This is the part 3 of the Ultimate guide in Make money online with minisites using PPC, which is all about configuring your WordPress Blog with different configurations and plugins. In part 2, you should’ve successfully installed wordpress to your blog. In this post, we’ll go thru the step by step guide into configuring your WordPress minisite to make it more effective in your quest to make money online.

Configuring WordPress for Minisite

I love using WordPress for minisites as it takes a very short time to configure and make a good minisite. The best thing is that the design is all free, thanks to free themes online. However, simply installing it and just using it normally isn’t enough, you have to know how to effectively use it to make a minisite and to make it more effective with search engines.

Step 1: Add a new user

After installing WordPress on your domain, you’re given a username of admin and a randomly generated password. Just for added security I would often change my username to something else, so first step I recommend is to create a new admin account. The purpose here is that a lot of WordPress that are hacked uses the username “admin” in their account which makes it really easy for hackers to get into. Make sure that the Role is set to “Administrator”. After successfully creating one, log out and log in to your account.

Step 2: Delete the other admin user account

In your WordPress’ Dashboard, look for the Users tab located on the left side of WordPress. Choose “Authors & Users”, put your mouse over the username “admin” and click the delete link to delete the account.

Step 3: Add the necessary Plugins

What you need to do is to install all the necessary plugins that will help you. You simply just need to look for the Plugins tab on the right side, and click the “Add new” link.

The best thing about wordpress is that it’s not complicated to install these plugins, it just takes a single click. What you simply need to do is to search the following plugins and click install (just like the image above):

• Akismet (Filters Spam comments)
• All in one SEO pack (Helpful to get your ranking in search engines)
• Contact Form 7 (If you need a contact form in your minisite)
• Google XML Sitemaps (Needed to direct Search Engine Bots to the right places in your minisite)
• Post Layout (Add codes in different sections of posts and pages, great for ads!)
• Shockingly Simple FavIcon (Add Favicon to your minisite)
• Statpress (See your Minisite’s Stats)
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (Show related posts)

For me, these are pretty much all the basic plugins that you’ll need to make your minisite more effective. All of these are free and can be easily downloaded thru WordPress. All you have to do now is to install and activate all the plugins.

Step 4: Configuration of WordPress

After you activate all the plugins in the list, you’ll find that a lot of them would be needing some configuration before you can actually use them. But I’ve developed my own step by step configuration by starting off with WordPress configuration and then to the plugins.

1. WordPress Configuration – Look for the settings tab on the left side of your dashboard (In wp-admin) and look for the following links:

1.1 “General”

Under General Settings, you just need to configure the Blog Title and Tagline.

• Blog Title – I usually put the main topic of the minisite, or the domain name of the minisite. (e.g. Printercart.net = Printer Cart)
• Tag Line – Place the main keyword that you’re targetting. (e.g. PrinterCart.net = Best Printer Carts)

1.2 “Writing”

In Writing, there’s not much you need to setup except the Update Services section on the bottom. This is basically to help you update different websites when you do update your site. Here’s the list that you should copy / paste and save in your settings:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com/
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/

http://www.newsisfree.com/

1.3 “Permalinks”

As for the settings for Permalinks, all you need is to change the permalinks to “Custom Structure” and copy and paste ” /%postname%/ ” to the area. This is helpful for seo as it fixes your internal links. (e.g. http://minisiteURL.com/date/title = http://minisiteURL.com/title). After this you’re done with WordPress configurations, congratulations!

2. Plugin Configurations – You’d need to configure some of the plugins to make sure that it gives the best possible result.

2.1 “Akismet”

Akismet is one of the best plugins to filter spams, this is one of the most useful plugins that you’ll ever need. (I get hundreds of spams in a day! this gets them all out) All you need is to create an account in WordPress.com and copy and paste the “key” in your profile page. You could click the “What is this?” link to get more information. You should get a confirmation like the one above that they key is valid.

2.2 “All-in-one SEO”

In All-in-One SEO just needs the following configuration:

• Plugin Status – Choose Enabled
• Home Title – Place the keywords that you’re targetting (e.g. Printer Carts)
• Home Description – Expand the keywords but make sure to reuse the main keyword. (e.g. Best Printer Carts in the World)
• Home Keywords – Go to Google Adwords Keyword tool External, Choose the right (Place especially for ccTLD, and type the keyword in). Choose the keywords that have enough searches and type it down here and separate them with a comma. (e.g. Printer carts, printer cart, hp printer carts, …)

2.3 “Yet Another Related Posts Plugin”

It is pretty simple, all you have to do is to lower the match threshold to 1 and copy the settings in the image above. I usually just consider the Bodies for matches this is to make sure that the related posts will show other posts especially if you have only a few post in your minisite.

This Post is part of the 6 post series on the Ultimate Guide to Making Money Online with Minisites using PPC

• Part 1 – Domain Name
• Part 2 – Installing WordPress
• Part 3 – Configuring WordPress
• Part 4 – WordPress Themes, Minisite Design
• Part 5 – PPC Ads (Google Adsense)
• Part 6 – Writing Minisite Contents