It wasn’t till I started this WordPress Blog that my learning curve went parabolic. I had been keeping the blog on my photo site for months. I did not give much thought to SEO or Keywords and Tags. The theme layout bothered me, but I found it frustrating when trying to customize it. When something worked I left it alone, fearing that I might break it.

Sure it all worked but I never realized how much better it could look, nor how many more people could actually find out about the photo site. That has all now changed.Since starting up this WordPress Blog and a clone on Blogger as a test, a whole new world has opened up.

I spent a whole day recently, on WordPress trying out all the free themes which were responsive. Yes, I can buy a custom theme, but I don’t know enough at this time to really know what I a need or what capabilities a theme should have. Instead of blowing a few hundred dollars on custom themes, I figured that I’d try to stick to the free themes for a while and learn more.

Spending the time to try a whole bunch of different free themes, was tiring and frustrating. A theme would seem to a perfect fit, but would be missing a bottom header area for a Copyright line. A theme would be almost perfect, but for the color used for Links or background theme color. A theme would be almost perfect but lacked widget areas. A theme would be almost perfect but was limited to one column. A theme would be almost perfect with two columns and nice color choices, but would compress the photos horizontally and stretch them vertically. Each free theme required its own set of compromises.

It was a lot of work but well worth it. I now have a much better idea of what I would like from a Blog. I have also let go of the desire for a 3 column blog. A two column setup means the post area is larger , easier to read and has larger photos. I even felt adventurous and customized the theme on my photo site pages including the blog. Spending that time trying all the different responsive free WordPress Themes turned out to be wise investment on many levels.

Along the way I also learned about Google’s Keyword site and how words can affect your Search Engine standings. I redid the Tags and keywords on the photo site blog. I also started to change the Titles of the posts to try to include high value keywords.

I then started to change the Keywords, Tags and Titles on this WordPress Blog. The Google Word Search page would be open in one window providing  better words.  Why use words which had 5,000 searches within the last month, when you could just as easily use words which had millions of searches. My Post Titles should be a lot better in the future. All things which I had never considered. The beauty is that I can see how this all affects the WordPress Blog by doing my own Google Searches.

To me it seems that WordPress is doing something really well with regards to Google. Posts are being picked up by Google quickly. My Blogger Blog does not seem to get the same level of attention from Google’s Search Engine bots.

Little things like using better Keywords and Tags make a difference. Who knew?

Setting out to create an external Blog was one of the best ideas that I have had. It has opened up so much. It is already affecting (for the better) the photo site and it’s blog. I’m also seeing results with the WordPress Blog. The one casualty is that my free time seems to have vanished into the internet ether…