to post but then I go in once a week and just delete all the spam in mass.

Once you download all the plugins and copy them to your server just go to the plugin option of your admin  dashboard and each of them will basically walk you through their activation.

Then go you your Settings option and make sure you have your options for RSS feeds turned on. The only other  advice that I feel is a must have is a good ping list of where it broadcasts your updates to. Currently I am using the  list below:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

(I have been using this list for several months so if you notice any of these no longer are valid or know of ones I don’t  have here please let me know.)

You can copy this list in at the bottom of the SETTINGS  – WRITING menu of your admin dashboard.

Now you will need to take some time to setup categories and forums and determine what you want the search  engines to see. Practice makes perfect so just play with things until you get used to them. Go one feature or plugin at  a time.

Then go look at your post and then look at the source code of the page to see what the Search Engines are seeing  too.

I use blogs a lot to promote most all my new sites. They work really good with all sites but particulary well with hard  to get indexed adult oriented and pharmacy sites. Posting the drug info sheets to the blog and then pointing a link  from the blog post to the actual page on the site for that particular drug and then add links in the link section for both  the pharmacy sites main page and also the order form for that particular medication.

This can also be used for catalog type sites. If you are selling toys to tractor parts and anything else you can start a  blog using the item description as the blog post and then link to that items page from both within the blogs main post  and also from the links section.

As an example I got a pharmacy listing to a PR2 in 3 weeks doing this and some front page listings. I can’t wait to see  what I get from it over time.

Well this should get you started. If you need an specific help please just shoot me an email at dively.joe@gmail.com.  Also please visit Links are Blue (http://linksareblue.com) for more help with Search Engines and Promoting your website.

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I suggets wordpress is best option which can attach with the current website. I feel blog which ur creating will be regulary updated. one more thing you can do is have page it self in website which act as blog.