This article will discuss how to SEO WordPress, so You can get more free traffic to your blog. As I recommend using WordPress for building niche sites it is essential to have a working knowledge of how toSEO WordPress to achieve high rankinks for my affiliate niche marketing projects. Although WordPress is already one of the most seo friendly CMS around it will need to be optimized for optimal rankings. Read this Guide to WordPress SEO to find out all You need to know about how to SEO WordPress Blogs.
How To SEO WordPress – A Guide to WordPress SEO
I will first discuss the most important changes You must apply to any WordPress Installation if You want to have a SEO friendly Blog. You will find out why standard WordPress Installations are not fully SEO optimized and how You fix these flaws. I will then introduce You to the best WordPress SEO Plug Ins, that allow You to automatically generate seo optimized WordPress Sites. There are WordPress SEO Plug Ins for most of the high priority on page seo factors available for free. So let’s find out how to SEO WordPress.
Start with SEO friendly WordPress Theme. A SEO Optimized WordPress Theme will not use any H1 Headings in the Header. There should always be only one H1 Tag on each page. Usually this is the Post Title, but I prefer to remove the H1 Tag from that too and use a H1 Heading in my post. A Single Post Page should not have more than one H1 Heading and You should only use H4 Headings in Your Sidebar. Some Themes will use H2 Headings all over the Sidebar, resulting in the search engine considdering ” Recent Posts ” or “Follow this Blog ” the terms that Your site is trying to rank for. A good place to downlaod seo friendly wordpress themes for free is here or download themes directly from wordpress here.
The first important tweak You must apply is to change the so called Permalink Structure. This just means that You tell WordPress how it should generate the URLs of Your posts. A standard WordPress Installation will create URLs like this one:
http://www.YourWordpressBlog.com/?p=12
That’s handy but far from seo optimized. So here is how to SEO WordPress to build optimized Permalinks automatically. Instead of the postcount You can tell WordPress to use the Title instead:
http://www.YourWordpressBlog.com/your-post-title
By using Your main keyword in the Title of your posts You will also have them appear in the URL. This way You gain a far higher on page SEO score and You can tweak Your Titles even further. WordPress gives You full control over the Permalink Structure under ” Settings >> Permalinks “Check the ” Custom Struture ” Button and put ” /%postname%/ ” in it. You can also use ” /%category%/%postname%/ ” to display the Category that the entry is filed under in the URL too. I reecommend to only use the Postname as this ensures that all links to this post will work even if You decide to put it into another Category later on. Now You know how to SEO WordPress for optimal URLs and Titles.
In the next chapters of my guide to how to SEO WordPress You will be introduced to the use of WordPress SEO Plugins. If You have no idea what a Plug-In is and how to use one then watch this Video about installing WordPress SEO Plug Ins before You continue to read how to SEO WordPress
Next we are going to gain control over the Title of each individual page that WordPress is going to create. The WordPress Standard for this is ” Blogname | Post Title “. I recommend to remove the Blogname to get the individual keywords of each page to the Beginning of my Titles and have fully unique titles on all my pages. I recommend to use a Plug In. Use Your main keyword phrase as the Title of Your Home Page, and set the Post Pages to use the Post Title. After You have installed the All In One SEO Pack You go to your WordPress Admin Area and then click ” Settings “, then click ” All in One SEO Pack “. On that page You set the following values:
Home Title: ” Your Main Keyword Phrase ”
Post Title: ” %post_title% ”
Page Title: ” %page_title% | %blog_title% ”
Category Title: ” %category_name% | %blog_title% ”
From then on each page that is created will have a seo optimized Title and You will not have duplicate page titles. So now You know how to SEO WordPress URLs and Titles and have therefor gained a huge edge over millions of standard wordpress blogs, because You have SEO optimized 2 of the most powerful on page seo factors. Let me now discuss how to SEO WordPress further.
A nice thing about WordPress is that it allows You to organize your content by assigning tags and categories to your posts. WordPress will create a page for each category and tag and display the corresponding posts there. But this leads to a lot of pages that have the same content, especially when your Blog is new and You have a small number of posts that share a lot of tags or are in the same categories. To achieve high SEO Scores You will have to tweak WordPress to set some of these pages to “NoIndex”. The search engines will still crawl and discover all of Your content, but will not index the Archieve Pages of Your Blog, thus avoiding any problems with the duplicate pages in the archieves. I use the All In One SEO Pack for WordPress to get this done. Go to ” SETTINGS>>>All In One SEO ” and then click the corresponding checkboxes. I mostly only leave the Categories as follow, since on most sites I dont have many duplicate articles in different categories. If You have many posts that have more than 1 Category then make the Categories ” Noindex ” too.
To avoid duplicate pages to be crerated You should also go to ” Settings” , then click on ” Discussion ” and uncheck the box next to ” Break comments into pages “. You should now understand how to SEO WordPress for a seo friendly surounding for Your content.
How To SEO WordPress – SEO Optimized WordPress Blog Posts and Pages
This Chapter will deal with How To SEO WordPress Content. You have already set up a SEO friendly environment for Your Blogs Posts and Pages with the SEO Techniques described above. You can further improve the SEO Score by following the advice below for creating seo optimized posts and pages with wordpress. While all of the above has to be applied just once these next seo tactics apply everytime You add content to WordPress. Here is how to SEO WordPress Content.
Use Headings to format Your posts. Each Post can contain H1, H2 and H3 Headings if You have at least 2 paragraphs of content inbetween. All Headings shall include Your main keyword phrase for that post or page. Position Your Keyword at the Beginning of the Headings for the highest relevance.
Use Images and their alt-attribute. WordPress will automatically add an alt-attribute to each picture You include in a post, but this is made up of the filename of the pic. If You are not using keyword optimized filenames for Your images all the time then You have to change the alt tag. Doing this manually on every post is boring, so there is a Plug-In to get the job done. The SEO friendly Images Plug In allows to put the Title of Your Post into the alt tag on autopilot. Make sure to have at least one optimized Image on each of Your posts.
Decorate Keywords as they appear inside Your Content. Your main keyword phrase should appear in bold, Italic and underlined once inside Your content. You can also have a secondary keyword appearing italic.
Add the “nofollow” Attribute to all outgoing links. Each Post should contain one outgoing link to an authority site in Your niche and should have your main keyword as the anchor text. Do not link out to many sites and add “nofollow” to all outgoing links to prevent passing Page Rank. Always put one Link in Your post that is going to another page of Your Blog and has a keyword as it’s anchor text. This link is “follow” as all other links pointing to a page within your website.
Let Your User help You get backlinks and more visitors by adding a Bookmarking Plug In to all of Your Posts. This can increase the number of Shares and Bookkmarks dramatically compared to a bookmarking option in the sidebar and also has the huge advantage that You are creating a lot of different bookmarks to many pages of your Blog, rather then the same bookmark over and over from the sidebar-script that will not be unique on each page. You can use the AddToAny Plugin that is pretty easy to set up and can be customized completly with a lot of advanced options available. See here.
How To SEO WordPress – Best WordPress SEO Plug Ins
My absolute favorite of the WordPress SEO Plug Ins is the All In One SEO Pack. It will give You full control over Your Titles, Description and Meta Tags via one simple interface. It’s a Free Downlaod and to me is a must have on all of my blogs. There are also some other WordPress SEO Plug Ins that get the same Job done but I like it to have everything in one place with this WordPress SEO Plug In.
The SEO friendly Images Plug In is another one that I have been using regularly. Image Alt Tags are a powerful on page seo factor and should be used on each and every page of your blog. You can use Keywowrd Optimized Image Filenames for all your pics to have the standard WordPress Behavior of adding the filename into the alt tag resuult in seo optimized html or You set up the Plugin to generate a keyword optimized alt attribute automatically.
I also use the Head Cleaner Plug In to keep my source code clean and my sites loading fast. At least since Caffeine the site load speed is a ranking factor in google. So make use of a Head Cleaning Plug In to get rid of source code that is not needed, but automatically generated by WordPress.
Learn how to SEO WordPress as You Type. Lately I started using a WordPress SEO Plug In for On Page SEO Factors that is truly powerful. This Plug In will check each post or page for it’s overall SEO Score and advice You on how to SEO WordPress accordingly. It can also automate a lot of the Content related SEO Tactics above. The Plugin Adds a text box right below the Post Editor. When You post to Your Blog You put Your main keyword into that box and the plug in will check how well the post is optimized for that keyword. It will also automatically decorate Your Keyword and add it to an alt tag if there is an image in the post. It can also add the Keyword to the Title if You like. All these options can be turned of if You want to manually edit a post. In short: This Plug In is like having a SEO Consultant watching over Your shoulder as You post to Your Blog and then giving You advice on how to rank better. It works for Posts and Pages and gurantees that all of Your Content is presented on SEO optimized websites.
I hope this Guide to WordPress SEO helps You to set up SEO optimized websites with WordPress. Now that You know how to SEO WordPress.