One of the best ways to rank higher for your keyword phrase is to have them in your domain name. A blog that is about photography would rank higher and come up in more searches if the domain name was something like www.herviewphotography.com rather than www.herview.ca for example. “Her View” is catchy yes, and of course good branding, but for organic search engine traffic from people looking for fine art photography, www.herview.ca would have to rely on a lot of “on page” optimization.

Having the keyword phrase in the actual url of the website page or blog post is a very important and often overlooked aspect of blog design.

In the example below, you see the URL of another post in this blog

Here you see the domain name Blog Building Basics, followed by the category name of the post in question, “blogging tips” and then the actual post title. The post title is followed by .html which indicates that it is to be viewed in a web browser.

This format is but one way set up your permalink structure and is why I wrote earlier about the importance of a good post title. Aaron Wall, the author of SEOBook, describes how to create search engine friendly page titles in his free search engine optimization video I recently posted and this is where it all applies, the custom permalink structure.

What Is A Permalink?

Permalink stands for Permanant Link and is used to describe the full link to the blog post or website page.

When you first go to a blog, you might see a couple of posts on the front page but each post has it’s own page all by itself as well. The link to that single post is called the Permanant Link or Permalink.

Choosing A Custom Permalink Structure

A WordPress blog handles all this through the Custom Permalink Structure setup on the Permalink sub tab of the WordPress Options Tab.

When you first create a blog with WordPress, the default setting is chosen. You see in the screen shot that the default setting uses the post id number rather than the title.

Ugly Permalinks

If your post is about “Fine Art Photography From Peru” and your post number is 24, the link to your post would be www.herviewphotography.com/?p=24 . As described above, www.herviewphotography.com/fine-art/fine-art-photography-from-peru.html would be much more descriptive and get your keyword phrases in the url.

Using the post id number as your url descriptor is called “ugly permalink”

The Date and Name based setting inserts the year, the month and the day, then the post name without the .html but instead a trailing slash. Much better than the default and used for very busy blogs, ones with many posts and when post titles might duplicate.

If you use the custom one like I suggest, you’d have to do well not to duplicate a post title as your blog ages because WordPress would gag on it, not knowing which post to show “fine art photography” from March 21st 2004 or “fine art photography” from Dec 22nd, 2006. Same title, two different posts, …hiccup… crash.

Pretty Permalinks

If you think your page titles are going to be unique all the time, with no duplication, the best choice for a new blogger in my opinion is to use the custom setting and then specify the custom structure. These url’s that use the full post title instead of numeric descriptor are called “pretty permalinks”

Insert your custom structure into the field provided. In my example, I used two WordPress Permalink variables %category% and %postname% with the slashes to separate them and followed with “.html” to complete it.

If you use a lot of the same post titles but want to create some sort of uniqueness, I would opt for one of these two custom structures

/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%.html

Or

/%category%/%post_id%/%postname%.html

This last option gives you a keyword phrase from the category, inserts the post id to make it unique, then finishes with the post title and then .html

What you’re looking at in the example above are variables that WordPress uses. A percent sign is wrapped around a word and is then used internally to pull the data from the database based on the variable. The variable %category% is replaced with the actual category. In the case of two categories being used, WordPress uses the one with the lower id number.

Look here for a complete list of permalink structure tags, and more information about this as not all combinations of structure tags work together.

It’s important if not critical to get this done right before you even write your first post because if you’ve got any inbound links to your blog or blog pages and then change your permalink structure, all those links will now be dead (404 not found). When you first create a blog, choosing a custom permalink structure should be on the top of your list. Besides, it’s easy, the entire Options tab setup takes about 5 minutes or less.

The options for this tab include the size of the post box ,convert emoticons to graphics for display, setting the default post category, post via email and update services.

This tutorial will focus on the size of the post box and update services

Note: throughout this article and this website, the term “WordPress Tab” or “Tab” refers to the tabs within the wordpress architecture and not to be confused with the tabs within your Firefox browser.

Configure The Writing Tab

1. Login to your WordPress Dashboard, and click on the Options tab found in the light blue WordPress navigation bar
2. If this is a brand new install of WordPress with no Plugins installed, there should be 7 subtabs as options
3. Click on the “Writing” tab as shown in the image below

Size Of Post Box

You’ll see that I have “size of the post box” circled. The number you set here has an impact on how much room you have to write your blog post. By default, the number is 10 which refers to 10 rows of space for writing in.

Go have a look at this right now. Login to your wordpress blog, then click the “write a post” link from your dashboard (or click the “write” tab next to “dashboard”).

Make a note of the size of the “post” box under “title”. Not too big is it? If you haven’t already change this setting, it’s exactly 10 rows tall. Personally, I prefer it twice that size just so I can see more of my post without having to scroll through it while I’m editing it.

Now, go back to the “writing” tab by clicking on Options -> Writing and change this value to 20 so that it doubles the writing space available.

Once you’ve done that, we’ll skip over the blog by email part and straight down to the bottom, the “Update Services”

Update Services

You may or may not have heard about ping or pinging, but essentially it’s a way for to tell someone or a service that something has happened. Pinging can be used in various ways, but in this case it’s to tell some blog announcement services that “hey, I’ve got some new content, please update your catalog”.

A ping is just a little nudge saying, I’m here, and I’ve got something new. This is an over simplification, but you get the idea.

The “Update Services” is a list of places that accept pings from you so that they can alert their readers or update their lists and put a link to your new post on their website.

What happens is that you ping them, then they come to your website and see what’s new. Then they take the new title of your blog post and usually the first paragraph and update their websites with the new info. This then displays your latest work on their sites so that interested parties can come back to your site and read.

Pinging is a good thing.

Too much pinging can be a bad thing.

By default, this box has one entry in it.

Here are a few more entries that I use myself.

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Copy and paste these items into your Update Services text field.

Keep in mind that whenever you publish a new post, part of what your web host is doing is then pinging these places. That takes time and server resources. It can slow things down just slightly, so you may notice a slight hesitation in response time. I know of places that give you huge lists of places to ping and then your website just times out when you hit publish. This is a stripped down version of that huge list that I find works.

You get to ping a bunch of places to announce your work, your blog post publishes in a timely manor, you get more traffic and everyone is happy.

Once you’ve configured this “writing” tab on your wordpress dashboard, press the update button. Then go have a look at your “write a post” page and see how the change looks.

The general tab is where you configure your blog title, tagline, add the www to the domain name and set the blog timzone offset.

Note: throughout this article and this website, the term “WordPress Tab” or “Tab” refers to the tabs within the wordpress architecture and not to be confused with the tabs within your Firefox browser.

1. Login to your WordPress Dashboard, and click on the Options tab found in the light blue WordPress navigation bar
2. If this is a brand new install of WordPress with no Plugins installed, there should be 7 subtabs as options
3. Click on the “General” tab as shown in the image below

The first two fields, Weblog title and Tagline are just that, the title and tagline. Both are great places to get your keywords into your website and be descriptive at the same time. Depending on your theme, these two fields are used in different ways. The Weblog Title though is always used in the title field of your blog. It shows up in the top part of your browser window, in links shown in search engines and when people bookmark your site (more often than not). Keep them professional using your keywords and being as descriptive as possible.

Add The WWW To Your WordPress Blog Address

I want to draw your attention to the next two fields, WordPress Address (URL) and Blog Address (URL) (you’ll see them circled in red)

By default, your blog is installed without the www. In my case, the default was http://blogbuildingbasics.com. You can leave this if you like, however, when you link to your website, be aware that http://domainname.com and http://www.domainname.com are two different domains in the eyes of the search engines.

It is my opinion that you should always add the www in front of your domain name in these two fields before you do any posting or marketing of your blog.

To update them, simply put your curser in that field and add the www. in front of your domain name.

Enter Your Timezone Offset

The last thing of note here is the “Times In The Weblog Should Differ By” field. This is so that when you’re looking at anything that is time stamped in your blog (ie: future posting), you will know when the post is really coming out. You may find that you use this more often than you think in your upcoming blogging experience, so best to just enter your GMT offset here. I’m in mountain time which is GMT -7, so that’s what I put in the box.

Press the update button to complete this portion of the General Tab configuration.

A plugin is like a utility for your blog that does something.

There are programmers all over the world who build these plugins to do little jobs for them and then they share them. Most of them are given away free of charge, so feel free to experiment with them if you like.

When I first create a blog for myself or clients, these are the first three I install and activate.

First 3 Plugins For WordPress Beginners To Install

• WordPress Database Backup
• Google XML Sitemap Generator
• Blog Stats

Why these three plugins?

WordPress Database Backup Plugin – All your posts, links and any other data you input into WordPress is stored in a database. If anything should happen to your blog or the web hosting server that it’s on, having a recent backup is pretty critical wouldn’t you think? The first plugin allows you to schedule a backup of your database tables hourly, daily, weekly or on demand. There are few options so that keeps it simple. Set it to email the zipped up database content file to you once a day or once a week depending on how often you blog.

Google XML Sitemap Generator – You have probably seen a sitemap but what the hell is XML? Not to worry, this one you don’t even have to understand, except for the fact that it tells Google, Yahoo and ASK.com about your new posts in a format that they can understand easily and effectively. Think “Marketing”. This plugin generates a search engine readable sitemap and then actually goes out and tells them about it (It pings the search engines and says “come look, I have a new post – here’s where it is!” ). This little plugin is extremely well built by Arne Brachold and I even gave a donation to him I was so impressed and appreciative of his efforts.

Again, with this plugin, simply download it, ftp it to your server using a free ftp client like FireFTP and then activate it. Once activated, go to options -> XML-Sitemap page and check off the fields that apply. Simple. There’s a lot of things the plugin asks on the options page, but most of the default options are fine.

Blog Stats – This one does just what it says, it gives you a nice little interface (within your free wordpress.com account) showing you your visitors, where they came from, what they’re viewing, how many came on which days, what they had searched for to find you and much much more. It’s not really critical at all, but it’s pretty good to know if you’re getting any traffic from your link building and especially knowing what your readers had searched for to find you. This little plugin was created by the WordPress team at Automattic.

In order to use Blog Stats, you will have to have to have a username with wordpress. They show you your stats via an interface on wordpress. In order to see it, you have to login to your account AND you have to have an API code (Application Programming Interface code – like a unique id for your account). You’ll need this same API code for an anti-spam plugin as well, so if you already have it, you’re good to go.

To get the WordPress Username and API code, go to www.wordpress.com (dot com, not dot org) and click on “signup”. You’ll see a page where you enter a username and a password for your account.

Below the fields where you enter your username and password you will see this question

Choose the second option as you see here. All you really need is the username so that you can get your API key.

To get your API Key, Follow the “where is my api key” instructions at WordPress

Your WordPress blog has a home on a web server. The web server is a computer located somewhere in the world and may be shared by many other blogs.

The server that stores all your files and serves them out when requested is called a Web Host. Web Hosting is the first thing you will require after purchasing your desired website name (or domain name).

Understanding Web Hosting

In the picture above we see a simple diagram showing how your computer is connected to your Web Host across the internet. In the old days (1990’s and early 2000’s), people would work on their web pages using Frontpage or Dream Weaver, Microsoft Visual Dev, or in my case Notepad and then once they had them looking like they wanted, would transfer the files to the Web Host where they would then be available for viewing to people around the world.

Files are transferred to your Web Host using a free ftp program like FireFTP.

These days, blogging platforms like WordPress make it easy to add content to your website right from within your web browser and the days of manually editing, tweaking and formatting your website are gone. With WordPress, it’s easily done with the click of a button.

Web Hosts charge a yearly fee for various services that they offer.

• Storage space for your files
• Database server for your data and content
• One click install of your WordPress Blog
• Bandwidth – or the moving of files from the server to the browser
• Email for your domain
• Online Photo Galleries
• Website Statistics – who’s visiting, from where, what words, and how
• 24/7 phone support
• Much more

Basic packages are around $100 a year but some Web Hosting companies offer much better rates for more than one year. Prices actually vary depending on your contract such as $8.95 per month if you pay by the month, but then lowers to $6.95 per month if you pay for a year in advance. The price may drop to as little as $4.95 a month if you pay for 3 years in advance. I use and recommend both Hostgator and Host Monster as very good places to get your web hosting.

If you want to have a blog or a website, you pretty much need to rent some space from a Web Hosting company in some form or another. There are free places to host your blog, but they’re not as robust or allow you to customize the things you need. They’re a fine place to get started if you need to, but most outgrow their free hosting quickly.

The easiest way to answer the question “what is Web Hosting” is to simply realize that someone, somewhere, has to store your files so that they can be viewed by others on the internet. A Web Host is the computer that manages all the parts of storing your data, managing your traffic as well as the other benefits listed above.

When you first install your wordpress blog using Fantastico, from within cpanel, a default theme is put in place. Once you’ve found another theme you want to use to spice up how your blog looks, you will have to first download the theme, and then transfer those files to your webhost to be used. This is called transferring the files and it’s done through a process of FTPing.

FTP simply stands for File Transfer Protocol and it’s just a fancy name for a method of moving files across the internet.

FireFTP is an easy method to do so because it’s an add-on for Firefox and opens within a tab of your browser allowing access to your local files and your remote files.

Local files are those stored on your own computer and remote files are those stored on your webhost server.

Install And Use FireFTP

Your first order of business is to install FireFTP into your firefox browser. If you have not yet made the switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox, now is the time to do so. Fire fox is much more robust, more secure and easily configurable web browser. Even the US govt warn about the dangers of using Internet Explorer. Switch to Firefox now and you wont ever look back.

Firstly:

Secondly:
Install FireFTP

Third:
Watch this 4m30s video on using FireFTP

I completely understand the confusion about how to ftp, what it means and how to do it when you first begin blogging. Most of us take it for granted as a way to move files across the internet to our webhosts, but for the person new to blogging, I’d like to make ftping as easy to understand as possible. I’ve used both CuteFTP and WS FTP, the latter for years and I’m not only much more happy with FireFTP, I now recommend it as the free ftp client of choice.

You may or may not know my story of how I once weighed 475 pounds and then took it upon myself to learn about health, nutrition and fitness and lose 300 pounds of fat. I then took up bodybuilding and gained another 50 to 60 pounds of lean muscle. I first began a website about it where I wrote about natural weight loss, health, fitness, tips and tricks etc and then in 2004 began a blogger blog on the backend of my website. My expertise was in microsoft, IIS, Active Server Pages and I used what I knew.

Enter wordpress blogs

I see how wordpress is much easier, much more robust, has the ability to make changes and allows for many plugins and automatic RSS feeds. It’s just plain easy for anyone to get started blogging and for a seasoned expert / programmer / html designer to get into simply and easily.

I began a new wordpress blog and launched it using th keyword phrase weight loss blog. It has quickly become a great resource for people wanting to learn how to take action on their health and weight loss by learning, being accountable and by taking action… and then getting support.

I chose the permalink structure early on having the category followed by the postname which is just good SEO.

in the options -> permalinks tab in the wordpress dashboard, you set the permalinks to “custom” and enter /%category%/%postname%.html

%category% and %postname% are variables that get replaced with the category and the postname, so by entering in the text above you end up with a post something like www.formerfatguyblog.com/weight-loss/how-i-lost-300-pounds-my-weight-loss-story.html. It has the domain name, a keyword phrase (the category) and then the post name followed by .html

This was how it was up until I decided to have guest authors.

The idea behind guest authors was to have the actual expert in their field write and educate the reader in their chosen field of expertise, then provide a revenue sharing model for them so that they not only educate and inspire, but then split the income from the advertisements. It would then be in their best interest to promote their author page and their posts driving traffic to the site. Each author doing this would results in more net views, more lives changed, more people educated and a cross promotion system going on. A person coming to the site to learn about Emotional Freedom Technique would then also learn about exercise from a top ranked personal trainer. Then maybe learn about creating more passion in their relationships from the teachings of another writer. More passionate relationships, better support for the person on the weight loss mission, less stress and better results. win-win.

This is the model I’m adapting and promoting.

However, one possible problem arises. Duplicate page names. Duplicate titles to posts. Rare yes, but possible. Two authors may enter the same name for the post which would then cause a system crash of sorts. Avoiding this would be a good idea.

Changing the permalink structure to reduce this possibility is the direction I’m taking.

By adding in the year and the month of the post, the odds of two posts being entered with the same name in the same category, in the same year and same month is highly unlikely. This also allows for the reader to then read older posts by date (year and month) within a category.

The permalink structure has been changed to /%category%/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html

Crash.

Well, not crash, but certainly not good either.

All the links I had in place from my previous marketing are now dead. They pointed to the old name and are now all turning up 404 not found.

Not exactly.

Normally, a bunch of work in the .htaccess file would be required to capture the old inbound links, process them, and then redirect them with a 301 redirect to the new page.

Have YOU got time to do that? Me either.

Enter Deans Permalinks Migration Plugin which does this all automatically with an upload, a click and then a change to the new WordPress permalink structure.

I’ll tell you how easy this was: I had a new author log into the site and text me a message (SMS) that she was writing a post. I texted her back saying “hold on a minute, I have to make a change”. Then downloaded the plugin, unzipped it, uploaded it, activated it, clicked on the plugin tab, clicked update, changed the permalink structure and then texted the author back saying “it’s good to go”.

That was it. Painless, and she was impressed too at how fast I did that.

Now my goal is to track the inbound links to the old posts and update them as best I can.

Changing your wordpress permalink structure might seem to be complicated and scary to do, but with Deans Permalink Migration Plugin, my job was done in two minutes.

Update: Spoke too soon. Seems this plugin will not work in all circumstances. It does not like %category% in the url structure that I pointed out above. Even after removing the %category% part, it still wouldn’t work. I de-activated the plugin, reverted back to the original permalink structure and will tackle this again when I have more time and more information.

Depending on how you’ve installed WordPress (manually or by a “one-click-install” that many hosting providers offer) – one of the very last installation steps is to choose a blog name and provide an email address. That’s where this checklist begins. Click on a heading below to get started!

1. Create blog title, add email address
2. Change your password
3. Disable visual rich editor
4. Add users
5. Change the tagline
6. Edit Membership permissions
7. Set a date and time format
8. Modify Reading and Writing settings
9. Edit Discussion settings
10. Modify Permalinks structure
11. Pick a theme
12. Customize your theme
13. Write down CSS info
14. Change title format
15. Edit blogroll
16. Edit the About page
17. Add some categories
18. Edit the example post for testing
19. Install plugins
20. Check blog and test plugins
21. Create a favicon.ico
22. Create a shortcut to the Dashboard / setup WordPress client
23. Start posting

I will be going through this WordPress post install checklist one by one in greater detail at a later date

Before posting your precious work for your blog, write the post using an external editor like Word or Textpad or other tool. This way you can take advantage of the word processor power, spell checking and grammer checking take place before posting. As well, you will have a back up copy in the event that your blog platform crashes while you’re writing, or after you press the “Publish” button.

Why am I telling you this? Because the very same thing just happened to me and I needed to remind myself why I write in MS Word first. I had decided to write up a quick post with a paragraph or two, but it turned into an essay with lots of affiliate links and such. Then I entered some Amazon affiliate information into the post, using the “Code” tab, and POOF! Away it all went.

I have been in the habit of writing first, then copying and pasting into my blog editor after running the text through a text washer. I use notepad to wash my text. I call it text washing because as I used to teach my student, copying directly from word into your html editor brings a long a great number of MS Word formatting crap. It looks like text, it smells like text and it feels like text, but have a look at the underlying code and there’s a bunch of crap that needs to be washed out. Notepad is a simple editor that removes the extra formatting for you before you paste it into your wordpress editor window. A client of mine, a writer from Wyoming calls it “taking the text for a bath”.

I’ll explain “washing your text” in another post.