http://www.business-blogging-solutions.com/?page_id=361,

Doesn’t say much to the search engines about the topic of the post does it? Search engines won’t know what’s on the page unless you tell them.  To do this, change the URL structure of your WordPress installation so your URL is a little more search engine friendly; like this:

http://www.business-blogging-solutions.com/creating-search-engine-friendly-urls,

Be sure the title contains your most important keywords for the page telling Google what the page is about.

How to Create Search Engine Friendly URLs

1. Expand the settings tab in your left sidebar and click on permalinks.
2. On the resulting page, click the custom structure radio button.
3. In the field next to it, write: /%category%/%postname%/
4. Save changes.

You will now have search engine friendly URLs

Updating .htaccess

If you should see a message at the top of the page that reads:

You should update your .htaccess now.

If you don’t see this message you don’t have to do anything.

However if you need to update your .htaccess:

1. Scroll down, find and highlight the code and copy it.
2.Open your FTP program and in the folder on the web side where wordpress is installed look for the file .htaccess.
3. Open it, paste the code in, save it and close it.

If  no file exists, you will need to create one.

1. Open your text editor program, paste the code and save it as .htaccess
2.Open your FTP program and on the web side where wordpress is installed upload the .htaccess file Do not install it in the WordPress directory, make sure it is in the website root directory.

That’s all there is to fixing our URL problems.

I’m curious to know if there is enough interest for another workshop. If I can get 4-6 people together, I will put on a workshop which is an extension of my 1 on 1 WordPress Training sessions. I will find a downtown location in late May or early June.

Interested?

The main service we offer is one on one WordPress Training in your home or office in the Toronto area. This is a 3 hour session and we go over the WordPress dashboard in great detail. If you are baffled by what to do with WordPress this is the class for you.

We offer non traditional boutique WordPress services in addition to our training.

We offer consultations on modifications and on setting up theme installations. Support for WordPress updates, recovering from a WordPress hack attack.

We also offer consultations on how to get your business found on Google.

Making a blog or website mobile-friendly. It doesn’t take much for your WordPress site to be easily “mobilized”. We offer a mobile solution for your WordPress site.

That’s pretty much where we stop. We are not writers, but we know writers who can help you with search and people friendly copy for your blog posts. We are not designers, but we know talented designers who you can work with. If you want to add video to your site, we know many experienced videographers.

So if you are looking for help with WordPress for your business, we can help.

We will set your site up as both a mobile web version and as an App downloadable from the Apple App store and Google Play store.

For more information on our WordPress Mobile Special, please contact us.

However, when it comes to a business, blogging for the sake of blogging could be a negative. I can only see two reasons to start a business blog. One is to open communication with customers and the second is to provide SEO benefits, in other words increased traffic.

Customers, or potential customers, won’t hang around or return to your blog if the content is useless to them. Likewise, if search engines see nothing but keyword-stuffed blog posts with links to all your important pages, they won’t give it the authority it needs to build those pages.

It is not difficult to create content that is both useful to your visitors and of value to develop authority. Well written content will, over time, develop natural inbound links. These links are an essential part of that authority development.

Rather than blogging without direction, put together a game plan for your blog. It can work for both visitor satisfaction and SEO purposes. You can then incorporate some of the social blogging platforms that act like funnels, first bringing traffic to your blog then channeling that traffic to your site’s ‘business’ pages. Get it right and everyone wins – get it wrong and you end up blogging for the sake of blogging, with content that is really worthless, and no one wins, least of all your business.