Stealth Employed

Are you starting a new blog? If you are serious about blogging and you want to bring in quality traffic, then hosting your own blog is the answer for you. Wordpress from wordpress.org is a personal publishing platform which is very easy to use, yet very powerful and effective. Installation and setup can take 20 minutes to a few hours depending on your knowledge of code and uploading files to a server. Then all you have to do is generate quality content for your visitors. Here is the list of things you need to do to make sure your blog starts getting noticed right away:

1. Get a domain name from GoDaddy or Yahoo or Network Solutions. Don’t get a name like “www.mywebsitedomainnameiswaytoolong.com”. Make it as specific and short as possible to increase it’s value. Also don’t ad numbers unless you absolutely have to.
2. Get a hosting package (with PHP) from GoDaddy or Yahoo or Network Solutions.
3. Download Wordpress from wordpress.com. It includes a readme document which explains exactly how to install your Wordpress blog and configure it.
4. Choose a theme for your blog. Wordpress comes with two available themes but they have thousands to choose from at themes.wordpress.net.
5. Download plugins for your blog. Wordpress plugins can help you do just about anything with your blog. Here is a list of my must have Wordpress plugins:
   1. Goolge XML Sitemaps – Also know as Google Sitemap Generator. This widget will creat a search engine compliant XML sitemap document so that when the search bots find your site, they know exactly where to look for all the juicy information. Don’t forget to go to google.com/webmasters to submit and verify your site.
   2. All In One SEO Pack – This tool will generate page titles, meta tags, page descriptions, and keyword lists which are search engine friendly. It also helps search engines to avoid indexing duplicate content from your site.
   3. AdSense Manager – The Adsense Manager plugin is primarily built for adding Google Adsense ad units to any part of your blog. But it also has this cool “direct code injection” tool which allows you to place any piece of code just like an ad unit to any part of your blog. This is great if you use affiliate links too. The plugin will also create simple ad widgets that you can easily place in your sidebar.
   4. FeedBurner FeedSmith – This is a service provided by feedburner.com. There are two sides to FeedBurner. One is the website where you can get stats and change settings for your feed. The other is the plugin for your wordpress blog which redirects the standard wordpress feed to your updated FeedBurner feed. This is a must as it will not only help you create a stimulating RSS feed, it will also help you to notify most of the major feed reader services like blogger.com and technorati.com. Sign up for the service, and follow all the instructions word for word. Make sure to activate these features:
      1. BrowserFriendly – Ensures that almost all browsers will see your feed the way you want them to.
      2. SmartFeed – Converts your feed to all the major feed formats.
      3. FeedFlare – adds options for the readers. Increases blog interactivity.
      4. Email Subscriptions – gives you code to an email subscription box to your blog. This is vital. This would be a good time to use the Adsense Manager “direct code injection” tool which will make a widget for you sidebar.
      5. PingShot – Notifies up to 11 feed reader services that your blog has new content.

   Keep in mind that you may need other plugins as well depending on what type of blog you are creating. I use more plugins than are listed here and I found most of them at the wordpress plugin page.

6. Double check all your settings and your widgets because it sucks when you write a bunch of stuff on your blog and then you have to go back and make major changes to your blog.
7. Start publishing your content!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 21st, 2007 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.