Optimizing Your Blog Part 3

By Peter Wolfing www.blogtoolbox.com

Optimizing Wordpress

Now let’s optimize your blog for the Search Engines.

Essential Wordpress Plug-ins

Plug-ins is like little applications that allow you to do different things on your blog. Some are very helpful with SEO, some allow your visitors to interact with you more, and some can automate your content for you.

In order to find plug-ins go to Wordpress.org

http:// wordpress.org/extend/plugins

Here is where you can find all sorts of plugins to suit your needs. You can also find lots more if you just do a Google search. Most are free but some are paid.

Here is a list of essential plugins I recommend you install:

All In One SEO Pack – this helps you to automate SEO for every blog post you make

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Google XML Sitemaps – this helps to build a sitemap for you and also pings Google every time you make a change or a new post. This is really useful in getting your blog indexed quickly.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

Sociable – this adds social bookmarking buttons to your posts so your visitors can easily bookmark your content.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable

You will download them as a zip file, but unlike when you download a theme, don’t unzip them.

1) In your Dashboard go to ‘Plugins’ and click on ‘Add New’.

2) Click ‘Upload’ at the top

3) Click ‘Choose File’ and find (e.g., located on your desktop) the plug-in you want to upload and click ‘Install Now’. When you select the plug-in from your computer, remember you don’t need to unzip it, just upload the zipped version.

4) Click ‘Activate’

Permalinks

In order to get better SEO, we need to change the permalinks so that the title of each blog post will be included in the URL.

e.g. from this: www.yourwebsite.com/?p=40

to this: www.yourwebsite.com/lose-weight-with-raw-food/

which is much more search engine friendly.

1) Log into your blog, go to ‘Settings’ and select ‘Permalinks’.

2) Select ‘Customer Structure’ and enter /%postname%/ into the field:

Privacy Settings

Next, you need to make sure your privacy settings are on the right settings in order to get better SEO. Go to ‘Settings’ and click on ‘Privacy’.

Useful Widgets

Widgets can be useful not only for SEO purposes, but also to make your site more user-friendly and easier to navigate.

1) Go to ‘Appearance’ and click on ‘Widgets’.

Here you will find all the Widgets you can use in your blog.

Categories and Recent Posts– this is good for SEO and is also helpful to your visitors in terms of site navigation

Recent Comments – gives your visitors some social proof that other people are interested in you blog, and this helps add a sense of community.

Links – you can add your favorite links, or affiliate links, or trade links with other blogs in your niche.

Text – you can put html in this code and can use it for all sorts of things. You can put in an opt in box, affiliate banners, videos etc.

Search Box – makes your blog easier to navigate for your visitors

My Blog Log – shows avatars of recent visitors to you blog and really helps to create a sense of community. It’s not provided in your dashboard already, so you’ll have to download it.

Full installation and set up details can be found here:

http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/community/com_widget_wp.php

To put these widgets in your blog, simply drag them from the left hand side and put them in the box you want on the right hand sidebar.

I hope you enjoyed this blog article regarding your blog.

Peter Wolfing