Some starting WordPress hints. Change you login name to the name you want people to identify with the site. Don’t use the default name ‘admin’ to post articles unless you really want to get into the admin niche. Seeing your name makes it more personal and professional.

Create a Category

WordPress has the default category called uncategorized. Having any articles uncategorized is bad SEO and similar to calling a Word document ‘Untitled’. If it is called Untitled, it actually does have a title and if you put a post in the category uncategorized, well, it has been categorized. Hasn’t it? This setting can be changed in WordPress by going to Manage and selecting Categories

Make a Blogroll

People that come to your site will leave at one point or another. No one gets to one site and remains there for weeks on end. With a Blogroll you can at least point your visitors to places that you like, those sites may point visitors back to you. This setting can be changed in WordPress by going to Blogroll and selecting Categories

Link to other sites

Visitors come to your site from somewhere, often through comments you leave on other blogs. You should not just make comments on blogs, but write articles on your blog about other blogs and people referencing people by name and by website. This post: http://cindyking.biz/web-content-conference-in-french has links to 5 people and 3 other sites. This generates good will and encourages the people and target sites to link back to your site.

Then go to the blog you reference and in your signature link back to your post and not you home page. A link on a blog should end with “.com/?page_id=2″ and not just a .com as most people do.

Customize Your Permalink Structure

Which of these two links tells you something about the topic of the post that is presented on the website?

http://cindyking.biz/?page_id=2
http://cindyking.biz/web-lingo-getting-on-foreign-search-engines/submitting-your-website-to-a-chinese-search-engine

Both may get you to your destination, but the top option – the default – does nothing to help a reader get an idea of your post. This setting can be changed in WordPress by going to Options and selecting Permalinks

Write all your own articles

Or at least you should write most of your own articles. This is not a plan to pull sales from any PRL site, just stating that readers can tell when the article is not original. If really necessary, when you have a real writes block and can’t write one post you can use them for the base on an article that you build on. Don’t use them for your core.

Writers Block

When blogging a post you discover that you don’t have a topic in mind – true writers block. Go to a blog related to your topic and give pointers that makes a 6 point how-to article.