Entries for June, 2008

As per the last four posts in this series, by now, you have your new blog in a reasonably good shape but it’s been privately kept until now. So far the following steps have been followed to get it into the state that it is:

• Registered the domain name (or free blog space) and the hosting space
• Set up domain email addresses and installed Wordpress, chose a theme and basic plugins
• Created pillar posts, categories, permalink and configured some plugins
• Did some internal Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work using free tools and links

Having done a reasonably good work so far, now it’s time to get your blog reviewed by some experienced people - not necessarily experts - and also release it for preview to your friends and family people. Click Here to Continue Reading

Having completed your pillar posts and other initial setup, time has now arrived to do some search engine optimization (SEO) for your site and its contents. We are not yet talking about doing the SEO using paid external services but more of how to seo yourself stuff and tips to optimize your blog to make it more search engine friendly.

Phase 6: Make the content SEO friendly
In the last post, I mentioned that Wordpress is an amazingly powerful platform when it comes to creating search engine friendly content, in the context of tags, post slugs, categories etc (In fact the term WordPress SEO is redundant) There are a lot more that Wordpress can do which we will talk about soon. At the same time, there are a number of things that you could do manually to make sure that your blog’s technical structure (theme code mainly) is optimized as well. Click Here to Continue Reading

One of the common mistakes that many new bloggers make is to go live too early or before it is actually ready for mass acceptance. In the third post of this series, let me share a few experiences which could be useful tips for some of you to prepare your new blog for launch!

Phase 5: Create & configure initial content
After setting up your wordpress blog as per our last post, it is now time to start building the initial content and content relationship entities such as tags, categories and permalink structure. There may be a few other things such as some default sidebar widgets but they are not as important as the content itself.

Initial content checklist
The following are the bare minimum content you must have before you can think of making the blog public.

• The very first post should be a welcome post that explains the motive behind your blog and what you intend to offer
• The welcome post should be followed by three or four (or more if you can) posts that underline the main subject Click Here to Continue Reading

Technorati, the de-facto standard for blog ranking and blog content aggregation services, has announced the launch of their new blog advertisement network - Technorati Media. The surprise announcement must be a hint that they are all set to take on Google AdSense which right now leads the Tier 1 online advertisement market with the help of 100 thousands of bloggers (and not just high traffic websites). – the other Tier 1 player
Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) not being a favorite among bloggers as well as publishers outside the US.

The right people for the right business model
Technorati probably already knows in and out on what bloggers need in terms of monetization and they have huge statistics with them Click Here to Continue Reading