Wordpress4Dummies, wordpress blog ,SEO, Articles, Templates, Plugin, Skin, Download, pdf

1. Write brilliant content

Let’s get this clear before we move on – there is simply no better way to improve your search engine ranking than writing great content. Simple as that. SEO is not a substitute for writing brilliant stuff.

2. Leave worthwhile comments

An increasing number of blogs are DoFollow, which means search engines see the link as a backlink (which is obviously good). With that in mind, if you read something that you find interesting, then leave a comment and potentially it’ll have a benefit to your ranking. However, (regular readers will know what is coming!) under no circumstances should you leave a comment that says anything like: “thanks. I try out on my new blog. BIG BLOG LINK”.

I don’t know if there are ten commandments in blogging, but that should be one of them; if you are going to leave a comment then make it worthwhile! Offer something constructive; perhaps your own thoughts or tips on the subject. By all means say thanks, but make sure that that is not all you say.

3. Make “blogging friends”

One of the things I love about WordPress is the community. It’s not been too long since I “joined”, but it is immediately noticeable how willing people are to help, offer tips etc etc. However, one of the things I have found really valuable is help from other WordPress bloggers; I’m an author on WPHacks, and Kyle’s help has been simply brilliant – his advice has been priceless, and from an SEO perspective, having WPHacks linking to my site has undoubtedly helped.

The tip here: go guest posting! Find the biggest site In your niche and go and write for it! Not only will you get a backlink, but you might even gain some more visits out of it!

4. Use Header tags correctly within posts

So far we’ve focused more on tips that you can’t really apply directly into your blog, but here is one you can do straight away: use Header tags and use them correctly. If your post has seperate headings (like this one!) then tag them appropriately. Below is a guide to how you should head things up:

H1 – this tells Google this is the most important thing on the whole page. For that reason, it should contain post titles, not your blog’s title. The following code will do the trick:

<h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1>

H2 – this is the second most important content on the page, so should be used for sub-headings (as they are being used in this post). You can set headings by clicking on ‘Paragraph’ in the visual editor (as shown in the image).

Using header tags correctly to increase WordPress SEO

H3 – use for sub sub headings and sidebar elements

H4 – sub sub sub headings and perhaps go this low for sidebar elements.

5. Create a sitemap

Sitemaps tell search engines: here is my content. By giving search engines your content, it gets indexed and you get visits. Or something like that. The point is that sitemaps are an essential part of a blog’s SEO strategy and there is no excuse for not having one. Thankfully for WordPress users, you can easily create a sitemap with the Google XML Sitemaps plugin! Install it, set it up and tell Google where your new sitemap is. Done.

6. Use a search engine friendly title tag

Don’t underestmate the importance of a good title tag. Making sure your title matches the content of your post accurately is highly important; when people are searching, if you’ve got a great post on the subject but your title is about your cat then it won’t be found! The code below is an SEO’d title tag that you can copy straight into your current theme:

><? bloginfo('name'); ?> | <?php bloginfo('description'); ?><?php } ?>
<?php if ( is_search() ) { ?>Search Results for <?php /* Search Count */ $allsearch = &new WP_Query("s=$s&showposts=-1"); $key = wp_specialchars($s, 1); $count = $allsearch->post_count; _e(''); echo $key; _e(' &mdash; '); echo $count . ' '; _e('articles'); wp_reset_query(); ?><?php } ?>
<?php if ( is_404() ) { ?><? bloginfo('name'); ?> | 404 Nothing Found<?php } ?>
<?php if ( is_author() ) { ?><? bloginfo('name'); ?> | Author Archives<?php } ?>
<?php if ( is_single() ) { ?><?php wp_title(''); ?> | <?php
$category = get_the_category();
echo $category[0]->cat_name;
?> | <? bloginfo('name'); ?><?php } ?>
<?php if ( is_page() ) { ?><? bloginfo('name'); ?> | <?php
$category = get_the_category();
echo $category[0]->cat_name;  ?>|<?php wp_title(''); ?><?php } ?>
<?php if ( is_category() ) { ?><?php single_cat_title(); ?> | <?php $category = get_the_category();
echo $category[0]->category_description; ?> | <? bloginfo('name'); ?><?php } ?>
<?php if ( is_month() ) { ?><? bloginfo('name'); ?> | Archive | <?php the_time('F, Y'); ?><?php } ?>
<?php if ( is_day() ) { ?><? bloginfo('name'); ?> | Archive | <?php the_time('F j, Y'); ?><?php } ?>
<?php if (function_exists('is_tag')) { if ( is_tag() ) { ?><?php single_tag_title("", true); } } ?> | <? bloginfo('name'); ?>
</title>

(via ProBlogDesign)

As if that weren’t enough, the next tip will let you customize your title tag even further…

7. Don’t use SEO plugins, use single post meta boxes!

An increasing number of themes are coming with options for adding meta data, changing the title etc etc. The good news is they’re really easy to implement yourself, as I explain in this post (complete with something you can download, copy and paste into your own theme yourself!). What it does is create a box on your post writing page which you can fill out and when saved, you’ll create a number of custom fields with the values of what you typed in. Read the full tutorial on creating in post meta boxes here.

8. Use alt tag on images

Without an alt tag, search engines can’t tell what a certain image is. Again, WordPress users have got it easy; they can just fill out the description when they upload an image and hey presto. It’s an easy thing to do, so make sure you do it!

9. Super SEO for your comments

With thousands of WordPress plugins available, it is very easy to think to yourself “Do I need this plugin that does something I could very easily implement myslef”. Why you shouldn’t use as many plugins as you can find is a post for another day, but for now take my word for it; it’s a bad idea to install a lot of plugins. However, there are some situations where you’re allowed to use a plugin. This is one of them. The SEO Super Comments plugin dynamically generates pages for all your comments, making them indexable by search engines. Now you can rank higher for “Hi. Great post. Thanks. [big link]!”

10. Use “Pretty Permalinks”

The final tip for today is use Pretty Permalinks! Under the settings tab in the WordPress backend, click ‘Permalinks’. You’ve then got a number of options, but I’d suggest you use a ‘Custom Structure’ and have either /category/post-name/ or /post-name/. The code below will do either:

<!-- for /category/postname/-->
/%category%/%postname%/
<!-- or for /postname/-->
/%postname%/

So there we are. Ten tips to improve your blog’s SEO. Now go and reap the rewards!

WordPress has dominated the blogging software market in a similar fashion as Google did the search marketing all those [10] years ago. WordPress has acheived this by providing a CMS and blogging platform combined into one simplistic package that most people can install in seconds. The help of ‘fantastico’ and the 1 click install has definitely increased the WordPress market penetration.

WordPress is extremely simply to install, easy to use, is customisable in seconds via the use of the theme support, meaning that individual preset-templates can be accessed for free at the click of a button and users can create their own templates. The early plug-in support has built an industry almost in itself, allowing for users to do anything and everything.

Open Source

WordPress is open source and coded in PHP so is compatible with a significant majority of shared hosts out there. Due to the open source nature of WordPress there is an established active community, meaning that ideas can be shared and support is readily available on a broad range of issues. There is not really anything on the market which even compares to WordPress on an Apache server.

The problem comes when you are running a Windows server because there is not really anything asp/aspx based which compares to WordPress. There are some alternatives to this however nothing with the same features that have been listed. A sub domain can be created however the risk of splitting domain authority means it will be unable unlikely to fully harness the power of fresh content.

Popular CMS

The alternatives to WordPress on the whole are thin on the ground:

• Drupal – may be too much bloat for the casual blogger.
• Joomla – as above.
• Movable Type – was actually a big player at one point, before a license change alienated bloggers (Perl, not PHP). The fact it is written in Perl and not PHP has also hindered it’s adoption
• Textpattern – Great but not got the level of plug-ins that WP has.
• Typo – built in Ruby on Rails, seems to be the choice of the hardcore Rails fans.

PHP Nuke seemed to be the most popular CMS before WordPress took centre stage and there are of course other CMSs out there such as Drupal and Joomla, however as previously stated, there is nothing on the market that really comes close to comparing.

Drupal and Wordpress are two of the most popular, open source content management systems (CMS). Many websites and blogs run either Wordpress of Drupal chiefly because they are flexible platforms with large user support communities, and they’re free. I use both Drupal and Wordpress in my day-to-day activities: WordStream runs on Drupal, while my personal websites and blogs run on Wordpress. So I have a pretty good handle on the advantages and disadvantages of both CMS platforms.

In this post, I’m going to offer my opinions on Drupal VS Wordpress with respect to:

• Ease of use
• Custom templates and free themes
• SEO plugins or modules
• CMS performance

So let’s dive into the Drupal vs Wordpress debate and see which CMS emerges victorious.

Ease of Use

Out of the box, Wordpress has a cleaner, simpler user interface (UI) than Drupal. The Wordpress interface offers users fewer page formatting tools than Drupal, so it makes it pretty easy for the average Joe or Jane to dive right into blogging with little to no previous experience.

Drupal User Interface

Wordpress User Interface

Even though you’re given fewer formatting presets in Wordpress, you’re certainly not limited to those options. You can still expand the Wordpress UI to the “kitchen sink,” which features another row of formatting tools. But for the budding blogger, this extra row of tools is hidden so newbies aren’t overwhelmed initially. Now, I’m not saying that the Drupal user interface is complex by any means. It’s just that, relatively speaking, Drupal is not as user-friendly as Wordpress.

Note: One of my favorite Wordpress “kitchen sink” tools is the very basic “Paste as Plain Text,” which lets me copy content from a Word doc and strip out the Word formatting to paste cleanly into Wordpress.

Also, with respect to installation and modification, Wordpress is easier to set up and get running than Drupal and it’s easier to modify code on the backend, if you’re so inclined. If you don’t have background in PHP and/or programming, getting your Drupal system up and running effectively can be a slow slog. And the vast modular system can be complex for some.

Verdict: Wordpress offers better ease of use, with a more user-friendly UI. Also, it’s easier to install, especially for the novice.

Custom Templates and Free Themes

Both Drupal and Wordpress are supported by a ton of fantastic free themes and templates, from basic one-column skins to the more advanced, “newsy” themes with multiple dashboards for various content feeds. But which CMS offers the most choices for free themes and templates? Well, my gut told me that Wordpress had more overall theme support on the Web, but I wanted to run a quick test to see if my instincts were correct. So as is often the case, I turned to search for answers.

Here are the results from some quick and dirty Google searches for theme and template queries:

Template Search Results

• “Wordpress templates”: 275 million results
• “Drupal templates”: 1 million results

Free Theme Search Results

• “Free Wordpress themes”: 44 million results
• “Free Drupal themes”: 550K results

Verdict: Worpress is the winner here when it comes to the breadth, depth and popularity of free skins available for your site. Moral of the story, if you’re short on cash and looking for a free theme for your blog or website, you should have more options and better luck finding a CMS template that fits your style using Wordpress.

SEO Plugins or Modules

Both Drupal and Wordpress offer a product that’s very SEO-friendly right off-the-shelf. However, if you really want to enhance your SEO efforts, from writing “pretty” URLs to creating alternative page titles and title tags, you’ll need to install some dedicated plugins to soup-up your CMS.

So which community offers more SEO plugins or modules (Drupal calls them modules) for CMS users, Drupal or Wordpress? Once again, I went to the engines to run some queries and find a favorite.

SEO Plugin and Module Search Results

• Drupal SEO modules: 344K
• Wordpress SEO plugins: 7 million

BTW, if you’re looking for some extensive lists of SEO plugins for Wordpress and SEO modules for Drupal, here are two great resources:

• Drupal SEO Modules
• 20 of the Best SEO Plugins for WordPress

Note: The Mashable list is awesome, but the writer did leave out one critical SEO plugin for Wordpress: Ultimate Google Analytics plugin. Point being, SEO without data analysis is basically useless.

Verdict: While search results aren’t a definitive gauge of the quality of plugins, Wordpress bests Drupal for the sheer number of community supported SEO plugin/module options.

CMS Performance

Now, I’m no developer, so I won’t embarrass myself and try to expound on backend PHP programming and SQL requests for Wordpress vs Drupal. But I can speak to the overarching capabilities of each CMS. Drupal is a far more robust CMS and better for running large sites that need more thrust and capacity to run dynamic forms, ecommerce shopping carts, and bolt on community functions like forums, chat, etc. Wordpress, however, is better suited for smaller sites or the casual blogger whose site doesn’t require a lot of horsepower and complex functionality.

For example, I host some of my modest affiliate sites and blogs on Wordpress while WordStream’s 1000+ pages of content, forms, info gathering tools and platform extensions needs to run on a powerful CMS like Drupal.

If you’re looking for more in-depth analysis of Drupal vs Wordpress for CMS performance, check out these articles:

• A Comparison of WordPress and Drupal
• Drupal vs. WordPress: Which is better for blogging?

Verdict: If you require a CMS powerhouse for your website and have a developer at your disposal or some inherent programming aptitude, then Drupal is the clear and only choice here. Wordpress simply can not handle full-featured sites effectively like Drupal can. However, if you’re a low-tech, one-man show with a smallish site or blog, go with Wordpress for greater simplicity.

Blogs are an excellent tool for improving a site’s search engine optimization (SEO). For some excellent WordPress plugins that help set the stage, we refer you to our earlier post:

The best WordPress plugins for bloggers

However, using the wpSEO plugin will help you reach the next level. We explain our results and some other tricks we used on the way to improving our SEO benchmarks for this blog.

Step 1: Setting up wpSEO
We decided to give wpSEO a test drive – you can use it for free for ten days.

Yes, the plugin has a small price tag, but in return, after the initial learning curve of fine-tuning your work with it, time savings and more targeted traffic will come your way. This led us to conclude that the small cost was justified.

Download the wpSEO plugin here.

Tip 1:  Unless you are an SEO expert, start by using the options as described in these screenshots:
basic set-up steps. You can also download and install options on your blog (see above image).

Step 2: Title – a good one helps
Doing SEO is important, but it does not diminish the importance of a good title. An interesting title makes your target audience curious and tempts them to read the post. Because Google does not like titles beyond 65 characters (it cuts them off), you should limit your titles to around five to eight words.

Tip 2: Try to limit title length to 60 characters – 5 to 8  words.

Bonus tip: Make sure you use the right permalink set-up to further help with SEO.

Step 3: WordPress excerpt – enticing people to read
WordPress offers the use of a short description through the WordPress Excerpt Summary option. Google Alerts, for example, uses this summary.

However, search engines truncate your summary after 160 characters using an ellipsis (…) for the rest of the text. This could decrease a blog’s click-through rate (CTR). A compelling excerpt of 160 characters not only entices readers, but can also be used as a meta description with wpSEO (see image below).

Tip 3: Write a compelling WordPress excerpt of 160 characters that you can also use for the post’s meta description.

Bonus tip: Explaining meta tags versus meta description.

Step 4: Meta keywords
Yahoo! uses meta keywords for the description displayed in search results. While some may suggest five to eight keywords that match both content of and target for a blog post, others suggest limiting it to around 200 characters, since most databases have a default maximum size for certain fields of 255 characters. Hence, those search engines that see keyword meta keywords look at the first 255 characters. Google does not use meta keywords but Yahoo! and other smaller search engines do.

Tip 4: Choose about eight keywords and make sure you don’t exceed 200 characters.

The image to the right shows the fields that should show if you have activated the wpSEO options, including the choices we made (download pdf below).

Bonus tip: Download screenshots of how we set up wpSEO to get more bang for our buck(pdf file).

Step 5: Test the set-up
At this point, it is a good idea to see if it works the way you want it to. The link below allows you to enter any URL and test it (we recommend that you test posts, pages and categories) to see what works and what needs changing in the wpSEO options or the data you entered directly to get a more optimized solution (see above image).

Tip 5: After setting up, check if the blog post, page or category description settings work as intended.

Bonus tip: Test your site’s crawl-ability by search engine with the Search Engine Robot Simulator.

We love the wpSEO plugin and have paid for it because, after extensive testing, we believe it is worth every penny. Nevertheless, there are one or two things that could be improved a bit:

- Why defaults? The documentation is excellent – if you are a geek. Unfortunately, the explanation provided about the default chosen to optimize SEO when uploading the file (see screenshot top left of this post) is missing. For many people this might not matter, but understanding the logic behind a configuration, especially SEO-related, allows one to learn.

- Categories: When you go tohttp://YourBlog.com/wp-admin/categories.php, you enter the description (no brackets or anything needed) and wpSEO gets it. It would be great if keywords for post categories could also be entered using the same approach (see image at right). Currently, keywords can only be taken from titles or tags of posts. This does not allow a true fine-tuning, which would be more effective.

- Great stuff: Allowing the importing of preset options (see image top left), saving the xml file with currently set options, and a well thought-out user-interface make working with wpSEO easy. They also help provide a great user experience and make increasing targeted traffic simple.

Bottom line
WordPress does a great job of SEO out of the box. This post shows how you can improve this even further with a few tricks and thewpSEO plugin. The latter does what All in One SEO Pack does, and then some.

Above we outlined five tips that should help get your SEO work off to a great start. Sure, it takes time and effort for your work in SEO to show up. Nevertheless, once optimization is finished, maintaining SEO performance requires less time and effort. Most importantly, the Return on Investment (ROI) is substantial.

I am real excited about sharing this tip with you, because figuring this out, for me, was a huge. Recently Google updated Google SideWiki to include the option of sending comments to your Blogger blog. However, at this time, there is no option of sending comments to any other blog platform, more commonly, self-hosted WordPress.

While I was excited to discover that Google included an option of porting comments to Blogger, for me, it simply wasn’t enough. The comment I create in Google SideWiki are ones that I’d like to share with readers on my dot Com blog, rather than my personal Blogger blog. At any rate, here’s the steps on how you can send your GoogleWiki comments to your WordPress blog.

Visit Blogger.com and create a new blog. Name the blog whatever you want, but I would name: Your Name SideWiki Comments. And give it a permalink structure the same: yournamesidewiki.

On the “Choose Your Template” page, scroll down to the very bottom and choose “Simple II” Created by: Jason Sutter. The reason why you you’re choosing this template is not for looks, it’s because there is no sidebar. I’ll explain in more detail in the next few steps.

Create and publish a test post. Don’t worry about what to say, just say anything and speed through this process. The reason why you need to quickly create and publish a post is so that you can have an active entry in your RSS feed, which you will be using in the next steps.

Next, click on Settings and then Formatting. You’ll want to change the Show post on main page count from 7 to ZERO! The reason why you want to set this to ZERO is because you don’t want the content to appear on this blog. In fact, you don’t want ANYTHING to appear on this blog, thus the reason for choosing the theme without the sidebar. I’ll explain more in the next few steps. Don’t forget to scroll down and save your modified settings.

Next, click on Layout and proceed to REMOVE all of the Gadgets in your template. As mentioned in the previous step, you do NOT want anything to appear on your blog, and for sure, you do NOT want your Google SideWiki comments to appear live on the blog.

The only gadget remaining is the Blog Posts gadget because this can’t be removed. However, it doesn’t matter, because previously, showing ZERO posts was set. View your blog live to verify that your published test post is not displaying. Click the RSS icon and copy your RSS Feed URL to clipboard and save it for the next upcoming steps.

Next, login to your self-hosted WordPress blog. Navigate to the Plugins / Add New section and search for wp-o-matic. Install and activate it.

Copy the cron instructions and from cPanel, open your Cron manager, click advanced, and paste the cron string in. Add a campaign and in the Basic tab, title it: Your Name SideWiki Comments. In the Feeds tab, PASTE your Blogger ATOM RSS feed. In the Categories tab, I suggest creating a category called, SideWiki Comments. This will identify to your readers that articles published in this category are your Sidewiki comments.

Nothing needs to be done in the Rewrite tab, you can skip that. From the Options section, adjust the frequency to a time which fits your post frequency. If you know that you’re going to be creating a new SideWiki comment every four hours, then you might want to set the frequency to match that. You don’t need to Cache Images because there won’t be any.

I would suggest CHECKING the Use feed date option. You can leave Perform pingbacks UNCHECKED. You’ll want to leave the Type of post to create set to Published, unless you want to manually go back to your post editor and publish them. The Max items to create on each fetch, I have changed to 0 for unlimited. I would leave the Post title links to source? UNCHECKED and keep the Discussion options setting OPEN and CHECK Allow pings. At this point, you’re done. Click submit.

At this point, you’re going to want to FETCH the RSS data. When this happens, your data will automatically be published into your self-hosted WordPress blog.

Final product is a beautiful article that you retain complete credit, copyrights, as well as what I call, “indexable ownership.” Using Google SideWiki is a great way to express your views and opinions about web pages you visit. However, I believe that writers should retain ownership of their content contributions.

I can’t say that Google quickly recognized that, but I can say that it’s great that they opened up the feature to port SideWiki comments to Blogger. However, I also feel that it’s important to allow users the option to port the comments to other platforms as well. I also feel that my contributions on places such as in Google SideWiki can earn revenue.

I am a professional blogger and it’s important that I have methods for earning revenue on the content I publish on the web. By porting Google SideWiki comments to a self-hosted WordPress blog, the author has full control over displaying contextual based ads. On average, I earn $20 to $25 on each article I publish per year and annual revenue double each year.

Free Wordpress Horses Blog Web2.0 Theme Template, Very High Quality Design Theme for Wordpress Called Horse theme by Savvy, The theme is SEO-friendly, Adsense-ready (you can insert ads in three different spots of your choice), and “feature-ready.” To have something show up in the “Featured” section, just categorize the post as “Featured.” To have images appear in the featured section automagically, just install the Thumbnails for Excerpts Plugin, Come With 3 Columns, Brown and White Colors, Nice Inspiration and Web2.0 Interface.

Web Publishing with Blog Hosting

Blogs have become an immensely popular way for internet users to publish content on the web. Upon first being introduced, they were primarily used as online personal journals. Today, blogs are being used by people of all sorts and companies of all sizes to obtain exposure and generate revenue. A blog is ideal for inexperienced users as most platforms don’t require you to know anything about HTML or other programming technologies. This makes for a user-friendly environment that allows you to easily publish content and establish a presence online.

Before creating your first blog entry, it is a good idea to determine whether you intend to monetize it, or simply use it for personal use. Most importantly, you need to determine what platform you want to use and where to host it. While you can choose a free platform provided by sites such as Blogger.com or WordPress.com, you are likely to get the most of out of a blog hosted by a professional web host. With this type of arrangement, you generally have to pay for the web hosting account but get the blogging script free. Though you can save a few dollars by going with the totally free route, most find that paid blog hosting offers the best value in terms of customization, control and flexibility.

What to Look For

A good blog hosting package is one that allows you to install and setup the application through simple point-and-click procedures. This can usually be done through a control panel such as cPanel and its Fantastico one-click script installer. If you are new to the world of online blogging, having such an easy to use tool is vital because manually installing any software on a web server can be an overwhelming complicated task. In addition, your hosting package should include a database such as MySQL for back-end in support and have whatever programming package the blogging software is written in installed on the server. It should also provide you with an amply supply of disk space and bandwidth as these resources will allow you to store your blog files and enjoy good amount of traffic. In the end, these features will help to ensure that your experience with a blog turns out be as smooth and pain-free as possible.

Finding Your Host

There are many companies that can provide you with a blog hosting service and this factor often makes choosing one a difficult process. When out comparing host, you will see that most offer multiple blogging applications for you to choose from. The best advise is to write down your exact requirements and preferences and then match them with the services provided by a particular host. It is also wise to learn more about the individual platforms to find out what each has to offer. When getting down to the specifics, you will find that it is much easier to choose a blog hosting solution that can deliver the results you’re after.

Description: Features: * sliding posts gallery (built in, customizable on the theme’s options page) * ads ready ( 1 banner ad in the header, 1 link ad below the header, 1 250×250 ad in the sidebar, 4 125×125 small ads in the sidebar)
License: Free to use, must keep footer AS IS.

Written by Allan Bisset

WordPress is the world’s favourite CMS for blogging.  To date, over 6 million downloads of version 2.8 have been made from the WordPress site and it’s easy to understand why.  It’s open source, free and pretty easy to use – if you can master MS Word, you can handle WordPress.  Here at Fresh Egg we’re big fans of Business Blogging.  A Blog can build links, add content on a constant basis, create power and give you authority, but most importantly, a Blog allows you a platform on which to engage with consumers at their level.  Our preferred tool is WordPress, which is easy to administer and use once set up on your site.

We’re also fortunate in having aboard Jerome Degl’innocenti.  Jerome is a web designer who has been working here for the past three years.  Before that, almost incredibly, he was a maître d’ in an up-market US dining establishment, getting into all things web in his spare time.  Jerome has a passion for web design and all things computer related and has been using WordPress virtually since the day it launched.

What Jerome doesn’t know about the intricacies, capabilities and limitations of WordPress isn’t worth knowing, and since he began using the tool he’s kept a repository of all his experiences, tips and hints for users on his own Pimp My WordPress site.   Over the years, Jerome has added other information and education resources about WordPress to the site  so that it is now a vast library of useful background, tutorials, hints and tips, fixes and patches – in fact everything you ever wanted to make WordPress an even more effective and reliable tool.

Now we believe that a Business Blog can become the means of creating a network hub that you own and can therefore influence both the medium and the message.  Regular blogging massively increases the presence that your business site is likely to have in each Search Engine index.  Each Blog posting, given cogent content and contextual links on the page and through navigation, will help to push the entire site higher in the Search Engine rankings.

So if you want to find out how to expand, use, improve or trouble shoot your WordPress blog, just go to one of the best information resources online that you’ll find.  In one place, Jerome has pulled together an array of text and video content using external resources and his own considerable experience to present what we think is an excellent library for any WordPress blogger.

Veteran copywriter Michael Fortin, in an interview about SEO copywriting, said that he has tested a variety of blog platforms and the one that always seems to do best for search engine optimization is WordPress. That’s an incredible statement.

Specifically, he’s compared WordPress with Typepad and some of the other popular blogging platforms available and WordPress always comes up on top. Why is that?

I think there are several reasons why WordPress does so well:

First, it has a great community of support. Being open source, there are thousands of people working to improve WordPress every day. Many of the people who are most involved in developing WordPress improvements are themselves successful Internet marketing and SEO professionals. Their work benefits themselves as well as the rest of us so it behooves them to improve WordPress’s SEO benefits whenever they can.

Another reasons WordPress is so good at optimization is because developers go through the trouble of creating plugins that are useful. These plugins and the source code of WordPress work together to build a solid platform for blogging.

Finally, WordPress has a reputation. Online, reputations matter. If you build a solid reputation for your product or service and word gets around, the search engines tend to honor that. Word of mouth reputations are important and it’s something that robots can’t measure. That means Google’s algorithms are built in part on human interactions and input, whether by design or fiat.

If you’d like to listen to Michael’s interview, you can download it here. It’s about an hour long and well worth listening to.