Day 1 – Publish The first 10 Posts and Invite the Search Spiders!

10 October 2008 14 Comments So Far, Join In!

On Day 1 of launching a new WordPress website, you need to be sure you have at least 10 posts on your site! I cannot tell you how many sites I have launched with NO posts on them, but suffice to say… they are still sitting in the same position today! Along with your first bit of content, you have to post a link to your site somewhere so it can be found by search engines and crawled by search spiders.

Writing the Launch Posts

For myself, writing these initial 10 posts came easy… I have a son in College who ALWAYS needs extra money. My instructions to him were simple… I need at least 400 words each, about 10 specific niche related subjects. I have to work with him more on the side of SEO writing, but the main goal of getting general posts to the site was done in 1 day, for $5 each.

Not everyone has a son or daughter to do this and writing the posts can be a challenge… but you MUST sit down for 3-4 hours and get it done! Remember when we launched our BANS sites in the past, our primary goal on the first day was to get all of our main categories setup and ready for traffic. This is really the same practice, just in a different way.

You do not want to go crazy with keyword research and spending alot of time on these initial posts – just keep them tightly related to your over niche. If the site is about cars, write 10 car informational posts. If its about accounting, write 10 posts of important dates in the world of accounting, and why those dates are important.

Choose your first 10 post topics.
Very briefly, research the top web results on the subject.
In your own words, write your posts.
Spell check and post them!

Getting your First Inbound Link

Finding a place for your first inbound is alot easier than you think! In my case, I wrote a post about a new site I had just launched on this very website. If I did not have this website to work with, I would just head out on the web to niche related websites and blogs, looking for a post to leave a comment! Don’t be fooled by thinking comments are not followed… they are!

Keep in Mind:

Posting a comment on a popular blog will draw both visitors AND spiders!
The No-Follow tag does NOT block spiders, it ONLY stops the PageRank from flowing!
DO NOT use PageRank to determine if you should post a comment or not!
Keep any comments on other blogs topic related! If you post a comment on this blog, make it a genuine comment, your link will still be followed!
Use Anchor text that makes sense, and change it up from site to site!
Do not post links in your comments – they get marked as spam!

Day 1 can be a challenge for most due to the time it takes to complete! Writing your first group of posts can be a mental drain… but at this point we DO NOT care about the SEO quality of those initial posts, just that we got them live! We will work on the more targeted posts as we move forward!

Tomorrow… Along with another new post, we will list our blog in all the popular blog search engines, and setup our ping tools to let them all know every time we post!

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About the Author, Mark Hansen

Mark Hansen has written 468 article(s) at the Niche Store Builder site.

I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.

Latest Readers Who Commented on This Article

14 Comments »

David said:

Hi Mark,

Great post, i am halfway through writing the posts. Just checked through the google listings for my new blog and interested to find it has some peculiar pages indexed like
http://www.sixpackquest.net/blog/wp-login.php?action=register
http://www.sixpackquest.net/blog/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword

Hve you any idea how to stop these being indexed, I can remember on purely BANS we limited access to certain directories but not sure about wordpress.

Dave

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# 10 October 2008 at 9:08 am

Mark (author) said:

@ David -

On your site – there is a sidebar meta info, which includes your login link etc. Just remove that from your site in the widgets section, or out of your theme sidebar file.

You can also add a line to your robots.txt blocking the wp-admin/ folder.

Mark

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# 10 October 2008 at 9:17 am

Bryan said:

Mark,

I must admit that I am guilt of not having enough posts before I go ‘live’. Good points there.

After far as inbound links go do use any social bookmarking sites to get that first action from the search engines?

Bryan

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# 10 October 2008 at 9:31 am

Mark (author) said:

@ Bryan –

I don’t for the first link… We will however be using them in the very near future!! :-)

The first series of posts on the site are really just “Filler” to get the ball rolling.

Mark

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# 10 October 2008 at 9:40 am

Chris @ BlogToyBox said:

While I agree on the notion of having content ready to go, I don’t know if having “filler” is really the best notion. When I visit a fresh website, the initial content there and then makes me decide if it will be worth returning. If the content is substandard filler – and not indicative of what the site will be – I don’t know that, do I. For all I know this is the best the blog will have to offer.

I think the opposite – your first content should be killer. Get those first people hooked!

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# 10 October 2008 at 6:44 pm

Vic said:

I don’t understand – point 6 seems to contradict point 1 – if you post a comment without posting a link in your comment, how can people access your blog?

The only way I can think of is if the blog’s commenting system allows you to specify a website (like yours) or if the blog allows you to keep a public user profile which can specify the user’s blog. Is this what you mean?

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# 10 October 2008 at 7:29 pm

Jeff Jones said:

Mark,

Could you go into why it’s important to have 10 links when you go live as opposed to adding content as you go.

Why would that keep your site at the same position?

Jeff

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# 11 October 2008 at 7:56 am

Mark (author) said:

@ Chris -

My choice of words.. filler content… was likely a bad choice of words. EVERY post is important and topical to the site. However, my main goal on day 1 for the site is truly not for the visitors at this point, it is to have enough content in place to feed spiders who may come crawling, and give them an avenue to get to each section of the site.

Realistically, targeted visitors are still a few days away as I work on adding more unique posts and bookmarking the site for links.

Once promotion of the site begins the level of post quality rises along with the visitor count.

@ Vic – When I referred to links in your comment, I was referring to the comment body. You should always use a link in the anchor of your “Name” field, but as you write your comment in the text box, if you include links… they are generally held for moderation.

@ Jeff J – Strictly to make sure you have 90% of your site ready for visitors. If you only have 1 post (Which I have done myself) written, only one of your categories in WP will show up, thus giving early visitors the impression you will only blog about one subject.

Having enough content to get all of your categories displaying, as well as giving the spiders something to chew on for awhile as they travel the site was my main goal.

Mark

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# 11 October 2008 at 8:26 am

glenn said:

Mark-
To further Vic’s question, if you aren’t putting a link in the comments section, i.e. the link is only tied to your name or a ‘website’ field, how do you vary the anchor text?

I always try to leave a link in the comments field and vary the anchor text, but now i’m concerned by your spam comment.

thanks.

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# 11 October 2008 at 8:55 am

Mark (author) said:

@ Glenn –

On this site, your anchor text, or name you used in the post box, was “Glenn”. What you should have used… since it leads to your VATech site, was: “VA Tech Sports Blog”

As you traverse the web and comment on OTHER blogs, you change it up just a little for each site. Assume you land on another VATech fan site and comment on their blog, you could use anchor text of: “Virginia Tech Sports Blog”

An then on another one: “VA Tech Fan Blog”

Making these small changes to your anchor text on different sites, provides different ways for search engines to clasify and find your site.

Remember – Google is the ONLY search engine that adheres to no-follow in any method as it was intended. The other engines either completely ignore it, or give it little respect at all! Google, even though they say they dont follow it… there is proof on the web that they DO use it for reference value….

Mark

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# 11 October 2008 at 9:18 am

Hot abs said:

I found the comment on anchor text in the name field interesting, I have missed this point all long. That’s a gem thanks.

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# 11 October 2008 at 9:30 am

Flatten your tummy said:

That’s a good point about the “no follow” tag. I’m sure that many people including myself have thought that it meant there was no point in doing a comment on those blogs. And making a post for each category is an excellent tip. Thanks Mark

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# 12 October 2008 at 5:52 am