With your WordPress site up and running, now's the time to promote it to the widest possible audience. Fortunately, there are many tools and approaches available to help you in this task. If your WordPress site is a blog, you will have a particularly broad set of techniques at your disposal.   Quick Page Links   Search Engine Optimisation Links RSS Blog Indexes Social Networking

Search Engine Optimisation

Your site needs to be optimised for your target search terms regarding, as a minimum:

• web page addresses (so called search engine friendly – SEF – web addresses)
• web page titles
• appropriate page content

and steps taken to ensure that your site can be located and appropriately indexed by the main search engines – predominantly Google.

Links

Links to your web site from other relevant, credible web sites are potentially beneficial in 2 main respects:

• boosting search engine rankings
• referring/directing traffic to your site

Webmasters responsible for non-blog sites have typically been very conservative in their linking strategies, being obsessed with obtaining inbound links without 'surrendering' outbound links to other web sites.

The blogging world – the so-called 'blogosphere' – however, may well be considered different, requiring a different approach to linking. After all, the blogosphere regards itself as a community, defined by its concern with interaction and communication, rather than purely selfish considerations.

You may decide that a more relaxed attitude can be taken to outward linking, as many of your visitors will, after all, expect you to be 'wired in' to other relevant blogs/sites within your area of expertise and your linking strategy may also include making regular constructive contributions to other blogs which link back to your own.

You may find that being a positive, constructive member of your particular area of the blogosphere will bring its own reward in terms of both quality links and referrals!

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RSS

If your WordPress site is a blog, you are likely to be – should be! – publishing a regular stream of postings on your particular subject area. If you are, then an RSS feed with links to your latest content could help to build your blog traffic and visitor loyalty over time.

There are a range of tools available to maximise the promotional opportunity presented by RSS.

Blog Indexes

Self-explanatory really… Just as there are directories for 'conventional' web sites, there are many blog indexes. You will want to consider whether your blog's inclusion in selected indexes would be of benefit.

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Social Networking

The latest craze – but one which shows little sign of diminishing. Even if you don't directly participate, you cannot fail to be aware of the prominence of social networking sites and tools (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

You will need to think carefully about the realistic benefits of contributing to social networks if your aim is to increase awareness of and traffic levels to your WordPress site. Social networks are distinctly informal. Would your site/message sit comfortably within this environment or would there be a better use for the time you can devote to promoting your site? Life, and being a webmaster, after all, is all about priorities!

Faced with the barrage of publicity about social networks, it would be easy to think that participation in some form is a must, but we would suggest you resist the 'join the crowd' mentality and make your decision on logical grounds as with other elements of your marketing/promotional plan.

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