Preface

WordPress is a powerful and effective open source web publishing platform that enables anyone, regardless of computer skills, to create and maintain a world-class website. Millions of people worldwide have adopted WordPress, and its popularity continues to increase. In February 2011, WordPress.org reported over 32.5 million downloads of WordPress version 3.0. When you combine all the WordPress users that haven't yet upgraded, it's obvious that WordPress is firmly established as one of the most popular web publishing platforms.

Its popularity is well-deserved. WordPress is easy to use, fun, efficient, and, as we will learn in this book, creates search engine-friendly websites.

This book offers a practical, hands-on approach to installing, building, and optimizing a WordPress blog or website in a way that search engines will love. We'll unlock the hidden and not-so-hidden elements that search engines look for when they return search results for their visitors. We'll also look at a wide range of new ways to market your website or blog through secondary channels such as video sites and social media, and we'll learn that WordPress is particularly well-suited for extension into these other channels.

We'll learn about Google's recommended best practices and how to implement the best ranking strategies when planning and executing your web marketing plan. We'll learn to identify and safely avoid a host of forbidden black hat techniques that search engines frown upon.

We'll learn the full spectrum of search ranking factors and techniques: keyword research, title tag optimization, link building, site architecture, and more. Finally, we'll take everything we learn about search optimization and learn how to implement it on the WordPress platform.

With the tools in this book and the inherent power of WordPress, you have the opportunity to create a high-ranking website that can compete with any search engines in the market.