Alright, it seems you have decided to build a website to help promote your business. It is the year 2009, and almost all businesses should have a presence on the internet. The first thing you need to do is pick the URL. The URL is the address that people will have to type in to get to your site, you know www.yourwebsite.com. When choosing the name of the website, it is important to make the title relevant to your product or service. If people are going to be searching Google with the word “wedding” to find your site, then it would be a good idea to have wedding in your URL. This gives you a head start on getting your website to the top of the search engines. If you already have an established website without your keyword in it, it is not the end of the world. This is just one of many variables that Google considers while indexing their pages.

Now that you have selected a URL, it is time to figure out how you are going to add content to the site. A good idea would be to use WordPress. There are many tutorials online that show how to get started with WordPress. Most of the time, you can log into your CPanel and there is one click installation. If you have trouble, you can visit www.wordpress.org to have your questions answered. There are forums where you can post questions and get them answered. The WordPress community is very responsive. I talked more about this one of my previous posts: WordPress Blog – Quick and Easy to set-up – More qualified brides to your site.

Once you have WordPress installed, the next thing you need to do is select a layout for your blog. These are also referred to as themes. You can search for them on the WordPress homepage. I recommend, when searching, that you look for themes that are search engine optimized. These themes will automatically make your site more compatible with Google and allow you to rank higher in the search engines than you normally would. Next, you will need to add a few plug-ins to your site. These are also found on the WordPress website. The most important  plug-in is called the All-In-One SEO Pack. This plug-in further optimizes your site for the search engines.

You now have chosen your URL and layout, and have added an important SEO plug-in, so now it is time to begin adding content to your blog. When writing your articles, it is important to keep some things in mind. Remember, we are targeting keywords with our blog that are relevant to the service you are providing. If you have a wedding dj service in Dallas, Texas, then you should target keywords such as “wedding dj service Dallas Texas.” It is good to have your keywords in the title of your article. Also, you need to use them at least 1-2 time within in the article. This helps you get your article listed in the search engines for the keywords you are targeting. You can use as many keywords as you want.

Another good plug-in is the WordPress.com Stats plug-in. It keeps very detailed statistics of where your traffic is coming from. It tells you if your traffic came from search engines. If it did, then it tells you exactly what keywords were searched in order to get to your blog. Additionally, it tells you what page your visitors were on before they got to your site. This is very valuable information that enables you to find out which keywords are working best for you. Although blog stats is good, you would also benefit from having a Google Analytics account as well.

It is a good idea to add fresh content to your blog at least one or two times a week. Google takes notice of this and so do the regular visitors to your site. People are more likely to return to your site if they know there will be fresh information for them to take in during their next visit. Another way to improve your blog is by adding pictures and video. WordPress makes it very easy to add pictures and videos. When making a new post for your blog, the option to add pictures and video is right on the screen, just a click away. Also, the search engines favor websites with pictures and video, opposed to ones with just text. Visitors to your site are more likely to stick around when they see the videos and pictures.

A WordPress blog is a nice, simple way to get started. Do not confuse it for a novice way of going about your business, though. Some of the most famous blogs on the internet use WordPress. It is very simple, but it has the capabilities to make a very attractive, clean blog.  This blog that you are reading is a simple WordPress blog.