Askimet – http://akismet.com/ and use your WordPress API key http://wordpress.com/api-keys/
aLinks – http://alinks.headzoo.com/ – Automatically links keywords
All in One SEO Pack – http://semperfiwebdesign.com/ – Add SEO techniques to your blog. Change your settings once, get the benefit each time.
cforms – http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin
Google XML Sitemaps – http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sitemap-home/
Sociable – http://yoast.com/wordpress/sociable/
SRG Clean Archives – http://www.idunzo.com/projects/clean-archives/
**Replace Smart Archives on nickswitzer.net

Subscribe to Comments – http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/
WWW Redirect – http://www.justinshattuck.com/wordpress-www-redirect-plugin/
WP-Cumulus – http://www.roytanck.com/2008/03/15/wp-cumulus-released
or Another Tag Cloud Program

Optional Plugins
FlickrRSS – http://eightface.com/wordpress/flickrrss/
Exec-PHP – http://bluesome.net/post/2005/08/18/50/
LinkXL – http://www.linkxl.com/wp_plugin/ – for TLA

This is just a quick little list, if you have any questions or want some advice, please contact me.

Avg. Time on Site.
-This is calculated when they first request a page, and then when they request another.  This is not a true indication of the time.  Say if a person wants to read one of your posts (say a really lengthy and informative post, and it fulfills their needs) it doesn’t say actually how long they sat there and read it.  So it counts it as 0 time on your site if they do not click something else on your site.

Bounce Rate:
Many people don’t go to a website to find specific information and while they’re using that information for their intended purpose, do they continue to search your site unless either A) they’re returning to find out what else you wrote or B) complete finished whatever task they needed to accomplish at your site, and was curious about more.

So in conclusion, these are not great indicators of how your site helps people unless you have 20 articles written about similar subjects.  Because there is not a way for them to see (unless the person clicks something after reading the article, which many don’t).  If anyone has a good alternative or way to determine these and other measurements better, please feel free to share with all of us.

To post to WordPress from a desktop blogging client or remote website that uses the Atom Publishing Protocol or one of the XML-RPC publishing interfaces you must enable them below.

Remote Publishing

To post to WordPress from a desktop blogging client or remote website that uses the Atom Publishing Protocol or one of the XML-RPC publishing interfaces you must enable them below.

Then you need to add the list of update sites for XML-RPC to this part further below in the same section.

Update Services

When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services. For more about this, see Update Services on the Codex. Separate multiple service URLs with line breaks.

Here is the list:

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

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

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

http://audiorpc.wehttp://blogs.com/RPC2

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

http://blogpeople.net/ping

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://feedsky.com/api/RPC2

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

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

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

http://ping.blogoon.net/

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

http://ping.fc2.com/

http://ping.feedburner.com/

http://ping.kutsulog.net/

http://ping.myblog.jp/

http://ping.namaan.net/rpc

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

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

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

http://ping.wordblog.de/

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

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

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

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

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

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

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

http://rpc.twingly.com/

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://wasalive.com/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

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

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

If you have any more, please let me know, but it should be a good start for most of you.

How many links you need from pages with PR ==>

1

3

Here is a table that I found recently about Google’s Page Ranking based on incoming links. I am not sure how accurate it is since Google keeps changing their algorithm, but it is a very interesting thing to note about how many links should be incoming in order to get a certain page rank. This doesn’t seem to factor in content or other things that are (or should be) heavily weighed in Google’s algorithm, but again it’s just very interesting.

Google has the majority of the search market, so it should be number one on your list.  Click the follow link to submit your site to Google. http://www.google.com/addurl/

Next on the list of popular search engines is Yahoo!  They hold about 20% of the market compared to Google’s 65ish%.  But any avenue to get to your blog is a plus!  If you would like to get your website added to Yahoo! to get crawled by their robots, please visit the link http://submit.search.yahoo.com/

Another good site would be the Open Directory Project, also known as the dmoz!  For this one, you must navigate to the correct category that you would like your website added and then click “Suggest URL” at the top.  Click here to read about adding your site to the dmoz. http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

We can’t forget about the Giant software company now can we?  MSN has loyal followers and also has those that use hotmail for their personal email.  So make sure to also add your site to their submission form so it can be indexed also.  Use the link http://search.msn.com.sg/docs/submit.aspx

Alexa is a very good Web Information website that has a good way of analyzing websites similar to that of Google’s page ranking.  To get your site added to them, visit the following link: http://www.alexa.com/site/help/webmasters.

Lastly, we need to have a sitemap already created.  We can do this with our blog by using the Google Sitemap plugin (which is one of the vital plugins we will see soon in the “Top WordPress Plugins” article).  It asks you to add it in what might be a confusing way, but I’ve provided an example.

http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.the URL of your
sitemap here.xml

Example:
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.optimizeyourweb.net/sitemap.xml

After adding your site to each one of these, you should feel confident that they will soon be indexed by each and everyone one of the previous sites soon!  Once indexed, the only thing you should work on is relevant content!

• JKA Hosting
  • This site has hosting packages (some where you can get free domains!) and free blogging tools. Take a look!
• My Hosting
  • This site has great deals (as little as $6.45/month) to help you start your blogging!
• WestHost
  • Has $3.95 VPS Web Hosting! Great deals to help host your blog for CHEAP!
• Host Color
  • Great packages starting from 50MB/month to 30GB/month so you can alter your package as your site grows!

 Once you have chosen your domain name/hosting situation, I would recommend going with WordPress as your publishing platform.  WordPress.org has great links to themes, which are not only aesthetically pleasing, but you can choose to use themes that allow widgets (plugins for your website that you can drag and drop into place, which makes adding plugins easy) and how many columns the theme has.  I will soon write another post about great sites for themes, but this should get you started. Also be sure to read and FAQ’s and Installation instructions on wordpress.org’s site for any howto installation questions.

After customizing your blog, the most important thing to do is fill it with content.  Write as much as you can, but make sure it is quality writing and things that you would want to read about (especially if it is a professional site, and not a personal “here’s how my life in Vietnam is going” site that you may write to keep your family up-to-date).  For professional sites, use plugins (which I will go into detail later) that help people share your content with others, or easily track the discussion in the comments section of your post.  Try to keep your articles around the same general (would be better if it’s specific) subject, so you can have people constantly reading your site for new and interesting information about whatever.

Lastly, you may wish to participate in ads, or some sort of affiliate program.  Google Adsense is a major player, but they have strict rules in which they will not hesitate to ban you for breaking.  I will also write a list of good replacements to Google Adsense, as well as a list of affiliate programs and detailed information about them. 

If you have any questions, as always, let me know!  And have fun bloggin!