ZillionBits-Its about number$ and te<h^0!0gy

Last week I mentioned using a WordPress blog that shows postings in chronological order as a way to quickly create a mini-site. I thought I’d back it up a little, though, and start by discussing what it takes to create the perfect “AdSense-ready” WordPress blog. (Much of what I say in this series applies to other blogging platforms, but everything is written specifically for and about WordPress.)

Why WordPress?

First, let’s talk about why we’re using WordPress in the first place. WordPress is the first choice for many bloggers because it’s:

• Free
• Well-supported
• Customizable
• Extensible using plugins
• Free (did I say that already?)

There are other free blogging solutions available, Blogger being the most obvious, but for ultimate flexibility it’s hard to beat WordPress. (Note that this blog you’re reading is not running WordPress, for geeky reasons, but I run other WordPress-hosted blogs like Mortgage Guide…)

Title and Subtitle

Now, before you do anything else, sit down and choose a title and a subtitle for your blog. I’m not talking about the domain name, but the blog’s name and description. Some tips:

• Keep the title as short as possible. The subtitle can be longer.
• Don’t include the word “blog” in the title unless your blog is about blogging. (Do book titles include the word “book”?)
• Include your primary keyword in the title somewhere. (Important for SEO purposes and for ad selection. See Understanding the AdSense Patent.)
• Include a secondary keyword in the subtitle.
• Write the description like a headline.

Try to be as happy as you can with your choice, because once it’s out there it’s going to stick and you’ll have a devil of a time changing it. Spend as much time as you think you need on this. Be sure to search Google to see if anyone is using the same blog name. If they are, it’s probably best to choose something else to avoid confusion.

The Domain Name

Once you’ve settled on a blog name, it’s time to pick a domain name. Actually, you should be doing this concurrently with the name selection.

You might be wondering if you really need a domain name. Absolutely. Otherwise your blog is at risk. Yes, you can use a subdomain on someone else’s domain, but what happens if your relationship with that party dissipates? What if that party doesn’t like what you’re doing with your blog and decides to delist it? What if you want to change or upgrade blogging platforms? Ultimately, your blog lives by its findability and linkability. If the base URL for your blog changes for any reason — and I have firsthand experience with this — then you might as well say goodbye to all those incoming links, especially if you can’t arrange proper server-level redirects from the old blog address to the new blog address. And even with proper redirect things can still get messed up — Technorati lists both memwg.com (currently #20) and MakeEasyMoneyWithGoogle.com (currently #56) in its list of AdSense blogs, even though the latter is nothing but a redirect to the former.

Domain name tips:

• Base it on the blog title.
• Keep it short, but make sure it includes the primary keyword.
• Get a .com domain if possible.
• Avoid “blog” and other blogging keywords.
• Use private domain registration to hide your personal information from prying eyes.

Most of my older domain names were registered with GoDaddy, but lately I’ve been using 1&1 exclusively because the $5.99 price for .com domains includes free private registration. Shop around, though, things change all the time.

Generally speaking, you’ll want to install your blog at the root of the domain. Unlike this blog, which has the unwieldy path “/blog/adsense/” (and was created before I understood how to properly manipulate the blogging software I use to do otherwise), you want the blog to be on the home page so that it gets indexed quickly by the search engines. And also so that it’s easy to find.

Prefixed With “www” Or Not?

Unless you’re using a subdomain (see the next item), your blog will be accessible in two ways: “www.domain.com” and “domain.com”. Some links will use one form, some the other. You want to prevent this. Choose one form and arrange things so that anyone who accesses the site via the other form gets redirected to the proper (”canonical”) form.

On most web servers, this means noodling with the special .htaccess file in the root. If you want to redirect the non-www form to the www form, use these commands:

Options -Indexes
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^nodebtisgood.(.*)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.nodebtisgood.com/$1 [R=301,L]

You would, of course, replace all instances of “nodebtisgood” with your own domain name.

To do the reverse — go from www form to non-www form — these are the commands you need:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^nodebtisgood\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://nodebtisgood.com/$1 [R=301,L]

See Webweaver’s .htaccess redirection examples for more details on this.

Subdomains

If you already have a site and you want to add a blog to it, you have two choices: install the blog in a subfolder of the site or else install it in as a subdomain. (This assumes that your hosting service lets you create subdomains.)

Technically, a subdomain is a separate site from its parent site. As such, it’s easier to get the home page of a subdomain (which in this case would be your main blog page) indexed than random pages within the parent site. This is a good reason to use a subdomain, although recent abuses of subdomains by spammers is likely going to cause Google and the other search engines to index subdomains more carefully.

Semantically, though, I like having the blog separated from the main site in this manner. Keep the subdomain short, usually just the primary keyword itself works well. Avoid calling it “blog”, as in “blog.foo.com”.

Get Your Hosting Right!

Armed with your domain name, you’re ready to find a hosting service. I always recommend separation of church and state on this one — don’t host your domain with the registrar you bought it from. That way, if you run into problems with your hosting service your domain name won’t be frozen and you can point it elsewhere if necessary.

You should be able to find hosting very cheaply for your WordPress blog. If you’re at all technically-inclined, or willing to learn, consider getting a reseller account. This is a hosting account that you can use to sell hosting services to others. You’re not looking to do that, but a reseller account gives you lots of space, bandwidth, and the ability to host multiple domains (25, 50, even unlimited…) for a low price. Personally, I have a reseller account from ResellerZoom myself, which gives me the ability to host up to 50 domains for only $5 a month. But again, it pays to shop around.

Try to get a hosting service with Fantastico support. Fantastico is a set of auto-installation scripts that can be used with cPanel, which is the standard control panel for managing hosting accounts. Fantastico makes WordPress installation trivial.

Be sure to setup email accounts within the hosting service, or at least forward the email to one of your other accounts. Don’t setup a “catch-all” account, you’ll just get flooded with spam. You should set up “webmaster” and “postmaster” accounts in addition to at least one other.

Next time we’ll look at getting the WordPress blog up and running.

Originally from An AdSense Blog: Make Easy Money with Google on July 11, 2006, 10:02am