If your WordPress site is already up and running and you neglected to make pretty permalinks, it’s not too late. Permalinks are the direct links websites use to link to your content. If you set them up using “pretty permalinks” they’ll help boost your site’s ranking in search engines. But if you change your permalinks structure once your site is up and running all your current links will be broken. That’s bad.

But never fear, Permalinks Migration Plugin to the rescue!

With the Permalinks Migration Plugin you can change your permalinks structure and your old links will be redirected to your new ones. Score! So even if you neglected to maximize your permalinks when you launched your site, now you can change your permalink structure to use pretty permalinks, which are more user friendly and better for search engine optimization.

One way to improve your search engine ranking is to use what are called “pretty permalinks.” Permalinks are the direct and permanent links to your blog entries. It’s what websites use to link to your content.

By default, WordPress creates permalinks that are short and ugly. They look like this:

http://www.mysite.com/?p=206

It doesn’t mean anything to anybody, especially search engines. One way to make your permalinks more user friendly—and more search engine friendly—is to use pretty permalinks. They look like this:

http://www.mysite.com/title_of_your_post

You can change this under Settings: Permalinks in your WordPress backend. You can choose of the options for permalinks or use the custom field. Adding

/%postname%/

to the custom field will you give pretty, easy to decipher urls like the one above.

You can also get fancy and insert the year, month and day or the category name. If you’re already launched your site and didn’t use pretty permalinks, it’s not too late—there’s a plugin that can help. Read more about changing your WordPress permalinks or check out our tutorial video on pretty permalinks from the 7 Tips series.

One of the easiest ways to boost your search engine optimization (SEO) for a WordPress site is to install the Google Sitemaps Generator plugin. It boosts your SEO by creating a sitemap, which is a widely adopted search engine standard that helps search engine robots crawl your site. It was created by Google and adopted by Yahoo!, Microsoft and others in the search engine industry.

In English, it makes it easier for search engines to see what’s on your site and add it to the search results. That’s good.

The best part is that it’s incredibly simple and requires little to no work from you: Download the plugin, upload it and activate it. Done. Sit back and watch your site benefit from better search engine ranking.

We’ve even created a free video tutorial that walks you through installing Google Sitemaps Generator (the video shows how to install two of the best basic plugins, so skip to about 2:30 for the Google Sitemaps Generator).

It’s not enough to simply have a website these days. You have to make the most of it. Here are five basic tips to make sure you’re getting the most out of your website:

Don’t Forget the Call to Action

What is it you want people to do on your site? Should they be contacting you? Buying a widget? Coming to the shop? Signing up for something? Whatever you want people to do, make sure it’s clear.

Be Easy to Contact

It should be obvious, but you’d be surprised how often it’s difficult to contact a business through their website. Make sure your contact info is easy to find, whether it’s an e-mail address, phone number or contact form. Use whatever works for you, just make sure it’s there (and make sure you respond).

(Bonus: Here are two free WordPress contact plugins we recommend.)

Subscribe

It’s always smart to give people a way to follow along. The e-mail newsletter is the standard, but subscriptions through a technology called RSS is another way to go (don’t worry, WordPress includes RSS functionality automatically). You can even offer subscriptions through a service like FeedBurner and offer RSS and automatic e-mail notification. The point is to let people know when you’ve got something new to offer.

(Bonus: We use Aweber for our email newsletter solution.)

Track Your Stats

While you don’t need to check your website’s traffic statistics daily, you should definitely be tracking them. Free services like Google Analytics, Site Meter or a number of WordPress plugins make it easy. Set up your stats and then sit back. It’s smart to check in and know how your traffic is trending, but don’t get obsessive. Stats can give you a general picture and let you know if your marketing is working, but keep in mind that factors out of your control (like the weather) also come into play.

(Bonus: Watch a free tutorial video on how to study your traffic stats and refine your strategy.)

Test Your Site

It’s another obvious tip, but it’s surprising how often even major websites have simple errors. I just came across one on a presidential candidate’s site. And confession time: I just found a broken link on my own site that’s probably been there for months. Doh. Test your site. Proof the text. Try the links.

Writing for the web is a whole new game. People don’t have time to read and you can’t afford for people to miss what you have to say. So here are three tips to improve your online writing:

1. Keep it Short

People tend to skim when they’re looking at a computer screen. They won’t read as much online as they will if something is in print. So keep your copy short. Be succinct.

2. Chunkable Content

While keeping it short is good, one of the advantages of the web is unlimited space. Giving extra info can be helpful, but you have to make sure it’s accessible. You need to chunk your content. Break it up into lists whenever you can (like this one). Use headers to break out sections and bold text to emphasize important points.

3. Have Some Personality

A big danger of the web is dry, boring copy. Don’t be dull—give your text some personality. It’s OK to be funny. It’s OK to have some character. Keeping people awake is a good thing. Keeping people reading is even better.

Got it? Good.

The headline can be the most important copy in your blog entry, news article or e-mail newsletter. Sometimes it’s the only copy people will read—but if you do it right, they’ll keep on reading.

Here are 5 tips for writing headlines that work:

Communicate Something

More than anything your headline needs to communicate. It needs to tell people exactly what they’re going to get and why they should care. Keep it short and sweet, but tell people what they need to know.

Know Your Audience

Your headline has to hook people—but not just any people. You’ve got to hook your specific audience. That means your headline needs to highlight something interesting, news worthy or catchy for your audience. And what’s catchy for your audience may not be catchy for the average person on the street (and what you think is catchy may not be what your audience thinks is catchy).

Don’t Be Cute

Too often people go for cute and clever when trying to write headlines. It may work for your local newspaper, but that’s the last thing you should aim for online. Above all else your headline needs to work, and so often cute and clever headlines are easily misconstrued. People don’t get the pun or don’t understand how it relates, and they won’t stick around to figure it out.

Stand Alone

Remember that your headline needs to stand alone. A headline may show up in RSS feeds or search results with little or no context, so it needs to communicate the most important ideas all by itself. You can’t rely on teaser text or photos to fill in the context.

Insert your Main Keywords

Keywords for your article should appear in your headline. It’s a basic search engine optimization strategy, but it also makes sense. If your headline is communicating clearly, it’s pretty likely you’re using basic keywords that summarize your article.

For more on writing headlines that work check out usability guru Jakob Nielsen and the copy writing expert Copyblogger.

It’s not enough to simply make great content available on your site. It also has to be findable. If people can’t find your stuff, how will they know it’s so great?

I recently visited the website for presidential candidate Barack Obama with a very specific question. Nowadays candidate’s websites are chock full of information. It’s practically overwhelming.

I immediately went looking for a search box—and came up with nothing. The site had no search box! The most basic way to find information and they didn’t have one. All that great content that explained Obama’s positions and probably answered my question wasn’t going to be found.

Make sure your content is findable.

WordPress has a built-in search engine, offers categories and tags to organize your content and has search engine optimization features that make your content easier to find. Most good themes will take advantage of these features, so you should never have to make a mistake like not having a search box.

SEO is yet another techie acronym to add to your arsenal. It stands for Search Engine Optimization and is all about optimizing your website’s position in search results. Many books have been written about SEO and websites are dedicated to it. It’s big business—and it should be.

Showing up higher in search results (like when you go to Google and type in a phrase or keyword) usually means more traffic and more business.

SEO is part science and part art. The SEO experts figure out what search engines look at when they rank websites. Then they figure out what can be tweaked to improve a site’s rank in the results. Some SEO tactics are of questionable value and others are borderline unethical, but the mainstream of SEO thought is simple, basic improvements that will boost your rank in search engine results.

It’s usually simple things like figuring out keywords for your site and then putting those keywords in the right places. Those right places include the title bar (the text that shows up at the top of your browser), any headers, headlines or bold text on a page, and the meta data (helpful information in a page’s code that’s not visible in a browser).

It’s really not rocket science. What search engines do is look at a page and try to figure out what’s the most important thing on that page. For a page to be the number one search result for something like rocket science it better have the words “rocket science” and other important keywords in key locations on the page. Otherwise it’s probably not really about rocket science.

Good SEO is about recognizing the same thing for your site. So if you’re in the rocket science business, you’d probably have keywords like rocket science, rockets, propulsion, physics, NASA, booster, missile, etc. And you’d want to use those words in your headlines and other important places on your site.

The simplest way to do SEO is to use tools that are already SEO friendly. Using a platform like WordPress and a theme that builds on WordPress’s SEO-friendly features will move your site to the top of the search results.

Also: Be sure to check out our 7 Steps to Optimizing WordPress video tutorials.

If you run a small business, organization or cash-strapped project and you need an online presence then it’s time you embraced the do-it-yourself web. It’s cheaper, faster and easier than you think. Plus you get to be in charge and changing your mind doesn’t break the bank.

The best advice I heard when I started my own business was to hire people to do what I’m not good at it. It’s proved to be very good advice when it comes to finances, insurance and anything legal. But when it comes to the web it’s getting easier and easier to do it yourself, even if you’re not a technology lover.

Here are five reasons why you should do your website yourself:

1. It’s Cheap
So often running a small business is about bootstrapping everything. If you can get it done for cheap, do it. And a DIY website can be incredibly cheap. A powerful content management system like WordPress is free. A professionally designed and coded theme from iThemes will run you $30-80. Spend a few hours setting it up and you’re good to go. You could pay a designer and a programmer a lot of money, but unless you need something complicated you’re going to be better off doing it yourself.

2. It’s Fast
Sometimes you need stuff done yesterday. Well, the quickest way to get a website up is to do it yourself. With WordPress and iThemes you could have a site up today (OK, probably tomorrow by the time you wait for the url to point to your new site). Compare that to hiring a designer and programmer—they’ll laugh if you tell them you want a site today. Even a week would be incredible turn around time.

3. It’s Easier Than You Think
Unlike the legal, tax, or insurance fields, you don’t need to be a pro to pull off a good website. Technology is becoming more and more user-friendly. It’s to the point where if you can work something like Microsoft Word then you can run your own website. You can set it up, keep it updated and add frequent updates without a problem.

4. You’re in Charge
The best reason to do your website yourself is that you get to be in charge. If something needs to be changed, you can change it. You don’t have to pay a techie and wait for them to get around to it. You can get urgent news out there immediately, you can add updates to your heart’s content, and you never have to be the site with breaking news from 2006 (unless you want to be). Being in charge of your website is the best way to make it as easy as possible to update your website, and the easier it is the more likely you’ll do it.

5. It’s OK to Change Your Mind
Because it’s so cheap and easy to do a website yourself, it’s also cheap and easy to change your mind. So you can start with a DIY website and see how it works. If it doesn’t work you haven’t made a major investment so it’s no big deal to scrap it and call in the pricey pros. The alternative—spending big money on a website only to discover you could have done it yourself—is a much bigger waste. Plus a DIY site can be a nice transition. Maybe you need a site now but can’t afford a custom site. You can always do the site yourself for now and upgrade when you can afford it.