10 Essential Steps for a Killer SEO WordPress Blog

1. Download WordPress and install. If you use a host like hostmonster or webhostingpad, you can use fantastico or another service to instantly install your blog. Using the default theme, Twenty Ten, works fine to start with, but it needs the items below to be more effective.

2. Change Permalinks. In admin, click Settings > Permalinks, change Common settings to Custom Structure and type in the following. Also, change the tag and category names so it contains a keyword related to your content.

/%postname%/

2. Activate Akismet (to block spam). In admin, go to Plugins and under Akismet in the middle of the screen, click Activate. Click the link ‘enter your Akismet API key’ and enter yours or click ‘get your key’ if you don’t have one.

3. Add URLs to ping, increasing your online exposure (don’t add too many, as pingomatic already distributes to multiple sites). In admin, go to Settings > Writing. At the bottom, where it says ‘Update Services’ remove what is there and paste in these URLs…

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

4. Download and install the ‘Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger’ WordPress plugin, http://ultimateplugins.com/smart-update-pinger/ . Copy to the wp-content > plugins folder via an FTP program such as FileZilla (free). Return to the WordPress admin and choose Plugins, locate your newly added plugin and activate it. Now, go to Settings > UP Smart Update Pinger and ensure ‘Enable pinging’ is checked, and you may adjust any other settings on this page. This plugin allows more accurate pinging when posting remotely and not to ping when editing.

5. Add SEO friendly code to the header. In Admin, go to Appearance > Editor > then on right side click to edit Header (header.php)

If you have WordPress 3.x, then find the following code approx 10 lines down from the top. This code does not yield good SEO, because it appends a pipe and the name of your blog to each title, making each page title less effective for SEO (I have no idea why they made that default). So…

Find this…

<title><?php
/*
* Print the <title> tag based on what is being viewed.
*/
global $page, $paged;

wp_title();

// Add the blog name.
//bloginfo( 'name' );

// Add the blog description for the home/front page.
$site_description = get_bloginfo( 'description', 'display' );
if ( $site_description && ( is_home() || is_front_page() ) )
echo " | $site_description";

// Add a page number if necessary:
if ( $paged >= 2 || $page >= 2 )
echo ' | ' . sprintf( __( 'Page %s', 'twentyten' ), max( $paged, $page ) );

?></title>

And replace with this…

<title><?php
global $page, $paged;
if ( is_home() ) { ?>
(REPLACE THIS WITH YOUR PAGE TITLE)
<?php } else if (is_category()) { echo single_cat_title(); } else { the_title(); }
// Add a page number if necessary:
if ( $paged >= 2 || $page >= 2 )
echo ' | ' . sprintf( __( 'Page %s', 'twentyten' ), max( $paged, $page ) );?></title>
<meta name="title" content="<?php if (is_home()) {bloginfo('name') ;} else {wp_title(' ') ;}?>" />
<meta name="description" content="<?php if (is_home()) {bloginfo('name') ;} else {wp_title(' ') ;}?>" />
<meta name="keywords" content="<?php if (is_home()) {bloginfo('name') ;} else {wp_title(' ') ;}?>" />

NOTE: This WordPress theme changes the straight apostrophes to the smart apostrophes (that are curved). Unfortunately, you can't literally copy and paste it, but need to first manually change all apostrophes in the code to the straight, dumb, normal ones. The easiest way to do this is to copy into Notepad++ and search/replace the curved apostrophes for regular ones.

6. Download FeedBurner plugin and FTP upload to your WordPress plugins folder. Activate, and enter your FeedBurner URL in the plugin under Settings > FeedBurner. If you don’t have a URL, go to Feedburner and make one.

7. Download Google XML Sitemaps plugin. Copy to plugins folder via FTP, then activate it, then under Settings, click XML-Sitemap, then click the top link ‘Click here’ to build it for the first time.

8. Add Google Analytics code to WordPress. You don’t need a plugin for this simple task, unless you plan on switching themes often. To add the code, in the Admin, go Appearance > Editor, then choose Header.php on the right side. Scroll down and find the </head> tag about 1/3 down the page. Copy your Google Analytics code you got when registering with them and paste the code immediately before the </head> tag. Note, this is only for the latest Analytics code. If you are using the legacy code, then you want to put it in the footer above the </body> tag. For either case, click ‘Update File’ and you’re done. Wait a day, then check Google Analytics and you should see your data. If you have no visitors, you need to make sure your blog is indexed, then start driving traffic to your site. To see if Google has indexed your site, type your URL in Google’s search field.

9. Add your blog URL to Google Webmaster Tools. This will allow you to track the indexing frequency and # of indexed pages, and determine if your blog has any errors.

10. Download and install Windows Live Writer for super-easy posting (and for multiple accounts). Then within that program, choose the menu item Blogs > Add Blog Account… then choose Other Blog Service. It will then configure the blog. You can drag and drop onto the writing area, including images, which you can tell it to automatically add a shadow or make rounded corners on, for instance. You can also adjust images’ brightness/contrast. See an example of a Free Images blog which uses Live Writer for its rounded images. If you don’t believe this tool is essential, just download and try it for a while.

6 BONUS TIPS FOR EXTRA WORDPRESS BLING…

11. Publish RSS feeds as a post. Download FeedWordPress (for publishing [syndicating] RSS feeds from other sources into your content). WordPress also has a built-in RSS widget you can drag (from Admin > Appearance > Widgets) to a sidebar, but it only gives a direct link, instead of actual posts, which FeedWordPress can do. To mashup (mix together and filter) your RSS content sources, you can use Yahoo Pipes. See 10 steps to mashup RSS content with Yahoo Pipes.

12. Add easy quick-links to your post for adding it to Digg, Facebook, and other social media. AddThis. After each posting, add it to Digg and others- having links to your pages will do wonders for Google deciding whether to index them.

13. Add a CreativeCommons license. Did you know that Google’s advanced search engine will find sites with CreativeCommons licenses? Bloggers may search this to find content to syndicate. If you use links to your own site woven into your articles, you can benefit by having your links syndicated across multiple other websites. To add a CreativeCommons license, fill out the form and click Select a License. On the next page, copy the code, then return to your WordPress blog Admin area, and click Appearance > Widgets, then choose the Text widget and drag over to the right to your Primary Widget Area. Open the Text widget and paste in your code. I prefer removing all the text junk after the <br /> tag to make it look cleaner. Save. The CreativeCommons logo should now appear and Google and will recognize this site as having a shareable content.

14. Add a contact form- Fast Secure Form takes hardly any time to configure and uses Akismet for spam prevention.

15. For a little more variety and bling, add a theme, such as WooThemes. They have a  few free ones that are worth checking out.

16. Add a contact form plugin. Not all work, but this one does.

17. Change category name under Posts > Categories, so it contains a keyword related to your content.