Having set up various clients with WordPress, clients who were interested in search engine rankings and ways to optimize their blog and posts for the search engines, I thought I’d layout some basics for setting up your WordPress blog for ultimate SEO bang.
Also included here are some other WordPress plug-ins & tips we’ve found indispensable for setting up maximum-efficiency blogs.
SEO for WordPress – Plug-ins and Features
The focus of good on-page SEO is conveying to the search-bots the subject matter of each page, from the directory and file names, to the title and meta tags, to the content. Google and the other search engines appear to parse these “signals,” noting the presence of keywords in all of the above when assessing what keywords are relevant to your post. Thus, being able to control these aspects of your blog posts is crucial in optimizing them for the search engines.
Using Permalinks for naming directories and posts
Permalinks allow you to control the name of directories and files of your posts. When logged in as an administrator, click on: Settings > Permalinks – and select “Custom Structure.” You want to customize this setting so that the value is:
/%postname%/
This setting will create the URL to your blog post to be:
/name-of-your-blog-post/
which is the human-readable URL for your post the title of the post with hyphens separating each word (minus any non-alpha-numeric characters).
You can also set the Permalink value to be:
/%category%/%postname%/
which will create a URL for the post where the category assigned to the post (or the first category assigned, if multiple categories) will be the directory name, and your post will be the title of the post formatted as described above.
Even better, you can tweak the Permalink in the “Permalink” field just below the blog post title, while you’re in the editing mode, so that it is more concise and keyword-rich. Just remember to use hyphens to separate each word, and don’t use any characters except alpha-numeric, hyphens or underscores. Hyphens are preferable to underscores when separating words.
The Permalinks feature offers almost complete control over the directory and file naming for each of your blog posts, giving them some extra juice in the rankings battle.
WordPress Plug-in for Controlling Title Tag and Description Meta Tag (SEO)
Headspace2 – Headspace2 is a great plug-in that lets you control the the title tag and the description meta tag for each blog post. As many know, these two tags are very important in how Google and other search engines assess a Web page’s ranking, so controlling these is a serious plus. Headspace2 allows you to configure meta data for:
- Posts
- Pages
- Categories
- Home page
- Author pages
- Search pages
- 404 page
The “keywords” meta tag is whatever tags you add to your post, so Headspace2 takes care of the other important meta data.
After installing and activating the plug-in, you will see Headspace text entry fields below the main blog-entry field, where you can add the title tag and description meta tag content. The title tag content you enter will be in addition to the title of your blog, appearing first.
Google Sitemap Generator
The Google Sitemap Generator plug-in creates a Google XML Sitemap of your WordPress blog. Just install the plug-in, activate it, and a “sitemap.xml” sitemap is auto-generated and updated with each blog post. You can then submit this sitemap using Google’s Webmaster Tools.
AddThis Social Media Sharing & Bookmarking Feature
AddThis has become a very popular widget to allow users to easily add your Web page or blog post to various social bookmarking and networking sites. The WordPress plug-in is very easy to install and configure.
Feedburner / Feedsmith Plug-in
The Feedburner / Feedsmith Plug-in, originally authored by Steve Smith, detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
Other Tips to Improve Your WordPress Blogging Efficiency
Pasting Microsoft Word Content into Blog Posts
When pasting content into your blog from a MS Word document, you want to make sure you don’t include all the (hidden) formatting code MS Word embeds . WordPress has a built-in feature to strip out all the extraneous Word code *without* having to first paste the content into a simple text editor.
While in “Visual” editing mode, click the right-most icon in the WYSIWYG formatting tools above the text-entry field, called “Kitchen Sink.” This adds a new row of tools, one of which is a tool to strip out Word formatting when pasting from a Word document. It shows a clipboard and the “W”. Just click on this, paste in your Word content into the text-entry field, and click “Insert.” Your content is entered format-free!
Cool Tag Cloud – 3D with WP-Cumulus
The WP-Cumulus plug-in add the cool 3D moving tag cloud feature. Very easy to install and configure. This plug-in gives your tag cloud some serious coolness.
Spam Blocking Plug-in for WordPress
The Akismet plug-in pretty much eliminates spam for showing up in your blog comments. Questionable comments are held for approval. Akismet is very effective and highly recommended.
Public-Post Preview Plug-in – Link to Preview Post before Publishing
Public Post Preview plug-in provides a great way to share your blog post via hyperlink before publishing it. The preview link is provided below the text-entry field. Make sure you check the “Public Preview” box and then just send the URL out to friends or colleagues who you’d like to review your draft.
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