WordPress SEO Search Engine Optimization tips

WordPress SEO Search Engine Optimization tips

Search Engine Optimization or SEO works a bit differently for those of us using WordPress blogging software. In this article I will show you a few tips on how to optimize your personal WordPress blog to obtain a higher Pagerank. Pagerank is what the Google Search Engine uses to rate your site compared to other sites based on the same content. A higher Pagerank can set your Web page ahead of others in the search results.

Quality External and internal Links

Among many contributing factors, one key element used by search engines to determine how your blog will rank is the presence of quality external links. External links are often referred to as "Backlinks" – or a link that points back to your site. The more quality Backlinks you have, generally the higher your search engine page ranking.

You can also use internal links to increase the ranking of a page and help search engines find and index (spider) pages quicker. The pages are found and indexed quicker if the link is coming from a page that has already been indexed.

Title Tags

The title tag is the most important html tag in terms of SEO. To make the WordPress title tag work to our advantage we need to use the SEO Title Tag plugin This plugin allows the user to create custom unique titles for each page and post on their blog.

Use Permalinks

One of the best features of WordPress is the ability to use a Permalink structure as opposed to page id. This allows the blogger to create a Post Slug (post name) that is related to the keywords or key phrase that the blogger is trying to target. Permalinks are not enabled by default. To enable them, log into WordPress, then select Options -> Permalinks from the admin menu. I use the date and named based format /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/structure. However, I have seen better results from those using /%postname%/ and nothing else.

Home Page Navigation

A majority of the SEO "internal link power" will stem from the homepage of your blog. This is mainly due to the fact that the homepage is usually the first page that gets indexed by the search engines. Be sure to list your categories and most important article links on the home page.

Site Design

The first few seconds of a visitors experience on your site are the most crucial. If your blog is poorly laid out, lacks quality design and is hard to navigate, visitors might quickly leave disappointed and never return. Try to keep your design and layout simple and easy to navigate. Place your article content toward the top of the page (above the fold). Visitors should not have to scroll to get to the article.

Article Content

Write original content that is in your own words. If you simply copy articles or your blog contains content that isn't in your own words, your site will actually get de-ranked. Originality is just as important on the internet as it is socially in life.

One can either blend in or stand out amongst the rest!

and with over 60 million blogs available on the internet, I would hope we want to be one that stands out. 

Source: funxtra