Setting Up WordPress For Maximum Profits
WordPress is a fantastic piece of software and enables you to get very high search engine results with relatively little effort. However, there are a few things you should take the time to do in order to extract the maximum potential for making profits from your blog.
The first step is to ensure your blog URL’s are setup to be SEO friendly, you will get far higher rankings if your URL format looks like example.com/blogging-on-wordpress-is-fun rather than example.com/?p=13 which is the default setup.
To change the link structure, login to the admin area, go to Settings >> Permalinks and click the custom structure. Enter the following code in to the box:
/%postname%/
and then click save. If you have categories setup, you can also use:
/%category%/%postname%/
Another option you need to check is the Privacy page because if you used Fantastico to install WordPress then by default it blocks search engines from crawling your website, so you need to ensure the “allow my blog to be found in the search engines” is checked.
You should look at changing the default theme for WordPress, try and find something that is very clean with minimal graphics, we don’t want to distract our visitors, we want to get them focused on clicking the affiliate links and noticing the relevant ads we have conveniently placed. Whichever theme you choose, go for something with as few graphics and colours as possible, this will also help it load very fast. A little research may be required, however is well worth it.
One of the reasons WordPress has become the most downloaded blogging platform is the ability to extend the functionality with plugins. To turbo-charge your blog, look to add the following plugins:
- All-In-One-SEO-Pack: this plugin allows you to use custom titles, descriptions and keywords for each post you make which really helps your search engine rankings.
- WP-Spamfree: Easily the best anti-spam plugin available, it uses a cookie and javascript based system to stop bots from posting spam comments on your blog.
- Twitter-Tools: The perfect companion that can automatically update your Twitter page whenever you post a new blog, exposes your blog to thousands of people instantly.
- Social Bookmarking Reloaded: This excellent plugin adds social bookmarking icons to the end of your post and lets your visitors bookmark your blog with a click of a mouse button.
- WP Click Track: An invaluable little tool that lets you track all the clicks on your site and mask your affiliate links – important if you want to increase click-thrus.
The final element that you need to do is to insert your Google Analytics code. This is absolutely essential because it allows us to see who is coming to our site, how long they spent on there, how they found our site and what page they left on.
Using this data we can find new content to add (because maybe someone used an unusual keyword combination) and even discover why people are not clicking our links – maybe they are leaving immediately after arriving which suggests that the blog is not what they were expecting when they clicked through from Google.
Everybody blogs for different reasons, however if you are purely blogging for revenue then ensure that as a first step that the above is followed and implemented.
Cemil Ozcelik
www.OnlineBusinessBlackbook.com © 2009 - 2010
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Great to the point article Cemil. Taking just 1 or 2 of your points can make such a difference in ensuring your blog is setup the right way. Be careful not to tell too many people about the ‘/%category%/%postname%/’. Don’t want too many other competing blogs climbing the rankings
This is a very interesting article. Wordpress is reliable software and is worth taking the time to know how to set up properly to receive maximum benefits.
Hi Cemil,
You’ve highlighted some great tips for new bloggers who want to set up their very own self hosted blog. It will be sure to to get them off on the right foot.
Great post Cemil and some good suggestions for plugins.
Another informative post Cemil – and straight to the point, which I like. I must admit, I do like your bit at the end …. “If you like this post, you may also like…”. I may have to steal that one
Jan
Glad you enjoyed it Jan. In many industries they don’t say steal, you say “leveraged”