1.  Pick your site topic, something you are knowledgeable and/or passionate about.

2. Register a domain name, preferably with your topic as keywords. I  suggest a registering a “.com” instead of a “.net”, “.biz”, etc.

3. Set up a web site hosting account. The cheapest plan is usually all you will need until your traffic soars, and you do not need dedicated hosting at this time.

4. Build your site. Many domain hosting accounts offer Wordpress installs with a click of a mouse. If not, you can download Wordpress for free at WordPress.org.

5. Pick a theme. WordPress comes prepackaged with a generic blue theme.  There are a variety of sites that offer free templates. The only downside to using free templates is that other sites are out there using the same theme, and the creators of the templates may insist you keep a link on your site to them (in exchange for their hard work of designing the theme).  Or you can purchase themes, such as Thesis Theme,  that are more unique and no reciprocal links are required

6. Wordpress Mechanics. A few tips: Under Privacy, make your blogs visible to everyone. Under Permalinks, change the custom structure /%category%/%postname%/ which is the best structure for the search engines.  I don’t recommend using the default as you don’t want a question mark (?) in the URL.

7. Now Add Content! Write what you know, how you feel. Try to add posts at least three times per week.  Wordpress allows you to program posts in the future, so you could simply blog once a week, but make it look like you are posting every day!

8. Monetize your site. You can make money with affiliate marketing links, sponsored reviews and targetd ads such as Chitika.

9. Get Visitors! First tell all your friends and family to visit your site (hopefully you have some of both).  Then submit your site to blog directories and search engines.

10. Helpful Stuff. AddThis.com lets you add a button for easy bookmarking & sharing. StatCounter is a just want it says, a stat counter, and it’s free (select the “invisible” option). Plus check out my list of recommended Wordpress Plug-Ins.

Image: Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I have been using lijit for 4 months, 3 weeks, 9 hours, 38 minutes and 59 seconds now (or so my account tells me). I decided to give it a try after seeing so many of the website examples at BlogWorld use it. So far, I have only tested it on my celebrity fashion website.

So what does lijit do?  It provides a search tool for your website’s results as well as results from your social content and your network’s content (so my visitors can search my other relation fashion websites as well). Great for my visitors, but sometimes frustrating for myself when I’m trying to find a previous post, and have to scroll through results.

They also offer in depth statistic of website referrers, keywords, page views, locations, etc. For free, I might add!

Not only is their service free, they offer revenue opportunities as well.  I by no means will be able to retire off my earnings so far, but it’s cool to actually get paid for using a service. Now if they only had a referral or affiliate program!

Another thing I like about lijit (besides them sending me this free tshirt) is their personal service and fast responses.  They even promoted @stealthestyle via their @lijit twitter account which I thought was extremely nice, so thank you!

What are your legitimate thoughts on lijit?

You may have heard that Social Media and SEO are polar opposites – whoever told you that has a point. The fact is, though, that social media is becoming more of a force on the web, and things are changing. Here’s the scoop:

Social Media’s Conflict of SEO Interest

A large part of the search engine ranking algorithm is a giant popularity contest. Who’s linking to you and who are you linking to?  With that understanding, wouldn’t it be a conflict of interest for you to have full control over a separate website, and be able to link to yourself?

That’s the problem between social media and SEO! If Google counted links coming from your Facebook or Twitter account to your personal website, it would be biased and would upset the popularity contest. For this reason, the search engines have recommended to social media websites to place “nofollow” on all links leaving their websites. This is a signal for the search engines to ignore the link (or keeping with the popularity contest metaphor – ignoring the votes).

So Social Media Has No SEO Value?

Most social sites have this “nofollow”, but not all. Social bookmarking sites like digg.com & reddit.com allow you to share content that search engines recognize the links. Social informational sites like hubpages.com and squidoo.com allow you to provide information on the topic of your choice, and search engines also recognize those links, provided your content is of high quality. Don’t count on links from Wikipedia, twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. to count towards your SEO.

So is Social Media a Waste of my Time?

Heck no! Consider the goal of SEO for your site –traffic. Whether you are selling something, advertising, or pushing an informational agenda, you need traffic. Search engines may ignore the links from these sites which would help your site rank higher; however, these social media sites are powerhouses to the search engines. Write great information (read: interesting, funny, new, or controversial) on social media sites, and your content will show up in search engines! Make the link back to your site attractive enough, and you will reap the rewards of the traffic that these powerhouses send.

How Can I Tailor my Social Media Content?

If you want your content to be found by search engines, make it easy to classify by choosing a keyword for the content to revolve around. Use the keyword (and slight variations of it) in your titles, headings/subheadings, and content. That way when someone searches for that keyword, the social media content is found to be both relevant (from having the keyword) and popular (for being on a powerhouse site), and you can draw more traffic.

Google Says Social Media is Important

But wait, didn’t I just say that Google ignores the majority of social media links? In the traditional sense they do; however, the social graph also plays into rankings. Let’s think about this logically – what is it that Google wants? Accurate

Your social graph says a lot about you – that is, who is linked to you and who are you linked to. It’s not the biggest factor in the way Google ranks sites, but it matters.

THE Rule

Content is King!  There is no magic bullet for social media, but interesting, valuable content is as close as they come. Provide solid content and people will talk about it, share it, and link to it. Good content leads to good traffic and good SEO.

A.J. Wilcox has worked in the Internet marketing industry for several years. He currently is team lead over the Local & National accounts at the local online marketing firm OrangeSoda.com.