Configuring your plugins is not too tough, but can be confusing when you first see all the options. I am going to show you what I do to configure my plugins for niche sites ~ whether they are small or large. This is the way I do it, it works for me, and I’m sure there’s other ways for it to be done. Just remember, obsessing about your plugin configuration is not going to make you any money. So get them configured and then we’ll be moving on to content creation which IS a money making activity. 
All in one SEO pack.
Let’s get started with this one, since it yells in big red box whenever you open the page. You can click the link that says go to the admin page in the big red box at the top of your page.
plugin status: click enable
Scroll down to the “home title” box. This is where you’re going to put the title you want to show up in your header and in the blue stripe at the top of the page. You may have already filled in the title of your blog in your general settings area. This will override anything you’ve put in that space.
Use keywords that will encompass all the posts you will be making ~ like you did in the url.
For the mountain bike site I will be using: Used mountain bikes for sale (this covers three keywords ~ used mountain bikes and mountain bikes for sale, as well as used mountain bikes for sale)
Home description.
This is like the tagline and you have probably already figured this out as well. You can copy paste what you already have here. Whatever you put here will override what’s in your general settings as well. Use keywords, but make sure it’s descriptive of what your site is about, not just a list of keywords. Remember, this is a RESOURCE for people.
Never let SEO take over the readability of your site. Because while it’s important for the search engines to love you, if the people they send to your site get turned off by you’re content being written just for search engines they won’t buy.
ex. mountain bike site: Buy used mountain bikes and find great deals on mountain bikes for sale
Home keywords:
These do not show up on your site. They are what is known as “meta tags” in the html code of your site. There is some contraversy about how much meta tags are used by the search engines, but it does you no harm to fill them in and it gives you one more possible way to let Google know what your site is about. You want to pick your best 5 to 8 keywords to put in here. When I say best I mean, highest search volume. Separate each keyword with a comma.
ex: cannondale mountain bike, giant mountain bike, gt mountain bike, kona bikes, specialized mountain bike, trek mountain bike
The rest:
I leave at the default settings.
Click update options.
To configure the next plugin look for the settings category in your sidebar. If it’s not already open click the word so it will show you all the options. If you looked around after you installed your plugins you may have noticed this is where you can change and configure the plugins that need it.
Simple Link Cloaker
While this is next on my list, we won’t be using this one until we write some content, so we’ll review it when we need it. It simply allows you to put your affiliate link in one spot, but then you can choose a link to make that forward to. This way all of the affiliate links on your site don’t look like affiliate links they look like regular links from your site. Don’t worry I’ll show you exactly how to do it when we need it.
Tweetmeme
This is the next plugin on my list. This plugin will allow your readers to share posts from your site with their followers on twitter. Whether or not you have a twitter account doesn’t matter. If you do it’s nice, but if you don’t it’s ok too.
So click tweetmeme in the settings section and let’s configure this one.
Positioning:
Where do you want the button to show up? I think it’s nice at the beginning of the post ~ but it’s also nice to have at teh bottom of the post so when people finish reading and they like it the button is right there for them to click. There is an option for both to have it at the top and the bottom, which is also a possibility.
If you are using only excerpts of posts on your front page I definitely would use one or the other. It looks crazy with both on exerpts. But what I suggest is you try them all, one at a time, check out your blog and see what it looks like. See if you like the way it looks.
Choose one right now, just tick the box in front of what you want.
Type: I leave the normal size widget.
Display: I untick show on pages ~ I don’t really want people tweeting my privacy policy and my about page etc. Depending on the site you are building you may want to leave the widget on the pages ~ but for a niche blog I would take it off.
** If you are doing a 1 or 2 page niche site I would not use this plugin at all. Since we are going to have lots of pages of content I think it’s a good plugin, but I wouldn’t use it on a really small site. **
Source: when someone clicks the button it will give an automatic post for them to tweet. If you fill in your twitter username here it will give you a retweet which is good, and helps you keep track of who’s tweeting your site.
If you have a twitter username ~ a go ahead and fill in your username in the space available. If you don’t have a twitter username you can still use the plugin, it will just say tweetmeme instead of you when people tweet your post, which is fine.
Save changes. Click the save button at the bottom.
Related Posts:
You may get a message to move some templates around in your files. Don’t worry about it. That piece allows you to create custom templates and is not necessary. If it doesn’t find the templates where they’re supposed to be it just turns that piece off. It’s not necessary so don’t worry about it.
The Pool.
This is where the plugin chooses content to show. I leave this in the default settings.
Relatedness.
Since this is a niche blog your posts are likely to be pretty related. I leave the relatedness options as the default. However, if I see I have no related posts showing up after I have 5 or 10 posts written I will come back in and change the match threshold number to 3 and see if that gets posts to show up. It usually does.
Display options:
I leave them default. I personally like up to 5 related posts, but if you would like fewer, or more change the numbers around and see what it looks like.
Display options for rss:
I leave these as default as well. It’s nice for some related posts to show up when people subscribe to your feed, it can help get people back to your site.
Update options:
Click the button and you’ve configured this plugin
XML Sitemap:
This plugin will create and submit a map of your site to the search engines. It will update your sitemap as you put more and more posts on your site.
While this plugin looks complicated I leave all the default settings and just click the create sitemap button.
It usually only takes a second or two for the sitemap to be created and the search engines to be notified. Once you get the message that your sitemap was created that’s it for this plugin.
Akismet:
Akismet comes installed on your blog, all you have to do is activate it. Akismet is a fantastic plugin that will manage 99.9% of your spam for you automatically. It really is a fantastic plugin.
To activate akistmet you’re going to need an API key. Let’s get your key.
Go to wordpress.com (go ahead click the link ~ it will open in a new window).
This is wordpress.com ~ it is totally different than what you’ve just installed on you blog. WordPress.com is yet another free blogging platform, much like blogger ~ however, they are NOT very friendly to people trying to make money online. They are the master of the API key so you’ll have to have an account.
If you have an account here, just log in. If you don’t you’ll need to sign up for one. You can create just a username or user account (something like that) that will just create an account here (and an API key) but won’t create a blog for you. This option is fine.
You will have to create a username, and a password. Then you’ll have to go to your email and click the confirmation link. Once you’ve done that you should be able to log in.
Once you’ve logged in you want to go to the account link and hover over it. You will see a bunch of options when you do that. Choose edit profile.
When taken to your profile page your API key will be the first thing on the page. Copy it so you can paste it where it needs to go.
Go back to your niche blog dashboard and click on the plugins category.
Akismet should be the first one on the list. Go ahead and tick the activate link. When you do that you will see a message at the top of your screen that says you have to enter your API key to activate. Click the link where it says “enter your wordpress API key” and that will take you to a space to paste it.
Go ahead and paste your API key in. I also click the box to delete spam after 30 days, that way I don’t have to worry about it. Then click update options to save. Once you do that your akismet plugin will be operational and you’ll be good to go.
That’s it for configuring plugins. If you have any questions make sure you ask in the comment section. I’ll do my best to answer them.
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Thanks for the plugins, it is really of great help to me. I also want to be your follower because you have good infos and very effective ones!
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