The next step in setting up this site was to choose how I would manage the content. Naturally, since I love doing WordPress customizations, that was the simplest choice. Plus, I believe that blogging allows you to keep fresh content, which is an attractive quality to search engines and visitors alike.
WordPress Installation
GoDaddy makes the WordPress installation process quite simple in their GoDaddy Hosting Connection center. All I had to do was choose to install the application, answer a few questions relating to installation directories, usernames and passwords, and GoDaddy did the rest. The application installation process generally takes under half an hour, and they will email you once it is ready to go.
Theme Selection
Since the goal of this SEO contest is to get your site indexed and optimized as quickly as possible to move to the #1 ranking, the ideal choice of theme was Thesis – the best WordPress SEO theme. While the theme doesn’t come with as much graphical beauty as many other themes, it comes fully ready to be optimized without having to do many additional plugins or code modifications.
Blog Concept
I believe that traffic and popularity are key factors in site optimization. Why? Simply because if you have useful content on your site, and give people reason to visit it, those people will (hopefully) like it enough to share via bookmarking and linking. And as most optimization experts will agree, natural links into your site definitely help boost it in the rankings.
Hence, I have decided to share my optimization techniques. I am looking at this as a 96 day SEO experiment, to see the results of what can be accomplished in terms of Google SERP rankings using a particular set of optimization techniques. Hopefully, it will become a useful resource for anyone starting out their own website or blog.
Plug-ins
Because Thesis comes with SEO optimization fields built into the theme, I am not in need of many additional SEO plug-ins. With any other theme, I would choose to install Platinum SEO. But with theme, my first plug-in selection will be for the automatic creation of a sitemap. Google Sitemaps not only creates the sitemap, but continues to update it as new content is added the site, along with submit it to the major search engines: Google, Bing, Yahoo & Ask.
I also hope to encourage visitors and conversation by adding this site to the DoFollow blog circuit with the DoFollow, CommentLuv and KeywordLuv plug-ins.
Finally, I added Contact Form 7 to make contacting me about any of your optimization questions in relation to anything you see on this site.
Feedburner
Lastly, I took the standard feed and converted it to Feedburner so I could monitor my subscription stats. I hope that everyone who stops by subscribes via RSS to follow the progress of this SEO experiment and read about all the steps taken to get this site to the top.
Your Suggestions
If you are (or plan to) build a site quickly in hopes of getting it to the top of search engines results as quickly as possible, what content management systems, themes, plugins, etc. would you utilize? ifwnsre2z4
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome… Good luck with the contest and it looks like you are off to a great start.
.-= Seth W@Make Money Blogging´s last blog ..5 Ways you are Unknowingly Harming Your Posts =-.
I found that there is better SEO themes then Thesis is.
Simplebalance is very decent one.
.-= Hellas´s last blog ..Day 2 – oes tsetnoc =-.
It’s funny, but I did find your site via the dofollow blog site.
Love the KeywordLuv plugin. I never heard of this plugin before, but really like it. I think I might install it on one my blogs.
For WordPress installations I like cpanel. I have my hosting with HostGator. It sounds to be similar to GoDaddy, but instead of having to wait the installation is instant. Takes only a couple seconds.
Shannon
.-= Shannon @ Article Submitter´s last blog ..Today’s Links =-.
Welcome to the world of SEO! Good job done my friend. Wish you the best from my side.
.-= oes tsetnoc´s last undefined ..If you register your site for free at =-.
Wish you the the very best for the competition
.-= oes tsetnoc´s last undefined ..If you register your site for free at =-.
Very good documentation of what you are doing. This will prove helpful to others starting their own blog. Good luck!
.-= ZXT@Nothing But Random´s last blog ..Kanye West Spoils Taylor Swift Award at VMA =-.
Thanks for article
I live in Russia, and not so well I know English language
References on WordPress SEO themes were useful to me
Whether it is possible to translate your article and to publish at itself in a blog in Russian referring to http://www.oestsetnoc.us
Thanks
Kristi,
by the way thank you for helping me about url canonicalization…but my main which indexed last time in www version has gone..and my main did not indexed..
i dont know where to comment..i simply comment in this post..
.-= oes tsetnoc´s last blog ..Oes tsetnoc – First problem occurred =-.
Good to see another site indexed and ready to get going with this competition , I will be following all of you as our journey goes on. Best of luck to everyone.
.-= Oes Tsetnoc´s last blog ..Oes Tsetnoc Day 4 =-.
As for your question regarding CMS, I am supporting ‘WordPress’ for blogging-based websites where as I go for ‘Joomla!’ for other non-blogging websites.
Speaking about Plug-ins for WP, I can list my essentials which are [Akisemt (wp default but need activation), WP-Spame Free, Some of Lester Chans Plugins & Google Sitemaps]
.-= Hicham@Hicham Maged´s last blog ..Me, Myself and Websites =-.
Came back to this post looking for suggestions regarding plug-ins, and wasn’t disappointed. I’ll have to take a look at Platinum SEO: an article on WP Beginner that talked about fixing post titles and writing post excerpts discussed the All-in-One SEO Pack and I installed that and fixed the title tags.
.-= ashok´s last blog ..Notes on Dickinson’s “They say that “Time assuages”…” (686) =-.