Read my previous article if you want to learn How to Start a Blog
If you want to attract search engine traffic and get thousands of visitors to read your content you need to optimize the structure and content of your Word Press Blog.
7 Steps for Optimizing Your Word Press Blog Structure
The plugins below are highly recommended as they save you lots of time, no knowledge of coding is necessary and it’s easy to accomplish.
1. Install the headspace plugin
This plugin allows you to easily add titles and descriptions to your posts and pages.
2. Install the Google Sitemaps plugin.
http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/sitemap-generator-plugin-for-wordpress/
A site map provides a way for Google to index all your pages. It functions similar to a table of contents so your visitors can also view the contents of your glob without scrolling through all the categories. The site map plugin submits your pages automatically to Google whenever you create new posts on your blog.
3. Install the Google XML Sitemaps generator plugin
http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. It helps Google to index and crawl your pages better which may result it attracting more visitors from the search engines.
4. Install the similar posts plugin
The beauty of this plugin is that it helps visitors to stay longer on your blog. After a visitor reads your post they can view other content related to it. It displays a highly configurable list of related posts. Similarity can be based on any combination of word usage in the content, title, or tags.
5. Create a permalink structure
The basic Word Press installation will display the pages with unfriendly URLs in the browser. This means the URL will have a bunch of numbers after it. It not makes them hard to remember should a visitor try to type it into their browser but it makes it more difficult for search engines to index your pages.
To change your permalink structure you need to login to your WordPress admin panel, then go to Options > Permalinks. Choose custom. To create a permalink structure like
http://www.myblog.com/category/postname.php enter the following code:
/%category%/%postname%/
If you prefer a permalink structure like http://www.myblog.com/postname.php enter:
/%postname%/
6. Add a newsletter sign up form
You’ve probably heard “the money is in the list”. If you have a large list of subscribers you can send a newsletter to them every 2 weeks thereby keeping in touch with them. From time to time you can promote your products to them and make money from your list.
To add a contact form to your blog download and install this plugin:
http://chip.cuccio.us/projects/contact-form-ii/
7. Allow visitors to comment on your content.
To encourage visitors to comment on your blog posts make sure you enable comments in the admin panel. To do this login to your admin panel then go to: settings-discussion settings and check the boxes for allowing comments.
Now you’ve taken the 7 steps to optimize your Word Press Blog Structure you need to optimize the content of your blog.
How to Mass Delete Comments From WordPress Using phpMyAdmin
Have you been inundated with spam comments
on your Word Press Blog?
Recently I helped a customer that had accumulated over 4000 spam comments on her blog. She tried removing them from the Word Press dash board however it only removes 20 comments at a time. This would take forever because there multiple pages of comments to delete.
Here are the steps to mass delete comments from
your Word Press database using phpMyAdmin:
1. Go to phpmyadmin in your cpanel
This is the management panel that comes with your hosting account if it uses the Apache environment. Once you’re logged in cpanel click on the mySQL databases icon then click on the phpmyadmin link at the bottom of the page.
2. Click your Word Press database link
This is located in the top left and will display all the data in tables.
3. Remove all comments
If you want to remove all comments check the wp_comments table then in the drop down box select empty then press go. Remember this will remove both approved and unapproved comments.
How to remove unapproved comments and keep the approved comments
1. Back up your database – this is to make sure you can restore all your files should you make a mistake. To do this click on your database, click export, make sure all your tables are selected, check SQL, click save file, click go. Follow the rest of the screen prompts to download the database to your computer. You can save it as a text or zipped file.
2. Click on the comments table. ( You can click browse to view all the approved and unapproved comments).
4. Click the mySQL tab. This will open up a query box. Delete the default query and type in:
DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = 0
Click go
This will delete all the 4000 unapproved comments
5. Remove overhead. These are fragments still left in the database that must be removed. To delete them go to ” check all tables with overhead”, select “optimize table” from the drop down box.
Your database size will now be reduced because you’ve removed the 4000 unapproved comments.
If you check your blog you’ll notice all the comments have disappeared.
Tip
To prevent spam from accumulating install the activate the Akismet plugin. This is a spam filter which allows you to mass delete comments within the Word Press administration panel.
Here’s a video tutorial showing how to use phpmyadmin to remove WP Spam Comments: