The Setup
When I made the leap (or got dumped, however you want to look at it… LOL) into self-employment back on Friday, December 6, 2002, I was scared shitless, to say the least. And in the years since, I have struggled, floundered, and put a brave face on pursuing success - but a lot of that time, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
Ok, I take that back - I knew what I was doing. What I didn’t know was whether what I was doing was what …

Please help me welcome Michelle Lee, CH to not only the vAS family of websites, but to the wonderful world of WordPress!

Michelle was previously blogging over at Blogger, but decided to make the switch to WordPress (yay!) with the Set Me Up, Get Me Started & Guide Me package to ensure she’s able to hit the ground running.

Take a minute and visit Paradigm Shift. Leave her a comment and let her know what a great decision she’s made moving to WordPress.

This is the fifth post in our DIY SEO for WordPress series.

We’re heading into more familiar territory in this step. You’re probably already used to highlighting words and phrases within your text using bold and italics. The only thing new here is to be a little more purposeful about your highlighting.

This is the fourth post in our DIY SEO for WordPress series.

You’ve done your keyword research, you’ve got your list of keywords you want to optimize for, and now it’s time to put all that good research to use.

Ready?

When it comes to SEO that you can do for your site, the page title, page description and the keywords in your keyword META tag are extremely important. But let’s clear up a point of potential confusion before we start.

Your page title is NOT what you think it is…

Hey everyone, help me welcome Karen Bierdeman, M.Ed, The Guilt Free Mom Parent Coach to the vAS family! Karen’s specialty is coaching moms with strong-willed children.
As the parent of a couple of strong-willed children, myself, I found myself on the pages of Karen’s free e-book, “Secrets and Lies About Parenting Strong-Willed Children: What You Need to Know Now!” After reading it, I have a few more tools for my parenting toolbox - ones tailored specifically to me and my strong-willed children!
Go visit Karen today, get your copy of …

This is the third post in our DIY SEO for WordPress series.

A permalink is the URL of an individual blog post. To see what I’m talking about, click the title of any of your blog posts. What you’ll end up with is just that blog post, in its entirety, shown on that page. The address bar of your browser will reflect the URL (permalink) of that blog post.

You want your permalinks to make sense to both people and the search engines.

photo credit: Matter = Energy
This is the second post in our DIY SEO for WordPress series.
Compile Your Keyword List
Write down all the keywords from the list you generated using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool that have high search volumes and low advertiser competition. I won’t try to give you cutoffs or thresholds, because every market is different, so make your selections relative to the list you generated.
Write down keyword ideas you think should have appeared on the list. These will come from that ‘gap’ between what you think your …

Today I just have to crow a little bit, give Christa of Giggle On! a virtual high five, and to point out for the rest of you that you don’t have to be a geeky-programmer-type like me to realize your SEO goals.
Christa made the #1 position in Google for her main keyword phrase two days after she implemented the action items she took away from her blog consulting session on Tuesday of this week! Topic? DIY SEO: Do-It-Yourself SEO. I had told her I was writing the series …

photo credit: Matter = Energy
This is the first of a series of posts called DIY SEO (Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization): Step by Step Instructions on SEO You Can Do Yourself Today. While you could pay hundreds, even thousands, of dollars to an SEO company to optimize your site for the search engines, there is an awful lot of SEO good you can do for your site all by yourself - for free - even if you’re not a programmer or particularly “technical” by nature. So why not do what …

One of the more common complaints I hear from my clients is, “I want to use pictures on my site, but I don’t know where to get them for free…legally.” To their credit, every last one of my clients who’ve asked me about adding more photos and images to their sites has voiced concern about adhering to copyright laws.
Well, kiss that problem goodbye by installing the Photo Dropper plugin!
Now you can easily add Creative Commons licensed photos - images that are licensed for shared use - to your …