Use Keywords Upfront: Keywords are those you use to describe your niche and are also the words people use to search for information. When Google or any other search engine looks for information they go for the first few words of your title. If your WordPress post title says something like “The 10 best tips for…” then the search engine spider will look elsewhere.

Length Counts: In the offline world, a short, catchy, single word title is much easier to remember and will sell more units. The reverse is true online. The longer the title, the better. A longer title gives the search engine more words to find. Make your WordPress post title keyword rich.

Emphasise the Benefits: Always use the benefits in your post title rather than features. An example of a blog post title that emphasises the benefits is: “WordPress Post Titles – How to Optimise your WordPress Post Title to Bring More Traffic To Your Blog”.

The WordPress category function is a powerful way to improve the structure of your site for both human visitors and search engines. WordPress enables you to create categories according to how you want your site to be organised.

For example, say the category of your site is shoes. You can create a WordPress category for High Heels, one for Flats, one for Thongs, one for Kitten Heels, one for Peep Toes, and so on.

When you add posts to your blog, you can choose which WordPress category your post belongs to. Then your blog will be able to archive your past posts not only by month and date, as well as by WordPress category.

This is extremely useful in terms of site navigation. If a visitor is interested only in kitten heels, they simply choose the Kitten Heels WordPress category and WordPress will sort your posts according to the category. They don’t have to go through your entire archives to find all the posts relevant to kitten heels. Using categories makes it very simple.

By using the WordPress category function, you will eventually have many pages on your site with links to high heels, flats, thongs, kitten heels and so on. All those backlinks to the same keyword can result in much higher search engine rankings.

Users can obtain a free WordPress account through wordpress.com, however your site will be hosted on the WordPress server (i.e. yourname.wordpress.com). If you wish to install WordPress to your own domain and site, you will need to abide by the following instructions.

Before you can install WordPress, you’ll need to make sure you have hosting. WordPress makes several suggestions for hosting, including BlueHost, DreamHost, Media Temple and Laughing Squid. They provide a link for you so you can go straight to the hosting site.

Once you’ve found a host, you can install WordPress. This is done by the famous five-minute installation that WordPress is known for. To install WordPress, you simply need to follow the handy installation guide that can walk even a complete novice through the process. There is even a support forum where you can post your questions and receive an immediate answer from helpful volunteers.

While you install WordPress, consult the Codex page – this will answer all the questions you have about WordPress. The Codex page has information about every facet of WordPress ranging from design to spam.

Posts and Pages are different; when you write a post it goes into the blog’s ‘loop’ (such as in the ‘recent posts’ section), whereas a page is static and stays on the site somewhere in the sidebar (such as an ‘About Us’ or ‘Contact Us’ page).

You may have discovered that some themes will not show the sidebar on WordPress pages. This occurs when you have chosen the ‘static page’ option under the ‘Reading’ menu of the WordPress Dashboard. To fix this, you simply need to read the sidebar to WordPress static pages.

• Click on the Presentation from the main panel on the WordPress Dashboard (this appears when you log in). Click on Theme Editor.
• On the right hand side you will see a list of the current theme’s templates. If you see a ‘Page Template’ option, click that and the code will appear in the editing box. Copy all the code in the editor and paste it into the Notepad application as a backup.
• At the top of the editing box you should see this bit of code:

  <?php get_header(); ?>

  This tells the page to get the themes header, so we will tell the page to get the sidebar.

• Place your mouse directly behind the above code, and hit the enter key once. Paste this code:

  <?php get_sidebar(); ?>

  Make sure you paste this code between the < > brackets and click “Update File”.

• If you manage to corrupt your theme’s template files and it no longer displays properly, simply deleted all the edited text you have tampered with and replace it with the backup text you previously pasted into Notepad.

Where is the WordPress plugin feature located?
The WordPress plugin feature is located in the admin area of a blog. When logged in, you can see a tab labelled ‘plugins’ which will take you to a list of installed WordPress Plugins waiting to be activated. Each WordPress plugin will have a description of its uses and what version of WordPress is required for it to function correctly.

What does a WordPress plugin do?
Depending on the individual WordPress plugin, these little applications can do a range of things. Each plugin will have a different function. Some can enable your blog to playback YouTube videos, whereas others can give you more SEO options to improve the ranking of your blog. WordPress Plugins are created by computer developers all over the world to be used on the WordPress platform.

Where can I download WordPress Plugins?
You can download WordPress Plugins directly from the WordPress homepage. There are new Plugins added everyday, as well as information on the most popular Plugins.

How do I install a WordPress plugin?
Simply upload the full directory to your wp-content/Plugins directory using ftp. You will need to make sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz writeable via CHMOD 666. Then you can activate the WordPress plugin from inside your blog (under the ‘Options’ menu) and begin to build a sitemap.

WordPress Themes
Unlike Joomla templates, WordPress themes are SEO friendly right out of the box. WordPress themes are far more user-friendly to install than Joomla templates as WordPress offers an easy to navigate graphical user interface (GUI). While WordPress may be light on its components and ability to be extended, it makes administrating articles, comments and blogs far easier than Joomla Templates does.

Joomla Templates
Joomla templates are more powerful and robust than WordPress themes, as they can allow a user to administrate more than just the articles of a blog. Joomla templates are not initially SEO friendly until the SEF plugin has been installed, but they do have the capacity to be extended beyond WordPress’s capabilities. The main problem with Joomla templates is that they are harder to learn as the JavaScript and CSS involved can be quite difficult for a novice user, but ultimately it is more customisable.

Following the next few steps can help you learn how to blog successfully.

• Ensure your blog is aesthetically pleasing. It needs to be both easy to read and easy to navigate. Do not give your visitors any reason to want to leave your site. Otherwise people will not read what you have to say and your time and effort will be put to waste.

• Do not underestimate the importance of advertising. Fortunately, it is easy to get your name and posts out there and submit your posts to social networking and bookmarking sites. MySpace, Delicious, Digg and so on can really help promote your site with little effort from you.

• Aim to be interesting. Try to blog about things that have not been extensively covered already. If that is not possible then simply try to write about something from another angle.

• Do not let yourself feel intimidated. It does not matter if you are not experienced in blogging. Everyone has to learn how to blog, so you simply need to jump in and get started.

Design: Is the design of the WordPress template simple and intuitive? You want your site to be attractive yet functional enough to entice more readers and sponsors, so a simple but appealing design is crucial.

Flexibility: A good WordPress template should be easily customisable, as you don’t want to have to be a computer programmer simply to change the background colour of your blog.

SEO: More traffic is always a good thing when it comes to building your online presence, so choose a WordPress template that is customised for SEO.

SMO: Social media is another way of enticing new readers to your blog, so it is wise to have social media options built into your WordPress template.

Accessibility: Find a WordPress template that can be navigated through easily. Don’t give your readers any reason to leave your site.

Cross-browser Compatibility: This is a very important thing to look for in a WordPress template. Ensure you blog will show up the same in top browsers including IE, Firefox and Chrome.

1. Go to wordpress.com and create a free account. You will be required to choose a unique name for you blog. Pick something that is easy to remember. It will look like this: yourname.wordpress.com.
2. Log into your account at wordpress.com. You will be taken to your site’s Dashboard.
3. Create a test post. You can delete it later, but this will show you the basic functions of a WordPress blog. Click ‘Add New Post’ under the ‘Posts’ category on the left hand sidebar.
4. Before you submit your first WordPress blog post, you want to add a few things. Firstly, add tags to your post using the ‘Add tags’ function on the right hand side of the ‘Add New Post’ page. A tag is a way of organising and searching for content on your site as the content grows. Create whatever tags you want for each post.
5. Set up a category for organising your posts. Choose a category title carefully with consideration for the future. If you are starting a personal blog, you may want to have categories for topics such as ‘Family’, ‘Pets’, ‘Entertainment’, etc.
6. Click on the link across the top of the screen that says ‘View Site’ to see your published works. You will notice that the blog has the title you chose when you signed up, as well as a tag line if you set it up. This is the most basic way of starting your own WordPress blog.

WordPress themes are the kind of skin a WordPress blog takes on. A WordPress theme determines the appearance of the layout, text colour, background colour, header, title, links and all other visual elements of a WordPress blog.

Premium-designed WordPress themes are popular as they are created by professional designers and design agencies. These designers create various WordPress themes to suit different needs. Most WordPress themes are available for download at a very low cost, whereas others are free.

There are many advantages of premium WordPress themes over the free variety. Most importantly, premium WordPress themes are far less common and thus will not be as frequently seen across the internet. Moreover, bloggers do not need to hire web designers to create layouts for their blogs because they can easily find attractive, credible-looking WordPress themes for download on the internet.

Premium WordPress themes are ideal for businesses that run large online projects using blogs or sites. A premium WordPress theme can set a site apart from its competitors as it can help sustain the interest of readers by offering an attractive and functional website.