7 Tips for Applying SEO to Your WordPress Blog
Written by admin on September 22nd, 2009 in SEO.
There are too many WordPress blogs all over the internet to even count; however, the number of articles that are search engine optimized are very few. This article details 7 ways to make a WordPress blog more friendly to search engines.
1. Every blog you publish will have its very own permanent URL, called a permalink. So, you need to make certain your permalinks are arranged for SEO. The default setting on WordPress’ setting for permalinks is not the best; but, this can be changed simply and quickly. First, go to your WordPress dashboard and find the Permalinks menu. Choose the Permalinks menu and go to Settings. Click on settings. Once you are in settings, you can customize your settings using “yourdomainname.com/category/postname, instead of a number. Having your category and title in your URL is just more appealing than just some numbers.
2. Install a plug-in, such as All in One SEO Pack. If you use this plug-in, the home page and posts on your blogs can have a custom title, a meta description, and keyword tags.
3. Your blog should be optimized for a long keyword phrase that has lower competition. All you have to do is take a little time to research first. Google AdWords Keywords is an excellent source. There you can find keyword phrase and competition level criteria you need. The perfect phrase should several hundred searches per month instead of several thousand per month. Make sure to never use the same keyword in more than one blog post. The keyword phrase should appear in the post’s title and only 2 or 3 times in the post itself.
4. Social bookmarking should be used to bookmark each post. Digg or StumbleUpon are two great bookmarking services. OnlyWire and SocialMarker are good too, and they let bloggers list their site to more than one bookmarking service at once. If you want more traffic and a backlink that goes to your posting, and we all do, then utilizing a social bookmarking website will help you accomplish this.
5. It is a given that your home page will get the most hits out of any other pages on your website. This is why home page optimization is crucial. Use Google AdWords to find 1 or 2 keywords to use that relate to your subject on your home page. Shoot for keywords that will get several thousand searches a month. This will put you in the same league as your competition. The keywords that you pick should be placed in the following areas: your tag TITLE, meta discription, and, in your blog’s home page content.
6. Put the Google XML Sitemap on your computer. Now, this plug-in will not increase your rankings, but it will put all of your posts and pages in the search engine’s index. This plug-in from Google will provide you a sitemap.
7. Building links that go back to your blog will definitely boost your rankings on the search engines. Neglecting to make links is the fastest way to slow down the traffic to your website. There are many different ways to build links: article marketing, submitting to directories, posting on forums, making comments on other blogs, providing press releases, exchanging links, and social bookmarking.
October 30th, 2009 at 1:18 am
i am still looking for a good SEO plugin for Wordpress. my blog is not ranking high enought for the keywords that i wanted to rank.