You should consider WordPress if you are serious about your blog. You get support and customisation by virtue of plug-ins that offers extra services which help interact with visitors. You also get a unique site.

No programming needed

With any website it is better to start off on a good footing, you don’t want to start changing software once you get going. WordPress offers ease of use for those who are not programmers. As soon as it is installed you can start blogging immediately. It is established and stable and offers a good variety of themes so you can change the look and feel to suit your tastes.

You are able to administer you own blog as the user management tools are fantastic. Once you have designed your blog you have the satisfaction of knowing you will never have to tear it apart and start again.

As an SEO tool WordPress is invaluable. You get linking structures already in place that are so necessary for spiders plus you get coding that contains no validation errors. You do however need to put in a little extra effort if you want to make your blog more SEO friendly.

SEO principles

• Firstly you need to ensure that your webpage URL’s reflect the name of your blog post. Don’t leave them as a post number. You can either write a rewrite rule into your .htaccess file or you can use the permalinks that come with WordPress. When asked about your custom structure you simply type “/index.php/%postname%”.
• Change the order of your page title so that your blog post name appears before either the name or the date of your blog. Everyone practicing SEO should know that the very first words in your title carry weight. They are what catch both readers and spider’s attention. To do this you need to swap the order of your PHP tags so that the wp_title appears before bloginfo. This is done by editing the header.php file.
• If you find that your blog entry title has been automatically inserted into a tag or your blog name is in the tag you can edit them in single.php and in header.php. You have the choice of choosing a format but it is possibly best to swap your blog name for an image. This way you will be making the most of your header tags.
• Avoid duplicate content issues by allowing spiders to follow links but not list them on the index. To do this you need to use “index,nofollow” tags on tag pages, category pages or archive pages. WordPress offers plugs-ins which makes this a simple process.
• You need to pay attention to your linking structure. Your blog needs to be accessible by the fewest clicks possible. This means you need to remove unnecessary links and pages. WordPress offers a plug-in called pagination that will help with this.

WordPress as a Blog platform

WordPress is open source. It offers a high level of security, personalisation and flexibility. You can customise your site to suit your niche audience with its host of themes, plug-ins and applications. You need never worry about the dreaded “Your account has been suspended/deleted” message again.

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