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WordPress is a relatively SEO friendly blogging tool to begin with. It offers a linking structure that makes it relatively easy for spiders to crawl your pages, and the code contains very little validation errors if any at all. However, there are a few additional steps that you can follow in order to make your WordPress blog even more SEO friendly, and most are so simple to implement that there is absolutely no reason not to.

1 – You need to make sure that the URLs on your pages contain your blog’s post name, rather than simply a post number.

This can be easily accomplished by using the permalinks page in your WordPress settings, typing “/index.php/%postname%” when asked about custom structure. Alternatively, you can write a rewrite rule directly into your .htaccess file in order to have an increase in control over the syntax of your URLs.

2 – Change your page title order so that your blog post name appears before the name of your blog or the date of your blog.

The first words in your title are always given more weight than anything else, and they will also catch the attention of your readers more effectively. This can be done by editing the header.php file, swapping the order of the PHP tags so that wp_title appears before bloginfo.

3 – Make excellent use of your heading tags.

You may find that your blog entry title is insert automatically into a tag, or that your blog name is in a tag. You can edit these tags in single.php as well as header.php in most WordPress templates. You can choose a format that suits you, but the best solution is typically to put your blog entry title in, swapping your blog name for an image instead. Also make sure that you make good use of other heading tags, using a good heading structure any time that it is suitable.

4 – Avoid duplicate content issues by using “index, nofollow” tags on your tag pages, archive pages and category pages, allowing search engine spiders to follow the links on these pages but not to list them in the index.

There are a number of plugins that can make this a really simple process, and one of the best is called robotsmeta.

5 – Pay attention to the linking structure in your blog, making sure that all of your blog entries can be properly accessed with as few clicks as is possible.

Remove unnecessary links from your blog pages and remove unnecessary pages from your blog as well. You are going to want to consider using a pagination plugin to help you remove unnecessary clutter from your blog for ease of use and increased access.

There are a number of other techniques that you can use to maximize your SEO for WordPress, but this is certainly a good place to begin.

Photo Credits: 1

Originally posted 2009-02-06 08:35:13. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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How do you you remove the dates from your permalink structure without ruining all the hard earned links you have developed?

Glad you asked… It really is very simple… (Note I tried the various plugins first but had issues… In the end this solution is faster for the visitor, quicker to implement, and simpler.)

Assuming your current permalink structure is /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

1. First change your permalink structure to /%postname%/
2. Create a .htaccess file (or modify an existing file)
3. Add this line above any other Wordpress declarations: RedirectMatch 301 /dddd/dd/dd/(.*) /$1
4. Make sure the .htaccess file is in the root of your blog

Here is an example .htaccess file direct from one of my blogs…
RedirectMatch 301 /dddd/dd/dd/(.*) /$1

# END WordPress

By 301 redirecting you are telling the search engines that the content has moved to a new location. While there is typically some drop off during the transition, your blog will come back stronger for making the change.

As an example of the effectiveness…
Here is an old url: http://www.golfballdriver.com/2008/03/18/michelle-wie-and-robin-lopez-at-charity-auction-pic/
which now redirects to the new url: http://www.golfballdriver.com/michelle-wie-and-robin-lopez-at-charity-auction-pic/

Originally posted 2009-02-02 12:30:17. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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