How to set up and use a Wordpress Blog

I have become a very big fan of Wordpress mainly because it is so easy to use and it also is really easy to optimize for the search engines. You can now have your own self hosted Wordpress blog for $8 a month or even less if you pay in advance. The webhost I use and recommend is ez-web-hosting.com The main reason that I recommend them is that because they are one of the few webhosts that still do daily backups of your site or blog. Just get the basic economy package. I know too many people who have used other hosts and lost their whole sites. Cheap hosting usually means no daily backup so beware. You can use any host really that has something called Fantastico which is automatic installation software for blogs and forums and just about anything else. Or just ask to see if they have a way that they allow you to install Wordpress.

Before you get your site you will need a domain name. If you want to do a blog for your massage website to promote your business you will want a domain name that says the word massage or what type of massage that you do and where you do it. Massageyourcity.com is the best.

If you want a blog to start talking about things in the massage profession or teach classes or write about politics or trends in the massage profession you have to decide on the focus of the blog so you can choose a good domain name that represents what you will be talking about and it will also help you get found by the search engines. You can research keywords and what people are looking for in relation to different topics in massage by using the free Google Keyword tool.

After you choose your domain you can then set up the blog. After you get it set up you can choose a theme in the appearance section and then also do some simple steps to optimize your blog using some of my. You can then create an xml sitemap with one of those plugins and submit it to search engines as I have outlined here on my other site.

So what are some ideas to blog about? If there were more hours in a day I probably would have a massage politics blog, a massage business blog, a massage marketing blog, a massage ethics blog, the future of massage to explore trends, massage around the world to find out how the rest of the world envisions massage and uses massage.

If anyone has any ideas for blogs but are not sure about them or how to develop them just let me know.

Here are some of my sites that I actually use Wordpress for:

www.wa-massage-therapy.com - creating a directory of massage therapists and a CE calendar
www.massage-school-notes.com
www.massagepracticebuilder.com

and my main blog on my www.thebodyworker.com site.