Tag Archives: blog
Leveraging WordPress SEO Plugins
Creating and publishing a website is no longer a mysterious, esoteric task that is reserved only for computer geeks. These days, just about everyone and their dog has a website. Anyone wanting a piece of the virtual pie can easily sign up for a free Blogger blog or one of the major Web 2.0 properties like HubPages or Squidoo in about five minutes. Plus, there are lots of WYSIWYG editors available that make creating a beautiful, interactive webpage a very simple process.
One of the most popular tools for hosting a blog is WordPress, an open-source project that is freely available for the downloading. There are at least a thousand tutorials available on the ‘net for how to set up a WordPress blog, configure the theme, upload it to your own hosting account, and so on. This article is not going to re-cover that ground. It has been done more than enough. The question is, what do you do once your blog is online, to get the word out so that you can get traffic?
The answer to that question is: search engine optimization. SEO is basically the process of driving traffic to your website organically (that is, not paid) from the search engines. To get the search engine “spiders” or “bots” to notice your site among the “billions and billions” of pages out on the web, and then rank it “high” in the results pages (so people will find it easily), you’ll need to work on these three general tasks:
- Make sure your content is relevant to the keywords people are searching with
- Optimizing your website and its content with keyword emphasis and linking structures
- Building inbound links to your website from others, preferably those in your same niche
This article focuses on the tools that can simplify item (2) in the list. Backlinking, the process described in (3), is a subject for a whitepaper, not just a short article. And, obviously, it is up to you to be sure your content is relevant to the keywords you are attaching to your pages as mentioned in item (1); just use your common sense.
The good news is that there are any number of tools to simplify the job to improve the optimization on your website. Owing to the popularity of WordPress, an entire industry is producing add-on capabilities in specialized themes and WordPress SEO plugins to facilitate optimizing sites built with the platform. You can dig up all sorts of tools, ranging from free plugins like Platinum SEO, HeadSpace2, and Google Video Sitemaps to premium plugins like SEOPressor or SEO Booster Pro.
Here is a short list of plugins you should investigate:
- SEOPressor WordPress Plugin
- Platinum SEO Pack
- All-in-One SEO Pack
- Google XML Sitemap
- Google Image Sitemap
- Google Video Sitemap
- Automatic SEO Links
- HeadSpace2
Always remember, though: put good content on your site that will provide real value for your visitors. Treat your visitors well, and you will get your fair share of traffic; just be sure to do your SEO correctly, and you can speed up the process considerably!
Leveraging WordPress SEO Plugins
Creating and publishing a website is no longer a mysterious, esoteric task that is reserved only for computer geeks. These days, just about everyone and their dog has a website. Anyone wanting a piece of the virtual pie can easily sign up for a free Blogger blog or one of the major Web 2.0 properties like HubPages or Squidoo in about five minutes. Plus, there are lots of WYSIWYG editors available that make creating a beautiful, interactive webpage a very simple process.
One of the most popular tools for hosting a blog is WordPress, an open-source project that is freely available for the downloading. There are at least a thousand tutorials available on the ‘net for how to set up a WordPress blog, configure the theme, upload it to your own hosting account, and so on. This article is not going to re-cover that ground. It has been done more than enough. The question is, what do you do once your blog is online, to get the word out so that you can get traffic?
The answer to that question is: search engine optimization. SEO is basically the process of driving traffic to your website organically (that is, not paid) from the search engines. To get the search engine “spiders” or “bots” to notice your site among the “billions and billions” of pages out on the web, and then rank it “high” in the results pages (so people will find it easily), you’ll need to work on these three general tasks:
- Make sure your content is relevant to the keywords people are searching with
- Optimizing your website and its content with keyword emphasis and linking structures
- Building inbound links to your website from others, preferably those in your same niche
This article focuses on the tools that can simplify item (2) in the list. Backlinking, the process described in (3), is a subject for a whitepaper, not just a short article. And, obviously, it is up to you to be sure your content is relevant to the keywords you are attaching to your pages as mentioned in item (1); just use your common sense.
The good news is that there are any number of tools to simplify the job to improve the optimization on your website. Owing to the popularity of WordPress, an entire industry is producing add-on capabilities in specialized themes and WordPress SEO plugins to facilitate optimizing sites built with the platform. You can dig up all sorts of tools, ranging from free plugins like Platinum SEO, HeadSpace2, and Google Video Sitemaps to premium plugins like SEOPressor or SEO Booster Pro.
Here is a short list of plugins you should investigate:
- SEOPressor WordPress Plugin
- Platinum SEO Pack
- All-in-One SEO Pack
- Google XML Sitemap
- Google Image Sitemap
- Google Video Sitemap
- Automatic SEO Links
- HeadSpace2
Always remember, though: put good content on your site that will provide real value for your visitors. Treat your visitors well, and you will get your fair share of traffic; just be sure to do your SEO correctly, and you can speed up the process considerably!
An E-Z Linking Strategy
In building a backlink strategy for your site, remember that there are different ways to get links. One of the easiest ways is to do a link exchange
Link exchanges are done with similar sites with both sites placing a link to the other. Link exchanges have been penalized by search engines because of heavy spam but there still benefits to doing a link exchange, so don’t be afraid to try.
Inbound one way links are, by far, the best links to get. These links are sometimes difficult to get because there is no exchange. It requires the other web site to link to you without you linking to them. Gaining one way links should rank near the top of your off-page optimization strategy.
In order to get one way links you have to get noticed. Getting noticed online is not a whole lot different than getting noticed off-line.
To gain links, you need to provide content that is unique and original to entice other sites to link to you. Adding a blog, or forum is an excellent way to continually add new content to your static site. If you have a static web site it will be much more difficult to gain links.
Applying SEO techniques such as the above can bring great benefits. As an example if you are trying to optimize a site that sells vitamins. The first step would be researching highly ranked competitors. After analyzing their sites you can use their blog or forum to determine what topics are hot. Typically in these community sites hot topics will draw quite a bit of traffic and comments from readers.
One method of gaining their attention is to look at the topics on their site that are creating the most commotion. When you find the hot topics, do a review of the site on your blog. In your review concentrate on the hot topic, but don’t just talk about their services. Point out what they have missed, or don’t have, keep in mind you want to draw their attention. The key is you’re not trying to advertise for them rather you want to establish yourself as an expert.
Often, the other site will notice your review. It’s not automatic, so you may have to bring it to their attention. Think of it as being in a crowd where everyone is talking. If you enter the conversation you must make sure to say something relevant. If you speak up and say something unrelated or meaningless people in the crowd will quickly dismiss you.
Here’s the trick to this technique, when you comment about a site or bring up a controversial point they have to link to you to reply to your review. Remember to position yourself as an expert when you do this. Don’t be rude or obnoxious, but make meaningful comments and reviews and you’re bound to get noticed.
Most Blogs track links to the site, so rest assured that if the blogger read something that needs to be addressed by them they will comment.
After you complete your review, leave a comment on the other site, don’t just leave it to fate for them to find it. You could excerpt a small portion of the review, just enough to draw attention and raise interest. This serves two purposes, primarily it will establish you as an expert, second their readers will follow the link from the comment to your site. The key is to do this on popular active sites. You wont benefit if the site is not active with members reading and commenting.
Over time this strategy will help increase traffic your site and build one way links to your site. If you do it right you’ll see the numbers jump in your traffic from other readers visiting your site to get the rest of the story.