How is that beautifully self-branded website of yours looking? Make sure it’s “sharing ready” because now we are going to pump your blog FULL of search engine optimizing tricks so that you can get your website up on the first page of Google as quickly as possible. Since we’re on the topic let’s talk a little bit about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and why it’s important.
When search engines use their secret algorithms to determine the validity, authority and relevance of a particular website they use several determining factors. Backlinks are one of these factors, which we have been working on the last few days through AHS and Posterous. But no matter how many great backlinks you have, if your site is not set up properly, search engines may not even be able to read your site’s html – let alone rank you!
So today, I will show you exactly how to set up your site to get that prime optimization so all your hard work reaches its full potential. To get an idea of how essential it is to rank well with Google think about this: Steve has signed up nearly 50 people from ONE single article he wrote on his website that was ranked in the top five websites for a particular keyword search.
How would you like to sign up 50 people to your business by simply writing an article? It is possible – just follow the steps!First of all, if you want search engines to find you, you can’t block them! To make sure you are not blocking search engines from your website go to your Privacy Settings at the bottom left-hand side of your page on the WordPress Dashboard.
Click on it and tell it not to block the search engines!!(Hint: If your site is blocking search engines there will be a notice on the top-left hand of your dashboard screen that says “Search Engines Blocked”.)
This website will submit your domain to the major search engines as well as several independent, smaller search engines. It’s completely free and it takes less than five minutes.
There are sites available where you can pay to do this but I am not sure what the advantage of paying is, and why pay for something you can get for free anyway?Our next step is to verify your website with Google and Yahoo. What this does is it lets the Search Engines know your site exists and that you own it. This will help Google and Yahoo to crawl your sites, which basically means they will index your information and you will therefore be able to get in their rankings. This is important, and not too hard to do if you have WordPress installed on your site.
In order to do this you will also need accounts with Google and Yahoo (both of which are free). Follow these easy steps to get verified:· In your WordPress Dashboard go to Add New Plugins and find the AskApache
Search Engine Verification Plugin. Install and activate it.
· For Google: Go HERE and sign in. Enter your URL and click continue. Choose the
“Add Meta Tag to Homepage” option and copy the meta tag code. · Go back to your Plugin and paste the code into the Google box, click the Enabled
box and save. This should verify you with Google!
· To verify with Yahoo go HERE and sign in. Click on add a site, choose the verify
with Meta Tag on Homepage option and copy and paste into your Plugin, just
like you did with Google.
· Voila! You are verified!
The next thing you want to do is put an RSS Feed on your blog. This will allow your readers to subscribe, which means they will receive an email update automatically every time you post. To do this go to Feedburner, HERE and sign in.
(Again you will need to use your Google account.)Put in your url and copy that to the RSS Feed widget on your blog. I can’t really give exact instructions for this since every theme will be slightly different. Some themes have their own RSS buttons. If you need more help, Feedburner should have a Plugin to help you get your feed set up.
One really quick step before we get to the Plugins: Go to Permalinks under Settings and set your permalinks as this: /%postname%/. This way your post urls will make sense. Alright, now, let’s get to the plethora of plugins that you will want to install onto your site for maximum search engine optimization.
· XML SiteMap: This notifies Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask about updates to your blog. You will need to set this up so that the search engine spiders can crawl your site. In layman’s terms, this plug-in makes your site readable by the search engines.
· Akismet: This plug-in manages your comments and includes a spam filter.·
TweetMeme: This plug-in allows you or your readers to click on a button on your post and have it published on Twitter.
·
SEO Friendly Images: This plug-in makes all of the images on your site SEO friendly. Images can have a negative effect on search engine rankings because they can’t be read by the spiders. SEO Friendly Images makes the code of your images readable to the spiders.
·
SEO Power: Now this is a Plugin that you will actually have to download and install yourself. Go HERE and choose to opt-in to get the free plugin, then just follow his instructions to upload it to your WordPress site. What this will do is take all of the keyword searches people have used to find your blog and it will add those as tags to your page.
This will look like actual permalinks to Google, so it’s like adding automatic keywords for the phrases that people have already used to find you. To people this will make it look on the search engine as if you have written a post with the topic in that phrase, even though that phrase may be nowhere in your entire site. If you have no idea what I’m talking about – that’s ok, just trust me this will really boost your traffic!
Last step!! Woohoo! And this one is really simple. Pinging “authority” sites lets others know of your existence. Go HERE and copy the list of Ping sites I have listed and then go to (in your WordPress dashboard) Settings/Writing/Update Services and paste that list there. Now, every time you write a new post or update your blog, all of those sites will be notified! This is a great way to get your website indexed fast.
Congratulations!! Your blog is now SEO approved!