Insurance Marketing Online Step 3 – Setting Up Your Insurance Website

Today is the moment of truth for many. It’s the point you fear more than anything. Setting up a website.

Now, as you relax, take a deep breath and allow any anxiety to drift away, watch the first video and marvel at how incredibly simple it is to set up a WordPress blog.

I recommend using the WordPress.org blog because it’s free, it’s incredibly simple to use and has one of the most supporting and giving communities out there. Anyhow, you’ll see how simple it is to set this up after you watch these videos.

What is WordPress and a blog?

First, a blog is short for “web log.” Originally they were used as daily diaries and are generally organized in a date fashion. The newest post/article is on the top of the first page of your blog. However, over time and as WordPress and other blogging platforms have evolved, they’ve become what’s known as a content management system. Now, it’s just an easy way to organize and create content online.

WordPress is a blogging platform that will provide software that sits on your webhost’s server. It creates the ‘look’ of your website. This site is built with a WordPress blog software. The theme is what makes the header, footer and sidebars look the same on all the pages. Or, if I customize it, makes things look differently on each page. All I do is upload this area here (what you’re reading now) and it creates the webpage with the header, footer, etc. all nicely formatted around my content.

Go set it up and play around with it. Try out several themes and see how the content stays the same but the way the site looks can be modified with just a few clicks. Here are the videos to get you started…

#1 – Installing WordPress

If you’re not using a hosting account with Hostgator or host with CPanel, you can the WordPress blog software here and manually install it yourself (that’s how I originally started, this is much easier!).

#2 – Changing Themes (the look) of your site

As I said, there are thousands of themes to choose from. If you want to start with one of the free ones at WordPress.org, that fine. It’s rare you’ll see another like yours out there with so many to choose from. However, if you want to start with a premium theme that has support behind it and the ability to customize and help you get rolling, I highly recommend either:

• StudioPress Themes or,
• Headway Theme

I own all of the StudioPress Themes and Headway Theme. They both have incredible creators behind them with great support. StudioPress has a small selection of themes to choose from so you can be working right out of the box with little customization necessary.

#3 – Changing Settings And Plugins for additional features

Here are the two options I recommend for your Permalink Settings, either:

• %post_id%/%postname% – or
• %category%/%postname% – what this site, InsuranceMarketingOnline.net uses for link structure.

Here is a list of recommended plugins you can install (that I use) for additional features. Just search inside the WordPress admin panel on the add plugins page for each of these to install straight from WordPress without downloading or uploading. I’ve bolded the one’s I always install on each of my sites.

• Akismet – Comes with WordPress and is an AntiSpam defense
• FeedBurner Feedsmith – Track who’s subscribed to your blog RSS feed. Requires free Feedburner account.
• Google XML Sitemaps – Creates a Google Sitemap to help Google crawl your site.
• Pretty Link – URL shortner to create links that redirect to other sites so you can track clicks.
• Replace WP-Version – Replaces the WordPress version in your code for security purposes.
• Search Meter – Use if you have a search box on your site. Tracks what people are searching for on your site.
• TinyMCE Advanced – Creates a friendlier WYSIWYG bar in the post and page editor.
• Ultimate Google Analytics – Easily adds Google analytics code to each page of your site. Need free Google analytics account which I’ll cover later in this series.
• WordPress.com Stats – Another analytics program that uses WordPress.com’s statistics. See inside your dashboard what’s happening without the detail from Google Analytics.
• WP-SpamFree – Another AntiSpam defense plugin.
• WP Security Scan – Scans your WordPress install for security leaks.
• WP Super Cache – Not important at first but if you get a lot of traffic will help speed up the load time of your site.
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – Not important at first. Will create a list of links of related posts on your site at the bottom of each post. Helps for SEO and keep people on your site longer.
• Platinum SEO Pack – Important to make your site even more SEO friendly. Not needed if you’re using the Headway Theme.
• SexyBookmarks – Not important but pretty. Creates a list of Social Bookmark sites for people to submit your articles after reading.
• WP-Footnotes – Not important but allows you to quickly create footnotes in posts. Makes it very easy.
• WP Smush.it – Shrinks images you upload to your site to help your site load faster and give a better user experience.
• WP Status Notifier – Notifies you of posts pending review.
• WordPress Database Backup – Easily backup your WordPress database and set up automatic backups. Very important, in my opinion.

As you get into it, you’ll look for more features and will be able to find plugins that will help you. These are the basics I recommend for AntiSpam measures, site management, and SEO purposes.

#4 – Creating Posts & Pages

These are a quick overview of creating content on your site. My goal is to simply show you what’s possible. You should spend time with each and see how it changes your site. Also, change your widgets (the things in the sidebar) and other options to see how things work. Worst thing that happens is you go back to your CPanel and delete everything and start over from the beginning. BTW, that is the worst. Nobody will get hurt if you mess it up so bad it can’t be fixed, I promise.

#5 – Adding Your Site To Market Samurai’s Rank Tracker

This may be a little premature but you can now add your site to Market Samurai’s rank tracker module to see where it ranks for your keywords. My morning routine consists of checking where all my sites rank on Google, Yahoo and Bing with Market Samurai. It takes a few minutes and if there are drastic changes I can go into the SEO Competition page for that keyword and find out what’s changed. This may be a little advanced right now but will make more sense as you get more content on your site.

This is a quick run through of WordPress. As I said above, it’s up to you to get into it and play. If you want more about the administration panel of WordPress and what each component does, visit http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page for their documentation.

As always, post your questions or comments below.