The All In One SEO plugin will help optimize your blog for the search engines.

To start log into your dashboard.

Then hold your mouse over the plug in icon and a drop down menu will appear.

Then you want to click on Add New.

In the Search box type in All-In-One SEO and click Search Plugins.

It should be the first plugin on the list. You now want to click on Install on the right.

A pop up box will appear where you need to click on install again. I have already installed it so mine is worded a little differently. Where mine says Latest Version Installed it will actually say Install Now.

Next you want to click on Activate Plugin.

Now that you have installed the All In One SEO plugin you need to configure it by filling out a few boxes.

Hold your mouse over the setting icon and click on All In One SEO.

Be sure that you have Enabled checked at the top.

Your Home Title is what will show in the search engines as the name of your site. If you want to add an additional description you can put it here. See how mine is below. The name of my blog is HeidiPassey.com, but when you find it in the search engine it actually says “HeidiPassey.com – Learning Internet Marking”.

The second box to fill in is your Home Description. This is what will show up when someone comes across your website  in a search engine. This is the text listed underneath your website. You want this description to catch peoples attention and draw them in. The more interesting your description the more people that will click on your website over other search results.

As you can see above my description text really isn’t too catchy, so that is something I need to work on.

The last box that you should fill in is the Home Keywords. This doesn’t carry as much push as it used to, but it will help with some search engines. You want to list all the keywords you feel your site is about. These are words that you would want your site to show up when someone searches for them.

You can leave the rest of the boxes as they are. Scroll to the bottom and click on Update Options and you are done.

If you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment.

Now that you have Wordpress installed you probably want to change the theme to something more interesting and pleasing to the eye. When you first install Wordpress it defaults to a pretty plain blue theme.

One of the nice things about Wordpress is that there are literally 1000’s of themes out there that you can choose from and many of them are free. There are all kinds of free themes available in a variety of formats and colors. You can find themes specific to cars, dogs, planes and so much more. What theme you choose ultimately depends on what kind of feel you want your blog to have. Is it personal or is it for business?

You can install a free theme, a premium theme or a customized theme. You will pay a fee for a premium theme, but the advantage is that not as many other bloggers will be using your theme and you may have access to more support than you would if you just used a free theme.

Customized themes are unique to you. You can pay to have a theme customized exactly how you want it to look and no one else will have the exact same theme.

If you aren’t sure now, don’t worry. You can always change your theme down the road. Your theme is not set in stone so don’t spend too much time trying to decide.

To get started lets look at the free themes that are already available through Wordpress.

First, log into you dashboard and hold your mouse over Appearance.  A drop down menu will then open up.

Click on Add New Themes.

A search menu will pull up where you can select the colors you looking for, you can choose if you want a 2 column, 3 column or 4 column blog and other options as well.

Let’s choose orange and 2 column for this search. Here are a couple of the themes that pull up.

You can click on Preview to see how it will look before you install it. Once you decide on the theme you want click on Install.

This will bring up a pop up. Click on Install Now to install the theme into your Wordpress blog.

You now have your new theme installed, but it isn’t active yet on your blog. If you go to your blog you will still see the original plain blue theme. To finish, you need to click on Activate.

That’s all there is to it.  Now that you have your new theme installed you can start adding different widgets and plug ins. I’ll talk about what these are in upcoming posts.

Again, don’t worry about picking the perfect theme right away. You could spend hours searching for the right theme. Pick a theme you like and start blogging. You want to get your blog going and start building your content. Then down the road you can spend more time searching for the perfect theme. I spent way too much time trying to pick my theme and I wish I had just picked one and started blogging.

Thanks again for reading!

Time to learn how to install Wordpress. As I thought about writing this post yesterday I was thinking it was going to be a long one. I think of the word “install” and I immediately think “complicated”. It’s funny though, because I went through the steps and it literally took me 2 minutes, if that, to write it all down. It really is simple.

Now, I’m going to go through the steps of installing Wordpress through Cpanel. You can install Wordpress manually, but Cpanel really makes it easy.

I actually tried that initially, installing it manually, because I wasn’t sure what I was doing. I didn’t know that you could quickly do it through cPanel. I ended up totally confused, but that’s just me. Using Filezilla is a learning curve I still need to get through. Once I learned I could use cPanel I was up and running in no time at all.

Since you are reading this post I’m assuming you have already got your domain name, set up a hosting account and transferred your DNS to your host. If you haven’t you can learn how in these posts:

How To Register Your First Domain Name

How To Set Up Your Hosting With HostGator

How to Transfer Your DNS To Your Webhost

To begin, log into your cPanel by going to your new domain plus “cPanel”

It should look like this (but with your domain name)

http://www.heidipassey.com/cpanel

Then log in with your user name and password that you set up with your host.

This is what cPanel will look like after you log in.

There are all kinds of things you can with cPanel. There is also a section with special offers that you will want to check out, such as getting $25 free in Google Adwords.

Scroll down to Fantastico. It is the smiley face Icon. Click on Fantastico.

There will be a menu of options on the left hand side. Click on Wordpress.

I didn’t make a screen shot of the next screen. Just click on New Installation.

Now you will select your domain from the list where it says Install on Domain. If this is your first blog, your new domain name should be the only one there.

Go ahead and leave the directory blank.

Choose your administrator user name and password. This is what you will use to log in and post on your blog.

Choose a nickname.

Enter you blogs name and description. The description will show up under you blog name in the header.

Now click Install Wordpress.

That’s it. That didn’t take long at all did it? Now if you go to your website address you should see a very basic looking blog.

I’ll cover ways to spice up the look of your blog in upcoming posts. Feel free to log into your blog now and get familiar with your dashboard. To log in, just go to:

http://www.heidipassey.com/wp-admin (your domain name, of course)

Don’t feel like you have to get your blog looking exactly right before you start adding content. That is a mistake I made. I spent too much time trying to get my blog to look the way I wanted it to before I started blogging. As Alex teaches, “don’t get it perfect, just get it going”. You can always make changes to the look of your blog later.

Again, if you have any questions please leave a comment.