For those who don’t know, WordPress is a powerful blogging software (or platform) which makes creating and maintaining a weblog extremely easy.  However, not only can it be used for blogs.  It can be used as a CMS (Content Management System) to build an entire website.  Some of you might have heard of similar platforms such as Blogspot or Typepad, however neither of these has a candle to the power and ease of WordPress.  Since discovering WordPress, I have used it religiously to build all of my own websites as well as clients’ websites as it is easy for me and they to modify content, change the site design, and in my most importantly, gain SEO rankings.

But what makes WordPress such a powerful SEO tool?  In the next several posts, I am going to make the case for why you should build your next website in WordPress and how to make it as Search Engine Friendly as possible.

I am going to try to break this down into several sections, including powerful plugins, link building techniques, and basic strategy inside the WordPress engine itself to make the search engines (and everyone else) find your content and drive traffic to your website.

In this initial post, I would like to just talk about the barebones WordPress platform.  The latest version can be downloaded at www.wordpress.org and installed on any Apache server.  After installing and logging into the WordPress Administration section for the first time, there are several SEO features we need to activate.

First, go to Settings > Permalinks

Permalinks will allow us to modify the URLs of our website pages to make them more search engine friendly.  For example, the default setting would create a URL like the following:

http://www.jeffashby.com/?p=123

We can create a custom structure that will give us the name of the post instead.  I like to add the category and post name by using this code: /%category%/%postname%/

http://www.jeffashby.com/wordpress/the-wonderful-world-of-wordpress-seo-part-1/

This creates a keyword rich URL that is not only more helpful for search engines, but also more helpful to visitors of your website.

Another cool feature about the Permalinks is if you actually go into a post that you write, right below the post title, you will be able to modify the URL of each post anyway you want.  That is enough about permalinks.

Second, try going to Settings > Privacy.

This will give us the option to enable or disable search engines from viewing your website.  You might be thinking “Why would I ever want to disallow crawlers from my site?”  The truth is, when your site is in development, it is a good idea to now allow your content to be added to the search engines.  In many situations, you might have development content that gets indexed that you don’t want indexed (and it is sometimes hard to remove indexed content).  Just make sure that when your page is done, go back and switch the search engine crawlers back on.

Lastly, I want to talk about pinging.  Go to Settings > Writing and scroll to the bottom where you see Update Services.

One of the amazing features of WordPress is that it has the ability to call spiders to your website.  Once you create a new post or page, WordPress will send a message out to the different search engines and content websites and basically say “Hey, there is new content on my website, come check it out.”  This is called pinging.

In this section of the administration, we can add a list of different websites that we want WordPress to ping other than just the default websites.  Currently this is the list I use:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://zing.zingfast.com

http://zhuaxia.com/rpc/server.php

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://www.zhuaxia.com/rpc/server.php

http://www.xianguo.com/xmlrpc/ping.php

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://www.weblogues.com

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.snipsnap.org

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.popdex.com

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/ping.php

http://www.lasermemory.com

http://www.imblogs.net/ping/

http://www.holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/

http://www.feedsky.com/api/RPC2

http://www.catapings.com/ping.php

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsdominicanos.com/ping/

http://www.blogroots.com

http://www.blogpeople.net

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://www.a2b.cc

http://weblogues.com/RPC/

http://weblogues.com/ping/

http://wasalive.com/ping/

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://topicexchange.com

http://thingamablog.sourceforge.net/ping.php

http://syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPingExtended.doz

http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx

http://rpc.wpkeys.com

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://rpc.twingly.com

http://rpc.technorati.jp/rpc/ping

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2

http://rpc.reader.livedoor.com/ping

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080

http://rpc.britblog.com/

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.bloggerei.de/ping/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rcs.datashed.net

http://r.hatena.ne.jp/rpc

http://popdex.com/addsite.php

http://pingqueue.com/rpc/

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://pingoat.com/

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc

http://ping.wordblog.de/

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.snap.com/ping/RPC2

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.namaan.net/rpc

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.kutsulog.net/

http://ping.feeds.yahoo.com/RPC2/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.fc2.com/

http://ping.fakapster.com/rpc

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.blogs.yandex.ru/RPC2

http://ping.blogoon.net/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogg.de/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://packetmonster.net/xmlrpc.php

http://newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://newsblog.jungleboots.org/ping.php

http://mod-pubsub.org/ping.php

http://mod-pubsub.org

http://lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://imblogs.net/ping/

http://holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/

http://hamo-search.com/ping.php

http://fgiasson.com/pings/ping.php

http://feedsky.com/api/RPC2

http://effbot.org/rpc/ping.cgi

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://catapings.com/ping.php

http://bulkfeeds.net

http://blogupdate.org/ping/

http://blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://blogsnow.com/ping

http://blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://blogsearch.google.us/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.tw/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.sk/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.se/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ru/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ro/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.pt/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.pl/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.nl/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.lt/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.jp/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.it/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.in/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ie/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.hr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.gr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.fr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.fi/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.es/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.de/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.vn/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.uy/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.ua/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.tw/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.tr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.sg/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.sa/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.pe/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.my/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.mx/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.do/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.co/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.br/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.au/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.ar/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.za/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.ve/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.uk/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.th/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.nz/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.ma/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.jp/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.it/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.in/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.il/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.id/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.hu/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.cr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.cl/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ch/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ca/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.bg/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.be/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.at/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ae/ping/RPC2

http://blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://blogpeople.net/ping

http://blogoon.net/ping/

http://blogoole.com/ping/

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://blogdb.jp

http://blogbot.dk/io/xml-rpc.php

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blog.goo.ne.jp

http://blo.gs/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping/

http://bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://bitacoles.net/notificacio.php

http://bblog.comping.php

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://audiorpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.co.jp/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

You could probably find more than this, but this is a pretty good list.  You can just copy and paste this list into this section and WordPress will do all the work in order to get more spiders looking at your content.  With JeffAshby.com, I am at the point where I can submit a new post, and less than 5 minutes later, it is already indexed into Google.  This is just an example of the power that WordPress can give your website in terms of SEO.

This information is a good opening to some of the powers of WordPress.  In the next post, I am going to discuss more about important plugins that are crucial to your SEO success.