Wordpress 10-Step Checklist For SEO, Traffic, and Plugins

This is a down-and-dirty checklist to make sure you’re covering all of your bases traffickizing and monetizing your website, which should be WordPress, and should be a blog with regular content updates. If not, you’re missing out.

1. Keywords

  • Pick 50 keywords most related to your content or niche.
    • Short, medium- and long-tail (2, 3, and 4+ phrases)
    • Include variations on spelling, plural (add “s”), word order
    • Brainstorm everything.
    • Include current books, authors, programs, products, services YOU like.
    • If somebody searches for something you like, they’re more likely to find YOU.
  • Use Google Keyword Tool
  • Use Google Insights to track change over time for keyword searches

2. SEO Plugins

  • Google integration toolkit
  • All-in-one SEO Pack
  • Simple Tags
  • Quick Meta Keywords

3. Email Subscribe

  • Capture visitors’ emails. Aweber or GreatAutoresponder work well. As long as you have one.
  • Follow-up emails with content, post updates, offers, you should know the drill by now.

4. RSS Feed

  • Upload feed to Google Feedburner.
  • Have a subscribe button prominent on your site (the  button)

5. Ping list

  • Copy and paste the list found here to Settings -> Writing -> Update Services.
  • ‘Nuff said. Unless you’re an uber elite ping-master ninja pro, just copy and paste. Well done.
  • Thanks to Jack Humphrey for the awesome list!

6. Social Bookmarking

  • “Bookmarkify” or “Sociable” plugin to let visitors bookmark and email content.
  • Bookmark yourself on all the social bookmarking sites with Onlywire (You have to include a link to them on your widget bar to stay active for free. Well worth it.) Saves hours.
  • If you do have time (or $ to outsource), build your friends list on the bookmarking sites to point more targeted traffic to you.

7. Trackbacks

  • Gets a little complicated, but a major source of free targeted traffic. Unless you have a decent marketing budget for other advertising, you want to do this.
  • Click here. Absorb. Apply.

8. Monetize

  • Get an account with Clickbank or other affiliate program (CommissionJunction, e-junkie, etc.)
  • Products you use everyday probably have an affiliate program. Examples: e-Books, credit cards, Aweber autoresponder, Tweetlater.com, knives, art, anything else you can imagine.
  • Create hoplinks (affiliate links) when you review products, services, or place google-like ads as text widgets. When people click, you don’t get 8 cents. You get 20-80% commission depending on what’s sold. The links in my example below (see sidebar) pay 50-60%. And they’re great products.

*NOTE Buy from yourself to save money on products you want. You get that % commission as a kick-back!

9. Feed the content machine

  • Subscribe to RSS feeds. You can even plug them into your blog posting (auto-blogging).
  • Stay on top of your topic. Provide the newest, latest, hottest. 4-10 trackback links per post.
  • Add new keywords constantly. New blog? Author? Book? Oprah guest? Whatever. Use it.
  • Guest post on other blogs. Have them guest post on yours. Guesting uses the same post, just uploaded on a different bog – yours and theirs.

10. Automate

  • The fun part. Once you have a regular traffic flow and are earning commissions from your review, recommendations, ads, or product(s), you can afford to outsource tasks.
  • You can get a Virtual Assistant (VA) – expensive.
  • Outsource individual tasks (Amazon Mechanical Turk) – not fully automated, lots of micromanaging.
  • Hire an outsource company. Way too much detail to go into this post. Read The 4-Hour Workweek to blow your mind with the possibilities of outsourcing.
  • No, I don’t outsource yet. I’m still poor. Change that. Share this.
Thanks to the Authority Black Book for the great walkthroughs. Without it, I would be a lost little Wordpress newblet.
[Bloglines] [Digg] [Squidoo] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Twitter] [Email] More »

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google Bookmarks
  • E-mail this story to a friend!
  • LinkedIn
  • Slashdot
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply