This is the first post in a series of how to get your blog noticed by search engines and, further, how to do some basic search engine optimization for your blog or website.

As an introduction I'll briefly discuss the two most important ways to get sustainable traffic to your blog or website:

1. Links
2. Search Engines

There are basically two ways to get links. One, create exceptional content, and people will link to your blog. Two, send promotional e-mails to web sites that might find your blog worth linking to (you'll still need to create exceptional content). However, the latter tactic can backfire and should be utilized with care. More on that later.

There are also two ways to get your blog indexed in the search engines. One is to get links, so the search engines will find your blog automatically by following those links. The other one is to actively tell the search engines that your blog exists. Do not be fooled by the sites that promise to increase your traffic by submitting your site to any number of search engines. Search engine submission does not guarantee inclusion in the index.

In this series of posts, I'll cover the following topics:
1. How to change the Wordpress Permalinks to look pretty for the search engines
2. How to get your site indexed in Google, guaranteed
3. How to further optimize your blog for search engine and Adsense keywords

First, we'll do some basic search engine optimization. We'll change the structure of the Wordpress Permalinks. Right now, the URL for my blog entry concerning image enhancements for Adsense looks like this:
http://innerblogger.com/?p=41

This is OK; Google will be able to index this, despite the ? in the URL. However, search engines put some weight (nobody quite knows how much) to the keywords appearing in the URL of a given page, so from that perspective, a better URL would be something like:
http://innerblogger.com/blogging/2006/enhancing-adsense-with-images-for-better-click-through-rate/

Luckily, Wordpress has a feature that enables you to switch from one permalink structure to another in a single click. One more reason to love Wordpress.

Make sure you read the instructions on the Wordpress Codex page. Not all the features work with all servers. I'm hosting my blog on Bluehost, which has Apache and so far I've had no problems with the Permalinks feature. Also, read the instructions and decide which permalink structure best suits your needs.

Here's how to change the permalink structure in Wordpress. I'm going to go for the following structure: innerblogger.com/category/year/post. If you want to do the same, follow these instructions. Go to your Wordpress Dashboard, navigate to Options -> Permalinks and then select the Custom option. Then, make it look like this:

Then, just hit the Update permalink structure button on bottom right, and you're done. Surf your blog and verify that everything works.

That's all there's to it! Next, we'll get our blog indexed in Google.