After careful consideration, I have decided to postpone the development of this blog in order to pursue the development of some other projects that are very important to me. In the meantime, I will leave this blog up for anyone who finds the existing information helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

The following video is an excellent tutorial on setting up your WordPress blog to automatically create SEO friendly URLs.

This is one of the most important, and also one of the easiest, things you can do to get your blog noticed by search engines. If you haven’t done it already, please watch this video and make the change to your WordPress permalinks. You’ll be glad you did.

In my last post, we talked about how to choose your list of keywords. Now it’s time to learn what to do with that list.

When you write an article, choose which category your article falls under. Consult your keyword list and chose the keyword phrase that matches the category and the article you are writing. That is the keyword phrase you will optimize that article for.  Your keyword phrase should go in the meta keywords tag for the article and should also be used in the article content itself.

Use the following guidelines:

• Try to use the keyword phrase in your title if it can be done in a logical and appealing way.
• Whenever possible, use the keyword phrase as part of your article’s URL
• Use the keyword phrase in subtitles and headers wherever possible
• Sprinkle your keyword phrase throughout the article, especially in the first paragraph. If you can work it into the first sentence without being awkward, do so.

The goal is to use enough keywords to get the search bots to recognize your keywords and rank your page as relevant to those words, without making the article awkward and/or useless to the reader. Never choose optimization over your reader. It doesn’t do any good to get readers to your blog if they can’t make sense of what you’ve written when they get there.

Write first for your reader and then, when you have a well-written article that provides valuable information, you can go back and optimize for your keywords by inserting them in places that make sense without altering the original value and readability of the article. Do this well, post after post, and, before you know it, you’ll be an expert at SEO and you’ll begin to see your traffic rise right along with your search engine ranking.

What are SEO keywords?

Keywords are words or phrases a person types into the search box when using a search engine like Google or yahoo to find information. SEO Keywords are the words and phrases YOU use to get your blog to rank well in the search results when a person searches for information using those same words and phrases.

Why are SEO keywords important?

Because, if you want your blog to show up in search results, preferably as close to the top as possible, you need to effectively use your keywords to get the search engines to match your blog to that topic.

The first step in this process is to figure out what the best keywords are for your blog.

Make a list of words and phrases YOU think the average person would use to search for the information on your blog. Then, go to family and friends. Tell them the general purpose of your blog and ask them to list the words or phrases THEY would use if they were looking for the information on your blog. If you’re gutsy enough, try interviewing some strangers as well. This is a great way to find out what real readers will search for instead of what you think they will search for. The purpose of this research is to find as many keyword phrases as possible that match both your blogs topic AND actual phrases people use to search for your information.

Once you have a good-sized list to work with, it’s time to review all your options, narrow down the list and select the keyword phrases you are going to use for your blog. It’s a good idea to have a final list of several related, but not identical, keyword phrases. This way, your blog can compete for ranking in several areas. Over time, you will be able to see which keyword phrases give you the best ranking and draw you the most qualified visitors and you can use that information to further focus your keywords and your blog.

When narrowing down your list, keep in mind the following mistakes to avoid:

• Choose Keyword phrases containing 2 to 4 words. Don’t select single word terms, especially if they are highly competitive and dominated by larger, more popular websites. You won’t able to compete effectively for these terms and are unlikely to make any progress with them. It’s better to focus your efforts in areas where you can compete effectively and get good results.
• Don’t make your keywords too broad. If your blog is about employment tax law, do not select “tax law” as one of your keyword phrases. You’ll end up competing with sites that cover every type of tax law. Instead, focus on “employment tax law.” This narrows your competition to the specific topic you cover and will result in more qualified traffic. The people who end up on your blog are there because they were looking for the topic you cover.
• On the other hand, don’t make your terms too specific or too technical. If you narrow your keywords too tightly or use words that are unfamiliar to the average person, people won’t search using your phrases and your blog will show up in fewer results, possibly not at all.
• Don’t pick just one or two phrases for your entire blog. Instead, you should first pick one or two phrases that cover your topic in general to be used in the meta keywords tag for your homepage. Then you should pick one or two keyword phrases for each category on your blog to be used for optimizing your content each time you write an article.

You should now have  enough information to get started on creating your keyword list. Your keywords are the foundation of SEO, so I recommend that you to take some time and choose them carefully. Get as much feedback as possible from a variety of people and keep refining your list until you find the right keywords to describe both your blog’s topic and your ideal reader’s search words.

In my next post, I’ll teach you how to use your keyword list to optimize your content and your blog for best results.

Do you get one of those cartoon halos full of question marks circling your forehead every time you see the word “SEO?” Do you get completely lost trying to figure it all out?

Don’t feel bad. I know I did and sometimes I still do. SEO can be very confusing and it’s not made any easier by the tons of conflicting information out there. You just want to post on your blog and have people show up to read it and maybe click on some ads or buy a few things. You weren’t planning to spend hours wading through complicated information that makes a college degree look like kindergarten.

That’s where I come in. My goal is to take all the information out there, condense it together and explain it to you in simple, easy terms, so you can do what you set out to do, build and promote your blog.

The first step in this process is to explain what SEO is and why it’s important to bother learning about it at all.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the process of making small changes to your blog that will improve its visibility on search engines and increase the amount of targeted traffic to your blog.

Why is this important to you? One reason… Readers! A blog without readers may as well be a journal in your nightstand. Bloggers need readers. Lots and lots of them. Every day.

You can get readers using other methods like commenting on forums, commenting on other blogs, submitting your blog to directories and using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, but search engine traffic still is and always will be extremely important.

Why? Because a reader who ends up on your blog through a search engine is not just a curiosity visit from someone who clicked your link somewhere and decided to take a look. They’re there because your blog matched something specific they were looking for and if you meet their expectations and provide the answers they seek, they’ll not only stick around, they’ll tell their friends about you, too.

Once you get past all the confusion, SEO isn’t really all that difficult and the results are worth the effort. Over the next few posts, we’ll go over SEO in more detail and learn some of the basics to get your blog noticed.

WordPress is an amazing piece of blogging software. Unfortunately, its popularity and open source code make it a prime target for hackers and other troublemakers. Also, over time, WordPress can become bogged down by plugins and an ever-growing database size, which can affect the speed and performance of your blog. Because of these issues, I believe every WordPress installation should include at least these 5 plugins.

1. Limit Login Attempts

   Limit Login Attempts does exactly what it says it will. It prevents a hacker from using brute force attacks, a method of hacking which tries login after login until finding one that works, to break into WordPress. Limit Login Attempts will lock out an IP address after a certain number of failed login attempts and send you an email alerting you that a lockout has occurred. You have complete control over how many failed logins to allow and how long a lockout should occur.

2. Secure WordPress

   Secure WordPress helps to secure your WordPress installation by removing information that WordPress displays by default on your blog and in your admin section, such as your current WordPress version and plugin information. Hackers can use these pieces of information to figure out what kind of vulnerabilities you might have. Hiding the information won’t stop hackers, but it’ll make it harder for them to figure out the best way to break into YOUR blog.

3. Maintenance Mode

   Maintenance Mode isn’t directly related to blog security, but I think it’s an important plugin to have. It allows you to put your blog in maintenance mode any time you’re doing updates or making changes, so your readers won’t see a mess if one of your changes causes the site to go wonky. You, as the admin, can see everything, but the reader will only see the “closed for maintenance” page that tells them to come back in whatever length of time you have specified.

   Maintenance mode can indirectly help with security by keeping potential hackers from seeing error information that prints on the screen if a new plugin or theme doesn’t work out right. I always put my site in maintenance mode when testing a new theme or installing a new plugin.

4. WP-DB-Backup

   WordPress Database Backup allows you to easily schedule regular backups of your WordPress database and either store them on your server or email them to yourself. I can’t tell you enough how important it is to have regular backups. You don’t want one server crash or a nasty hacker to undo months or even years of hard work. Always, always backup your data.

5. W3 Total Cache

   W3 Total Cache is one of the best caching plugins available and it’s used by well-known bloggers such as Mashable, John Chow, and SmashingMagazine. As the description on the plugin page says, it “improves the user experience of your site by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.”

   Making sure that your site is performing well makes everyone happy. Your web host will thank you for keeping the load on the server down, your reader will thank you for pages that load quickly, and you’ll be happy because your readers are happy and they keep coming back.

6. Akismet

   Okay, make that Six plugins!

   Akismet gets installed with the WordPress installation itself, but I mention it here because it’s important that you activate it and use it as soon as your blog is installed. You’d be surprised at how quick spammers are at finding new blogs. I received my first two spam comments after only one blog post here at Bootstrap. Nobody even knew the blog existed yet, but spammers found me. Fortunately, Akismet blocked them both and I didn’t have to do a thing.

There are dozens and dozens of great plugins for keeping your WordPress blog in tip-top shape. These are just a few of the ones I like. There are many more that I’ve never tried and even more that I’ve never heard of. Just remember, too many plugins can cause just as much trouble as not having enough of the right ones. Start with the basics and add what you need when you need it.

Now that you have your blog, you should promote it, right? Wrong!

Before you even consider promoting your blog, you first need to work on building up your content. A quick post or two is not enough. I believe you should have a minimum of ten solid posts on your blog before you begin actively promoting it. Why?

Well, think about this. Suppose you saw an ad for a new store in the city and you took the time out of your busy schedule to drive over and take a look. When you get there and walk through the door, all you see is a large room full of empty shelves and one, lone clerk standing at the counter with a few small items for you to look at. Would you have a very good impression of that store? Would you go back? Probably not, at least not without a lot of motivation to do so.

Promoting an empty or nearly empty blog is the same thing. If readers take time out of their busy schedules to visit your blog, they expect to find something of value. If they show up and find a few measly posts and a lot of empty shelves, they’ll be disappointed and highly unlikely to come back. You’ll have to work twice as hard to overcome a bad first impression than you will to make a good one, so take the time and build a good first impression.

That doesn’t mean you can’t tell anyone about your blog. It’s not a secret after all. Just don’t actively promote it yet.

Depending on how much and how often you write, this waiting period could be a few weeks or it could be a few months. No matter how long it takes, the time you spend will be worth it.

During this time, you should not only be filling your blog with excellent posts,  you should also be spending time reading other blogs, joining and participating in forums related to your topic, and learning as much as you can about blogging and blog promotion. Take lots of notes and carefully plan your promotion strategy.

Get yourself out there and start networking. Let people get to know who YOU are. Build a little suspense about the blog you’re working on. If you contribute to the community and give people a reason to think of you as someone worth listening to, when you finally reveal your blog to the public, you’ll have plenty of people eagerly waiting to see what you have to offer. Just make sure your blog measures up to the expectations you’ve created.

Your blog is an extension of your business, your topic, and, ultimately, YOU. Your theme should be no different.

It’s important to pick a theme that reflects you, as well as the purpose of your blog. You may adore hearts and flowers, but if your blog is about technology, a hearts and flowers theme may not be the best choice. Instead, pick out themes that reflect what your blog is about, then narrow your selection down to the one that fits your personality and personal style.

When selecting your theme, it’s also a good idea to choose one that is simple and doesn’t contain huge headers and lots of graphics, unless of course your blog topic is related to graphics. A simple theme will make your site load faster and draw your reader’s attention to your content, which is where you want it. A fancy design only wows on the first visit, it’s an annoyance after that.

Don’t worry. If the theme you choose today doesn’t work for you, you can easily change it to another one at any time. That’s one of the great benefits of using WordPress.

Okay, is your new theme downloaded and ready to install?

In your WordPress admin panel, open the  “Appearance” menu on the left-hand side and click on “Themes.” On the Themes page, you will see two tabs at the top, “Manage Themes” and “Install Themes.” Click on the “Install Themes” tab and then on the “Upload” link at the very top, next to “Search.” Use the browse button to locate and select the theme on your computer and then click “Install Now.”

If this is your first time uploading files through WordPress, you’ll need to fill in the FTP information for your web host. This information should have been provided for you by the hosting company in your welcome email. In most cases, the hostname is your domain name (www.mydomainname.com) or the IP address of the server your site is hosted on and the username and password are the same as the username and password you use to sign into your hosting account. Fill in the required information, select FTP as the connection option and then click “Proceed.” WordPress will install the theme for you.

If, for some reason, WordPress is unable to install your theme for you, you may need to do it manually. You will need to unzip the theme on your computer and then use FTP software to upload your files, but don’t worry, you can download and install FileZilla for free. Once you have it installed, enter your FTP information in the area highlighted in red on the image below and click “Quickconnect.” You can leave the Port field blank. If the quick connect section isn’t showing when you open FileZilla, simply select “Quickconnect Bar” from the “View” menu and it will show up.

You should now be connected to your hosting account. In the panel on the left, marked “Local Site”, locate the unzipped theme folder on your computer.  In the panel on the right, marked “Remote site,” navigate to the themes folder as follows:  public_html –> wp-content –> themes. Now, using your mouse, grab the theme folder from the Local Site panel and drag it into the Remote site panel. This will upload the entire theme folder to your website.

That’s it! You’ve installed your theme! Just return to the Themes page in your WordPress admin section and  locate your new theme on the “Manage Themes” tab and click “Activate,” then select the “Widgets” option from the “Appearance” menu to begin customizing your sidebar.

That’s all there is to it. You’re done!

Now that you have your domain name and hosting package and everything’s connected, there’s one last question to answer before putting it all together.

What blogging software are you going to use?

There are many good software options available, some free and some paid. With my years of blogging experience, I’ve tried quite a few of them. With that experience in mind, I highly recommend WordPress. It’s easy to use, has lots of features built in, thousands of plugins available for additional features, and enough theme choices available to fit any design you want. WordPress is the most popular, widely used blogging software available and it’s number one for a reason. Best of all, it’s free!

Ready to put it all together?

Log into your web hosting account and select Fantastico from your cPanel screen by clicking on the smiley face.

In the Fantastico menu, click on WordPress in the left-hand menu and then on the “New Installation” link.

Fill in the required information on the next screen, click on Install WordPress and follow the directions.

That’s it! You’ve just installed your blog! That was a lot easier than you thought, wasn’t it? Now you can log into WordPress and start looking around. The link to your admin panel will be provided at the end of the installation process.

Spend some time getting familiar with WordPress and your admin panel. Read the introductory post added to your blog during the installation process. Try deleting it and adding your own introductory post, welcoming future readers to your blog.

At this point, you actually have a working blog. You can post on it, promote it, anything you like. You don’t have to change a thing if you don’t want to, but the default blog is pretty boring and boring won’t get you very far. You need to make this blog your own. Put your personality into it. Make it yours! To do that, you need to find a theme.

We’ll cover themes and how to install them in my next post. Until then, you can start looking at the available options by clicking on “Appearance” in the WordPress admin menu and then on the Install Themes tab at the top. Select “Featured,” “Newest,” or “Recently Updated” just above the search bar or use the search options to find available themes. You can also do a search for WordPress themes on Google and find thousands of additional options.

If you have any questions or need help with your WordPress installation, please leave a comment or contact me. I’m always happy to help a fellow blogger in need.

Yay! You have your domain name and you’ve rented your hosting space. Aren’t you excited? You’re on the verge of having your very own website!

But first, you have to make sure the two are connected. If you purchased your domain name and hosting package together, this may already be done for you. If not, you will need to do it yourself.To do this, you’ll need some information from your new hosting company.

Read through the welcome email you received when you purchased your hosting package and look for a reference to “Name Servers.” A name server will look something like this: ns123.hostgator.com. If the information is not in your welcome email, try logging into your new hosting account and look for the information there. If you’re still unable to find it, contact customer support for your hosting company and they will give you the information.

Once you have the name server information, log into your domain name account and look for the option to update the name servers. The screen may look something like this:

Just replace each address with one of the name server addresses provided to you by your hosting company, one address per box, usually in numerical order. If your domain company has more name server addresses than your hosting company provided, just remove any extras after you’ve entered the ones from your hosting company.

Once you’ve entered all the name server information, just click “OK” and you’re done. Voila! You’re connected!

You now have a website. Of course, there’s nothing on it, but we’ll take care of that. The next step… choosing and installing your blogging software!