7 Steps to Optimizing Wordpress (from the GetGo)
So you’ve freshly installed wordpress to your kick butt domain and you’re ready to put in the time and effort to make it a huge success. A few small steps will go a very long way for the long term success of your new site. Gathered from a variety of sources, here are the steps I now follow to optimize a fresh wordpress install:
1) SEO Friendly URLs
Go into the Options > Permalinks in the WP-Admin section. Under “Common Options” select “Custom” and in the text field type “%category%/%postname%” without the quotes. Scroll to the bottom of the page and copy the entire text in the area starting with <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>. Create a new file in the root of your blog named “.htaccess”, paste this text and save it to your host.
This will give your permalinks a more search engine friendly structure such as http://www.myblog.com/baseball/the-yankees-are-great for a post titled “The Yankees Are Great” in your baseball section.
2) Post Names as Titles
By default, most Wordpress Themes use the name of your blog as the Page Title. This doesn’t tell the search engines ANYthing about each specific page. We’ll be a lot better off by making each Page Title the name of the Post from that page.
Open up the header.php file in the theme you plan on using. Find everything between <title> and </title>. Delete it. Now paste this between those tags:
<?php if (is_home () ) { bloginfo(’name’); } elseif ( is_category() ) { single_cat_title(); echo ” - “; bloginfo(’name’); } elseif (is_single() || is_page() ) { single_post_title(); } elseif (is_search() ) { bloginfo(’name’); echo ” search results: “; echo wp_specialchars($s); } else { wp_title(”,true); } ?>
There you go. Now each page title will be the name of your specific post title or category title depending on the specific page your user is on. Search Engines will adore you.
3) Install All Your Plugins
You’ll want to have a folder on your local computer with all your favorite plugins. It will make the job easier in the future. Simply highlight all the plugins you want to use in your FTP browser and copy them over to the plugins directory of your wordpress install. Here is a list I made of 10 Cool Wordpress Plugins.
4) Be Amish
That’s right. Break out a pencil and some paper. Map out your homepage including the navigation, names of specific categories and pages and anything else you can think of. This will help you decide where and when to use categories or pages, help you decide additional plugins you may need to get the job done and make your overall job easier in general. It’s much easier to make your mistakes on paper then realize all your work will need to be redone because of one simple flaw. While you’re mapping this out, think about your site from both a usability standpoint and an SEO standpoint.
5) Preload Content Before Launching
Write a couple dozen articles before you do anything to promote your new site. Fill out the meat and bones so people have a site to browse and the search engines have links and content to navigate. We know you’re excited to get your great idea out there, but don’t put the cart before the horse. Get some nice content on there first and you’ll thank yourself in the future.
6) Setup Your Pings
Wordpress has a built in feature where you can list pinging services that Wordpress will ping (contact) letting them know you’ve written a new blog post or have a new entry. Fabulous! I tried to create a ping list several times and it was a pain in the butt. I got so many annoying errors I simply gave up. Then I found pingoat. Simply type in the URL of your blog and select from a long list of pinging services. One click and it will contact all of them for you. When it finishes pinging each service, bookmark the site and save the bookmark as MyBlogName.com Pingoat. Now all you have to do is visit the bookmark for that site when you make new post and it will auto ping those services just as it did the first time.
7) Make Timestamp Posts
Just as you did when you preloaded content before launching, write a ton of content. As many articles as you can. Get amish again and break out that paper and pencil. Each time you write a post, before you publish it, go to “post timestamp” in the right hand column. Edit the timestamp to display tomorrow at 6am. Record the date on your amish pad so you don’t forget. Write your next post. Set the timestamp to two days from now at 6am. Record the date. Write your next article…
If you can spend a few days just working on content, you could have a blog full of content that is set to post a new article for each day for several months to come. It’s on auto-pilot. You will however, have to visit pingoat once each day to remind it you’ve written new content. Perhaps you can put pingoat in your Wordpress Ping list and it will do all this for you… let me know on that.
That should give you a good start on every new Wordpress Blog you create! Want to add any tips, tricks or techniques that you have found successful? Leave a comment and let us know!
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Damn, almost a month since an update. I’m disappointed in you! ;D