SEO Principles for WordPress Blogs

coffeeWordPress 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

Blog Traffic Exchange Related Posts
  • websiteWordpress as a Website: 4 Great Reasons When you think of Wordpress you probably think of blogging. That's how most people use it. They sign up for a free blog and start posting about a variety of things. Some blogs are very specific and targeted while others are just general every day kind of blogs. You might......
  • wpWhy is WordPress the Best Blogging Platform? There are a variety of reasons for why WordPress is one of the best blogging platforms on the internet. Many people try different blogging platforms, but they end up coming back to WordPress because it offers so much greater functionality. Here are five of the greatest reasons for why WordPress......
  • Related Sites OptionsWordPress Plugins These Wordpress plugins are offered by the Blog Traffic Exchange. Enjoy Related Websites / Related Posts Cloud based multi-site related posts plugin. Traffic balancing algorithm to ensure equality based on traffic. Randomization to spread the effect. New traffic opportunities every 24 hours. Increase your traffic today, join the Blog Traffic......
  • pluginBlog Plug-Ins to Get More Readers Wordpress specifically has a number of plug-ins for blogging that will allow you to attract more readers to your blog. Some of the best blog plug-ins for increasing traffic to come in three main categories: Social networking and bookmarking Posting across many different platforms RSS feed helpers BTE Related Websites:......
  • seorockstarSEO Tips for Bloggers on WordPress There are several million WordPress blogs that you can find on the internet, but unfortunately the majority of them are not properly optimized for search engines. This article is going to touch on some SEO tips for bloggers using WordPress to host their blog, because with the right tips it......
Blog Traffic Exchange Related Websites
  • blog traffic exchangeAdd Weight Loss and Fitness Bloggers to your Website Apparently this has ability has been built into wordpress for quite some time but a friend of mine recently pointed up that it can be done (pfblogs popular posts added to sidebar.)  Here is the wordpress codex for this feature: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/fetch_rss. To add the latest weight loss health and fitness......
  • blog traffic exchangeOptimizing Title Tags For Success Properly optimizing the title tag (or more appropriately, the HTML title element) of a web page can yield big benefits from a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective. The following document explains why titles are so important and provides useful tips on how to optimize a title tag.Title tags are......
  • Personal Website PackagePersonal Website Package The Personal Website Package includes all the Full Internet Marketing Service features listed below but in the event that you do not require all of the Full Internet Marketing Services contained therein, or require additional services, we will assess your needs during the free consultation and offer a pro-rated cost.......
  • blog traffic exchangeWhat Does Google Think Your Site is About? Title Tag: Shorter Title, more effective and descriptive.Leaving out your web site Title is similar to publishing a newspaper without a headline. It's that important! Remember, the Title of your site MUST grab attention, create curiosity and evoke emotion to get the user to click.Do not make the mistake......
  • blog traffic exchangeAdd Latest Golf Posts To Your Website Apparently this has ability has been built into wordpress for quite some time but a friend of mine recently pointed up that it can be done (pfblogs popular posts added to sidebar.)  Here is the wordpress codex for this feature: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/fetch_rss. To add the latest golf posts to my sidebar......
Online Stores

Remove Dates From Permalink

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

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# 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

Blog Traffic Exchange Related Posts
  • trafficlightsWays to Improve Blog Traffic There are actually an endless number of different ways that you can improve blog traffic if you know what to do and how to do it. Here are some tips to improve blog traffic by making improvements to your blog. Improve Blog Tip #1 – Improve your content quality and......
  • nookComing Up with a Blog Niche Are you beginning a brand new blog? One of the first decisions that you are going to want to make is where you want to put your blog, and then you are going to need to choose a blog niche. One of the best ways to get your blog started......
  • vidblogBring Your Weblog to Life with Video Blogs Perhaps you have not noticed that there has been a tremendous explosion in the way of online media, especially throughout the past couple of years. Now that hosting and bandwidth are becoming significantly less expensive, and because publishing tools are becoming better, simpler and cheaper, it has never been easier......
  • wp1Installing a WordPress Blog If you want to install WordPress on your own server, the first step is to download the necessary files from the website at WordPress.org download. Next, you will use an FTP program to upload the files to your host site. If you use Cpanel, you can use Fantastico in order......
  • gbdHow to Relocate your Wordpress Blog to a New Domain Name Making the decision to move my blog from http://www.courseladder.com to http://www.golfballdriver.com was a big one, and a good one, and it taught me a lot about learning how to relocate your Wordpress blog to a new domain name under the same hosting provider. Course Ladder suited me for a while,......
Blog Traffic Exchange Related Websites
  • blog traffic exchangeBloggers: Exclusive, Limited-Time Offer to Save Big on The Blog Traffic Exchange While this won't interest my general audience, the Wordpress bloggers among you might want to listen up. The Blog Traffic Exchange is very similar to your related posts plugin (you are using a related posts plugin, right?). The difference is that the Blog Traffic Exchange is related posts from around......
  • blog traffic exchangeProfessional Blogging Roundup - Don't Get Sloppy This Season Instead Get Busy! This list is full of dynamite bloggers. Every link is worth investigating. Get to it! Corporate Investors.com writes Blogging Up A Storm For Customers' Sake. Centers on two corporate giants Dell and Southwest Airlines. Business Week intones Blogs Keep a Company Death Watch. Daily Blogging Tips says 70% Think That......
  • blog traffic exchangeMy first week with Kontera from Blogging Tips Here's a great post from Blogging Tips on Kontera advertising. I have been considering signing up for Kontera but didn't know a lot about it. This post gives some terrific insight and I'm going to keep an eye out to see how the testing goes for Blogging Tips For the......
  • 10 Tips To Increase Traffic To Blog At this present writing, there are more than 115 Million blogs worldwide. The majority of these blogs are strictly for the purpose of making money. Unfortunately, the majority of these bloggers are failing miserably at making money with blogs. The reasons for such a high failure rate vary from: too......
  • ten tips for new bloggers As a grizzly old veteran of the blogging business (3 months on this blog but 3+ years on a previous one) I have a few ideas about what makes a blog successful or not, at least in the early stages. Part of this knowledge comes from running a blog for......
Online Stores