Search engine Optimization or SEO is vital for the success of every blog or web site. Unique content on a well optimized blog leads to better exposure. The best thing about blogging on WordPress is that it is very easy to use, and highly customizable. This article will give you some tips for making WordPress SEO friendly.
Let’s start with some hard facts: there are 55 million blogs and you have to make yours stand out for you to have a chance. The main traffic should come inside the blog, and not be on the blog homepage. The first second of a visitor’s attention is crucial. Search engine rankings rely heavily upon the quality and quantity of links to your blog and the best way to get links is by recommendation from other bloggers and site owners.
Here are few tricks and tips for making your WordPress blog SEO friendly.
Usually WordPress themes are well designed and structured. However there are a number of things that should be taken into consideration for better optimization for search engines. These are:
• Using the best URLS: Enable the permalinks by going to Options -> Permalinks in the admin panel. Choose a simple and versatile URL because this URL should not change in the future even if the content of the blog changes. If your blog is old and if you think you have used the wrong format, do not change it now. Use the information for future blogs that you may create.
• Handling URL canonization: WordPress blogs have a problem in which four URLs are used for the same post and this should be fixed to prevent the intensity.
For the best title tag, install and use the SEO Title tag plug-in.
Headings are defined by HTML with H1 (largest) to H6 (smallest) which need to be used in articles.
Most of the link traffic comes to the homepage and then gets distributed to the links on the blog page. Therefore an efficient navigation structure is needed. For this, you should have the most important links on your home page so that they can be easily viewed. This can be done by using WordPress Category Post plug-in. Once installed, the Related Posts plug-in to link similar articles. You should not have too many external links on the home page of the blog, and if you want to have them it is best to have them on another separate page.
A site map helps search engines find links to all your pages on the blog. Moreover it helps visitors to navigate and find specific articles and posts. A common myth is: Google Sitemap helps in improving ranking. This is not true. Google Sitemap is great for submitting information.
• Various WordPress plug – in create meta tags. However they are of no use anymore. The meta keyword tags are hardly used nowadays in the calculation of the ranking by search engines.
• It is good practice to have the important content in the source code, as it will make a positive difference in the search engine ranking.
• The last tip for making your WordPress SEO friendly is by designing your blog or web page efficiently and effectively. Everyone has different and varied choices and tastes which would influence the design of their page. These tips are only generalized tips that could help in better search engine optimization.
The key to a good blog is keeping it simple.
The body text font should be clear and big.
Clear and easily visible headings and title pages are important.
Make sure the colors, patterns and schemes used on your blog do not steal the uniqueness of the content.
The text width should not be bigger than one and a half alphabet.
When visitors reach your blog the text should be seen right away. Make sure the visitor should not have to search to reach the content he is looking for.
If you are not making decent money with advertisements on the blog or web page, we strongly advise you to erase all adverts that you have on the blog, as these can be off putting to visitors.
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June 11th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Some good points on WordPress SEO overall. However, you’re making a few assumptions here and there which aren’t always correct.
For instance: “Most of the link traffic comes to the homepage and then gets distributed to the links on the blog page”.
Most blogs get the most linkjuice targeted to articles/posts, not the homepage. This doesn’t go against your advice (to link to the most important pages from the homepage) but it does suggest people should think about how they link from their blog posts.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:45 am
One of the most important factors in Search Engine Optimization is the number of incoming links to your website, the relevance of the website linking to you, the anchor text used for the link, and the page ranking of the webpage linking to you. We have tried it and have found it very useful to increase our page rank on google. We are a tender information portal, http://www.tradereader.com. We used tenders as our anchor text. We suggest any site to try and increase the backlinks.
August 19th, 2009 at 8:10 am
nice site I like and I sure to visit, well done
October 28th, 2009 at 1:41 am
This publish was really entertaining, I enoyed it a lot.
February 25th, 2010 at 1:53 am
A friend of mine visited this site and told me that you have interesting topics that might help me. I have read the tips for making your WordPress blog SEO friendly and thank you so much because I have learned a lot from it.
June 3rd, 2010 at 11:41 am
I was recommended to visit this site and was told that I can learn a lot of things here. Great, I have made the right choice. Thanks author!!!