So, you’ve purchased a domain name, secured Web hosting, installed WordPress, and started posting on your first blog. You’ve got great content in a niche market, but you have one problem: no one is reading your posts.

Writing great content is only one step in the launch of a successful blog. Below are a few tips for launching your blog and driving traffic to your new Web site.

Search engine optimization with WordPress plug-ins

There are a zillion plug-ins available for WordPress and knowing where to start can be overwhelming. Here’s two you must install if you are serious about having a successful blog.

Google Sitemap Generator automatically generates an XML site map for your blog. The site map indexes your Web site, helping it to show up in the search results of Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, and Live Search. The best thing about this plug-in is that once it is installed it keeps running and requires no maintenance.

The second plug-in you need to install for your new blog is All in One SEO Pack. After the install, a new section of fields will appear when you are adding a new post to your blog. Simply enter a title, description, and keywords related to your post. It’s usually a good idea to use the same title that you are using for your actual blog post. All in One SEO Pack optimizes your titles for search engines, generates meta tags automatically (based on your keywords), and helps you avoid duplicate content.

Oh yeah, both plug-ins are completely free! Thank you, open source.

Driving traffic to your Web site with Twitter

Twitter? What is this little blue bird everyone is talking about nowadays? Isn’t it simply a glorified Facebook status-update service? Well it is status updates, but it’s also a powerful tool for driving traffic to your blog. In fact, Twitter is one of the primary sources of traffic to my blog.

How do I use Twitter to drive traffic to my Web site? It’s actually quite simple, with the help of twitterfeed. Twitterfeed is a free service that imports your blog’s RSS feed to Twitter for you. Import your feed by following these steps:

1. Sign into twitterfeed using OpenID.
2. Click on “Create new feed”.
3. Enter your Twitter username and password (don’t worry, it’s safe).
4. Paste in the link to your RSS feed (make sure you use http:// and not feed:).
5. It’s a good idea to prefix each post with something like “New Blog Post:” so people know it’s a blog post.
6. Feel free to change any of the other options.
7. Click the “Create” button and you are done.

Once you are set up, start posting to your blog and you will begin to see links to your posts appear in your Twitter feed. There is a similar service available for importing your RSS feed to your Facebook status. It’s also worth checking out if you want maximum exposure for your blog posts.

Matt Lambert is a Web designer based in North Vancouver.