Rob Fleming
Detroit Internet Marketing Examiner
In today’s highly competitive online market, getting maximum exposure for your website can seem like a never ending battle. There are so many areas of maintenance that must be managed, SEO considerations, and other elements a competitive website needs to stay in contention with the competition.
There are many different methods that can be employed in your website to give your online marketing campaign an edge, but one of the most easiest and cost effective methods available is blogging. Adding a blog to your website adds many powerful elements into one easy to deploy, configure and manageable package.
Blogging will give your site additional content that will be indexed on the major search engines, as well as inclusion in blog and article directories, which in turn boost visibility, help build authority and PR (PageRank), while offering your potential customers a regular stream of fresh relevant content.
Getting started
There are a few considerations that must be evaluated before you deploy your new blog site.
• Should you deploy your new blog as a sub-domain or sub site in your existing website, or create a new blog site with a new domain?
• Does your current webhost support PHP and MySql?
• Will you be able to configure your new blog site after the initial deployment is completed?
There are quite a few advantages to creating a new blog site with a new domain. Creating a new blog site on a different webhost is great way to boost your websites authority by building incoming links to your existing website with new keyword rich articles, and with static links from the blogs home page. This technique is frequently used to increase PR because Google and the other major search engines consider incoming links from sites with large qualities of relevant content a “vote” for the importance and relevance of the site they are linking to. This method has a higher cost of deployment, but is still relatively inexpensive. The use of a keyword based domain name will also add additional search engine ranking value.
Deploying a blog site as a sub-domain or sub site on the same domain as your existing website is a common practice among many webmasters and will still provide your site with a powerful marketing method to deliver fresh relevant content on a regular basis, but your sub site will not receive as much initial relevance from Goggle and the other major search engines as a new blog site deployed on different webhost unless your existing website has a PR4 or better ranking. The reason for this is that Google and other major search engines will rank your new blog site slightly lesser than your existing unless it already has high authority or PR ranking.
If your current webhost doesn’t support PHP and MySql, many Windows based hosting companies do not, then your only option will be to deploy your new blog site on new host that does offer support. The main reason for choosing PHP and MySql is that the cost of web hosting on Linux and Unix software is far less expensive than Windows based software, and this means lower hosting fee’s with more available features for the hosting customer.
There are many quality webhosts that offer flat fee webhosting for around $50.00 to $100.00 a year, and depending on potential future needs, you will get all you could ever want or need from the lower prices hosts. You will want to choose a webhost that offers “Fantastico”. Fantastico is a server side install and configuration tool that will let any end user install and configure WordPress and a few other Blogging platforms with easy to understand click and go installation.
Choosing your platform
There are quite a few blogging platforms out in the blogosphere that have robust features and are user friendly, but none compare to the simplicity, ease of use and power of WordPress. The WordPress blogging platform is 100% free, and is widely used by hundreds of thousands of bloggers, has thousands of free ready to use plugins, themes, and free online support.
Putting it all together
Once you have decided on your deployment location, all you will need to do is logon to your webhost control panel, navigate to the Fantistico installer and choose the WordPress installer. If you are installing WordPress into your webhosting account that does not offer Fantistico then you can still perform a manual install provided that your webhost supports PHP and your account has MySql access. WordPress has a simple and detailed set of instructions for manually installing. http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress
With your new WordPress blogging platform installed all you will need to do is select an appropriate theme, install SEO and sitemap plugins and you are ready to go.
Themes
You shoud use theme that reflects the tone of your business, if you sell party supplies then you will want a theme that is upbeat and friendly. You should always choose a theme that is 100% SEO friendly and ready. From within the administration section of your blog you will be able to view and install themes with the click of a button.
Plugins
There are literally thousands of plugins that can customize and automate every aspect of WordPress, so we’ll just cover the “must have” plugins to get your blog up and running. You may view and install plugins from your admin section within your blog.
1. All in One SEO Pack
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
Optimizes your WordPress blog for search engines by Automatically optimizing your titles and META tags.
2. Lifestream
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lifestream/
Lifestream displays your social feeds and activity from many social sites. Includes support to display your Flickr photos, Facebook feed, Friendster feed, Youtube videos, Twitter updates, any other RSS feed, from your other blogs, etc.
3. Sociable
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/
Automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites including Digg, Reddit, SU, Mixx, Propeller. You can also add e-mail and print buttons. It also supports TwitThis, but the plugin can be made easier by using TinyURL (or another URL shortening service) and automatically logging the user into Twitter with the URL and Title already shown.
4. Google XML Sitemaps
http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/
Generates an XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search support this format. Will automatically ping the search engines after each update.
5. DB Backup
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/
Easily backup/restore your posts and entire WordPress database. Download or send your back to your email.
6. WP-SpamFree
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-spamfree/
An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin for WordPress that virtually eliminates comment spam, including trackback and pingback spam.
7. Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form
http://green-beast.com/blog/?page_id=136
Lets you create a very secure contact form with custom fields so your readers can easily contact you.
Installing and configuring these plugins will only take a few minutes and will automate the important functions of your blog. With your theme and plugins installed the last important task is to edit your permalinks. A permalink is the format that all of your page name will be delivered and seen in a web browser. Using a SEO friendly permalink will add “.html” to end of each page making it easier for the search engine spiders to crawl your pages.
To use your permalinks click on the permalink links from the setting button in your blogs admin section and then click the custom radio button and add this permalink /category%/%postname%.html then save your setting.
Adding content
With your new blog site up and running you are now ready to begin publishing new content to your site. There are 2 possible methods. One is directly from within your blog admin section, or you may use one of many popular blog editors. To date the best options for Windows, Mac, and Linux users is Qumana.com. Qumana is 100% free and offers professional and easy to use features for all of your content development, editing and publishing needs.
The key to success in building your online visibility lies within publishing fresh relevant content to your new blog site on a regular basis. If you are on a tight time budget, then you may consider outsourcing the writing of your blogs articles.
There are a number of cost effective resources, such as posting an ad at your local community college, or one of the many online outsourcing services. You can easily find a qualified blogger to write and even post articles directly to your blog site for about $2.00 to $4.50 an article, and you may even consider hiring a part time blogger to come in to your office and write for your blog site.
The basic format for all for your articles should use a keyword or phrase in the article title and use keywords, phrases, and popular variations through out your article. You should also include links to your existing website using keyword anchor text. If you are unsure on which keywords are the most popular for your business, then visit wordtracker.com.
Keep in mind that it can take up to several weeks for your new content to be crawled, indexed, and included on the SERPs (search engine results pages), but once your content is visible you will have new keyword rich content on the SERPs that can attract new potential customers!
Author: Rob Fleming
Rob Fleming is an Examiner from Detroit. You can see Rob's articles on Rob's Home Page.
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Rob Fleming is a freelance writer with over 10 years experience in developing unique website content, marketing and SEO techniques. He has authored hundreds of powerful "how to" articles on building site authority, online business promotion on a budget, and driving traffic to websites with simple, easy to understand methods.
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