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.

One of the quickest and easiest ways to start a website or blog is by using WordPress.  If you have not used WordPress before, it is a program that you install from the cpanel of your website.  With the rise in popularity of WordPress, many hosting sites now offer one-click installation of WordPress.  If you are not sure what a cpanel is, it is very simple.  You log into your cpanel by going to www.yourwebsitename.com/cpanel.  Once you get in there, there should be an option for installation of WordPress.  Leave the directory field blank.

Once you get WordPress installed, it is one of the easiest formats to use.  In order to log into WordPress, you simply go to:  www.yourwebsitename.com/wp-admin.  You will use your WordPress username and password to log in.  You got this username and password when you installed WordPress.  Once you get logged in, you will see many options.  You can add new pages or posts,  check out your traffic stats, change your themes, and many other things.

First let’s choose you a nice layout.  These are often referred to as themes.  You can go to www.wordpress.org and search all of the themes they have.  You want to get a nice search engine optimized theme.  There are many of these available for free on the internet.  Once you select the one you are looking for, you need to the file and upload it to your “themes” directory.  To do this, you will need an ftp program.  I recommend Filezilla.  There are many tutorials on how to upload files on youtube.  It is a very simple program, and after using it one or two times, you will definitely have the hang of it.  Once you have the theme uploaded, you click on the “themes” link on the left side of the screen.  You will then activate the theme you chose.  All of the information you had on your previous theme will be automatically transferred to your new theme.  This is one of the great features of WordPress.

Making new posts is very simple.  There is a button in the left sidebar that says “new post.”  All you need to do is click on it to begin a new post.  There are spaces for the article title, article body, and tags.  Tags are another word for keywords.  These are the words that search engines will use to find your site.  When choosing the title, make sure you include the words that you will use as tags.  Also, when you are writing the article body, make sure you use the words you plan to use as keywords within the article 2-3 times each.  This is an important step in optimizing your site for the search engines.  After that, you hit publish, and you are finished.  All you need to do is click publish.  Of course, this is not all you can do.  You can add pictures, links, or anything you want.  WordPress uses a very user-friendly interface, so you can add pictures or links with one click.

Once you finish your post, you need to make sure Google and Yahoo are aware that you made a new post to your website.  In order to do this, you need to “ping” your website.  What does it mean to ping your website?  When you ping your website, you are sending out a signal that notifies the search engines and directories that your page has been updated.  The easiest way to do this is by going to http://www.pingler.com.  All you need to do is go to this page, put in the url, blog title, keywords, and a small description and click submit.  After doing, over 50 search engines and directories will be notified that your blog has been updated.

WordPress is very simple to get started with, but there is no limit to what you can do with it.  There are many plug-ins you can integrate into your WordPress blog.  There is one where it automatically sends out a “Tweet” on Twitter, notifying all of your followers that you just updated your blog.  There is another one that allows you to put Adsense on your blog.  Adsense is those little ads you see on many webpages, by Google.  When you set up an Adsense account, you will be paid each time someone clicks on your Adsense.  The most important plug-in is called  “All in One SEO“.  This FREE mod will verify that ALL of your posts are SEO friendly with proper page titles, keywords, and tags.  I highly recommend that instead of writing a unique description, you include a 50 word unique excerpt for every post.  Also NEVER place the same post into multiple categories, this is detrimental and gets looked as duplicate content from Google.  Your best bet is to only have a few categories, and keep all your posts organized within a select few pertaining to your keywords.