WordPress 17 “Must Do” Tweaks
WordPress is the most awesome marketing tool since the invention of the web.
A blog allows you brand yourself, communicate with your prospects, post valuable information, spread content all over the web, drive back links, build your list and much more. When it come to online network marketing, a WordPress blog with automated features and good SEO optimization becomes a very essential tool to attract website traffic and build your business.
E-mails die in the inbox, but blog posts are emailed to your list, plus syndicated all over the web. Big difference.
Installing WordPress is fairly simple, but even at the basic installation level, there are at least 17 important configurations that must be done including loading and setting several key plugins.
Here is a list that will help your current blog or install a new one:
1. General settings. Change the computer generated password, fill in your blog name, tag line, update your user profile, set the time zone, time format. Set the blog address to http://www.yourdomain.com (with the www).
2. Change the Permalinks structure. Who knows why, but Wordpress default settings are just plain awful. You want the posts’ urls to look like this: www.yourdomain.com/hot-home-business instead of the default www.yourdomain.com/?p213?
3. Set the Canonical URL in the SEO plugin or in the .htaccess file. Your URL must be set to either yourdomain.com or www.yourdomain.com You can’t have both. Google looks at them as two identical sites and will index them as ”duplicate content.” This penalizes you search-engine ranking.
The recommended setting it is www.yourdomain.com. This is a “root-level” command that gives you piece of mind that Google sees ONE blog, not two…regardless if people enter yourdomain.com or www.your domain.com. There are other duplicate content exclusions that must be done in WordPress, I discuss how to best handle those in the advanced installation.
4. Set the Code in the .htaccess File (or change the PHP code) to Redirect the Resident Feed to Google Feedburner. You should get a Google Feedburner account. It’s free. Feedburner has many cool features and advantages. But, in addition, if you ever lose your blog URL and need to transfer the blog into a different domain, it will be much easier to retrieve your subcribers.
5. Configure Discussion Settings. I could write a whole 30-page report on comments, but let me just explain a couple of key points. You want folks to comment on your blog. You just don’t want the Viagra, porn pushers, “bad bots” and other spam-happy jerks to invade the place.
Set up comment moderation so that you are in full control of the comments. Set the number of comments, number of links people can place (a common characteristic of spam is people placing a large number of hyperlinks on your blog).
6. Set your home page under Reading. Set your blog so that when visitors either see your latest post or a static home page, which ever is the best for your business.
7. Set up posting preferences under Writing. You can post on your blog by email from a Blackberry or iPhone or a remote computer (that’s very cool!)
8. Turn off Post Revisions. Saving post revisions is a great idea but WordPress takes to an extreme. The long list it displays post is anooying, plus but each revision generates a new record in your database, making it bigger and eventually slow down the loading time of the blog. If you write your posts in MSWord you have a copy of your posts anyway.
9. Set Up a Few Categories. It’s a good idea to give your blog a structure of the topics you plan to write about.
10. Change the Media Settings. If your theme allows 400px for the content width, and your max width for a large picture is 1024 (default), you have a problem.
11. Activate the Askimet anti-spam plugin. Obtain an API key and activate this plugin that comes with WordPress. There are people out there with bad robots that will post automated comments with spam advertising (especially Viagra, adult and others).
Askimet is not totally sufficient at keeping those out, but it does provide a good level of protection and must be activated.
12. Upload a The Chunks For URLs plugin to limits the length of the links people can leave in the comments. If someone posts a comment with a long link it can break your theme.
13. Upload a plugin that limits “Over Pinging.” Every time you post WordPress pings the search engines about your post. However, when editing, re-editing and saving posts, you risk over pinging and being banned from the search engines.
14. Upload and activate WP-backup plugin. This is a must. All your posts, pages and links are stored in the database. If it crashes, your entire blog is lost. Set the number of back ups per month, week or day and set it not to be stored on your server, but to be e-mailed to you.
This avoids extra files on your server and prevents search engines to index back ups, which is duplicate content (unless you know how channel back ups in an excluded directory).
15. Upload and activate the Google sitemap plugin. This helps Google to index your blog faster and also promotes better rankings. Indexing simply means Google found your pages and copied them in their database. They need a copy of your pages stored away before you can even hope to rank.
16. Upload and activate the WP Super Cache plugin. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly. This is important because blogs can be a drag to load. Statistically people click off after EIGHT seconds!
17. Upload and configure the All IN ONE SEO plugin (41 configuration check points). This allows you to perform, Url canocalization, title and description optimization, set keywords, establish exclusions, index or nonindex settings, follow or no follow and has on-page optimization fields that you fill as you write the posts.
To pursue automated features, SEO optimization and a more advanced functionality visit my page at: InstallWordPressQuickly.com
Best,
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