SEO for WordPress - The Complete Guide
I’m an SEO and I have been working a lot with WordPress, here I give you all my tips for you to rank very well in Google with your blog.
UPDATE: Check this blog post for a better guide.
Quick Facts
- There are 55 million blogs out there, if you don’t stand out you will have no chance.
- The first second of a visitors attention is the most crucial.
- Your main traffic should come to articles and posts inside your blog, not the home page.
- Search engine rankings relies heavily upon the quality and quantity of links to your blog when they determine the ranking.
- The best way to get links is by natural recommendations from other bloggers or web site owners.
Section 1: Optimize Your Blog
Usually the WordPress themes are well designed and structured already but there are a number of things you really should do to improve it for better optimization for search engines.
Using the best URLs
To enable the permalinks is easy and you have probably already done that, just go to Options -> Permalinks in the admin panel. But what format is the best to choose? The structure /%postname%/ - nothing else. This is best because your URLs to your articles should never change. And if you have it like this it does not matter if you change the category of the article or republish it with a new date, it will always be the same URL (more about that later). And if you happen to have two posts with the same title it is not a problem as WordPress will automatically add “-2″ in the end.
Have you been using the wrong format? Well, if your blog is not totally new you should not change. It is not vital and for the next time you make a blog you know how to make it right.
Handling URL Canonization
Every WordPress blog has an issue in which there are 4 different URLs for the same post and this has to be fixed to prevent dilution. Follow my guide on how to fix it here.
Title Tags
The title tag is the most important HTML-tag in terms of SEO.
Here are different versions you should use inside the <title></title> located in theme/header.php
Optimum ranking:
<?php if(is_home()) { echo 'Your blogs name | Few important words'; } else { wp_title('') ;} ?>For branding purposes:
<?php if(is_home()) { echo 'Your blogs name | Few important words'; } else { echo 'Your blogs name:'; wp_title('') ;} ?>The best title tag solution for advanced users
Either install and properly use the SEO Title Tag plugin or do the following:
- Download and install this plugin.
- Replace <?php get_header(); ?> with the context in header.php on single.php, page.php and category.php.
- Work out the best titles for the different versions and use the plugin to create different versions of category.php and single.php with their own versions of title tags. For example if your category with ID 5 is “SEO News” you could have the following title tag in single-cat-5.php:
<title>SEO News: <?php { wp_title('') ;} ?></title>In category.php you could have:
<title><?php { wp_title('') ;} ?> | Your Name</title>
Headings
Headings are defined by HTML with H1 (largest) to H6 (smallest). You need to use them in your articles when you write. Your article title should be in a main heading (H1), sub headings with H2 and small headings with H3.
Make sure that in theme/single.php this code <?php the_title(); ?> is wrapped in H1 so that it looks like:
<h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1>If your theme designer already used a specific CSS design for the heading tags you can do like this:
- Open up theme/single.php and add <div class=”singleheadings”> to the top after <?php get_header(); ?> and </div> to the bottom before <?php get_footer(); ?>.
- Add then add for example the following lines of CSS to your CSS file:
.singleheadings h1 {font-size:XXpx;font-family:XX} .singleheadings h2 {font-size:XXpx;font-family:XX} .singleheadings h3 {font-size:XXpx;font-family:XX}
You can change your quicktags by for example using this file instead (also add H2 to the file) so that you easily can insert heading tags when you write.
Navigation
Most of the link power is coming to the home page of your blog and gets distributed evenly among the rest of the links on that page. So in additional to having a good navigation structure for your visitors also do the following:
- Have links to the most important articles and pages from your home page. That can easily be achieved by making a category with your best articles and using the WP Category Post plugin to make a list of them on the index.php file.
- Install the Related Posts plugin and have your articles link to similar articles.
- Also link yourself to previous articles you have written.
- Place the attribute rel=”nofollow” on links that are totally useless for search engines such as to RSS feeds for the blog and comment links. In case you want to remove the nofollow on the comment links make sure you check the author links before approval as it is important that you don’t link to bad sites from your blog.
- You should not have hundreds of external links on the home page, if you have that I recommend that you place them on a separate page.
Site Map
A Site Map is where your visitors go to navigate and find specific articles and posts on your blog. It is also a place for search engines to find links to all your pages on your blog.
Use my article on how to make an automatic WordPresss Site Map and add one for your blog. I prefer that you make the first version in the guide.
What about a Google Sitemap?
It is not needed. There is no reason for a WordPress blog with a proper navigation structure to submit a Google Sitemap other than for information purposes. A Google Sitemap does not improve your ranking, only crawling, and that is not a problem.
Design
Everyone has different tastes about design but here are points to think about when you design your blog:
- Keep the design simple, very simple.
- Have the body text big with big and clear headings.
- For some reason blogs are not liked in the big social network sites (like digg, reddit etc) so make your theme unique and try to make it look like a site and not a blog.
- Make sure nothing steals attention from your text.
- The text width should not be longer than one and a half alphabet, even shorter.
- When a visitor reaches an article on your blog, the text should be seen instantly. Have the text as far up as possible. A visitor should not have to scroll to reach the content.
- If you are not making decent money with ads I suggest you to erase all ads you have on the blog.
References to follow:
What About the Meta Tags?
There are various WP plugins out there for this but to be honest and frank I can tell you that they are not worth the effort. The meta keywords tag are not used anymore (or extremely little) in the ranking calculation and while the meta description tag can show up in the SERPs I consider the snippet of text the visitor gets being better.
CSS Positioning
It has been said that by providing the important content first in the source code it will make a positive difference in your search engine ranking. I am not sure if this is true, but it won’t hurt to do it. For example on this blog the navigation on the left is in the bottom of the code.
Section 2: How to Craft Your Articles
You should read the entire section of Authoring High Quality Content by Mr. Fishkin but I give you here a very quick summary as it relates to this article.
First the most important quote:
One Great Page is Worth a Thousand Good Pages
While hundreds or dozens of on-topic pages that cover sections of an industry are valuable to a website’s growth, it is actually far better to invest a significant amount of time and energy producing a few articles/resources of truly exceptional quality. To create documents that become “industry standard” on the web and are pointed to time after time as the “source” for further investigations, claims, documents, etc. is to truly succeed in the rankings battle. The value of “owning” this traffic and link source far outweighs a myriad of articles that are rarely read or linked to.
Write articles or posts that serves as a stand alone document. This means there is everything valuable collected on that page on that specific topic. For example a stand alone document on “SEO for WordPress” should have everything on that page and the reader should not need any other articles on that topic.
Better 1 great article that you revise 10 times than 10 smaller ok articles.
To do this you can also rewrite and republish your old articles with the current time to show up again as the latest article.
Include links to more reading if applicable
Withing or at the end of your article you should link to other sources so that the reader can read more if he is interested. You can also use this as sources if you got your writing materials from other places.
Headlines
You should write the kind of headlines to your articles that:
- Contains important keyword combinations or phrase for ranking
- Describes with great interest what the article is about
- Makes the reader want to read it and clicks on it in the SERPs
- And is short and to the point
Section 3: Increase User Interaction
- Use polls from for example Poll Daddy.
- Increase the commenting field for longer user comments and better interaction. This also provides more unique content to your articles.
- Install the Subscribe to Comments plugin.
- Actually do reply to your commenters and answer their questions.
- If you revise an article based on a comment, do link and give credit to the commenter.
Section 4: Get Links
- The art of writing the kind of content that get natural links is called link baiting. See my article on that with a list of ideas here.
- Post your link baits on the major social network sites such as digg, reddit and the others.
- Install my Link to Me Textbox WordPess Plugin which provides an automatic HTML box of code for easy linking to you.
- Regularly link and reference other bloggers in your field in your posts to get attention from them. You loose nothing of it and many of them will return the favor and link to you. Also comment on their blogs to make them discover your blog.
- Read and follow my Link Building Guide
This article will be regularly updated and the URL will never change. Feel welcome to bookmark and or link to it. Let me know if there is something I should add. Thank you.
If you found this page useful, consider linking to it.
Simply copy and paste the code below into your web site (Ctrl+C to copy)
It will look like this: SEO for WordPress - The Complete Guide
[...] Fr dig som anvnder Wordpress som bloggprogramvara r mycket av den grundlggande skmotoroptimeringen redan gjord. Du kan dremot g igenom fljande fr att optimera din blogg riktigt bra: Kontrollera det tema du anvnder p bloggen: Kommer det viktigaste innehllet hgst upp och anvnds rubriktaggarna p rtt stt? Ls Jim Westergrens utmrkta guider: “SEO for Wordpress blogs” samt “WordPress users - sharpen your URLs with Google!“. [...]
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Excellent post Jim!
Excellent article! I’m wondering if the same applies to Wordpress-driven sites, as I am building a site with said CMS.
I was wondering if you would show how to do the seo mods or if you do it for a fee?
Thanks!
You mean the ones above?
It is quite easy but if you need help I can help you, it would cost a little bit yes.
Thanks! Mainly 3,4,5.
I use the optimal title plugin for titles and I had changed the peramlink already…
You can email me and we can go from there if you want.
patrick at patrickcash.com
Remarkable WP tips, thanks.
I can see put nofollows on things like RSS links and the like, but are you saying to link to other quality blogs with nofollows in place. This seems like defeating the purpose of a blog. No I’m not saying they should be link farms but Google seems to like blogs because of the extended conversation as well as fresh content. Why would you want to limit that conversation?
Greenguy,
About the nofollow I only mean the RSS thing, comment and such. As you can see on my blog there are no nofollow on the author links in comments and also none when I put URLs in posts that I make - I like to be generous and you are right on that point.
Hi Jim,
During the optimization of this blog, have you done anything to increase the content ratio or the keyword density?
Thanks,
Ciprian.
Ciprian,
Yes I have.
On a blog it is the single post pages that are important at it is those that will rank high in search engines.
So on those pages - like this one - I removed the navigation on the right side. This as those words are not usually related to the subject of the post and by removing it you increase the KW density.
I have realized that there are a lot more I could write about this and and so I think that I will expand this post about SEO for Wordpress blogs in a near future. Perhaps I can make the list double as long.
perfect site good information, very nice news and etc… tnx
One major problem to address with blogs, especially if you are utilizing a preset blog template supplied by one of the major blog platforms, is internal PageRank transfer. Blog PageRanks are heavily skewed to the home page. Many of the blog templates are not written with strong internal linkage. Because of that weakness, many internal pages in the archives, do not possess strong PageRanks.
http://www.johnbeck.tv/tax-foreclosures.html
Very true Smith.
Take a study at this blog if you want to see how I arranged the internal PR flow.
Where exactly do I put the rel=nofollow if I want to put that at a link?
And I don’t understand #2.? What exactly did you do there and how does it help?
and yeah I’m looking at all your tips for WP
Just started my own first blog!
Great tips, Jim. I notice that you don’t have any meta descriptions or keywords on your pages. Is this intentional? I added another step of SEO to a site at Pigeon Forge that pulls a post’s excerpt and uses it as the meta description. I know there’s talk about meta descriptions and keywords not being as effective in search engines these days, but I did it more for the user. A user is more likely to click a link in a search if it sounds interesting based on the title of the link and the description, so using a strong meta description rather than having a search engine “guess” is so much more effective. At least that’s what I’ve found. My clicks from search engines shot up about 25% once the pages got indexed with the new descriptions.
Great stuff!
Nice post.Coincidentally, I had just written a blog entry on optimizing page titles. The search engine advantages from this alone are ridiculous!
Great tips! Now why shouldn’t i thought of that? =)
With regards to point #1, i used /%postname%.html in my permalink in my blog http://ambatchdotcom.ruelbermudez.com/blog
Its definitely makes sense to beef up the description for search engines, because the user will decide whether to click a search result based on how interesting the link title and descriptions are. Helping out the description by pulling the excerpt proved to be HUGE.
ya that right if u seach some thin like real estate. than we see some tital and description . if our site tital more atractive for other than user come our site.
had just written a blog entry on optimizing page titles. The search engine advantages from this alone are ridiculous!
Remarkable WP tips, thanks.
Cool rescource left by you to the community thx alot
olli
Really usefull resource, thank You!
one thing more I saggeust the blog owner make some more blogs like this . so we get more info on it. This is say very great way to learn any thing or if u dont have knowlage but some thing than u just ask a Quession and u well get a anwser. Its simple great.
Mark,
This article will be expanded majorly soon, don’t worry.
I dont know but why i don find such informative and profitable blogs so often,I suspect blogging world is becoming so small that we cant find such lucrative blogs like this one.
Hi,
verry interesting article, thank you
greets from germany
Sven
Very good article, thanks!
Solid list of SEO best practices for Wordpress. Thanks for the list. I’ve found that most people don’t understand the use of Permalinks and what they can do for you as a blogger.
This article is now completely revised and republished.
Really good guide! I allways use your early guide when Im set up a new blog but now could I use this :D!
I dont like the “link to me textbox plugin”. Its okey at your blog and/or at other SEO-blogs or blogs about internet and stuff but I dont like it.
Like it when its cleaned up from that crap… Content is king. Clean is king. Natural linking is king :D.
(But as I say, at your blog it actually fit in…)
How about the robots.txt file?
The Robots.txt is not needed. But in case you want one you can check out this one.
Great post…i’ve been looking for some WP specific SEO information.
One question though, will allowing the bots to index my RSS feed hurt or benefit my rankings? Should I be excluding the feeds directory with robots.txt?
Really interesting article, but I was disappointed towards the ending to see that you used the word “here” as an anchor text for a link. Trying to take the first place on Google from Adobe?
I usually don’t post comments like that, but: Thanks. (And by the way, please set up at least a minimal print style sheet [1] … must write that, too.)
[1] http://meiert.com/en/blog/20070221/print-style-sheets-the-basics-for-no-excuses/
Jim there are many great ideas here, and the code you include will really help a lot of non programmers improve their blogs. One thing you say that I disagree with:
# Place the attribute rel=nofollow on links that are totally useless for search engines such as to RSS feeds for the blog and comment links.
By placing a nofollow tag on links such as your RSS feed this will ensure that no search engine will find it and therefore less users will find it. This is not advisable unless you want no one to read or syndicate your feeds.
Well, it will not make a significant difference but I consider it better to give a bigger share of the link juice to your other links. Placing nofollow should help.
Yeah, I should do that one day. Thanks.
Well, you find links to the RSS feeds on the blog, not in the SERPs. No one likes to get results such as this one in the SERPs. WordPress blogs has links to RSS feeds from all comment pages, category pages and home page.
For some reason, a small number of my readers found me via my indexed RSS feed on Google. So I think using nofollow in the RSS feed, which is changing its default property won’t be to my advantage.
wow this is indeed an eye opener for a new blogger like me. thanks to gaman above. i took like 1 hour reading all these stuffs. still i need more. thanks for such a great post. i probably write something about this too.
Thanks for the tip, wow this one old post - 2005, but great updates though. And that why people love WP!
Thanks
Excellent article. One question, once I read that in order to increase your links it might be useful to subscribe one’s own posts to blog carnivals. Is that realley true? Might it increase the number of links?
I couldn’t agree with this more, the number of relatively high quality posts that get killed on Digg because of a few google ads blocking the impact of the post must be huge.
Compliment, beautiful post
“One Great Page is Worth a Thousand Good Pages”
Excellent post JIM again. Am always learning new thing whenever i read your blog. “Link to Me Text box WordPress Plugin” Giving me great value to my blogs and showing me great result.
I loved where you said “For example a stand alone document on SEO for WordPress should have everything on that page and the reader should not need any other articles on that topic.”
This certainly is that page.
Hi Jim,
Id like to refer you back to a paragraph in your SEO For WordPress - A Complete Guide, under the heading of USING THE BEST URLS
Quote:
End Quote:
Jim, when I go to the Permalinks field in my blog I see that there are four options available to me, as follows:
1) Default:
2) Date and Name based:
3) Numeric:
4) Custom:
My own blog is set up with option 2).
However, from what I can gather, you are advocating we WordPress bloggers choose the Custom option at 4).
If this is correct, am I write in assuming that the sum total of information to be contained in the Custom permalink box would be as follows:
/%postname%/
The default code in the Custom permalink box is
/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/
so you are suggesting we edit that right down to just read %postname% is that correct?
Oh, and since I already have around 9 or 10 posts on my http://www.homeloangripes.com blog I take it that you are also suggesting I SHOULDNT change my permalink structure for this particular blog, but rather for any NEW blog/s I might form in the future.
Why is that? (just curious to know)
Regards,
Bruce
Jim,
With regard to ensuring that ALL posts go to just one of the four possible URL versions associated with my blog site, I note that you quote the following code can be pasted into the .htaccess file BEFORE the WordPress Permalink lines:
Quote:
End Quote:
Now, as I am not an html / WordPress expert, I am going to show you the code currently nesting in my own .htaccess file, and then ask you to please respond by showing me (via a comment on this page) what it SHOULD look like once your code has been added:
Here is my .htaccess file as of a minute ago:
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress
Jim, please note that the funny little row of squares right after # END WordPress didnt copy and paste into this comment.
Ive also just realized that apart from the main .htaccess file located in my htdocs directory, there is also another one in my Plugins directory. Forgive my naiveness here, but which one am I supposed to be adding the code to in order that I get all posts pointing to just ONE URL and not the four possible options?
Regards,
Bruce
Jim, is it important to use more than 1 heading? Do the headings h2 to h6 increase rankings at all?
Nice tips, Jim. I’d just started with my own blog and gave my own SEO recommendations for Wordpress blogs here:
http://www.larrylim.net/seo-online-marketing/seo-training-01-10-seo-tips-for-wordpress-blogs/18/
P/S: you still visit Namepros?
Excellent Guide Jim. Thanks.
Excellent Guide…
Thanks
outstanding article Jim. I’ve already implemented 2 of these suggestions, and plan on making changes today for a majority of the others.. thanks a ton for sharing..
Extremely useful, specially I gdidn’t know how to make 4 URL to become 1. Somehow I always thought Google could detect these automatically because it would ignore the repeated content..
Thanks, very helpful guide…
Jim, thanks, just what I needed, great article. I will be referencing you on my next post, right after I finish moving the free version of my blog:
http://www.seopractices.wordpress.com to my own host:
http://www.seopractices.com
I have already set up Wordpress on own host, so now I’m in the process of doing all the proper seo setting to it.
Jim, because I have the old blog with 16 posts on it, moving it to my own host gives me a couple questions?
-What is going to happen with the old url’s of the site? Do I have to do a 301 redirect for each old url to the new ones? Or is there a function at the free version of Wordpress that let’s me do it from there?
-Would I be able to keep the rankings I have for my old blog on my new blog?
Thanks in advanced for the great information, keep it up man.
Another question comes to my mind:
-Using the nofollow tag stops a webpage to spread link juice to the links in such page, but doesn’t stop bots to find that page. I understand that the way to block bots from crawling specific pages that you don’t want to be crawled, such us rss feeds, etc., is through robots.txt. Am I correct Jim? Thanks.
Nice guide Jim!
very good tutorial - it is nice to find every day a new thing to learn.
thanks
This post is fantastic Jim. I am going to be following all the instructions for the new blog Just Frag It and hopefully as it develops I’ll be able to test out various revenue generating strategies.
I am glad to post my views and points in this blog, but I must say that webmaster of this blog has done a very great job to make his blog more informative and more discussable but unfortunately everthing is same here that more than 80% in this and other blogs post their comments for making spam!!!, so i will really all this spam links to google band tool, because webmaster makes blogs for making discuss and for sloving each other problems. thanks http://www.gordoniihoodia.net
Tnx for the info.its nice tutorial….
Great Post.
Nice read definitely. Going to try the link to me textbox on my wordpress :))
Nice guide Jim!
Thanks for the tips!
But I am having some confusions about “duplicate content” these days.
Wouldn’t articles which are revised and republished a few times, be considered duplicate content by search engines?
I was wondering if you would show how to do the seo mods or if you do it for a fee?
Good article, thnx…
Hey Jim,
Awesome Tip! This was a great refreshing ideas of how to continue to say stay on the top of SEO! I will continue to use all your tips for my blog http://ambatchmasterpublished.blogspot.com
Hi Jim,
This is a great guide. I noticed that the link to the Related Post plugin doesnt work. Take care!
/Thomas Sjberg
thanks a lot
Great post and great to learn there are others like yourselves who have gone through the wordpress ringer. Title tags and meta description tags plugins are great ways to increase your clickthrough rate. They should be informative, natural, and contain relevant keywords ,all of this in a balance to benefit both search engines and users. SEO Articles
thanks
I have not given up on the description tag just yet. I add it to WP. I think creating your own description to be used on the search results page is a good idea also. It allows you to control the text the searcher sees.
Wow,
I am still very much new to SEO and web site marketing… And I have a WP blog that is ranked # 1 in two related searches “house cleaning tips blog” and “cleaning tips blog” on Google… It also is highly ranked with MSN and Yahoo… So I am a bit surprised about all the stuff that I have been reading about SEO and WP blogs… I just blog, blog, and blog some more… And everything has taken take of it’s self. If you need some cleaning tips then please do visit Your Fresh Start at Your Fresh Start
Thank you for providing the professional guideline of SEO for WordPress… I’m a beginner to doing web marketing, it very help me to have my plan and goal in this field!
Yeah like the tut Jim!
Thanks for sharing!
Benefits of WordPress and RSS on a website
RSS streamlines communications between publishers and readers. Since RSS has recently had a popularity surge, webmasters have been experimenting and using RSS feeds to deliver content in new and innovative ways.
Typically, RSS feeds contain news headlines and content summaries. The content summaries contain just enough information without overwhelming the reader with superfluous details. If the reader is interested and wants additional information, they can click on the item in the feed, accessing the website which contains additional details.
RSS readers aggregate multiple feeds, making it easy for individuals to quickly scan information contained within each feed. Feeds are generally themed, allowing users to opt-in to feeds that are of interest.
The big benefit to RSS is that individuals opt-in to content of interest, totally controlling the flow of information that they receive. If the quality of the content in the feed declines, users simply remove the feed from their RSS reader and they will not receive any additional updates from that source. The RSS reader acts as an aggregator, allowing users to view and scan multiple content streams in a timely fashion.
RSS is a great supplemental communication method that does not burden the publisher with maintaining lists or following strict privacy guidelines. RSS feeds are compiled according to the user’s choices, removing any burden that is placed on publishers of email newsletters. Publishers no longer need to be concerned with spam, privacy policies and age guidelines.
Today, the web is no longer about passive reading; it’s now about sharing content. Increasingly, websites are disseminating their news via blogs and articles. RSS is the new way for people to publish and distribute content.
The benefits of RSS marketing are:
- RSS is dynamic. As soon as content is changed, users know immediately;
- Users can review a large number of sites can easily by choosing from categorised headlines;
- It bypassed spam filters and firewalls and cannot get infected by viruses as users select the RSS feeds they are interested in;
- It allows users to view content without having to visit a site;
- It provides fresh content for your website;
- By adding RSS to a site, other people’s content can be easily published;
- It increases your search engine rankings because of the fresh content you are adding;
- It saves time: instead of browsing multiple sites for information, syndicated content is delivered directly through an RSS Reader.
WordPress can be added to an existing website as a seamless addition. The benefits of using WordPress are:
- It has a variety of free plug-in themes to define the look and feel;
- The software writes each article into an RSS file, which allows the major feeds to publish it each time an article is added;
- It can be seamlessly integrated into the site, adding content and therefore boosting PR values;
- Choosing a relevant keyword for the directory name will also help relevance in outbound links thereby increasing a sites visibility;
- Using the Technorati plug-in, keywords are tagged on that site for blog searches;
- Website owners can make money from running ads from Google Adsense at circa 75% of the click-through value
- Small companies can now be offered templated but effective Content Management Systems (CMS) solutions through WordPress, either as an add-on or the site itself.
thanks you
What about my site’s SEO? I wait your suggestions. Thanks!
great article… thnx
Hey! man.. What a great tip!
This was a great refreshing ideas.I will continue to use all your tips for my blog.
Thank you so much.
very nice informations.thanks..
I use this SEO plugin: wpSEO.
Hello,
this ist cool, thanks.
bye
I think you make more blogs for this type. Than we take a lots of information for it.I think its understandable that these transit workers feel shortchanged by this request given the years of service theyve given the system.
Thanks
Excellent article Jim. I had to stumble you.
Thanks for sharing the seo guide for wordpress !
Really a graet article. I was looking for more on avoiding duplicate content which is a major problem with wordpress design.
But really a good list of all useful plugins and resources to improve!
thanks a lot ıts a useful ınformatıon
great post..
thanks for the information
Thanks for that Jim, much needed info on wordpress SEO.
Really a graet article. I was looking for more on avoiding duplicate content which is a major problem with wordpress design.
But really a good list of all useful plugins and resources to improve
thank you for this useful information
Hello Jim,
You have created a great guideline, thank you!
Well describe SEO guide, That would really help to Blogger to set up Blog and also help then to promote their blogs on SE.
Thank
This was a great refreshing ideas.I will continue to use all your tips for my
Well done Jim. Very great SEO Guide !
Thats a great piece of information.
Thanks.
I might be using them in my http://www.blogtantra.com
I would agree there are many people who dont really know much about SEO. Thanks for making it simple to understand. Keep your tips coming.
Good articles! thanks for sharing!
We just release a new kind of plugin .
Still in french , V 0.1 , just release this day
Give your page the 301 +url , 302 + url , 404 error code from the “edit post page”
Traduction needed ! ( mail can be found on our site if you can help )
http://www.wordpress-seo.com/seo-http-error-manager.php
How it works :
Download, copy to plugin directory, Activate.
When editing you can choose Leave, 301, 302, 404 ( and url for 301, 302 )
Licence , “can be stolen”
and we still dont care of man who still want to give a licence for “nothing” like this !
Comment for make it better welcome
Sorry for my english
++
Thanks for helpful information you catch up us with your instructional explenation.
What people do is more important that what they say…
Best regards
Wow, I really enjoyed reading over all this information, and had to try some of this stuff out on my new container gardening blog.
Thanks again,
Simon
Nice list, thanks !
This blog was very useful for me.
John Sylvester’s comments about RSS and WordPress, especially the line, “WordPress can be added to an existing website as a seamless addition” is important, taken in context. This effectively means that writing articles about web design can add a significant amount of content that will help any site in Google’s rankings. It also gives information about the author, the company and its objectives. I have added a WordPress blog to my own, with very encouraging early results.
It’s important to me to completely and 100% understand the meaning of what I’m getting myself into when I start a new blog. I have started a couple only to fade out after the initial rush of having a new blog that I believe with actually help people. I wanted to create a blog once about advertising because my entire life is centered around it but I couldn’t even get that off the ground and actually get people to read it. Which was truly sad because I had a lot of good advice to give, for free. How do you actually make sure that you have the kind of blog that people want to read and will link to and will come back to time and time again? What’s wrong with my blog if it already has excellent quality articles and still no one comes to read it? Am I just targeting an audience that doesn’t exist? Is it possible that business owners and decision makers just don’t ever surf the internet in need of information?
Wow, this is some of the best, and most concise information I’ve read. I’ve been using the Link to me textbox and I think it’s just nice to have for any blog. I’m new at seo but I feel confident I’m getting info from a good source. Thank you very much!!!
A Superb and marvelous guide for me, who is new on the blog and what to everything right from the beginning with me site and blog on Sundream estate
Many thanks Jim
Thanks for the great tips as useally but has google downgraded the value of blogs as they dont seem to come up so often in the searches anymore.
Hi,
I like the ‘For branding purposes’ title tag — and i actually prefer it over the SEO title tags option as I think title and heading should be consistent — so instead of putting the title tag php echo code in my h2 tags I just use the H2 provided by Wordpress.
However, I tried the code you provided for the ‘For branding purposes’ title tag and it didn’t work. I get a parse error relating to that line.
The more simple ‘Optimum ranking’ title tag code works fine.
Any ideas?
Ive always wanted to optimize my WP blog with all the tips and ideas Ive gathered so far. The problem, however, is that I cant get all of my ideas materialize unless I purchase an account upgrade. Is there any way for me to optimize my site without purchasing this?
an interesting article, nice guide
thank you
jim well its such an excellent post. i really amazed after reading your post. you have clearly mentioned how to make use of our blog through improving the blog in various aspects to increase traffic. the url’s you have given also find useful for all the blogs.
I have really wondered that even meta tags are also playing good role in building traffic for blogs.
I think if you like to do seo on wordpress you must use plugins for seo which are available free online.
Hi all,
Wowww!!! What a great tip…
Thanks!
very nice informations.thanks..
We informative tip. I will certainly use it during my work of Web site Designing.
nice article; “pure and clear”
Great article!
Thank you for this informatin again.I will certainly use it during my work of web site.
Regards,
Lazerli Epilasyon
Minna Lazer - Stuff
I will use it on my site…
Your site is interesting, I will visit every day.Thanks
There is a lot to know about WordPress if you are serious.
You have provided a good list of stuff to consider. I would recommend that anyone interested in blogging use WordPress and learn about its features and how to make it SEO friendly ETC.
Hi,
Article is good but for me sound little difficult & more Techy language…
Can u please guide me some easy steps for doing this
Ive just updated my WP plug ins today when one idea came to me. Whats the use of these add-ons when I cant add them to my blog. The reason why I cant add them is that theyre only for blogs which were upgraded. Im really not sure if I need that upgrade because the main purpose why I set up my blog was for me to have an endless record of thing Ive experience in life. But I couldnt personalize my blog if Im not going to buy an upgrade. Can you also suggest something for people like me who stays with the basic?
Links are certainly important, but they may get less important as Google brings in its new algorithm called LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing.) This is because Google will start looking for keywords, related terms and words to those keywords, and the general relevancy of the content. What this ultimately means is that the site that is the most relevant and has the most quality writing and information, may be the site that comes on top. While links and keywords are still important, they may start taking a back door compared to actual quality of the content. That may seem impossible, but I think that’s the goal and it’s a very good goal at that.
hey dude!!thanks for sharing a wonderful experience with me…..if i tell it is a article its not good, better i will say as book…because only a book can explain from top to bottom……the highlight of this guide is anyone can understand easily and simple to learn……i will recommend this guide for all seo newbie….actyually i would like to thank my friend for directed me to this page….
I am happy, that I found your site. Is the best!
There is so much to know to do blogging right. Thank you for this comprehensive list of information. It will take me a week to read, reread, study and learn all this.
Nice Job. Everything I need to know in one place.
Greetings! The excellent site, has especially liked design. Thanks.
Blogging isn’t as easy as everybody thinks. Thanks for the guide!
Hai buddy, I am a junior web master I have searched for the details about the Links and the HTML tags. But I didnt get any clear details about that but after I saw your articles I got to know about the How to Craft our Articles and I know about the how to get links from others. And how to get interact with other sites. Thank you for your tips.
This site rocks
Very nice! Greetings from Spain.
Thanks for the great article.
Very Good! I love it.
This is rocking and very nice!!
Greetings from India.
One vital aspect, I have always thought, about optimization and WordPress was that the Technorati plug-in is a must a generates a lot of traffic to the blog if the title has been well thought out.
I often send this post as a link to students who have guestions about WordPress Blogs. Thanks
Very NICE! I got a great tips from your article here!
thank you~
Thanks! Mainly 3,4,5.
I use the optimal title plugin for titles and I had changed the peramlink already
You can email me and we can go from there if you want.
cicicocuk at http://www.oyunambari.com
I use the optimal title plugin for titles and I had changed the peramlink already
Thanks so much for this informative post. It’s been a great way to get our Wordpress SEO initiative off the ground!
(although, ironically, my own blog doesn’t use WordPress)
Thanks again!
again smple and easy illustrative article . great for someone to start using wordpress
Very NICE! I got a great tips from your article here! thank you~
Our company has been in the real estate business for over 20 years and, we have to admit that the lastest project has overcome our dinasour advertising metods by employing Web 2.0.
Living in Bangkok, you see glitzy front-page supplements that dominate Thailands English dailies, full-page magazine and newspaper colour ads that abound large project launches, and the billboards that predominate the city and Skytrain. We can only imagine the cost of such publicity and its significant impact on a projects bottom line.
That is not to say that elegantly-produced brochures and local media advertising doesnt have merit, but it has always seemed to us that it is a sort of marketing overkill a gunshot rather than rifle approach to project exposure.
For two years or more we have become acutely aware of the benefits of professional blogging: it increases company revenue over time through the marketing and relationship building power. The ability to write effective, interesting, and informative blog posts has proved itself be a highly cost effective option.
Gdlck works just fine
Thanks for sharing the news about the launch. Its one of the most fun projects Ive worked on.
very informative, thank you
Thanks Jim. A very crisp and informative article.
I am not a techie person but am trying my best to grasp things .. all the codes that you’ve written (php) to cite examples went way above my head. So did the plugin part.
When I clicked on the plugin links, most of them showed page not found. I wonder if there is some software or basic interface i need to download before trying to get to those pages.
Can you help me in this regard ? My attempt to google has only confused me even more.
Also, if time permits, please take a look at my blog and give me some honest feedback.
Thank you.
Hey Jim. A very crisp and informative article.
Thank you.
I agree Jim your writing style is very to the point and informative. Thanks
Very NICE! I got a great tips from your article here
I cant ask for more. Youve mentioned it all. I have several questions though: How regularly should you post in your blog? What about managing comments? What are the best ways to fight spammers? What is your say about trading links with fellow bloggers?
Thanks for this good article..
Thanks Jim..You have given all tips for FREE…
Thanks a lott……..
Very useful information, bookmarked! cheers
This is a really great list. I’ll have to bookmark this so that we can get back to it…Thanks for taking the time to prepare this.
I am not too focus on optimizing for blogs. However, those points that you hvae brought up are valid in terms of SEO. Good tips and i believe it will work well for blog optimization.
Very useful information, bookmarked! cheers
Hey Jim. A very crisp and informative article.
Thank you.
Really helpful post for all newbie blogger’s who are hunting there ways to get popularity and earn few bucks through there writing.
nice job Jim.
Great tips! Now why shouldnt i thought of that? =)
Hi! Your site appeared very useful to me. Excellent work, thanks.
Hello admin, nice site! Good content, Beautiful design, thanks! Greetings
Hello my name is Cisco. English language is my second language . I visit sites like yours to learn new english vocabulary words and improve my english grammar . I hope to have effective communication and business communication for a new job in US. I learned a new word of the day from your site. I plan to be public speaking and business writing better now from your site. Thank you.
Thanks Jim,
İt’s a good article. I wish your success.
Regars..
Great site! Thanks for letting me look around.
Very good site, well done. I especially like the ease of use and navigation
Incredible site!
Very nice and well designed web site. Great content and a fascinating read, keep up the good work and looking forward to more in the future.
Excellently, interesting and educational work! Your homepage looks really good and gives great information! Greetings from me! greetings
Good contents! fors as well as youngsters. Most effective website I have visited so far. Congratulations!!!!!
Site was very helpful. thank you
superb write up.thanks most of what you have written is like text book on seo.
Very interesting & professional site. You done great work.
Greetings from Arlington, Texas! Nice site!
I misspelled my email address on my last mail to you. Anyways, keep the site up!
i love this page keep it up.
Hi, nice site! Keep up the good work!
Brilliant advice - thanks
thanks
Enjoyed browsing through the site. Keep up the good work.
Hi Jim,
Thanks for all the useful tips on your guide, there’s a few I haven’t yet done myself. Im writing something similar on my own site..How I SEO my Wordpress Blog, link is http://how-to-solutions.com/beginners-guide-seo-wordpress-blog.html
I hope your readers find it of some interest.
Thanks, keep up the good work.
This site is professional and to the point.
Hello. Enjoyed your web site
! ! !
great tutorial..
thnks for the information..
that’s absolutely fantastic!
And we need reliable and quality virtual employees.
i want to ask one question toall.
i wanted to hire virtual employees for web designing and SEO. Actually i am looking for whole virtual team. Because now it’s become very expensive for our organization to recruit employees
We were prepared to post our requisite on freelancers site. But we have observed that it’s very time as well as money consuming process. And also I heard that The bigger problem on Elance, in my experience, is dummy projects. Some buyers post projects simply to get an idea of the cost or to try to find free work So, what next?
Our team comes out with conclusion to directly contact companies who are providing virtual employee services. But the question is “RELIABILITY and Hiring charges”.
We have got replies from some forums and communities. So, now we have one option company marketraise corp. it’s nice.
But we want best service provider with better package.
Thanks in advance
Sophia
good job please keep on the good work
Good work m8! This actually makes alot of sense.