10 SEO Tips For WordPress

The number of blogs online raises daily in a light speed, and the most famous blogging software is WordPress. WordPress is famous thanks to the easy to use platform even for newbies that don’t have knowledge of HTML or PHP, the numerous themes that permit you to change the look of your blog by one click and the thousands of plugins that can be installed to your blog for entertainment of your readers or other purpose.

The hardest part for bloggers is SEO Optimization of their blog and the reasons are different, lack in SEO Optimization knowledge and no clue what plugins they can use to optimize their blog or simply are afraid to mess with the plugins. So i decided to write these 10 Tips on SEO Optimization of your WordPress Blog.

In the 10 SEO Optimization Tips for WordPress blog i will include plugins you should use for better in-page search engine optimization (SEO) as well as hacks you can implement to your theme. I will start lining up from the top to the bottom.

Use permalinks

You must have heard the phrase search engine friendly URLs, what they talk about? The search engine friendly URLs are those URLs that can include words in the URL instead of some sort of syntax. WordPress by default use those syntax type URLs, by changing the Permalinks of your URLs and choosing custom and specify the structure as /%postname%/ your links to inner pages will be automatically transformed in the so called search engine friendly URLs that will consist keywords in the URL.

SEO Optimization Title Hack

The title tag of your blog is the most important in-page SEO Optimization part. If you install fresh WordPress and a WordPress theme your title would be something like Your SiteName > Your Description on the homepage. While for inner page it would look like Your SiteName > Your Description > Your Posts Title, this structure of title is not recommended since your sitename and description will always remain at the very first beginning of the title tag even for the inner pages and if the sitename and description will be long enough the title of the post in some cases will be almost invisible for search engines. With SEO Optimization Title Hack you will be able to change the structure of how title will be displayed and perform better with search engines even with the inner pages of your blog by changing the title structure and have the title of the post be in the first place, example: Your Posts Title > Your SiteName > Your Description. Something i would like to note is that in the example of the SEO Optimization Title Hack the structure is Posts Title > SiteName , you can change that simply by adding <?php bloginfo(’description’); ?> after the <?php bloginfo(’name’); ?>

Google Sitemaps plugin

The XML Google Sitemaps Generator plugin is a great plugin for your blog to keep the search engines in alert every time you have a new post published. As the name says the plugin will automatically generate XML sitemap for your blog each time you publish a new post and will ping the search engine to let them know there is a new URL in your blog that needs to be crawled. The Beta 3 version of the Google Sitemap Generator plugin now works with the Popularity Contest plugin written by Alex King to give priority in the URLs in the XML Sitemap.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator

The Dagon Sitemap Generator is not like Google Sitemap Generator. The Dagon Sitemap Generator will not ping the search engines when new posts are published, instead it does create a textual sitemap in your blog site for better in-site-linking structure and share some link love with your inner pages. To see it in action look at the Sitemap page of SEO Optimization blog.

Prevent Duplicate Content

Even tho the supplemental results have gone mainstream yet duplicate results effect your search engine rankings. You can prevent duplicate content within your blog by using the simple prevent duplicate content hack. The hack will make sure that your post will no longer be displayed in all pages of your blog like the main page, category page, archives page and yet once again in the posts page, rather, the hack will make sure that the content remains unique and gets displayed only twice (if you don’t use the more feature to cut the post) once in the main page and once in the posts page. This way you give more value to the posts page and display just a excerpt (summary) for the category pages and archive pages.

SEO Slugs

I did mention the SEO Slugs plugin in my previous post about the 2 WordPress search engine optimization (SEO) plugins installed. The SEO Slugs plugin will cut and remove the search engine boolean operators and the most common words used from the URL slug of your post. Using this plugin you will decrease the length of the URL of the post and increase the percentage of the keywords in the URL (see the Permalinks tip, the plugin will not work if you don’t use the search engine friendly URLs).

All in One SEO Pack

The All in One SEO Pack is the second search engine optimization (SEO) plugin i install together with the SEO Slugs plugin. This plugin will gives you the possibility to add unique and unique (different) metatag description and metatag keywords to each post you publish (once again we end up in the word Unique). The plugin (i notice) it lacks only in one thing, it does not add description metatag to the categories (hence i lost rankings for one of my categories in Google). Yet this plugin is a must use for SEO Optimization of your blog.

Related Posts

Having a in-site linking structure is important, and with Related Posts plugin you can share some link love with your other inner pages and improve the in-site linking structure of your site. The plugin will display textual links to other inner pages that are related to the post your readers are reading, it will also use the title of the post as anchor text to link to the inner pages (related posts).

WP-PageNavi

The WP-PageNavi plugin is another in-site linking structure builder plugin, but instead of linking to inner pages (posts). If you have set the options of your blog to display mostly 10 posts in homepage (which will affect also about the posts that are displayed within the categories) and you have more than 10 posts, WordPress will create a second page in order to display the rest of the posts. With the WP-PageNavi you will be able to create a small numeric menu linking to the inner pages (not posts) and share some link love with those pages too. To see it in action scroll down to the bottom of SEO Optimization blog and you will notice the small menu right bellow the last post.

10th Tip, you write it

I am leaving the 10th tip open till the end of September. I would kindly ask you (my reader) to write down in the comments the 10th Tip, by the end of September i will chose the most appropriate tip in my comments and use it as the 10th tip and give credits (textual permanent link to the winners website).

Feel free to write down the 10th SEO Optimization tip and get a permanent backlink to your site.

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