I am posting this to lay the rumor to rest that seo is a dirty word, or even one letter close to being one, because if done correctly it can be the online marketer’s best friend and even make Google happy.

For those new to online marketing what is seo? And why should you care about it. Seo simply means, “search engine optimization” but it is not something you do by simply flipping a switch, but a multitude of things to make your content more easily found by search engines such as Google.

I touched on this before in an earlier post and I would like to use a friend to illustrate a point.  He was all excited when he told me how he had signed up with this network marketing company and how great the company was, they had even given him his own website and he went on to extol the virtues of his company. What he didn’t realize is that he might as well be living on the moon for all the good his free website would do towards driving leads to his business.

Most if not all network marketing companies today will give you a replicating website, but as far as bringing in leads, forget it, it’s only value is a place to send your leads to for information once you have already found them, and you only want to do that when the time is right.

For the newbie it can be a daunting task to know just where to begin, but never fear there are places to go where you can get the help you need, if you already have your own marketing website or blog. Don’t forget, the sooner your site becomes search engine friendly the happier your wallet will be.

What good is it to have your domain name or content link show up on the second or third page of a Google search or not at all, when most web searchers only click on the top two or three sites listed on the first page.

Some of the changes are simple enough to implement such as making sure that the key words in the title should be included in the first paragraph of your content. There are literally dozens of things that you can do to make your posts become more visible to Google.

As a marketer I have picked up some marketing strategies and tools that I use in my business, that you might find useful for growing yours, tools that can not only make your marketing portal more friendly to the search engines but that will also help you to create a sales funnel to drive leads to your primary or MLM business.

Let me know if you find this useful and want to know more about seo optimization and free lead generation. It works for any MLM business and comes in the form of a free 7 Day Video Boot Camp   that will be emailed to you every day for 7 days. 

Flexibility 3 is a really cool WordPress theme and as the name implies very flexible. I found it easy enough for an Internet newbie like myself to be able to put up a very nice web page and there is so much more yet to learn. Can you imagine with a little more no-how, what a person could come up with. There is hardly a day goes by that I do not learn something new about its interface.

We will begin this post by opening the Dashboard and clicking on Appearance to open up the Flexibility 3 interface, which is the fourth submenu, directly below Menus under the Appearance Tab.  Clicking on it and it opens up a very busy page with several rows of tabs at the top. This is the control center for Flexibility 3 and is what gives it its amazing flexibility.

1.  Flexibility 3 Updates & Info Tab: It is just that, a place for Flexibility 3 to keep you in formed and up to date on the theme’s features.

2. Quick Change Settings Tab: This is just as it says, to make quick changes to the blog theme.

 a) Theme Color Changer Tab: Used to make over-all quick changes of the theme color by making a one color-picker selection, which then allows you to fine-tune your colors as you wish with the other theme tabs. The four steps given are simple enough; just make sure that you finish by clicking on the “Change Colors” button. Once you have chosen a particular color you can cut and paste the number that you see in the color picker tab and use it anywhere else you might choose to in the theme to get the precise shade of a particular colour.

 b) Theme Lightness Selector Tab: I need not elaborate much on this feature, as all it does is control the intensity or lightness of whatever color that you have chosen.

 c) Theme Layout Changer Tab: This is a feature that changes the overall width of your blog page adjusting the column widths and the number of side bars on your page. This feature is controlled under the “Choose a layout …” button, but it can be controlled more specifically in the “Blog/Sidebar Widths Tab”. The only other feature under the “Choose a Layout …” button is a button that optimizes Adsense, which is a Google advertising feature. Don’t bother with it unless you want to sign-up for Google’s PPC advertising, (Pay Per Click) a good way to lose money. Some have made millions but they knew what they were doing.

I was going to begin this post going over the flexibility3 header set-up, but I realized a quick run though of the dashboard might make the post easier to follow for anyone new to the WordPress interface.

Lets begin our dash with a quick rundown of the menu bar along the left side of the page.

1. Dashboard: Back office interface.

 a. Home – As you already know when you sign into your back office it opens with the Dashboard home page welcome.

b. Updates – The Dashboard has a second page where you can check for WordPress Updates.

 2. Jetpack: Widget to connect to the WordPress.com, (this is the non-business website).

a. Akismet Configuration – This is a must anti-spam plugin that I will explain later.

 b. Akismet Stats – Self-explanatory, brags about how well it is doing in grabbing and blocking spam.

 3. Posts: Your connection to the world and what you want to promote.

a. All Posts –  Shows all your posts with a link for adding new posts.

 b. Add New – Opens a window for creating a new post.

c. Categories – For creating and managing new categories.

d. Tags – A page for creating and managing tags.

4. Media: All media files.

a. Library – For storing uploaded media files.

b. Add New – A page for uploading media to your server, either drag  and drop the files in the “Drop files here” window, or click on the “Select Files” box in the middle of the window to browse for your  media.

5. Links: Will leave till later.

a. All links -

b. Add New -

c. Link Categories -

6. Pages: Pages in blogs are different then your post as they are static and do not add information with the latest always being on top. It is permanent info that you can add too over time.

a.  All Pages – Access to all of your pages with a button for “Adding a New Page”.

 b. Add New – Just what it says, opens a “new page” to write on.

7. Comments: A webpage where you can read and views comments, reply to and manage them.

8. Appearance: A tab that gives you total control over the appearance of you blog in a big way.

a. Themes – A page where you can upload themes that you take a fancy to, and install them if you so choose.

b. Widgets –  These are key to creating and tailoring you webpage to  make it uniquely yours. They are pieces of html code that do amazing things.

c. Menus – A neat feature to create and manage menus.

d. Flexibility3 Theme Options – Manage all aspects of the theme.

e. Editor – Allows editing of the Flexibility3 Theme style sheet html code  if you know how, be sure you know what you are doing if you make  any changes.

9. Plugins: Cool snippets of html code that will allow your blog to do just about  anything.

a. Installed Plugins – Lists all of your installed plugins, activated or not.

b. Add New – Allows you to install and activate new plugins.

10.  Users: A way to manage who has access to your blog and a button to add  more plugins and goodies.

a. All Users – Allows you to see and control who has access to your blog.

b. Add New – Opens a page to add new user to you blog.

 c. Your Profile – A means of editing your profile.

11. Tools: Gives you the means of backing up all content of your blog.

a. Available Tools – Gives you access to a little bookmarklet app, “Press This” that you can install that allows you grab bits of the web code.

b. Import – Gives you more them a half-dozen plugins that can be used to import various features from another system into your WordPress blog.

c. Export – This is the button that allows you to back-up your blog and  save its contents in an XML file. The page has a button to download  the XLM file. You can choose to export all contents, either, posts, or pages. See the page for further information.

d. Backups – Lists the last 10 of your blogs backups and gives you the option to download or delete them.

12. Settings: A settings interface for your WordPress blog.

 a. General – The only one that we need to worry about now is this one  as it controls the heading of your blog’s front page and by-line. The other tabs can be changed at any time if the need arises.

b.  Writing -

c. Reading -

d. Discussion -

 e. Media -

f. Privacy -

g. Permalinks -

Starting with this post I would like to share more about setting up WordPress, as a marketing tool and how it can be used by anyone interested in making money online. We will begin by installing a WordPress  Flexibility3 theme, and I hope it provides the info needed to get you started on your online adventure.

Marketing on the web has grown into the billions of dollars a year and if you are hoping to market a product or share a story, how do you get heard above the clamor of other websites wanting to get noticed. Because of that there are countless websites willing to show you how, some for free but there are countless opportunists out there ready to take your hard earned cash and provide you little in return.  If you are new to the web, but are serious about setting up your own website be careful where you spend your money and whose hype you fall for.

What every business needs are leads, ie customers, whether you are selling widgets, or ideas your prosperity lies in the list of customer (leads) that you generate and can market too.

Mike Dillard the founder of “Attraction Marketing” and how to generate your own free leads provides amazing incite on what to put in place to make it happen. By using WordPress Mike has put together some cool tools that allowed him to attract literally thousands of leads, which today makes him one of the leaders in online marketing and know-how. Mike Dillard’s “Attraction Marketing model and WordPress fit together like a hand in a glove”.

Up until about a year ago I had never heard of WordPress either, and until a fellow entrepreneur in my network marketing business connected me to a website, I was as much in the dark about the marketing potential of WordPress as anyone. WordPress provides all of the tools that you need to set up your own website as an online tool and become your own marketing expert.

What I want to do in the next few blogs is continue on from where I left off in my previous post, “The Actual Domain Sign-up”. I would like to explain the basics of WordPress and why it might be what you are looking for. It is a free service, but for the online newbie can be a bit of a challenge. If this is your first time I hope you have read the above-mentioned blog, have set up your domain and installed WordPress and are ready to begin as the next few posts may certainly make your journey into online marketing a little easier.

This tutorial begins where we left of in the post “The Actual Domain Sign-up”, so go now to your web site and open both your webpage and the WordPress Dashboard in their own windows. The Dashboard is the back office of the entire WordPress interface and allows you to configure and design your webpage through the use of widgets, (small snippets of html code that can do amazing things), and plugins which are also html code but work in a somewhat different manner. Both widgets and plugins pretty much allow you to create a webpage totally unique to you and to what you are selling.

At last we are ready to begin, so lets turn to the Dashboard, which welcomes you and as you can see offers some basic guidelines on getting started. Today I would like to focus on setting up the theme for your website. There are literally thousands of WordPress themes to choose from and a number of ways to come by them. Many are found within the WordPress interface but a Google search will bring up many more or you can pay to have someone create a webpage and a theme for you.

If you are short on cash, creating your own webpage will save you money plus it gives you a knowledge of website construction and the ability to make changes on your own, and not be dependent upon a web master and his time structure to make things happen. The only catch is that it is dependent on knowing html code and most of us don’t. Never fear, WordPress offers a work around and that is what this whole post is about, how to use widgets and plugins.

As I mentioned earlier there are countless themes out there and as it happened I found Flexibility 3 by accident as I was searching the web. What I like about the Flexibility 3 theme is that it is very flexible and free. I was told that the Thesis theme was also a good one, and very flexible but it is not free. So with that being said my walk through will be with Flexibility3

Because the Flexibility3 theme is not in the WordPress library you have to do a Google search for it and down load it to your desktop first.

This is my last walk through on uploading files to you server and it is for the newbie that has not read my post, “The Actual Domain Sign-up”.

1. Return to your Dashboard.
2. Now go to the side menu and click on Appearance and select “Theme”.
3. Click on “Install Themes” (Top of page).
4. In search line select “Upload”.
5. In the window that comes up select “Choose File”.
6. In search window go to your downloaded file “Flexibility3” and click on it.
7. Now click on the “Install Now” button.
8. You have successfully uploaded your Flexibility3 theme to your server.
9. It should now show up in your side bar under Appearances.
10. Click on it.

Stay tuned for my next post when we will get into the actual setting up of the theme itself.

Now that we are on the topic of WordPress plugins lets continue with another plugin that is a necessary enhancement if you wish your rss feeds to work to their optimum. I am speaking about the “FeedBurner Redirection Plugin”. What this does is take your standard rss feeds and adds tracking and email notification, which is good if you don’t subscribe to an auto responder. It also makes the rss feed more browser friendly and easier for your readers to subscribe too, plus other features, which we won’t go into now.

1. Click on the “Add New” menu under plugins and enter “Feedburner”
2. In the list that comes up click “Install Now” under the plugin “TentBlogger RSS FeedBurner Redirect” and then activate it.

Now that you have activated the plugin go to feedburner.com and set up an account if you do not have one.

You are now ready so go to FeedBurner and in the box beside where is says, “Burn a feed right this instant”, paste in your blog feed address and hit “next”.

(You may want an rss feed for your comments at a later date, when that time comes, just follow the same protocol except type in your comments feed address instead.)

Hitting the last “Next” button brought you to a second page where you can now edit the “feed title” if you want to, and also the feed address, only the part that is in the lower box however.

When you hit “Next” it will go to a new window that says it is a valid feed. (If perchance the feed was not valid it will take you to a feed validation and correction page where you are given instructions and links to make the necessary changes.) Hitting “Next” again takes you to an itunes setup page which you can fill in later if you want too and go on to a page entitled, “Get More Gusto From Your Feed Traffic Stats”, this you can leave until later, if you so choose. The last “Next” takes you to a page that states you have successfully updated your feed.

Now go to your WordPress dashboard and click on the “TentBlogger” plugin that you installed earlier, it shows in the lower left side bar, click on it and it will take you to a configuration page where you can enter your “feedburner address” and beneath that your “feedburner address for comment feeds” if you should choose to install it at a later date.

The question that you are now asking is where can I find my feed addresses. To save you a lot of hunting go to this link, it has lots of good stuff and Lorelle’s website will be able to answer all of your questions. http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2007/01/24/understanding-using-and-customizing-wordpress-blog-feeds/.

In summary this post has shown how to take both the  blog and its comment feeds, that are part of all WordPress blogs, and enhance them with FeedBurner. The following feed addresses are examples with no permalinks.( Lorelle’s web site shows both with and without permalinks.)

1. Blog feed: http://example.com/?feed=rss2
2. Blog FeedBurner feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/(blog name with no .com).

1. The comment feed: http://example.com/?feed=comments-rss2
2. The FeedBurner comments feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/comments(blog name with no .com)

Cheers

For WordPress blog users exposure is the name of the game and an easy way to help make that happen is with a neat little plugin called the “Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger”. This little plugin will “ping” chosen sites every time you update your site with new material but it prevents unnecessary pinging when you are editing your site or doing routine maintenance.

 Here is the link to the pinger plugin. http://ultimateplugins.com/smart-update-pinger . Click on the “Download Now” button and it will take you to a another web page with the by line, “Click here to download the Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger”.

Click on the by-line and it will download the file to your desktop or where ever you have designated your browser to download it too. My Mac is set up to unzip the files automatically after download which means I have to re-zip them so they can be uploaded via WordPress.

In the downloaded folder there are five files, three text files and a folder containing the two plugin files. To make this plug in work at least on my Mac I rezip and upload only the folder containing the two plugin files using the WordPress plugin upload feature. The plugin files cannot be seen if they are left in the folder containing the text files. And do not change their directory or file name or the log function will not work.

If the WordPress dashboard is new to you I will walk you through the upload protocol. As this plugin is not found on the wordpress.org website the protocol is different .

1. Click on the plugin tab and select “Add New”.
2. This brings up the “Install Plugins” page.
3. Not far from the top of the page on the left click on “Upload”
4. This takes you to a new page with a “Choose File” button, click on it.
5. This brings up your directory where you can locate the plugin folder. “Click on the plugin folder to upload it”.
6. It will appear in the window beside the “Choose File” button.
7. Hit the “Install Now”, button.

Once the folder with the two-plugin files is uploaded to the server use your ftp program to reset the right to the two-plugin files. I use Fetch. You will find the uploaded plugin files on your server under “public_html/yourdomainname/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-plugins-smart-update-pinger”.

Open their folder and select each one separately and reset their rights. The following walk through will guide you through that procedure using again the Mac and the ftp program Fetch.

1. Open their folder and first select the ultimate-plugins-smart-update-pinger.log file and do a right click and choose “Get Info”.
2. This opens a window where you will choose the Ownership and Permissions window.
3. In the box at the bottom of that window is the “UNIX equivalent” box, replace the number you see with 777 and click on the “Apply” button.
4. Then close the Get Info window.
5. Now do the same with the ultimate-plugins-smart-update-pinger.php file, only this time instead of inserting the number 777 insert 755.
6. Now close the Get Info window.

Now that you have the plugin installed there are still a few things that need to be taken care of before you can rest. We now need to add a list of sites that we need to ping. The following website is an excellent resource where you can find lists to ad to the Pinger plugin. Here is a link to a list of websites.  http://www.instant-info-online.com/wordpress-compressed-all-inclusive-ping-list.html. You can also do a “ping list” search on wordpress.org and it will come up with dozens of websites. Once on the site read it over thoroughly and decide which list is best for you. There is more then one option to consider depending on your preference.

You can use http://rpc.pingomatic.com, which is a ping service and it technically would be all that you would need to paste into the Pinger plugin table. This is one of the things I was referring two when I said you have to decide which list is for you. Each list has it’s pose and cons which is discussed at length on the website.

One last thing, leave the box below the domain window entitled “Detailed Logging”, unchecked and don’t forget to click on the “Update Options” before you leave the page.

That’s it for now,

Cheers

 Assuming that you have now decided on what to call your domain, registering it with a  service provider such as Go Daddy, is your next step before having it hosted. I personally use Host Gator as a hosting service. This whole process can be a bit daunting if this is your first time. What I like about Host Gator is their cPanel and the Fantastico interface, which makes the whole process much easier for the newbie.

Before you can have your domain hosted by Host Gator you have to go to Go Daddy and point your domain name to your name servers on the Host Gator website.

Let me walk you through this process if this is your first time.

1. Log into your Go Daddy account.
2. Go to title bar and click on the “My Account” tab.
3. Below your listed domains under “My Products” bar, click on the “domains button”.
4. It will now list all of your registered domains. Check the boxes of those domains that you want to manage, in this case those domains that you want pointed to the Host Gator website. By doing so all of the icons in the above bar are now lit up and accessible.
5. Choose the “names server” icon. It will give you two choices, choose the “set nameservers” option.
6. In the box that comes up choose “I have specific nameservers for my domains”, and fill in only those that were emailed to you from Host Gator when you signed up to have your domains hosted with them. They will probably have given you two nameservers. Four blank boxes will show, leave the extra two boxes empty.
7. Click “OK”.
8. A window will come up stating that you may have to wait from two hours to several days for this to take effect, chances are it will happen in minutes, just so you know.

Pointing your domain to a different website is not the same as transferring them. Do not let the boxes on the right side of Host Gator header confuse you as that interface is for moving and registering your domains with Host Gator, it is not for just pointing your domains to them for hosting, while leaving them still registered with Go Daddy.

Now that your domain is pointed to the Host Gator website let me walk you through the steps to getting your domain hosted by Host Gator.

1. When you activated your account with Host Gator they emailed you with all of your account info. It should have had a link to your cPanel. (I find it useful to have all of my links bookmarked in my bookmark bar in my browser.) “Click on that link now and bring up your cPanel”.
2. Scroll down the cPanel page to the “Domains” bar
3. Click on the “Addon Domains” icon under that bar.
4. In the “New Domain Name” field enter your full domain name as, http://yourdomainname.com
5. The rests of the fields will fill in automatically.
6. You must enter your password that came in the email when you activated your account with Host Gator.
7. Then click on the “Add Domain” button on the bottom of the page and you are now finished with getting your domain hosted with Host Gator.

The final and last step is getting WordPress installed. Remember WordPress.org is WordPress’ business blog service and it is for anyone serious in doing business on the Internet. It is for self hosted websites and it gives you many options needed for a meaningful website. You own and control all of the content and can host your own email accounts. WordPress has their non-business blog service at wordpress.com and it is more for the hobbyist, and non-serious businessperson.

1. Two menu bars below the Domains bar in your cPanel you will find the “Software/Services” bar, click on the “QuickInstall” button.
2. This takes you to the QuickInstall page, find “WordPress” under the Blog Software bar and click on it.
3. You will see “continue” in the right hand column, click on it.
4. Go to the box with the title, “Install WordPress” and choose the domain name that you want to use the WordPress software with.
5. I believe that you can fill out “Admin email, Blog Title, and First and Last Name” at a later date if you choose, then click on the “Install now” button.
6. Remember to bookmark your site and back office for ready access.
7. Your back office in WordPress with the tools to create your web page should have an address something like this http://yourdomainname.com/wp-admin.

You are now ready to start work on your webpage using the amazing free service of WordPress. The possibilities are endless and with a little bit of creativity you can come up with an amazing webpage to market anything.

For those of you that may have been following my blog I apologize for the lack of any content as my site went down and I have  spent the last few day reinventing the domain. All content was lost and I have been rebuilding my entire website. All was not lost completely as it has been a real learning experience and a lesson on why one should always back everything up. I hope the lesson was not in vane, only I know that answer.

Stay tuned as I will begin blogging this coming  week. I still have much work to do to get my website up and running properly, but I have more to share now on what to do and what not to do, and how to do it.

Cheers,

Bob Betts