Now that you have picked the content categories and niches that you are most passionate about and you have filtered these with an eye towards your level of interest, the amount of potential search traffic that they bring, their commercial value, and their level of competition, your focus should now turn to which platform to choose for your blogging business. We cannot over emphasize “business” enough. Even if you are blogging just for purely personal reasons, you must still view your blogging activity as a business. A business involves constant attention. A business involves being proactive. A business involves continuous research and self-education. Only by looking at your blogging endeavor as a business would this activity lead to sustainable success.
Do not rely on luck
Otherwise, blogging would just be a completely hit or miss affair. You would be at the mercy of your energy level, your motivation level, and, most frustrating of all, luck. Who wants that? The chances of successful sustained blogging are already quite dismal – do not make your odds even worse by purely relying on luck. This ereviewguide.com series seeks to remove as much of random luck from the process of blogging as possible so as to increase your chances of success. This is the reason why we focus on helping you strategically approach your objective as well as helping you build systems to help you blog in a sustainable, self-correcting, and success-focused way.
Blogging Platforms Make a Big Impact
Now that you have determined what to blog about and what key words and subtopics to pursue, the next stage in the process is to select a blogging platform. The blogging platform is the software program that will publish your blog posts. This is not a question to take lightly. Depending on the blogging platform you choose, your chances of success has a dramatic impact.
Free versus stand alone blogging platforms
There are many free blog platforms out there. They fall into two general camps: The most common are free hosted blog platforms. These are websites where you can create a free account and they have built-in software that you can use to publish your blogs. These free hosted blog platforms include but are not limited to blogger, WordPress.com, blogsome, xanga and livejournal. In fact, there are several dozen, if not hundreds, of free blog platforms out there. The reason that we mention only a handful of blog services is that they are the most stable and established of the free hosting blog platforms available online. While you are free to choose lesser known and newer hosted blog services, be mindful of the fact that many of these are fly-by-night operations and can fold just as quickly as they got started. Many are just set up by their owners as hobbies or to test out new blogging concepts. Be ready for the possibility that your blog at newer established hosted blog platform sites might disappear overnight with little or no warning.
Blogging with your own web host
The other way you can go with blogging platforms is to buy web hosting at a reputable hosting company like HostGator or DreamHost. Even godaddy has their own paid hosting service. Once you get hosting, you then get a domain name and you have a server-based independently hosted blogging platform software installed. This latter type of blog platform software refers to Content Management System and includes WordPress CMS and many other titles. WordPress is far and beyond the default standard in independently hosted blog platforms. It has won this title because millions upon millions of blogs online are hosted on WordPress. It is an open source software and it is the most widely used free blog platform software available online.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Free Hosted Blog Platforms
The main advantage of free hosted blog platforms is that all maintenance is handled by the service provider. All security issues, all server downtime issues, and other technical glitches that may pop up from time to time are handled by the service provider. Less stress and worry for you. Also, they host your blog completely free. Some even allow you to put up advertising or other income generating elements on you blog.
The downise to free hosted blogging is that you are, ultimately, not in control. If the blog network doesn’t like your blog, they can (and often will) find a reason to ask you to either move your blog or they will just delete it outright. You are at the mercy of the service provider. Additionally, terms and conditions may change dramatically with little to no notice and you may find your blog blocked overnight. The provider can decide to call it quits and your blog goes down with them. It is also harder to find legitimate high authority link partners when you’re operating from a subdomain at a free hosted blog. Finally, if your blog becomes successful, you may find it a chore to sell because many buyers are wary of buying such free hosted blogs.
Simply put, having your own hosted blog platform installation protects you from the hassles and headaches listed above. You also have a greater say and can get better customer service when dealing with your own paid hosting service should any issues arise.
The Advantages of WordPress CMS
WordPress is the most widely used blog CMS software for a reason. It is not because it is free. There are many other free blogging software titles available online. Part of its popularity stems from the fact that so many other people use it. This is a classic example of the network effect. If you are adopting a new blog software platform, you cannot piggy back off the experiences of other people that are using that same platform because there are not too many of them. However, if you are using a platform that is already being actively used by millions of people, then whatever issues you come across–whether it is improvement issues or bug fixes–chances are somebody on the planet has already encountered the same problem you are facing. More likely than not, they probably have come up with a fix. That is one key advantage of being part of a huge installed network of users. That is the primary advantage WordPress brings to the table. Closely related to the network effect and mass adoption advantage is the huge amount of customizability that WordPress brings to the table.
WordPress benefits from its Open Source orientation
One of the key reasons WordPress is so popular is its open source. This means that developers the world over regardless of whatever country they are in can look into the code of WordPress and come up with their own modification for the software. Since the source is available to everybody, it is standardized and people can then come up with their unique variation of WordPress functionality. One core example of this is its customizable plugins. People would come up with all sorts of little programs that can plug in directly into WordPress to make their particular installation perform specific tasks. This can run the gamut from search engine optimization tasks to publishing tasks to social media interaction–you name it. The only limit truly is the imagination of the developer community for WordPress. In other words, there are no limits.
WordPress encourages community development and innovation: Plugins
WordPress, almost from day one, has been engineered to invite as much innovation from its installed base community through its plug-in architecture. With only a few clicks and basic knowledge of FTP (file transfer protocol), WordPress users can download a plug-in from the website of the plug-in maker or from WordPress.org’s massive library of plugins, unzip the plug-in file, upload the plug-in to their WordPress installation’s plug-in directory and then log in to WordPress to activate the plug-in. With only a few clicks of the mouse, you can introduce powerful features to your blog that dramatically impacts its usability, its readability, its functions and how much traffic it can get from the search engine. WordPress has been engineered to be quick, easy and fun to use. That is a core part of why it dominates its competition in relation to installed base.
Benefit from a huge variety of themes
Theme customizability is another WordPress strong suit. Just like plugins, WordPress users have a wide range of choices in terms of how their WordPress installation would look like. WordPress again invites its huge installed base to come up with their own custom themes and share them both on WordPress.org itself or the user’s own personal website. WordPress themes impact the look of the WordPress installation. Unlike the plugins that impact how the blog behaves and organizes information, the theme impacts how a blog looks. The themes dictate the header pictures, the fonts, the sizes of the text, the table organization, how pictures are arranged, and how navigational elements appear.
WordPress encourages theme experimentation and diversity
In essence, a custom theme is a custom design for a blog. While many other blogging platform software allow for theme customization, they come nowhere near the huge amount of diversity that WordPress allows. There are almost no limits in relation to what a WordPress blog would look like. This makes WordPress an ideal candidate for personal expression and also for creating unique corporate brands. While the theme customization does set up some boundaries and standard rules, there are so much space within these rules that any creative designer has enough freedom to give a WordPress blog his unique creative fingerprint and unique look.
New Tools Manage Customizability
Given the amount of flexibility WordPress creators give WordPress users, there are new tools available in the market that allow users to create their own plugins and create their own themes. One particular theme editor is quite powerful, the Thesis theme editor, and allows anybody with little to no technical skills to come up with their own custom themes simply by moving around some elements on a composer page and making changes to templates. They can come up with a wide variety of themes that meet their particular needs.
WordPress for Search Engine Optimization
During the first two installments of this series, we spent quite a huge amount of time trying to instruct you to zero in on the key words that would help you achieve blogging success. The reason is obvious. No traffic equals no success. That is the iron law of the internet. Regardless of whether you are blogging or you are building regular websites, if you do not have traffic, you have failed. It is as simple as that. Picking the right key words means that you have a better chance of attracting free traffic from search engines than otherwise. Similarly, picking the right topics means that you have a better chance of attracting the attention of your target market and benefitting from word of mouth than otherwise. If you are looking to get traffic from search engines, picking key words is just the first step. You have to organize your website in such a way that search engines can go to your website quickly, get relevant information and index your materials efficiently. In other words, you have to optimize your blog or website for the search engines or also known as search engine optimization (SEO).
WordPress gets around SEO “complexity” myths
There are many myths regarding SEO. Many of these mythologies are really created by practitioners of search engine optimization to give their occupation a mysterious feel. That is just the way marketing works. The more mysterious or seemingly complicated something is, the more value it has in the minds of potential customers because they are intimated and they do not feel that they can do it themselves, and they would have to hire an “expert.” This is the reason why when you go to any SEO consultant’s website, it is filled with many jargon, confusing diagrams and mysterious references.
WordPress helps demystify SEO because instead of you having to figure out a lot of SEO basics, there are many plugins that are available for your WordPress blog that pretty much converts SEO into “fill-in-the-blanks situation.” This does not absolve you of doing your homework regarding target key words. WordPress will not do that for you. To use an analogy, it only provides the Ferrari engine and you would still have to buy your own gas.
Two Key SEO Plugins examined
Using these SEO plugins, WordPress users find that 80% to 90% of the SEO work has been handled for them. They merely need to fill in the blanks of these plug-in settings and the plugins will take care of the rest. Your responsibility is reduced to finding the right key words and coming up with the proper content to feed search engines. The rest is handled by WordPress. We have outlined two of the most powerful SEO plug-in packages available for WordPress. Read these closely pick which one better suits your situation. The great thing about these SEO packages is that they are pretty much interchangeable since they both address the same SEO issues and operate from the same principles. However, we wanted to give you a choice since each user’s situation varies.
All-in-One SEO Pack
All-in-one SEO pack is one of the oldest SEO plugins available for WordPress. It has been around for a long time and this fact alone should give you quite a bit of confidence because its longevity and its constant updates mean that you benefit from the cumulative experience not just of the developer but also its installed base of users. Whatever bugs they found in the past or security vulnerabilities were quickly identified by the installed user base and fixed by the programmer. The end result was a battle tested plug-in that has been around the block many times. At its most basic, all-in-one SEO pack addresses four key elements that are needed for a successful SEO. One is does your blog have the right post titles to attract search engine traffic? All-in-one SEO pack allows you to have blog titles that has your target key words coded in them. If somebody links to you, your target key words appear. The second feature is that it allows your blog post titles to have category support. Categories are often neglected by blog owners as just an unwanted feature. Many SEO specialists, however, realize that the category could actually be key word coded and helps your search engine optimization. WordPress all-in-one SEO pack allows you to optimize your category and it does this all in one page. You just need to fill in the blank and forget about it. The third element is duplicate content prevention. Many websites defeat their SEO campaigns by unwittingly duplicating content on their sites. Depending on how the navigation is set up, the search engine spiders return duplicate results and since search engines hate duplicate content, this may result in a penalty depending on how your website is set up. All-in-one SEO pack has built-in mechanisms that help avoid duplicate content issues. Finally, it allows for custom posts. SEO is a state of the art that is constantly evolving. All-in-one SEO pack recognizes this so you can customize your post with each entry. The plug-in does not overwrite your posts. If you notice a new change, you can go ahead and customize your entry to reflect that change in SEO practices.
All told, all-in-one SEO pack is a powerful plug-in package that works right out of the box. You do not even have to customize the options if you do not feel like it. It will automatically do your SEO for you. However, that is for beginners. If you truly want to get the most mileage out of this plug-in, you have to customize it. It is well worth your effort and time to fill in the blanks with the right information so you can reach your goals sooner rather than later.
WordPress SEO by Yoast
Developed by legendary WordPress developer Joost De Valk, WordPress by Yoast builds on De Valk’s many years of experience as a WordPress SEO consultant. It not only takes care of the SEO basics covered by all-in-one SEO pack discussed above, but it goes one step further. It helps its users write better SEO content.
As we have mentioned above, SEO involves three elements: The right key words, the right web page organization and the right content. All-in-one SEO pack handles the second of these elements–the right page organization. However, you are still in charge of the right key words and the right content. WordPress SEO by Yoast helps you with the third element–writing content. In addition to the features discussed above of all-in-one SEO pack, this plug-in gives you suggestions regarding your post. It gives you a snippet review for you to see an actual rendering of what your work will look like if it is featured in Google search results. You can quickly see whether the title is too short or whether it is too long. You can also see the meta description for your post. This allows you to tweak your post title so you can optimize your blog post title to fully capitalize on certain key words. Just as importantly, you can use the snippet feature to modify your meta description in that not only are your secondary or primary key words highlighted, but you create a call to action.
Many bloggers ignore the meta description of their blog post. This is really quite unfortunate because it is not enough for your blog post’s title to appear in the search engines. It is not enough for them to appear as the top result or near the top. Your target audience must click that listing for your to benefit. If they do not click, you do not get traffic and it is as simple as that. Do not waste this opportunity by ignoring the meta description. Write a killer description of your blog post and use action words for the reason that your target audience will click through. Think of it like writing a resume. Do not use passive sentences and try to begin your sentences with a verb and link the verb to an actual payoff or opportunity that your target users are looking for. It is not a science. It takes several years of tweaking and trial and error to come up with meta description copy that leaps off the page and really access click magnet. While it may take some doing in order to achieve results, keep at it.
WordPress SEO by Yoast gives you the tools to turn your meta description into a powerful weapon for your benefit. In addition to helping you with your content, this plug-in also comes with Linkdex page analysis. This functionality is actually a collection of functionalities. Think of it like an automated check list for your blog posts. It checks simple elements that you sometimes forget, for example, it checks if you have images in your post and if you do, it checks whether they have out tags that contain your post’s key word. This is very important because each post has many elements. One element is the title, another element is the meta description, another element is the subheading and finally pictures. Each of these elements, if optimized for search engines, can help you tremendously in getting more traffic for your blog post and your blog. This Linkdex functionality for WordPress SEO checks these elements for you to optimize for maximum benefit.
SEO Customization process
Finally, SEO by Yoast not only has the features of all-in-one SEO pack, it also improves on all-in-one SEO pack by walking you through the SEO customization process of the plug-in. It checks your current settings and gives you reminders of what you need to fix, for example, setting up pretty permalinks. In addition, it also automatically optimizes your blog by automatically inserting meta tags, optimizing your contents organization and fixing your link elements. This is all intended to meet Google and other search engines’ standards.
XML Site Map for WordPress
Even if you have all the right key words, your pages are optimized, and your content is optimized, you may still be overlooking one key element which might seriously hamper the success of your blog. For Google to send a web page traffic, it has to find that page, it has to crawl that page, and index that page. Crawling simply means going to the web page and sucking up a proprietary blend of information, including its organization, its key word clusters, and parts of its content. Google will then analyze this information and make some judgments and rank it when somebody searches for certain keywords. Sounds simple enough, right? Unfortunately, many bloggers organize their blog in such a way that it is actually hard to crawl. Even if Google can crawl your website, you may have set it up in such a way that it is a superficial crawl-less than 100% of information is mapped out and accounted for by Google. This can be a serious problem because you want to give Google as much information as it needs so it can potentially send you as much traffic as possible.
The benefits of using a sitemap
Make things easier for yourself by installing an XML site map for your WordPress blog. There are many site map plugins available. However, we are suggesting the most battle tested site map plug-in available. This is the XML site map plug-in. What is a site map? A site map is precisely a listing of all the pages of your site. It is organized in such a way that it is easy for Google to start at the home page and drill down to your deepest content and back up to a higher level. This helps search engines find all your content and navigate your website quickly and efficiently.
Just like anything else, if Google software hits a wall on your website, it will only try a certain amount of times before it gives up. The Google XML site map’s plug-in makes this process easier and helps prevent you from erecting walls that might stop Google from fully mapping out your blog. The sitemap also “suggests” to search engines how frequently they should crawl your site.
In terms of settings, you merely need to click check boxes for the features that you are looking for and also make sure that you have a site map file uploaded to the right directory on your blog. It clearly explains what you need to do to make the plug-in work. It is pretty much just a simple matter of creating an empty XML site map file and uploading it to a particular directory in your blog’s installation folders. If your installation is set up properly, you do not even need to manually upload. It will automatically generate the file. However, this depends on your server permissions. You may need to contact your hosting company’s technical support to figure out your permissions and hence you can create the file accordingly.
The Bottom Line
Going with WordPress saves you a lot of time when it comes to search engine optimization. Not only is it a powerful publishing platform, it is actually engineered in such a way as to invite its installed base of users to come up with helpful plugins that helps drive search engine traffic to WordPress installations. Take full advantage of this feature by installing the powerful plugins we discussed above. Make sure that you do your homework in regard to the key words you are going to optimize for. Make sure to read the instructions carefully in order to fully customize your WordPress blog.
Part 4: How To Turn Search Keywords Into High Quality Content
