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When it comes to business blogging, or commercial blogging, it’s not the same thing as personal blogging or blogging to make money. You are blogging to make money, but you are not trying to squeeze out revenue from your blog. You are using your blog as a marketing tool to lead people to your website so that you can close the sale and make money on your products and services. Your blog is the lead generator; your website is the salesman.

So what does your lead generation blog need in order to do its job well? Here are the three absolutely essential ingredients to make sure your company blog stands out and drives traffic to your website:

1. Quality, original content - Every day. We’re not talking about private label rights or recycled eye candy. Graphics are nice, but content is better. Eat a meal and not just a snack! Take your company talking points and turn them into a blog by getting into a real conversation with your customers about their needs and your desire to fill a niche within the marketplace. It all starts with quality, original content.
2. Links - You need to link to your website. Not just the home page either. I’m talking about real links to every page that is important on your website. And your links need to be in the body of your blog posts as well as in your sidebar blogroll. Take your important keywords and turn them into anchor text and link to each page on your website using the appropriate anchor text.
3. The right template - It can be custom-made, but it doesn’t have to be. An off-the-shelf template works just as well as long as it is SEOd properly. Your blog template needs to be crawlable so making sure that the code in your template makes it easy for the search engines to find what they need is absolutely essential. Your blog template must be able to attract a reader’s eye quickly and not drive them away, so attractiveness is important but even an ugly template with the right SEO will get you the traffic you are looking for. When it comes to getting ranked in the search engines, SEO is far more important than being pretty.

These are the three most essential elements to a successful company blog. Other things are nice, but without these three things going for you, you might as well hang it up. Everything else is gravy.

When you set up a blog you have a very important decision to make regarding design. Should you select an off-the-shelf template or select a blog design? There are advantages to doing it both ways. Here’s a run down of the benefits you can expect from going either direction:

Blog Template - If you choose a blog template for your business, you first need to consider what is the appropriate template for your blog. Not all blog templates are created equal. One of the most important considerations you’ll need to make is the optimization of your template. You can choose an attractive blog template, but if it isn’t optimized for search engines then it’s not important how pretty it is. Here are some other things you need to think about for templates:

• One side bar or two? Give this careful thought. If you have two sidebars - right and left, two on the right, or two on the left - then you have less space in the middle where your posts are. You might have more space for things like ads, blogroll, etc. but is it worth it? What will go into your sidebars? What is necessary and what is fluff? You’ll need to know. If you are running an affiliate blog then you might want two sidebars for all the affiliate banner ads you plan to display, but if your blog is a company blog for a service business then you might not want those distractions in your sidebar at all.
• Who else is using your template? Some people say if you are using a popular template then you are cutting your business short. It depends. Are a lot of people in your industry using the same template? If so then you might want to reconsider using it and go with an original design or another template. But if not then you might be OK with a particular template.
• Templates are free. You don’t have to pay for a blog template. But you will have to pay a designer to design you an original design.
• Could be easier to install. A template might be easier to install depending on how the orgiginal blog template is designed. Be sure that you understand any installation issues with a custom designed template.

Original Design - Pride of ownership is a big selling point. If you have an original blog design then you own it. It’s yours. No one else can copy it. You can boast of your originality and it can look really cool, give you a big boost in your image to your targeted customers. That’s a huge selling point. But is that the only benefit?

• Sidebars. You still have to decide how many sidebars you want. You can also give your original design other bells and whistles like dynamic footers, flash headers, etc. but be careful with those because you still have to consider search engine optimization. Don’t get so snazzy that your blog doesn’t pass the SEO test.
• Cost. Can you afford to pay a fancy designer to build you a blog design? Custom blog designs can run anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to several thousand. Can you afford it? Many bloggers who have purchased a custom blog design have said that it was well worth the expense and that through advertising they have more than made up for it. But that isn’t the case with all of them. Plan your monetization strategy well and make sure that you can afford the expense before you invest.
• Installation. Will you be installing the design yourself or will you have to pay someone to install it. Some custom designs require that you pay a technical person to set it up just right for you. Be sure you consider that expense, if necessary.

There are benefits to having your own design, but that doesn’t mean you should do it. For a lot of people, the cost far outweighs the benefits. It is something you have to give careful consideration to before you invest in an expensive design. The content of your blog is far more important than design and that is something you should always keep in mind.

This is one of my daily must read blogs. Nick Stamoulis really knows Internet Marketing and SEO. There are tips there for the newbies and for the pros both. It’s posted to twice daily so Brick Marketing can keep you up-to-date with the latest SEO News and Tips.

It’s a no nonsense blog both graphically and substance-wise. Nick tells you like it is and the blog focuses on the content rather than having a bunch of pretty colors and ads to distract you from reading about SEO.

They say knowing your audience is the biggest thing if you want to be successful. People wanting to read up on and learn about SEO don’t want a bunch of graphics and popups and ads. They want information. Nick’s Search Engine Optimization Journal provides that.

This is a continuation of Part 1 of setting up your wordpress blog.

1. Install wordpress software, create database, admin username, etc.

2. Upload standard plugins to the plugins directory. Akismet usually already installed with wordpress. We add google sitemap generator, google analytics, (customer must supply code), addthis plugin, dd-add-sig plugin, feedburner plugin, and backup database plugin

3. Upload themes that you want to try out into themes directory.

4. Under presentation, try each theme out and choose one. Once you have chosen the theme you will use, delete all other themes from the server except the one you are using, classic, and default.

5. Download the theme and the htaccess file you chose into a client folder on your hard drive for editing purposes.

6. Header image. If the theme comes with a header image, you may need to customize this. If you do want to customize the header graphic, you must find the graphic in the client folder inside the theme you downloaded, in the images file.

Once you find the graphic, open it in photoshop or paint shop pro. The new image you create must be the same size as the header that came with the theme.

Also once you create and replace the old header and upload it to the proper directory, you need to see if the wordpress theme is laying text over the header you just created to see if it looks ok. If it looks bad, go into the wordpress admin area under options and take out the weblog title.

The title will have to be put back in later using your html editor in header.php. Where it says title, you will have to take out the php for the title and manually add the title there. That will be discussed later in this document.

7. User Accounts, In admin, go to users. Create your admin account. Edit each account after creating it. Uncheck visual editor. Choose a display name for each user, hit update.

After typing in the display name, you will need to still go back and choose it from the dropdown menu and hit update again.

8. Options. General tab. Set time to -5 gmt or whatever your time settings are where you live and make sure the options are checked as displayed here.

Anyone can register should be checked.
Users must be registered and logged in to comment is something I usually check.

New User Default Role: subscriber

9. Options. Writing tab. Add ping list below.

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/
http://rpc.wpkeys.com/
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

10. Options. Reading tab. Set the feed on summary. Check the gzip option.

11. Options. Discussion tab. An administrator must always approve the comment. Check the option as displayed here.

12. Options. Permalink structure. First check date and name based so it will put code into the custom field below. Then change the custom field to the following.

Mainkeyphrasewrittenasallonewordhere/%category%/%postname%/%monthnum%/%day%/%year%/

Now hit the update button and copy the code it gives you. Download the .htaccess file from the server or you may have to create one and add that code to the next available line in the htaccess file.

Then upload the htaccess file to the server. View the blog, hit shift+refresh, then click the post title for the first post. Make sure you get no errors and check the permalink structure in the browser address bar to see if it is correct.

13. Manage Tab in admin area; Click pages. Choose the about page and click edit. Put in the text and links you want. Make sure keywords are used here.

14. Manage Tab in admin area; Click categories. Add categories using key phrases.

15. Blogroll. Check all default links and delete them. Add the links you want. Use good anchor text in the link names.

After adding a couple and choosing categories for them, view the blog to see if it is putting links into categories or putting them all into blogroll. It’s ok either way, but you will at least know whether you need to check categories for the links or not.

Also look to see if you are using too much anchor text and making the blog look sloppy. Alter as needed.

16. Editing Files. You should have downloaded the theme so now you can open all the php files you may need to edit. Usually, header, footer, sidebar, index, single, and page.php are the only files you will ever edit. Although there may be other files you want to look over and see if changes need to be made like to the stylesheet.

17. Header.php. should be the first part of the title. By default it is last. Move it to the front and make sure you put a dash or space before the next item.

Another part that will be there might look like this Now this is whatever you put into the admin area under options, general tab as the name of the blog.

If you had to put nothing in that field due to graphics issues then delete that and put the title of the blog you want there instead. That is all you really need to edit in the header so upload it and view it to see if it works the way you wanted it to. Click a post title to look there also. The title is what appears at the very top of your browser.

18. Sidebar.php. If you are careful, you can move things around here.
Maybe you want your categories at the top, the search at the bottom, whatever. Just make sure you know what you are doing there.

Backup your file first so if you upload and it screwed things up, you can always upload the backup and start over.

Delete the validation links in the sidebar. Wordpress never validates, so they are useless. You should leave the wordpress link since you are using their software. You can add images or anything else you want in your sidebar like widgets, affiliate buttons, etc.

19. Footer.php. You should leave the designer’s name and link, but if you left wordpress link in the sidebar, you can delete it here. If you didn’t leave it in the sidebar, you can leave it here. Once is enough.

That’s pretty much it. All questions are welcome.