Everytime I install a copy of WordPress on a site I have set of tasks I always complete before I start writing posts, I’ll be talking you through those with a quick 5 minute guide to optimize a fresh install of WordPress:
1) First things first update the Permalinks so there seo friendly:
login to your wp-admin -> Settings -> Permalinks
Select ‘Custom Structure’ and enter:
/%category%/%postname%/
More info on permalinks here
2) Next let’s update the ping list:
Why? This will help get various search engines to crawl your site as soon as you have created a new post and Index it quicker.
go to Settings -> Writing and at the bottom in the text area under “Update Services” replace it with the list from this post: Pinging update services
3) Next were going to add a google sitemap
head over here download site sitemap plugin, upload it to wp-content/plugins via ftp and activate in wp-admin -> plugins
4) Finally were going to create a Feedburner account.
So head over and sign up, once you have created your account and burnt your feed we need to redirect our WordPress feeds to our new feedburner feed, do this with the Feedsmith Feedburner plugin, again upload it to your plugin folder and activate in the wp-admin.
All you need now is a theme, theres thousands of free ones, but a great place to start is looking through this list on smashing magazine
Now your all ready to post. Theres alot more you can do once your blogs running to improve seo and such. This was just a basic guide for fresh installs, if you found this post useful consider subscribing to our RSS Feed
Update: This post was indexed by google within 20 minutes of being published
