After I wrote my super post on how to SEO wordpress, I wanted to hammer into every webmaster how important SEO is, especially if you’re running a blog or forum.

Free targeted traffic

Everyone tries to optimize their websites for those superstar keywords: make money online, google adsense, etc. Even though those are very attractive looking keywords, you don’t want to stuff your entire site with those keywords. People will often throw those keywords into random posts to try to rank for those search terms, but even if you do rank high, who’s going to click your post if it’s not directly related to the search?

The gem of forums and blogs is that they have content coming out the wazoo. If you can optimize each page to that page’s specific topic, you’ll end up ranking high for terms you never ever tried to rank for.

The millionaire league example

A while back I wrote a review and did a podcast on The millionaire league. Imagine my surprise when I noticed huge amounts of traffic coming to that article. I never planned to rank for that, but today its one of my largest traffic sources.

Optimize for the right keywords

If you were to rank for some obscure search term for every post, the incoming traffic would be much greater than if you tried to rank for the more attractive terms.

SEO your wordpress blog or site to make sure every page is getting free targeted traffic courtesy of Google.

Let’s take
a minute to talk about the all important domain names. In all fairness this blog has a name that’s about as catchy as the name of a lawyers’ office, but remember this was supposed to be an MFA site that didn’t need to be memorable.

Keep it simple

Think about the biggest names in the internet:

• Google
• Amazon
• Youtube
• Myspace

Notice that Google and Amazon are simple one word domains that just make sense. They’re easy to pronounce and hard to misspell.

Use two small words

Most single word domains are taken (unless you invent your own clever word). The next best thing is to mash together two small and distinct words: you-tube, my-space, face-book (although facebook is a word), sound-click, etc.

The optimal length you’re looking for is 5-8 letters.

Don’t use dashes

Despite what popular SEO guides will tell you, dashes are crap. They might help you cram some nice keywords into your name, but they’ll make you impossible to remember for later. Sure, with bookmarks and all, that’s less of an issue, but I’d advise against it.

Sleep on it!

I’ve bought a lot of domains on the spur of the moment idea, most of which have been pretty bad names (this blog a prime example). Better to take a day or two to think your domain name over and see if you’re still interested.