Search Engine Optimization for WordPress Bloggers
When I began blogging a few months ago, I had no idea what Search Engine Optimization was. I was happy just to be able to sign up for a blog with blogger.com, write an article and then publish something instantly. Once I figured out how to embed video into the site, I was ecstatic.
My site address was www.douglasthomaswallace.blogspot.com. After a couple of months, I was told that having a www yournamehere.blogspot.com address was like showing up to a black-tie affair in a Speedo. This same person said that serious bloggers used WordPress for their blogs; that way I could use the name I write under as my URL address. So I moved all my posts from my blogger.com account to a WordPress based site at www.douglasthomaswallace.com
I knew WordPress was free, open-source software, but I had no idea where to start. Did I use www.wordpress.com or www.wordpress.org? If I used WP.org, how did I go about downloading the software? How do I get my work onto the screen? How do I find the templates? How do I download them? Bottom line, I was lost.
I began calling around to find out how much it would cost me to get someone to do it for me. The first guy wanted to charge me $1500.00. I couldn’t hang the phone up fast enough. The next guy wanted to charge me $500.00 to set up my site, which I knew was free and told him that. He said, “Well it’s free if you know how to do it.” That statement pissed me off. Now I wanted to figure out how to do it on my own even more.
I began reading about WordPress.org I found a free e-book at www.johnnybtruant.com and followed his instructions. By the end of the day, I was able to get my own site up and going. Now after four months of writing fairly regularly, yesterday I learned that I still don’t know shit.
I wanted to learn about Search Engine Optimization so I emailed a local company called www.studioc5.com. Carlos walked me through all the things that were wrong with my site. He pointed out that my titles weren’t very search engine friendly. In fact, I didn’t even have titles in the URL; there were numbers instead.
“Google isn’t searching for www.douglasthomaswallace.comP=135 in the URL. They want titles up there,” Carlos said.
He also told me that I didn’t have my site set up to allow robots or followers to access my site. I didn’t have any tags. I didn’t have any headers. I didn’t have keyword rich phrases. I didn’t have very many links and worse for a blogger, I had never even looked at Twitter.
Of course I have heard of these all things that Carlos described, but I had no idea exactly what he was talking about. He was nice enough to explain that I needed to have a title that people might actually search for, that I needed to have those keywords in the body of the of the post at least twice, but preferably three times. He also said I need to optimize my site, showed me how to change the titles in the URL, and then explained what the categories and headers were. For now it’s all a learning experience and I’m glad I get to go through it with a very small audience right now.
So today I’m trying something a little different. I titled this article according to what I thought people might type in Google. I tried using keywords that are in the title at least twice. I added links. I put a header on the article and filed it in a couple of catergories. I followed Carlos’s directions and did my best to optimize the site. Now hopefully, in a week or so, my site will pop up when you Google it. We’ll see.
But just to help it along, I’m going to try this too: www.douglasthomaswallace.com is the most informative, gut-busting, rip-roaring good time you can have with your clothes on. If I told anyone else about www.douglasthomaswallace.com people would think I’m trying to preach the gospel of www.douglasthomaswallace.com and I’d hate to be accused of that.
There! That ought’a help those pesky little spiders. Thanks for bearing with me.
2 Comments
Carlos rocks! You don’t find a lot of people willing to help you like that very often.
No you don’t.