1. Your choice of WordPress theme makes a difference.
I’m
subscribed to the notion that “First Impression Counts”. If you can’t convince
your visitors to stay engaged in the first one minute or so, you’ll probably
not gonna be seeing them again.
Personally,
we use a ThemeForest for a few of our sites, they
have FREE and Paid Themes, obviously the paid ones are better, setting you back
$70 for two themes. We personally use the Headlines Theme for this site and
BusyBee for IncomeDiary.com.
Installing your theme is easy, once you have downloaded it from
Woothemes, go to your WordPress Admin, click Themes > Upload > Upload Zip
File and Activate!
2. What are the top 10 indispensable WordPress plug-ins?
What is a plug-in? In layman term, it’s an external code that add
a specific function to expand the functionality of your blog. With plug-ins,
you can practically do almost anything you can imagine to your blog. Though WordPress works
right out of the box, a plug-in help to optimize your blog and it’s for this
very reason, WordPress has been the preferred choice of blogging platform for
most bloggers. Due to a plethora of
plugins, it’s also important to keep in mind that your choice plug-ins should
be ones that best serve your blogging needs. Here’s a checklist of 10
post-install plugins you ought to install right after the initial setup.
3. Google tools are your best blogging friends
I can’t say enough how indispensable tools like Google
Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to track the performance of your
blog. While the core functions of both tools are primarily to improve your SERP
(aka: Search Engine Results Position). Each has its own specific uses you can’t
do without. If you don’t please Google.
4. Setup RSS & Email subscription
Despite what you are blogging for, your ultimate goal of
everything you do is to drive traffic to your site and convince your visitors
to subscribe (read: follow) your blog.
The most common approach to facilitate the process is to
register your blog with Feedburner which is a 3rd party application designed to
easily manage your RSS subscription and simplify the process of subscribing
with just “one easy click”.
Nothing can be any easier
than that. However, from my own personal blogging experience, you also need to
take into account the non-techy visitors who are know little about RSS. Hence
an alternative in the form of
email subscription may be a good complimentary option. Most
internet markets choose to use a service called Aweber so
they can have full controle over their email list.
5. Check browser compatibility
Unless you are getting the right premium themes from reputable
theme developer i.e. Thesis [insert your affiliate link] theme, some of
the code of those freely available themes may not be compatible across major
browsers, IE in particular. In fact, why 50% of users are still on IE is still beyond
me.
A nifty online tool – IE NetRenderer allows you to check how your site
is viewed by Internet Explorer 8, 7, 6 or 5.5 and it’s completely free!
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