Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips for WordPress
By Michael Pollock in Featured, WordPress
1. Write keyword rich post titles - it almost goes without saying, but the post title is the most important part of the blog post for many reasons. From your reader’s perspective, a descriptive and compelling title helps them decide if your post is worth reading or not. From an SEO perspective, think about the keywords or phrases people might type into a search box to find your post 2 months from now, and use those words or phrases in your post title. For maximum benefit, try to avoid titles that are cute, clever or cryptic.
2. Make your post titles live links - many of the WP themes already do this, but if yours doesn’t, you can add the necessary code pretty easily. In your Main Index Template and Page Template, find the code for the post tiltle. It’ll probably look like this:
<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
To link your post titles, you’ll want to replace that code with the following (be sure to leave out the “#” symbols):
<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
3. Optimize your permalinks - the default WP 2.0 installation displays permalinks this way: http://www.savvysolo.com/?p-123. A more search-engine friendly permalink includes the post title in the link, like this: http://www.savvysolo.com/2006/01/16/keyword-rich-post-title/. This is a simple change to make. In your WP admin panel, click on the “Options” tab, then the “Permalinks” sub-tab, and choose the option just below the “Default” permalink option. See the WordPress Codex for more on permailinks.
4. Optimize your page titles - According to most SEO experts, the page title tag is one of the most important tags on your page. In most WP themes, you’ll find the page title tag in the Header Template, and the default version ususally looks like this:
<title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?><?php wp_title(); ?></title>
The best tweak I’ve seen to optimize this tag comes from Stephen Spencer, who suggests using the following code for page title tag (omit the “#”):
<title><?php if (is_home()) { print "whatever title I want to have on my blog home page."; } else { wp_title(' '); print " : "; bloginfo('name'); } ?></title>
This tweak does a couple different things. First, it allows you to use a more descriptive, keyword-rich title for your blog’s main page. And second, for the individual post pages, it will use the title of your post as the page title, which is another reason to follow the advice I mentioned in #1 above.
5. Use the related posts plugin - Alex Malov’s Related Entries plugin is a neat little addition to any WP blog. Not only does it enhance your blog’s usability, but it also helps create a dense link structure throughout your site, which makes it easier for the search engine spiders to find and index older blog posts.
6. Use the Google sitemap plugin - According to Google:
“Google Sitemaps is an easy way for you to submit all your URLs to the Google index and get detailed reports about the visibility of your pages on Google.”
WordPress user Arne Brachold has made the sitemap creation and submission process fairly simple with his Google Sitemap plugin, which was recently updated for WP 2.0. This plugin will create a sitemap for you and submit it to Google.
Additionally, Elliot Kosmicki offers a script that will convert your Google sitemap into a Yahoo compliant sitemap that you can submit to Yahoo.
7. Add meta keyword tags and Technorati tags to your posts automatically - although it’s questionable whether or not meta keywords are still valuable when it comes to SEO, ultimately, they can’t hurt. As far as Technorati tags, they have little impact on SEO, but they can help increase your traffic directly from Technorati, so it’s a good idea to use them.Rick Boakes created the Autometa plugin that will add both tags to your posts automatically.
Another simple and effective Technorati tag generator I’ve used is Broobles’ Simple Tags plugin.
8. Validate your code - Use the W3C Markup Validation Service to ensure the code behind your pages is clean and valid. If you find your pages have errors in the code, hire or make friends with a savvy web developer to help you clean it up. See Google’s Information for Webmasters for more info on creating a technically valid site.
If you have further SEO tips for WordPress blogs, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
On Jan 20, 2006, Bryan Covington said:
Another handy plugin that ties to your #4 point is the Optimal Title plugin by Elastic Dog. I use it on my site and while I don’t know how much it’s actually helped, it was simple and easy to put in.
A little more SEO can’t hurt.
On Jan 23, 2006, Simply said:
Do not expect for Google spiders to come first even if you feed them your URL. MSN does a better job in discovering new sites. Wrote about MSN as first to index my site.
On Jan 29, 2006, Martin said:
Gotta agree with Simply … on my own sites I’ve noticed MSN gets to them much faster than Google does
On Feb 26, 2006, theMaab said:
hum… that seems werid. I have several site (nothing fancy/client sites) and a lot of them were ‘found’ by Google.
I never submitted the URL to them. However, I did have links to the sites from others sites. And that is how Google did find the site.
A friend once told me it is better if Google finds your site, verses you submitting the URL.
Now… if that is true or not, I do not know.
But I can confidently say I have a good 5 sites, that do show up on Google (not great rankings necessarily) and I never submitted the URL directly to Google.
On Mar 12, 2006, aggressive skater said:
There are some great tips here. I made the changes to my blog on friday and today (two days later), I am number one on google for the phrase “aggressive skate blog”! These are great tips, they really work.
On Jul 8, 2006, Jason Brown said:
These are all great tips to increase your SEO exposure for WordPress blogs. I was really glad to see you talking about the Sitemaps plugin, related post plugin, and validating your code with the W3C.
You mentioned optimizing your title tags, well.. I would like to offer my WordPress SEO plugin I made, which will optimize title tags, helps with autodiscovery of RSS feeds, and optimizes the meta tags as well.
You will Ultimate Tag Warrior installed, which is a great tagging plugin, but you can get my SEO plugin here WordPress SEO plugin
On Jul 10, 2006, SEO Portal said:
Here is another article about SEO for WordPress:
[url=”http://www.seo-portal.com/10-seo-tips-for-wordpress/2006/07/09/”]10 SEO Tips for WordPress[/url]
On Jul 14, 2006, Pigeon Forge said:
Great stuff. 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.
Great stuff!
On Jul 21, 2006, SEO ROCK said:
Nice article, I have observed that MSN has recently started visiting more often then google and I find my websites first indexed by msn and then by google.
On Jul 24, 2006, Dallas SEO said:
Nice tips on SEO. Ill have to try the sitemap plugin for some of my blogs.
On Jul 26, 2006, ken said:
Those tips are enriching all the consequences which does take to make a contituents of SEO.Or search engine of any sort.
On Jul 26, 2006, Brandi Belle said:
Great tips posted here! Thank you so much for sharing! Thumbs up for you! :)
On Sep 13, 2006, Steve Terjeson said:
Great list. Thanks for all the tips. I have been trying to determine if I should switch my blogger site to WordPress. Right now I am running 2 blogs - Blogger and a WordPress locally on my website.
On Sep 22, 2006, Michi said:
Hello Michael,
Nice post!
One question,
when I change the default setting to “Date and name based” for permalink as 3. Optimize your permalinks explains, all the links in sidebar of my blog get dead. Do you know how I can fix this nicely?
On Sep 29, 2006, On-Host said:
Great Post Michael,
With the sitemap plugin, it is also a good idea to re-publish the site map on a regular basis
cheers
On Oct 9, 2006, Holly Mann said:
I just created SEO Meta Editor Advanced - a plugin which allows you to edit and add a TITLE, HEADER & DESCRIPTION to every single page and post of your wordpress site. You can get more info about it at: http://www.cheekyo.com/ultimate-seo-plugin-wordpress/
On Oct 17, 2006, Steve Terjeson said:
Thanks for all the tips, I just wanted to post a followup that I took your advice and moved to my WordPress blog basically exclusively. Ironvine Search Marketing (http://www.ironvine.com/blog)
~Steve
On Oct 22, 2006, Brooke Skye said:
That was a really nice list of SEO tips thank you so much!
On Oct 25, 2006, Lucas said:
Very Interesting Mike… I’ll have to load that plugin for the Google SiteMap on my blog and play with it. I’ve managed to figure out the permalinks which i believe has helped and this past month i joined a site called “MindPetals”.
I found your site some time ago but hadn’t had a chance to go through until now. I do frequent your old blog (now yaro’s) SBB. Looking forward to reading more great articles from you. Cheers and talk soon Mike,
Luc
On Dec 16, 2006, Search Engine Marketin (Posizionamento Motori di Ricerca) said:
Michael, I’ve applied you suggest and now my blogs are growth in positions (slowly but better).
Thanks again
On Dec 29, 2006, eddy said:
Great new resources !
On Jan 10, 2007, Mattg said:
Google sitemap plugin works.
On Jan 17, 2007, Robert McCulloch said:
Do you think the domain name is as important for SEO as the title tag of a webpage? I know that MSN puts a lot of value on the domain name. But what about Google and Yahoo?
Thank you,
Robert McCulloch
http://rpmsol.info/
On Feb 5, 2007, Rose said:
A very handy post. Thank you for the information. :)
On Apr 1, 2007, John Wiseman said:
Excellent post! Lot’s of good tips here.. I picked up a few and implemented them on my blog.
I’ve also written some WordPress SEO tips here:
http://www.johnwiseman.ca/blogging/wordpress-seo/brilliant-wordpress-seo-tips-for-bloggers-and-webmasters/
On Apr 3, 2007, JonBishop said:
Great post . . . I’ve been reading for a while, and since I’m starting a new site I wanted to ask for some advice . . . I got a great (I think) new domain, related to martial arts and survivalism and have a basic idea of what I want to do with it, but I’m really looking for some great advise about the best way (other than adsense) to monetize a site like this, and the best way to drive traffic, other than normal SEO (meta tags, links, etc.).
I’ve already started a small scale link building campaign, and initially I’ll probably spend some money on adwords or adcenter, but any other advice you can give would be great, especially related to this niche!
On Apr 3, 2007, Michael Pollock said:
hey jon:
thanks for writing. here are my 3 brief pieces of advise beyond what’s in the article.
first, do more research. there’s alot of great info out there on SEO for wordpress, so start with a Google search. also research sites that are similar in content as your own.
second, just start writing. nothing builds traffic better than great content. and be sure to link to other bloggers in your niche.
third, make a ong-term commitment. building traffic takes time, so plan on at least a 6 month commitment before you start to see results.
hope that helps.
best - michael
On Apr 10, 2007, Frank said:
Excellent SEO article with very helpul SEO tips
http://supaz.wordpress.com
On Apr 26, 2007, Nikhil said:
Hey !!
This is definitely a well compiled article and thnx for sharing the usefull info . I am kinda looking forward to get into blogging and these informative posts are really helpful . Thnx !!
Regards ,
Nikhil
http://www.frazzlet.com
On May 24, 2007, Shardul said:
Michael - thanks for this excellent post. The information here is really helpful.
On Jun 13, 2007, SEO Articles said:
Great post and great to learn there are others like yourselves who have gone through the ringer. Title tags and meta description tags 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
On Jun 20, 2007, Recycling Supermarket said:
Thanks for the great tips. I have been trying to find out how to add a separate keyword rich title to the home page of my blog for ages - now I know how. Thanks.
On Jul 11, 2007, Matthew Shuff said:
I am just getting into WordPress and these are very informative links for me. Thanks.
On Sep 8, 2007, seo Mexico said:
Great post, the wordpress plugin directory has a lot of good stuff at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ take a look.
On Oct 12, 2007, Alen said:
Hi,
that is what I’ve been looking for. I just started my blog but haven’t yet know all the tricks. Im using Joomla for this purposes but that CMS has little or no built in SEO. So I decide to resaddle on WordPress for my first site http:\\wwww.playingod.com .
Yours tips are a good shot for beginners like me.
Thank you,
Alen
On Nov 8, 2007, Jonny said:
Maybe not completely SEO, but a decent theme along with your good content will make the site more appealing to visitors and could keep visitors at your site a little longer. Some people are automatically turned off when they see the default or a horrible theme. Why spend all that time optimizing if someone will leave due to a poor theme choice?
On Nov 17, 2007, Sneezy Melon said:
Well, quality content is always the most important point. What also matters is a good layout and a minimal loading time. People on the web move very fast. If your website takes too long to open, people will move on and not link it
On Nov 29, 2007, Electric guitars said:
Good list, I am also trying to optimize my blog as good as possible
On Jan 5, 2008, Boston SEO said:
This blog is a great source of SEO info for wordpress blogs.
On Mar 5, 2008, Freelance Web Designer said:
Very nice tips. I just redid my urls and am in the middle of adding some plugins. Thanks.
On Apr 8, 2008, Publicidad en Internet said:
Nice Article, I was looking for wordpress SEO tips
On Apr 19, 2008, Raman Shingde said:
a very informative article,I’ve tried #3,lets see how much it helps.