Book Image

WordPress 3 Search Engine Optimization

Book Image

WordPress 3 Search Engine Optimization

Overview of this book

WordPress is a powerful platform for creating feature-rich and attractive websites and blogs; but with a little extra tweaking and effort your WordPress site can dominate the search engines and bring thousands of new customers to your blog or business. WordPress3.0 Search Engine Optimization will show you the secrets that professional SEO companies use to take websites to the top of search results and proliferate their business. You'll be able to take your WordPress blog/site to the next level, as well as brush aside even the stiffest competition with this book in hand. We'll begin with a typical WordPress installation and with a variety of simple techniques, turn it into a powerful website that search engines will reward with high rankings. We'll go further: with advanced plug-ins we'll connect your WordPress site to popular social media sites and expand the reach of your site to bring more visitors. You'll learn about dozens of free online tools to accomplish everything from keyword research to monitoring your ranking progress. WordPress is a great start for building search-friendly sites. However, with the tools in this book, you'll get your website/blog noticed by numerous new users/customers or your target audience.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
WordPress 3 Search Engine Optimization
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using free hosted domains


Free hosted platforms like Blogger.com and WordPress.com provide a valuable service, but they aren't as appropriate as the primary destination for a business that works in a competitive SEO market. WordPress' free blogging service (available through WordPress.com instead of WordPress.org) offers users a free, full-featured blog on the WordPress platform. The free service offers hosting on a subdomain (http://yoursite.wordpress.com), but a custom domain is available for about $10 a year. Be warned: the custom domain feature requires some sound knowledge of domain mapping.

No free hosted domain will ever match the design flexibility and ranking power of custom domain. You'll be limited as to the themes and plugins you'll be able to install. Without the freedom to install plugins, you'll limit the SEO power available to you. And, if your site resides on a subdomain of WordPress.com, you'll be poorly regarded by search engines and customers alike. Search engines don...