“The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it’s the same problem you had last year. ” John Foster Dulles
Having a web site that gets found in Google isn’t hard to do, but it can be difficult to know where to begin. It all starts with first owning your site via wordpress.
So, this article is being written with the assumption that you have already made the smart business decision and own a wordpress.org site (not a wordpress.com… or any other free site).
Let’s get right to it….time to OPTIMIZE!
Definition of OPTIMIZE. transitive verb. : to make as perfect, effective, or functional as possible.
That’s what you want right? An effective, highly functional, wordpress business website or blog that gets found.
There are two areas of your blog that you need to optimize for…
1. Search engines (google, yahoo, bing, excite, msn, etc)
2. People (you want readers, buyers, customers, a loyal audience ..)
So, let’s just tackle getting found on search engines for now…
How To Optimize Your Blog For Search Engines
There are a number of things you can do for optimizing your blog for search engines. The first and most basic thing you need to do, is to install all the right plugins for your blog.
Over the next couple of days we will share the essential plugins you’ll need to have installed on your website:
Today we’ll discuss 3 that we use on our site and that you can upload from your wordpress dashboard, for free…immediately 
1. The SEO Title Tag Plugin
Depending on your theme, this is likely the most crucial plugin you will need to install into your WordPress blog. Some themes (like the Thesis themefor example) takes care of the same kind of issues that this plugin takes care of.
But in most cases, the SEO Title Tag plugin will be “gold” for your blog in the weeks, months and years to come.
Basically, what it does is turn all the titles of your posts into search engine friendly titles.
In other words, using this plugin, search engines will be able to easily pick up on the keywords you use inside the titles of your blog, and therefore increase your chances of getting ranked on the top pages for search engines like Google.com.
You can get the SEO Title Tag plugin here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-title-tag/
2. The WordPress GreetBox Plugin
This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url. For example, when a Facebook user clicks through from Facebook, they will see a message reminding them to ‘like’ your post if they like it.
Another example, when a visitor clicks through from Twitter, they will see a message suggesting them to twit the post and follow you on Twitter.
You can also set a default greeting message for new visitors (not matching any referrer URLs) suggesting them to subscribe to your RSS feed. Having these targeted suggestions will help your blog increase exposure, loyal readership, and reader interaction. Best of all, this plugin is compatible with WPMU and various WordPress cache plugins (so you do not have to sacrifice speed).
Some of the other features (among many):
- Show a different greeting message to your visitor depending on the referrer URL. You can add/edit/delete/disable these greeting messages as you choose.
- Clickable icon in greeting messages.
- Greeting messages automatically get inserted into the top of your posts upon activation. There is no need to modify theme files.
- Ability to auto-insert greeting message to the top or bottom of the post.
- Greeting messages can be user closeable or not.
- Ability to detect the visitor’s search keywords from major search engines and automatically display related posts under or above the greeting message.
- Show a default greeting message even if the vistor does not match any of your configured referrer URL
You can get the WordPress Greetbox Plugin Here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-greet-box/
3. The Akismet Plugin
This is an essential plugin if you don’t like blog comment spam. Yes, you read that correctly, blogs
are also plagued by spam. But instead of email spam, the spam comes in the form of comments on
your blog.
But luckily the Akismet plugin takes care of all your comment spam issues. There’s not much more to
it. You just install the plugin, and it then takes care of the rest for you.
Chances are, if you just log in to your wordpress dashboard (http://yoursitename/wp-admin) and click Plugins. You will notice the the plugin is already there, you just need to activate it and create your API Key.
You can create your WordPress API Key needed for the Akismet plugin here:
http://en.wordpress.com/api-keys/
Okay, that is enough for today… be sure to act right away. The plugins I shared with you today are free, you simply have to the the time to do the work
Tomorrow we will have 3 more incredible must have (free) and highly effective plugins you need. Then we will dive right into how we can get your site optimized for people
To Headache Free Social Media and Blogging,
Let’s Connect:
Come Write on Our Facebook Wall: Facebook.com/SyeWellsBiz
Let’s Connect On Twitter: Twitter.com/SyeWells
Receive Updates: http://SyeWells.com/Get-Newsletter/
—————————————————————————————–
If you have any question regarding our HeadAche- Free WordPress Blogging & Social Media services, and how we may assist in your business needs feel free to Contact Us.
We value our community and clients. Our exclusive list will receive email updates with discounts, special bonuses, and free gifts. Make sure to count yourself in.Get on the list here.
