Greetings all
After spending the last few weeks providing SEO coaching to small businesses here in New Zealand, I realized that many of them are relying more and more on WordPress-based web sites for their business.
Now I don’t have a problem with this at all – I’m a huge fan of WordPress and so are search engines. It’s really easy to use the blogging platform to build a decent looking, search engine friendly web site. But where people are coming unstuck is in how to optimize their WordPress site when they were previously used to dealing with raw HTML code.
I have started a little checklist for WordPress users, just to remind them of the key SEO tweaks they can make to their blog pages and posts to ensure they are as visible in search engines as possible. I hope to publish the checklist here and also make it available to Search Engine College students as a downloadable PDF.
Here’s where you guys come in. I know many of you use WP on a daily basis and are also busy optimizing your sites for Google and other search engines. I would LOVE for you to share your best tip on how to optimize WP sites so I can add it to the checklist.
Unless you wish to remain anonymous, all tips used will be acknowledged via name and link in the finished document.
Got your tip ready? Please add it in the comments on this post. Thanks so much!
that’s easy, all-in-one seo plugins is a must
Look into the use of scribeseo.com, works on all blogs with all-in-one plugin. Also removing all the un-needed stuff in the header.
Looking forward to all the other comments!
1. Change the permalink structure: Settings > Permalinks – Choose custom structure then enter “/%postname%/”
2. Install All-In-One SEO Plugin
3. Install Google Sitemap XML Plugin, get an HTML sitemap on there as well.
4. Internal link, try YARPP Plugin
5. Make sure when inserting images, optimise the ALT text etc.
6. Use breadcrumb navigation for pages and posts, try installing Breadcrumb NavXT Plugin
7. Write custom excerpts for posts to reduce duplicate content.
8. Block some pages using robots.txt (pagination, categories etc.) for same reason.
9. Keep it updated regularly!
10. If you are using a theme, change the footer content (if there is any) to avoid duplicate content across other sites using that theme.
Make sure that you “claim” and buildout your Google Places listing with a link to your WP web site. Get reviews, add a coupon, images and YouTube videos.
Good job, Kalena – I like collaborative efforts, and here is my contribution.
Platinum SEO is also a decent plugin, but requires some effort in configuration, specially all the “nofollow” settings.
Key items in blog SEO are of course the RSS feeds. Don’t forget to optimize them, and to create a number of feeds that can be distributed vertically (categories, for example, or key/strategic tags).
Besides of plugins and RSS, my blog SEO checklist is pretty much the same as for any other website, with a strong focus on content: remember to use keywords in the blog post title, in the URL slug, in the abstract/summary, and course in the body copy of your blog article. Good SEO practice is to optimize also pictures and links (anchors), and the eventually embedded multimedia files – but now we are going to far and moving on to the Social Media Optimization territories! =)
yep, all in one seo plus xml sitemap.
Then start USING all in one seo for every single post/page ?
Br, Andreas
Here are a few:
– “Fancy” links and post titles – page title like ” Post title – site name – etc.”
– Proper use of elements like H1, H2, H3 to define sections on page.
– Proper categories and tag usage.
– NO DUPLICATE CONTENT
Other than All-in-One SEO Pack, you can also consider these topics:
– Web Analytics Plugin
– Canonical Meta fix and Blocking Duplicate Contents
– XML Sitemap Creation/Automation Plugin
– Social Media Buttons (Facebook Like)
– Open Graph Protocol Plugin
– Robots.txt File (Blocking Feeds)
– Permalinks
– SEO Slugs Plugin
– Automatic SEO Links Plugin
– Fixing Old/Dead/Broken Link (301 Redirection Plugin)
– SEO Tag Cloud
– Page Excerpt Plugin
– Image Optimization – SEO Friendly Images Plugin
– Place Headings (H1, H2, H3)
– Breadcrumbs
– SEO Super Comments
Joost de Valk had a page on a WordPress Checklist long ago: http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/ (It’s easy to find if you search for WordPress SEO)
Great idea! I look forward to seeing the list!
One thing I do on all my WP and vBulletin sites is create a ‘Table of Contents’ page linked from the top navigation bar. This page is meant to read like the ‘Table of COntents’ or ‘Index’ like that found in a textbook. The content of this page are links to the key tags pages and to key individual WP posts (or threads of the Vbulletin). Its very helpful to the user, but its also helpful to the search engine spider in getting them all over the site and idnexing everything. Its like the good old fashioned html site maps.
See this eg:
http://www.forumdr.com/forum-docs-abc/
1) Permalinks – Get if fixed (/%category%/%postname%/ is my suggestion)
2) Redirection plugin – A must have
3) AIM for speed – I highly recommend WP-Super-Cache, which is a bit of work to set up, however it does the website lot faster.
These are FANTASTIC suggestions guys, keep ’em coming
Not sure whether I should divulge this, or keep it a secret, but here goes anyway: Don’t have a dedicated ‘Contact Us’ page, but put your contact details into the WordPress sidebar, so they’re on every page. Be a bit verbose when describing your location: “Drysdale, near Geelong, in Victoria, Australia” for example, then you get every combination of keyword+locality on every page.
Another one I can think of is using the SEO Smartlinks plugin. Creates very nice do-follow cross linking between your blog posts and also helps you control no-follow
I got more tips here, Thanks for sharing.
You can also see Automatic SEO Links http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/automatic-seo-links/ it is also quite customizable.
I see a lot of people focus on using plugins such as the All-in-one SEO to do the job but there’s a much better way by customizing the theme to accomplish more specific tasks.
1. fix the title property of most themes so it’s unique and using keywords
2. add a meta description that matches the page title and excerpt
3. add a keyword generator based on tags for the post
4. set your index/no-index based on content
On the pages themselves,
1. ensure your heading tag is used properly
2. deep link
3. always use the title attribute
4. use the alt attribute
5. have a robust footer
6. order your content properly
Another one, now that I recall it: not sure if it’s white hat, grey hat or black hat – use a ‘random’ plugin to vary the title of your page slightly. I used it directly in the header source code, not in the General Preferences. Case in point, my site title at one stage was ‘XX guru and all-round nice guy’. Since I had a few core skills to highlight, using this randomiser created some intriguing outcomes: some posts about topic A had a keyword in my site title for Topic B, which resulted in strong rankings for off-kilter combinations of searches.
@AB you have the right to change the page title. So, it is not much a problem for Google. But, you are actually trading off other keywords target when you are changing them. I’d prefer 3 different articles, rather than 3 different page titles for same article.
My advice would be take the template, strip it down, then build it back up again and make it as unique as possible. Google loves freshness and not templates
Write quality contents because content is king.
I am learning so much from reading your website. Thanks again!
Use your keywords in the footer. Keywords in title and description and make the text compelling. No good being on Page 1 if it isn’t inviting !
Thank you for all that good advise. I will try to keep most of them in the back of my mind.