Meadowsage.com

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Is the art of making your blogs / website, portal find easily, on the top list, get high traffic through search engine with informative content. Your arrow is the content, your blogs is the bow, your keywords is the arm, search engine is the medium, and the target is the reader.

Warning : The title might be overwhelmed

Okay, so I think somebody else has post it before, but I never found out. Or somebody else is writing a better tips & tricks for this, let me know if yes. This is the basic guide from my experience, and from a lot of tutorial out there, nice, harsh, revision of comment are really appreciated.

Q : I already have a nice domain with high pagerank ? What should I do next ?

A : Set up a space for it, if you don’t have any webhost, or your budget is not enough to afford the hosting, you can try a free one like 000webhost. This one comes without no ads or banner or such. Their new server is quite fast, and the support is pretty quick for a free webhost. I’ll post something about the webhost tips later on.

Q : Ok dude, I already do that,.. I have the webhost ready for my blog

A : Download the latest version of wordpress, you can download the latest version in here, wordpress is the most search engine friendly as far that i know. I’m not their marketer by the way, but as you know the update of wordpress is the most rapid and follow the trend of internet technology, the plugins build by thousand of people around the world, their community and support are awesome, anything related to web 2.0 or social network plugins, a basic function from tagging until the heavy one like combine a blog with a gallery, or making a blog as a portal with a lot of writer. And the best one is, IT’S FREE.

Q : Ahhh phuket, no wonder I see a lot of people use it, kay, I have the wordpress, next please,..

A : Follow the guidance of installing wordpress, if you too lazy to read it, its comes with 5 simple steps for me,

1. upload the file into your webhost (zip it for quick upload, and unzip it in the webhost), if you use cpanel, just upload the latest version of wordpress, after the files uploaded, mark the files and click unzip. Fast and easy.
2. setup the database (mysql database & user password), in the cpanel (control panel for a webhost), you’ll find the mysql icon, just click in there, put the database name, usually it comes (username_databasename), setup the password, use a combination of words and letter, or better if you add some character like @$@!&. Pair the username with the database, and mark all privileges.
3. hit your blog address, they will ask you to setup the configuration files, type all the information above, the database name, the password etc. Done Hit next, Simple and easy.
4. You’ll get a random password. SAVE IT, login to your wp-admin, http://youraddress.com/wp-admin, and then input the user (Admin), and the password given. After login, quick change the password by click the user at the top right, scroll down, input the new password, and done.
5. Congrats, You have your blogs ready to go.

Now we begin the optimization with the help of plugins and templates.

Q : In what way a plugin can help me with optimization of a blogs ?

A : Well, the answer is A LOT OF WAY, a plugins (additional script for your blog and can be installed separated from the wordpress itself), a plugins can help you to add related tag, so you don’t have need to write more, it can help you re-write the a post name, so it make easier for the reader to spot the content (like p=1? to post-title, a plugins can help you maintenance the feed, and drive the traffic more and a lot more.

Q : I get it now, so what kind of plugins I should install ?

A : It depends on your need, but I’ll show you mine. The basic plugins I installed is :

• AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget (drop-down) Help your visitor promote your website or blog. Put the AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget on your site or blog, so any visitor can easily bookmark it. The widget works with all popular bookmarking services. By AddThis.com. A very helpful plugins to keep your visitor coming.
  
• Akismet Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it.
• All in One SEO Pack Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog. By uberdose. This one is very useful tools to obtain more SEO blog.
  
• AskApache RewriteRules Viewer Displays the Internal WordPress Rewrite Rules. By AskApache.
• FeedBurner FeedSmith Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. By FeedBurner.
• Google XML Sitemaps This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. By Arne Brachhold.
• Related Posts This wordpress plugin provides tagcloud that shows the related posts of a post, and can replace a keyword within a post to a list of related posts. By René Ade.
• Top Commentators Widget Adds a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP site. Adapted from Show Top Commentators plugin. By Lorna Timbah.
• WordPress.com Stats Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key. By Andy Skelton.
• WordPress Database Backup On-demand backup of your WordPress database. By Austin Matzko.
• WP-PageNavi Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.

There’s a history why I used those plugins, I’ll tell you in the next chapter of tips & tricks to starting a super SEO blog with wordpress part II. Stay tuned. Find this information useful, just bookmark it.