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: This article was written in march 2007 and has not been updated since then, although many parts are still relevant. You should see my latest article about Wordpress: Hacks to boost your WordPress 2.7 blog.
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.
Jim Westergren is a company owner from Sweden who lives together with his wife and son. Some of his interests are SEO, web development, writing and
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 don’t 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 I´m set up a new blog but now could I use this
!
I don´t like the “link to me textbox plugin”. It´s okey at your blog and/or at other SEO-blogs or blogs about internet and stuff but I don´t like it.
Like it when it´s cleaned up from that crap… Content is king. Clean is king. Natural linking is king
.
(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,
I’d 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 SHOULDN’T 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” didn’t copy and paste into this comment.
I’ve 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
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?
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 doesn´t work. Take care!
/Thomas Sjöberg
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
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!
What about my site’s SEO? I wait your suggestions. Thanks!
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.
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 it’s understandable that these transit workers feel shortchanged by this request given the years of service they’ve 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
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?
I’ve always wanted to optimize my WP blog with all the tips and ideas I’ve gathered so far. The problem, however, is that I can’t 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!
We informative tip. I will certainly use it during my work of Web site Designing.
nice article; “pure and clear”
I will use it on my site…
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
I’ve just updated my WP plug ins today when one idea came to me. What’s the use of these add-ons when I can’t add them to my blog. The reason why I can’t add them is that they’re only for blogs which were upgraded. I’m 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 I’ve experience in life. But I couldn’t personalize my blog if I’m 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 didn’t 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~
Gdlck works just fine
Thanks for sharing the news about the launch. It’s one of the most fun projects I’ve 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 can’t ask for more. You’ve 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.
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.
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. I’m 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.
I have followed all, no most, of your advice in the last year and it really does make all the difference. Thanks Jim, you are worth your weight in gold!
Every wordpress user should read this blog before doing anything else!!
nothing more i can say because you’ve had it all. thanks for the info. nice site.
you have it all, nothing more nothing less, thanks for the nice information, it will help me a lot.
i read all of that, and it’s realy nice atricle. but still i looking for some bot to add my pages to search enginse and so, do any one have sth like this?
Just want to quickly share this good information. SEO challenge offering US 5000 for the winner. Competition will end in a few months. Find detail information here.
Thanks.
very beneficial write up. thank you.
Lots of great info, keep up the good work!
Very well done site! Please keep up the good work.
Great site keep up the good work
Thanks Jim,
For arranging this blog site.This will help me a lot..bookmarked and using it as a go to guide.
good job please keep on the good work
Wordpress is a good script to use seo materials on. I use “all in seo” pac and i em very pleased.
SEO is very good to get best rank in search engine but need to spend long time to best result. Patient also is important thing and must do more study about the SEO optimizing. If you are really master on SEO its like you can easy success on what ever blog platform you create beside the wordpress
Anyone else got this problem? When changing pluginversion in the menu the page turns blank and defaults to latest pluginversion on reload.
thanks great article!
Hi Jim,
I see that you’ve been overwhelmed with questions and might not have the time to answer all of them, but I’m still gonna try my luck.
Question…
I’m about to transfer all my content from old CMS site to new wordpress site (about 800 articles).
Should I…
A. Keep the dynamic links… or…
B. Create new permalinks with 301 redirect for each
Hope that yu can help. Keep up the GREAT work!
James
Hi James,
I think I would take option B. But it depends on the situation.
Good luck.
thanks a lot for article
Fantastic read. Seo is very hard, to point out the obviouse but its articles like this make it possible for people to learn from. Thanks
Awsum article. Keep it up. Its great when you find an article thats actually usefull. Thanks
thanks for that article! it was extremly informative! keep up the great work!
thanks for this article! i loved the depth of information provided : )
wow i wish someone had something like this for joomla, i setup my website in joomla but this was also helpful : ) thanks for that!
Very nice and well designed web site.thanks
Awesome tips:)
if you have created a themes with all the tricks?
because I am still a beginner and I am confused to implement it on the themes
You have some fantastic advice here! May I note that many premium themes these days already have great SEO integrated into the code. I use one theme known as Mimbo Pro, which has a wide variety of SEO tools and tricks builtin automatically. Just wanted to add my 2 cents…
Continue on with the great website!
Wordpress is a great platform for blogging, than ks for sharing…
great informative post very few provide such information in blogs.
Thank you..
thanks for this article!
Hi Jim, do you think for blog optimization s good to leave the meta description tag empty, so search engine will snippet from the blog content itself to achieve long tail SEO effect?
Nice post on WP SEO. What do you think about the WP Plugin All In One SEO Pack? I use this plugin and I think its the best for optimization for WP. Sure, you need to craft your articles or posts as well but this plugin makes everything else like the title tags, blog tags, and meta tags that much easier.
Yes, I think so. At least for blog rather then automatically taking the first sentence or so as a description.
It is a great plugin but it did not exist when I wrote the article. I would need to update this article as soon as I get the time for it and then I will for sure mention this plugin.
thanks for that article! it was extremly informative! keep up the great work!
I agree with all the other points and am already following most of them
Jim,
thanks for blogging about wordpress seo optimization. It’s my belief that if your blog is part of a main website, the ultimate URL for the blog is http://www.mysite.com/blog – however, wordpress do not support this format. Have you examined any workarounds? I know wordpress offer their software if you want to utilize this structure but I’m not sure how complicat4ed it is to use.
Marie,
http://www.mysite.com/blog/ should be the best in my opinion. To achieve it just install wordpress in a folder called “blog”.
You have made an awesome attempt and is doing consistently good.
Does All In One SEO can help our Website rank? I’m a newbie, is that for free?
I must say, It is one of the best SEO quick guide articles I’ve ever seen. Really very very Awesome and well written !
ohhh… how to optimize in blogspot, I just a new bie guys.. thanks
Gr8 collection of tips for wordpress blogger. Your post worth reading and proves very helpful for me.
Informative. Thank you.
Great informative post very few provide such information in blogs.
I must say, It is one of the best SEO quick guide articles
thanks
great tutor, thanks
nice guide,thanks
Excellent article, straight to the point. Too many SEO companies just focus on what search engine is looking for, and not optimised SEO for human reading.
Sitemaps are necessary but then many webmasters just don’t put emphasis on it. Properly formatting your headlines really help, those h1, h2.
Thanks! Mainly 3,4,5.
I use the optimal title plugin for titles and I had changed the peramlink already…
Great informative post very few provide such information in blogs.
I must say, It is one of the best SEO quick guide articles
thanks
Thanks a lot for this wonderful article
Regards
Thank You Jim. Useful article.
Where more effective permalink with .html extensions or without.
Example http://www.jimwestergren.com/seo-for-wordpress-blogs/article or
http://www.jimwestergren.com/seo-for-wordpress-blogs/article.html
Thank You…
@KoiKeeper,
I would do it without any extension at all.
Thanks for sharing Jim.
If we write one really good article, we can forget about writing for search engines. The good article will be picked up by others and this is definitely worth the effort.
Thanks for this article
regards
thanks for the info!
Jim, thank you,
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.
Thanks for sharing, Jim!
Looking forward to your next article about SEO for Wordpress blogs.
regards,
Thank you for the extensive guide! I’m working on making my SEO much better on my blog to drive in more traffic, and this is a great help.
Nice article Jim. Thanks for taking the time to write this.
Informative. Thank you.
Hi man ! yeah your articles very good and usefull. Thanks for this posting..
Good tips.Through these one can definitely get good ranking.
Excellent article Jim. Thank you. I am going to implement your suggestions right away.
Awesome tips, I specifically like the common sense advice at the very beginning, too many people don’t get the basics and try too hard to jump into what won’t matter until they have that much down. Great suggestions, I’ll return to this for a deeper look later.
It’s 2009 now and i think its still relevant.
And dun rush. Do it bit by bit.
Also, blogs are no longer “in”, dun think Twitter was around at the point in time you wrote this.
First, let me thank the writer of this article for writing such an awesome article. The points explained in this article are the core factors which lifts your SEO efforts to the end. Sitemap plays a very significant role to get your all site links indexed. Basically, sitemap are of two types, one is that you create to submit to the google webmaster tool for search engines and another one is that you create for your valuable visitors to navigate through the site easily. Also, the RSS feed URL is important as well, as it will get you many backlinks by submitting the feed url of your site to the feed directories.
Excellent post. It’s nice to read a post with details about the topic. So many people just post highlights, but you go the extra mile. Well Done, Thanks!
thanks for such incredible information. I wonder if it still applies today since your post is for a couple of years.
Great Content! And you prove your point by placing this post on number one in Google for “seo for wordpress blog” You Rock! thanks.. Lets see if i can get http://delightfulshopping.com to at least show up once with some of your tips! thank you
I saw on mattcutts blog that he mentioned some tips on ranking in wordpress. Thank you also for this.
Wordpress is very good for SEO. There are so many useful plugins. Thanks for your guide.
wordpress is the best solution i think.
Nice atricle. Very useful. I shall follow your guide. I myself have frequent requests for training in wordpress.
You suggest us great tips i come here from google and find ur article usefull but i have one question, u say simple theme/design. So how to ensure design is simple or design code is not complicated, is there any tool.
If one have portal site then how about using magazine style theme for wordpress as usually they are not plain?
hey this is great, im going to use this as an FAQ section
I have a fair amount of SEO knowledge and most of my sites rank well in the three major search engines. However, as fast as I can get quality backlinks that are related to my sites, Google seems to remove them.
My SEO blog has a PR3 and about 60% of my blog posts rank on the 1st page of Google for some of their search terms. My main page ranks fair. However, I think I need to go to a landing page format to rank higher in the search engines.
It just seems odd that I rank so well with just 3 backlinks showing it Google. My domain is 11 years old and that is part of the reason it ranks that well. However, I am somewhat puzzled about the backlinks issue with Google.
What is even more weird is that some of my clients rank on the 1st page of Google for their main page keyword terms, without any backlinks. Of course, some of these sites are 5 years old.
Anybody, have any suggestions of what I might be over looking? Is Google putting less importance on backlinks these days, is the big question in my mind.
thank so much , I saw on mattcutts blog that he mentioned some tips on ranking in wordpress. Thank you also for this.
awesome n really worth my time,i hav even bookmarked this post,you have done a lot of linkbaiting i guess
Excellent post. I just posted a recent presentation of Yoast with more Wordpress SEO tips on my blog More Wordpress SEO. Might be interesting for your readers.
Hi Jim
Lots of info here and it will take me some time to work through it all.
One thing that did catch my eye…
“Better 1 great article that you revise 10 times than 10 smaller ok articles.”
That’s what I,ve been doing – good to know that I am doing the right thing.
The other thing…
“To do this you can also rewrite and republish your old articles with the current time to show up again as the latest article.”
Great tip, which I shall certainly do.
I reached this website while searching for term “SEO for WordPress” in google and it was in 2nd, so i guess this might be effective. using plugins like platinum seo, all in 1 seo will also be fruitful for seo
thanks for the info
thanks süper bir disney olmu?
http://www.mp3dinleyin.com te?ekkürler thank you very march administrator
Great post!! I just have to copy it, I have written a blog about gifts, please come visit my site when u have time ^_^
How big a deal is it that you post title has to be the H1 tag?
My theme is so that the top heading of the blog itself is H1 and then the post titles are H2.
Nice post, but, does it work on blogspot blogs or not?
Does it work on blogspot, my blog is http://www.crack-cricket.blogspot.com
Too many apps lead to slow page load. Deactivate apps that are not in use or necessary. Great post!
insanity workout
hope this article works in my website
Fantastic tips, but also very well written and explained. Thank you!
numberone posted thank you for
how to make traffic over in every day
Thanks for the great tips….I will follow you and read your posts as often as I can
Excellent article! Thanks for sharing.
I am still trying to figure out what exactly is a landing page. Overall, this article really does cover a significant amount of information for newbies and yet refreshes the recollection of experienced WP users.
great article ever
How could you have a page this high up in a search result and not put adsense on it? That is really borderline criminal.
http://southbostontaxi.com
it is useful for me ,thank you.
Nice article. Thank you !
Good quality SEO information
Thanks,Dear Jim.
I feel very honored because I can see on the wordpress’ seo article, it is very detailed and in-depth.
Thanks a lot for your post and sharing.
Good work my friend.Thank you very much.i wish you success
Your main traffic should come to articles and posts inside your blog, not the home page.
This point is truly the best raw truth that a blogger has to relaize.
Lots of info here and it will take me some time to work through it all.
The impressive thing in your article is–
“Better 1 great article that you revise 10 times than 10 smaller ok articles.”
Glad to know that I am doing the right thing.
Great tip.
Nice post, thanks for sharing this wonderful and useful information with us. I will follow you and read your posts as often as I can
Good resource for anyone starting a blog or needs help optimizing one. Wordpress is the way to go if you plan on running a blog.
This info is great. Thank you. Please tell me how to get into the code of my blog. I maybe sounding like I know what i talk about but not actually.
Nice article Jim. Thanks for taking the time to write this.
Good work. I like it.
Hi,
Thanks For sharing such a wonderful blog. It is much informatics for me.
Keep posting.
Thanks & Regards
Brainshakers Interactive
Hi Jim, hope that everything is good with you and your family, a great post, thanks for sharing this wonderful and useful information with us. I was reading it again before I started up my new WP-blog page. //Lennart Marbella.
I would like to ask for your help writing a thesis on Wordpress SEO. Please fill in this questionnaire. Please, only complete the questionnaire if you are not a beginner user of Wordpress!
Thank you very much your help in advance.
Ildikó (from Hungary)
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dHAwY2g0UWJfUnlZR2Z4Z1Q2WTdMd1E6MA
Good work. I realy like it.
it’s true.
Great article. As you said- I will have to link to it
Take care.
This is a really helpful post with great tips. Coming from blogger this helped me get a grasp on some subjects I can put to use with Wordpress. Thanks for the share.
You have put in a great resource here. It’s worth selling.
I have worked in wordpress but I do not notice rules which have define in this post , really, I am happy to find this post , I also want to follow these rules , I have confidence , these rules will helpful in wordpress. Thanks
thank for your information, i now a litle bit understand about seo in wordpress
The best article on seo for wordpress I found sofar. Thanks writing and sharing.
Awesome plugin, thank you!
Wow, the definitive guide! This really is one of the better resources for Wordpress SEO I’ve found, good job!
Good for SEO’s