How to optimise you church blog with wordpress plugins

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I have been promising for a while now a video tutorial on wordpress.. so I have done a brief tutorial on 3 plugins that help you get stacks more traffic form the search engines.

Enjoy and comments are welcomed.

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Church blogging - The secret to installing wordpress

Yesterday we spoke about research and planning your site for the first few posts and putting yourself in the shoes of the reader. Today, I just want to put together a series of posts on how to get wordpress installed and how to start adding content.

Firstly, you need a domain name to host it. If you are unsure what to call it then use a tool

http://www.robobunny.com/cgi-bin/dislexicon

http://www.domainsbot.com/

Once you have a domain name in mind or already have one then you need to put the wordpress software on you hosting account. If you already have hosting just ask them if they support hosting a wordpress blog and if they have a wordpress installer in the control panel.

If you need hosting there are plenty out there to choose from I would recommend

http://www.everymanhosting.com

They have a wordpress installer which literally takes 30 seconds to install.

Once it is up and running you can start to change the design as it comes with two very basic themes which personally don’t look great.

All you need to do a search on google for wordpress themes and download them onto your computer and we will cover how to do it in the next post.

Have a browse here though.

http://hackwordpress.com/best-magazine-style-wordpress-themes/

In my opinion these are some of the best free magazine style wordpress themes.

Steve

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The secret to getting more traffic to your church blog - Part 1

Yesterday I spoke on why we should blog and how we can get a ton of traffic for our church blogs and eventually bring people through the doors of our churches and further advance the Kingdom of God.

Today I am going to lift the lid on my preferred blogging software that is free. This is the start of the series of tutorials on why you should have a blog and what you should do to drive traffic to your blog.

Firstly, you should host your blog on your own domain. I know there are so many websites that offer free blogs hosted on free websites like blogger and wordpress.com. I am a big fan of wordpress but you need to use the self hosted free install, please let me explain why.

When you are using wordpress on your domain you can use the plugins to optimise your blog and gain visitors to it. You are promoting a brand, a domain that people will start to remember. All the other free online blogs give you a sub domain such as yourblog.blogger.com. This is all well and good but you cannot control it and optimise it as much.

You maybe a preacher, a youth leader, a Pastor and cell group leader, you may be looking to launch a blog for your church to keep the community informed. Whoever you are or whatever your role, the best way to set up a blog is self hosting wordpress.

Steps 1 – Research your potential audience

We covered the importance of keyword research the other day, but we need to just cover over it again.

One of the biggest mistakes of all bloggers is the lack of research of what people want to read about in the niche you’re operating in.

I would recommend you follow this process.

Go to google.com and type in your number one keyword.

Have a look at the top 10 websites and view them. Have a look at what content they have, if they are easy to read and do they look good.

Make a list of what kind of content they have and we can use these lead keywords next.

With these “lead keywords” put them into a keyword research tool. There are plenty out there to use that free.

Here are a couple I would use.

http://www.hexatrack.com (free version for a limited period)

http://www.wordtracker.com/ (free trial then pay site)

When using these tools you are looking for “long tail keywords”. These long tail keyword are searches that people search on a regular basis but there isn’t as much competition as the “lead keywords”. This is the approach of many internet marketers that have the luxury of working for them and it works in any niche. Here are some other articles that may be worth a read.

Evangelism Blogs Evangelism Through Blogging: HOW TO START A BLOG EVANGELISM THROUGH BLOGGING: WHY YOU SHOULD DO IT Blogging: Cyber-Savvy Outreach Mark Beeson: Leverage Your Evangelism Moments The Benefits of Blogging / Social Media - Part #2 Church Marketing: Three Ways To Drive Traffic To The Blog

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