Day 6 – Publishing A Blog With WordPress Direct

In the past Thirty Day Challenges we’ve used several different platforms for publishing our content. Today we’re going to use a new platform that seems to have been specifically built for the Thirty Day Challenge and it’s called WordPress Direct.

A word of warning if you’re thinking about dropping out of the Thirty Day Challenge please stick around today and you’ll be rewarded for all your hard work over the past couple days.

Day 6 is approximately ~62 minutes

Awesome Software And Domains

(video length ~14 minutes)

This year we’re actually going to host our very own content. We can automatically update the blog using a special piece of software that will be perfect for testing our niche.

As usual the Thirty Day Challenge will cost you absolutely nothing. However, today Dan is going to talk about the power of domains and how spending a little bit of money on registering your own domain name to create your own site.

Registering your own domain name using your keywords in that domain name is a powerful way to get yourself moved higher up in the rankings. Remember the Competition Analysis in Market Samurai? One of the metrics was keyword in domain name.

Try using a service called Name Boy to lookup and see if your keyword domain name is available or get alternative suggestions for a domain name.

Another you can do to check on domain names is Name Cheap.

When using a domain name do not use a lot of hyphens. Ed recommend using no more than one in your domain name. They also know for a fact that Google is looking for domain names with lots of hyphens and penalizing them. In general it looks like a spammy domain with lots of hyphens.

Hosting Your Own Blog

(video length ~14 minutes)

You don’t have to do this…the Thirty Day Challenge is all about the free experience. This is something that you have the option of doing that is buying a domain name. It will give you an advantage, but it is totally acceptable to go through Thirty Day Challenge without your own domain name.

We’re using Host Gator to host our domains. If you use Host Gator then some of the funds will go to the Thirty Day Challenge. I currently use Blue Host for my own hosting and will buy my own domain name. By the way, I’ll get some affiliate dollars if you go through my Blue Host link.

Signing up for a hosting account is pretty self-explanatory. If you’ve signed up for anything online you should have no problem signing up for hosting. Go to either the Blue Host or Host Gator links and fill out the forms.

You can probably skip this video as it goes through the details of registering for a hosting account with Host Gator.

Install A Blog With WordPress Direct

(video length ~16 minutes)

To start things out you need to got http://30dc.wordpressdirect.com.  Signing up is no different then any other form you’ve filled out on the internet.  There is one special option for Thirty Day Challengers and that is the option to sign up for the upgrade to silver membership which will give you 15 sites instead of 3

***latent semantic indexing is already built in to WordPress Direct!

1. Choose a template – Ed says theres over 1500 and I bet probably increasing.
2. You have two options here either use your own hosting account or WordPress Direct will host for you.
3. If you use WordPresss Direct you have the option of several domains then type your keyword in the subdomain.
4. If you use your own hosting account you’ll need your own hosting information
5. Fill out the form with information relevant to your blog.
6. Add keyword categories…the top keyword should be your main keyword phrase in this section.  The website keywords will create automatic categories.
7. In step 3 check mark all the boxes.
8. Not adding Google Analytics now…click “Install Website Now”

Add Content And Publish Blog

(video length ~16 minutes)

Guru Bob shows us how to get your first article on the blog and enter your affiliate product in a sidebar widget on your blog.

The key to WordPress Direct is that it is totally optimize for SEO.

Setting Up Your First Article

1. Login to your WordPress Direct Account.
2. Click the “New Post” link to create a new post in your blog
3. Take the article you wrote earlier in the TDC and copy past the title and content to WordPress Direct.
4. You want your first article to be highly optimized for your main keyword. – keyword in title, first line, last line, and use bold/italics/underline. Leave some normal and highlight others.  You really don’t need more than one highlighted (emphasized).
5. Add a tag – use your keyword
6. Put it under the category that is your keyword.
7. WordPress Direct has the special plugin called WP Tags to Technorati. This lets Technorati know that the blog has content in relation to that tag.
8. WP Direct also has the social bookmarking information at the bottom of the article.

Affiliate Promotion with Ads and Banners

Use the affiliate information we did with Dan Raine a few days ago.  The image plus the 30-50 word description.

1. Go to the Ads And Banners Page
2. Upload image and add location of image
3. Copy paste the product description.
4. You can add links to your affiliate description.
5. Click “Save Sale Offer” which will add the image to the sale area
6. Select your image.  Click the anchor that allows you to add your affiliate URL. – after adding the URL add your Keyword Phrase again.
7. Guru Bob at 2 affiliate links one to the image and another to the last line of text.

WordPress Direct is a great and easy way to get your blog up and is highly optimized for SEO.

Another day in the books!  Now all I have to do is set up my first WordPress Direct Blog.  Should I pay the extra $1 to allow me to sign up for up to 15 blogs?