Ways to Optimize Wordpress?

[OpenMindsEnt]

Hi. I am looking for some ways to optimize my Wordpress blog to be discovered and linked to in as many ways as possible. Which plugins should I use? How should I set up my pinging settings? Which sites should I submit my blog to?

I have already looked on Google for this but I found a lot of older articles which I am sure are outdated (some from 2006-2007). I also ran a search on this forum and found a couple things but I would feel a lot better with a simple list of things I could do.

Any and all advice will be appreciated!

Thanks,

Tim

[ExRat]

Hi Tim,

I have already looked on Google for this but I found a lot of older articles which I am sure are outdated (some from 2006-2007)

Keep reading and learning. Much of the older stuff is not outdated yet. Once you learn enough you will instinctively know what stuff is outdated or not.

Search for lists of plugins offered by others on blogs. Find more than one list and compare them, test out the plugins.

If you want user interaction (comments) find dofollow plugins (I think one is called 'whatwouldsethgodindo' or 'what would seth godin do')

Also try 'subscribe to comments' plugin.

How should I set up my pinging settings?

Again, search for ping lists offered by others on blogs. Also have a look at allowing feedburner (owned by google) to provide your feed, then tick all the boxes in their ping list setup (allowing them to do your pinging for you.) So - do one or the other - either add a ping list in the correct area on your blog OR use feedburner (and leave the ping list empty on your blog.)

I have bought quite a few of the WSOs about SEOing blogs and they weren't expensive and by doing it I have a good idea of what is required/what others are doing. I would recommend this. It might give you a headache, but once the knowledge is in your noddle, it stays there

If you find a blog with a great feature you want to replicate, then sometimes if you enter the url of the blog with the standard directory listing after it, you can often see the list of their plugins.

Here's an example. You want to find the name of a plugin on a blog at -

(had to alter the name so that it didn't match a REAL blog!)

somerandomblognamexyzabc.com

You can see that it's installed on the root.

So you go and take a peek at -

somerandomblognamexyzabc.com/wp-content/plugins

Sometimes you will be able to see the list.

'All in one seo' plugin is used by the majority to tweak their blogs. It's worth taking the time to understand the settings in it, it's a powerful plugin.

Does this help?

[Leanne King]

Hi there,

Some basics are to make sure that you are targetting the right keywords, make sure you have your privacy settings set for the search engines to find you, make use of all in one seo wordpress plugin or platinum seo, make sure you use custom permalinks either category/postname or just post name if you don't have many categories also make use of the slug.

That should be enough to get you started... oh and update the default ping list. As Roger has already said there are loads of articles on the net and I believe if you search this forum you will also find some advice on ping lists.

All the best

Leanne

[Eric Lorence]

Just quickly...

Plugin's-

Google sitemap generator

All in one SEO, be sure to set it up, it is useless without adding the proper keywords.

Askimet Spam

Dashboard/settings-

Go to settings/permalinks and reset your url's from the default enumerated to domain/category/postname

You should allow comments, but deny trackbacks (usually spam), this is done in settings/discussion.
Users should be logged in to comment.

Security-

Add an index.php to your plugins folder, and themes folder. (it can be blank)

Use login lockdown plugin

WP automatic upgrade plugin

Add an .htaccess to your admin folder, or password protect in cpanel

Themes-

Be sure to use any "widget aware" theme, otherwise it will be difficult to add Adsense or other items such as a signup form.

[OpenMindsEnt]

Thasnks everyone for the tips! You all have provided me with great info that I was looking for. Much appreciated!

[Bob Monie]

This is the best pinglist i have found and it is used by many of the pro bloggers.

Your default pinglist is the pingomatic url. Copy and paste this list to it aswell.

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

My top plugins for SEO are

- All in One SEO
- Google XML Sitemaps
- AddToThis social bookmarking plugin
- maxblogpress Ping Optimizer (stops the blog over pinging and getting you banned)
- Pingcrawl plugin

[Ronnie Nijmeh]

You should check out the "Auto Social Poster" wordpress plugin: Auto Social Poster

It bookmarks your posts with a variety of social bookmarking sites.

[OpenMindsEnt]

Wow thanks everyone! That Auto Social Poster sounds great. Big thanks for that ping list too...adding it now!

Thanks again everyone. Cheers