How to Seo Your Wordpress Blog
Wordpress is one of the most seo friendly publishing systems today, but to get the best results you still need to tinker with it a little bit!
So let’s see what steps you need to take to modify Wordpress so it will turn into a true seo CMS:
1. Permalinks structure: the default structure is no good at all - although search engines have no problem in indexing pages that have urls with variables, it’s very clear that they prefer clean urls.
The best results I have seen are when permalinks structure is set to “%postname%”, and only that. This is something to keep in mind for any site you build, Wordpress or any other CMS.
2. Related posts plugin ( tinyurl.com/262ao4 ): this is good for both your visitors and the search engines. It automatically finds related posts and displays them in a list - very useful when visitors arrive on a page looking for something and they get more info on the same subject.
3. Metatags plugin ( tinyurl.com/2fxota ): you simply can’t let the search engines handle the text your visitors see in the search engine result pages. You can influence your click-through rate very much just by handling this one aspect of your copy.
As for the search engine optimization aspect - the description metatag can move you up a spot or two when you are in the first 5 with small to medium competition. And it only takes a minute!
4. Sitemap Generator Plugin ( tinyurl.com/2zy4nx ): for a small site this wouldn’t be a problem, but when your page count goes over 50 indexing and maintaining a sitemap the old fashioned way just isn’t viable.
This plugin is actually more valuable because it creates both an XML sitemap (like those used by Google) and a normal, HTML sitemap for your visitors.
Some of its features include: support for multi-level categories and pages, category/page exclusion, permalink support, what order to list items in and many other options.
5. List of ping sites ( tinyurl.com/2ljwrb ): put this great list in the Options -> Writing -> Update Services box and every time you write a new post 56 sites will link to you. This is a great way to ensure a quick indexing of every post on your site and, given enough time, get quite a few backlinks with the text anchor you choose.
Some optimizers say that blog and ping doesn’t work anymore, but I do this everyday - it takes next to no time and the benefits are visible.
6. Technorati ( technorati.com ) is another easy way to make your Wordpress blog known, especially to other bloggers. Still, its biggest benefit is categorizing and indexing your content.
Create an account, claim your blog and then fill in the details in the blog settings page: write up a good description and then in the “tags” section fill in the keywords that represent your blog. Try to fill all the boxes but don’t spam. If you grabbed the list from no. 5 you’ll have all your posts listed in Technorati, and you’re going to see the benefits really soon.
Apply these tips and soon you’ll be on your way to more traffic and better ranking!
Article Source: http://www.articlecube.com
Florin Costache is a Romanian webmaster that writes on search engine optimization (optimizare). He also provides Romanian site owners with top notch seo services (optimizare site)!
25 Simple Blog SEO and Traffic Tips
This is a nice concise list of 25 ways to greatly increase your blog’s traffic and search rankings.
1) Content is king!
2) Submit your site to as many search engines as possible. After the initial indexing I would recommend resubmitting every 6 months.
3) Comment on as many blogs as possible. Make your comments thoughtful and not spammy.
4) Link up with popular blogs - trackbacks can be good for SEO as well as your traffic.
5) Write a good article and post it on a site like http://www.digg.com, although this won’t help as far as traffic goes (you will get a HUGE boost for a few hours, then it will tone back down, you probably won’t get any permanent readers from Digg) and it sure doesn’t help with your relationship with your web host, it can create some new inbound links.
6) Use http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ . Instead of the GoogleBot searching for your pages you can tell it where your pages are. This is a great way to get your whole site indexed.
7) Content is king!
Get listed on web directories like http://www.dmoz.com/. Although many SEO “experts” think it is overrated no one disagrees that it can help boost your site’s rankings.
9) Add some links for feed readers and blog aggregators like http://www.bloglines.com/, http://www.google.com/reader/, and http://myweb.yahoo.com/.
10) Add some social bookmarking links at the bottom of each post
11) Make it easy for your users to find your RSS feed
12) Add a “E-mail This!” link either on the header or the footer of each post
13) Content is king! (see a pattern?)
14) If you write a really good post try e-mailing the URL to some big-name bloggers with a short personalized message. You never know, they might like it and link to it.
15) Try asking some big sites who are in your niche if they would like to trade links. More often than not they will say “no”, but at least give it a try.
16) Don’t obsess over “get rich quick” schemes.
17) Don’t obsess over “get lots of traffic really quick” schemes.
18) Submit your RSS feed to a bunch of RSS directories, http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-directory.htm has a large list of popular directories.
19) Use http://pingomatic.com/ to notify a ton of aggregators that your site has been updated.
20) Don’t obsess over the numbers - it takes time to build up a good reader base.
21) Make your posts as keyword rich as possible. Whenever you can use a word that has to do with your niche, use it!
22) Use lists, especially if your site is targeted towards more tech-savvy users
23) If you have a MySpace page or a home page on a similar service put up a link to your blog.
24) Tag important keywords, using this site ( http://www.richardrodger.com/tags.htm ) you can tag keywords.
25) Last but not least, offer free stuff. Everyone loves free stuff!
The really important thing you have to remember is, just have fun. If your blog is causing you to become stressed out then it probably is not a good idea to continue blogging.
If your readers can tell you are having fun while providing good content they will become permanent readers.
About The Author
Jeremy Steele started his http://www.nusuni.com/ website in mid-2002. Since then he has joined the blogging community and runs four successful blogs. This article is copyrighted so please obtain permission before republishing or altering it.
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