SEO Tips for your Wordpress Blog

[fenix1987]

This is a great list to consider when optimizing your wordpress blog. I made it as simple as it can get so all will be able to understand it but if you have questions, you can just leave a comment here.

These are free tips so don't be lazy and read these if you want to optimize your wordpress blog. The article is too long to post here so here is the link:

A lot of blogs are using wordpress because it is one of the most seo-friendly Content Management System (CMS). So here i am going to list some seo tips to improve your wordpress blog. These are important things to get your wordpress blog optimized. It will help you gain more traffic and rank better in search engines like google, yahoo, msn, etc.



Install Wordpress Plugins
You can get a lot of free plugins online and they will help a lot in optimizing your blog. You can view an article of mine that lists the Best SEO Plugins for Wordpress.
Optimize permalinks
The default permalink is not seo-friendly and should be changed right away. For me, the most seo-friendly would be to use /%postname%/ which will make something like this Ways to Increase Link Popularity . You can change your permalink by going to Settings >> Permalinks and choose custom structure and input /%postname%/ .
Optimize page titles
Page titles are the most important in your single page and should be placed between h1 tags. Titles should be short but keyword-rich.
Remove hyperlink of the Title of your single posts
I saw a lot of blogs that hyperlinks the title of their single posts and this is no longer needed since it will still link on the same page. You can easily edit it at Presentation and edit the single.php file.
Validate your code
There are a lot of tools online that you can use to validate your code. By validating your code, it will help search engines to crawl your site easier. This requires knowledge in web design to fix these codes so if you can’t do it, you can hire a web developer to do it for you. I am using this tool (http://validator.w3.org/) to validate my code.
Add Meta Keywords and Description
Always add meta keywords and description to your blogs because it will help the search engines to identify what kind of blog you have. Choose your keywords wisely (means that you choose keywords that are not so competitive but has a good search volume).
Deep-Linking your posts
Deep-linking is where a post of yours links to another related post of yours. Choose the keywords to hyperlink wisely, choose the one that fits most to the post that you’ll be linking.



Hope that helps. :p

[ehomepreneur]

Thanks for post. Just one question, can we make our blog title different when optimizing it in the SEO plugin? Reason being blog title is to attract human readers while SEO is to attract search engine. Keyword like "Promote your business" has more searches in search engines but "Explode your Business" as the blog title has more impact on human readers.

Any thoughts on this?

[innominds]

Thank for sharing those SEO tips here.
I would like to mention that All-in-One SEO pugin is a must have wordpress plugin.
This optimizies the wordpress posts very well.

[DavidF]

Thank for sharing those SEO tips here.
I would like to mention that All-in-One SEO pugin is a must have wordpress plugin.
This optimizies the wordpress posts very well.

yes it is a great plugin. However dont reply on that plugin to do all the work for you. With every post that plugin gives you the opportunity to create your own title tags, description and keywords. Use that.

[D79312]

Nice link to show how to optimize wordpress. Below are my favorite wordpress plugins...



Tell A Friend Widget
Platinum SEO Pack
Adsense Delux
Meta Robots wordpress plugin
Google XML Sitemaps
SEO Friendly Images
SEO Title Tag
Simple Press Forum

[twt]

Can I ask your views on permalink structure please. Had a look round you site and couldn't find you views.

[autumn]

hello. let me ask you on how long should be a good title? i used to create long titles until i read this thread. please enlighten me.

[digger]

Can I ask your views on permalink structure please. Had a look round you site and couldn't find you views.

For permalinks, I almost always use this...

/%category%/%postname%/

-Al

[Social-Media]

Hmmm...




Install Wordpress Plugins
You can get a lot of free plugins online and they will help a lot in optimizing your blog. You can view an article of mine that lists the Best SEO Plugins for Wordpress.

If you're implying that you should utilize lots of WP plugins, I disagree... I say minimize the number of plugins you use. I use Akismet to eliminate spam and Contact7 to have a contact us form. Those are the only two plugins I use. I would probably use All-in-One SEO Pack plugin if I were using a different Theme, but I use Thesis which is EXTREMELY robust and SEO friendly out of the box.

Plugins often lead to problems when you are ready to upgrade your version of wordpress or your Theme. The plugin updates compatible with new versions of WP are often released much later if ever. The more you have, the more likely you'll have problems.

Excessive use of plugins often slow your site down as well.



Optimize permalinks
The default permalink is not seo-friendly and should be changed right away. For me, the most seo-friendly would be to use /%postname%/ which will make something like this Ways to Increase Link Popularity . You can change your permalink by going to Settings >> Permalinks and choose custom structure and input /%postname%/ .

I agree. Even though using /%postname%/ can lead to issues w/ WP, I still use it as my prefered permalink. I don't want category names or archive dates in my URLs.



Optimize page titles
Page titles are the most important in your single page and should be placed between h1 tags. Titles should be short but keyword-rich.


Goes without saying. The postname should be the h1 on the post page... it should be an h2 on the category, archives, and tags pages (if applicable). The postname should include the keyword phrase targeted by the title.


Remove hyperlink of the Title of your single posts
I saw a lot of blogs that hyperlinks the title of their single posts and this is no longer needed since it will still link on the same page. You can easily edit it at Presentation and edit the single.php file.

If you're saying on the post page to NOT have the post title/h1 link to itself, it doesn't hurt to have it do so. In fact it may help as it is yet another inbound link with the targeted keyword phrase in the link text (assuming your post title actually contains your targeted keyword phrase).


Validate your code
There are a lot of tools online that you can use to validate your code. By validating your code, it will help search engines to crawl your site easier. This requires knowledge in web design to fix these codes so if you can’t do it, you can hire a web developer to do it for you. I am using this tool to validate my code.

My experience with this is that it is TOTALLY overated. Search engines have been dealing with non-compliant, non-validating HTML for over a decade. They are going after parts of you HTML documents that are VERY basic... the value of title element, the value of h1 element, the content of the page, the href value for an anchor/link element, the link text for an anchor/link element, etc... they could care less if you are using some attribute value that is not "standard" so it doesn't validate.

As long as it does not prevent the search engines from extracting the basic content from the elements they use to rank your pages and following links on your page, validation errors do not adversely affect rankings.

It IS, however, a good idea to "try" to eliminate as many validation errors as possible.



Add Meta Keywords and Description
Always add meta keywords and description to your blogs because it will help the search engines to identify what kind of blog you have. Choose your keywords wisely (means that you choose keywords that are not so competitive but has a good search volume).

This will have zero effect on your organic rankings at Google and most search engines. Most search engines TOTALLY ignore meta keywords elements because they have been abused so by blackhat SEOs and spammers in the past. Yahoo! is the only major engine that I am aware of that even looks at them. Google absolutely does not.

Meta description will not affect your rankings at most search engines. This is definitely the fact at Google who does NOT use meta description as a ranking factor. That being said, the meta description is VERY important. It SHOULD be optimized to increase the likelihood that it will be shown as the Google description. Google only shows it as the snippet if it contains all of the keywords from the search phrase. So it's best to include all keywords from a pages title in the meta description since the keyword phrases in the title should be the search phrases most often used to fine the URL in the SERPs assuming the page and its title has been properly optimized. The meta description shoud also have a call to action. A well written meta description can drastically improve click-thru-rates in the SERPs, but have little to no affect on rankings at most engines.


Deep-Linking your posts
Deep-linking is where a post of yours links to another related post of yours. Choose the keywords to hyperlink wisely, choose the one that fits most to the post that you’ll be linking.

Actually, deep linking typically has nothing to do with one page on your site linking to another. Deep linking typically refers having inbound links to pages OTHER than your home page. This is not JUST inbound links to non-home page URLs from other pages on your site, but much more importantly having other sites linking to inner pages (non-home page URLs) on your site.

Google measures domain authority based on this. Sites with lots of links to lots of pages are seen as more of an authority than sites with lots of links ONLY to the home page. Since each page on a site should be about different topics and target different keyword phrases, having inbound links to many pages tells Google that other sites refer to your site for many different topics... i.e. you're an authority in your niche.


A couple of tips from me...

- Pick a theme that is already SEO friendly instead of trying to "make do" with a bad, SEO unfriendly theme using All-in-One SEO Pack plugin. Thesis by DIYThemes is awesome if you've never seen it. Tons of SEOs use it for their blogs: Rae Hoffman (SugarRae), Michael Gray, Matt Cutts, BlogStorm, etc.

- Don't display the entire post on the home, category, archives, and tags pages... ONLY display the entire post on the post page.

- Use custom excerpts that are totally unique (written from scratch) on the home, category, archives and tags pages rather than simply using the standard 1st 200 words with a "[read more]" link as the excerpt shown on the home, category, archives, and tags pages. Use excerpts everywhere else besides the post page.

So show the entire post on the post page... show excerpts on home, category, archives, and tag pages. While for a short time the same excerpt will appear on the home and category pages, eventually the post will roll off the home page and the excerpt will ONLY exist on the category page. This makes your category page a collection of unique post excerpts rather than a collection of paragraphs duplicated in the first couple of paragraphs of each of the posts linked to.

- Add a meta name="robots" content="noindex" to all archive and tags pages to eliminate duplicate content. You don't want the same excerpts indexed on the category, archive, and tag pages.

- Posts should only be in one category to eliminate it from showing up in multiple indexed places on the site (2 or more category pages) creating duplicate copies of the same post. If you place a post in multiple categories then the excerpt or post will show up duplicated on multiple category pages.