WordPress Search Optimization Tune up

Posted on 18. Jun, 2010 by Pete Hollier in Search Optimization

Blogs and business what a great mix. A tool that benefits both Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing programs by making content development, publishing and visitor engagement a task which many business’ are able to complete in-house..

Blog Search Engine Optimization

Regardless of the Blogging Platform, basic Organic Search Optimization principles apply::

• Keyword research is required to target the Search Engine traffic you’ve identified as your audience.
• Integration of Keywords into Titles, Headings and other HTML elements.
• Back-links to the Blog, preferably including keyword rich Anchor Text from authoritative web sites.

The basics have to be covered before moving ahead with with your Blog’s Search Optimization. A few things you can do to improve your Blog’s Search Viability include:

The WordPress Text Editor

Some good basic SEO can be accomplished through WordPress’s simple text editor such as Bold and Italics which often get overlooked. When adding media, be sure to integrate your keywords into Img Alt tags and descriptions, also use keywords in the actual media file name.

Ideally I prefer to see content developed using an HTML Editor such as Dreamweaver and pasting HTML code into the HTML version of the WordPress text editor.

Install SEO Plug-in

There is no shortage of plug-ins to assist Bloggers’ with their SEO. I have tried a few and have been using HeadSpace 2 which lets you customize Title tags, descriptions and other usefull SEO tasks.

Another useful WordPress plug-in Add Meta Tags lets you modify Blog Tags, descriptions on a per post/page basis.

Customize the Permalinks

By default WordPress rewrites the Post URL to the post number. Using the Permalinks custom field using /%postname%/ rewrites the Posts URL to a Search Engine friendly URL using the Title of the page. To leverage this function keywords must be included in the Post Title.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content’s causes confusion for both Search Engines and Visitors making it difficult to determine, which page to index or view. A couple quick fixes for duplicate content issues are:

• 301 Redirects duplicate content pages to the primary web page.
• Use the canonical tag and refer to the primary URL
• Use Robots.txt no-index function so Search Engines don’t index the duplicate pages.

Check the Privacy Settings

From your WordPress Dashboard go to Settings > Privacy and you will see the visibility options. Don’t select "I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors". It seems basic however, you would be surprised how often I see Search Engines blocked from Blogs.

Internal Linking

Your Blog’s internal linking structure can assist to direct page rank to primary pages. Be sure to use contextual keyword rich terms in your Anchor text. In addition to the value of the links, using Anchor text encourages visitors to view additional pages and spend more time on site. A couple of other tactics are:

• Provide links to other relevant Blog Posts readers may be interested in. Arkayne is an excellent plug-in to automatically provide relevant posts. Arakyne is also developing into an excellent Social Community of Bloggers.
• Rewrite some of you older Blog Posts and update links to relevant content that may not have been available at the time of writing

XML Site Maps

XML Site Maps enables you to provide additional information about your Blog’s Posts and Pages. The Google XML Site Maps plug-in for WordPress generates a XML Site map and pings the Search Engines when new content is published. This plug in is a good start to developing a Site Map. However, to really make site maps work for you it is necessary to open the Site Map file and edit it manually.

The Last Word

I always recommend Blogging, the benefits your business gains by committing to a Blog are many. The Search Optimization tips above are all relatively easy to complete using the tools mentioned. Bloggers’ must keep all these SEO tactics in the back off their mind as they develop content.

I am a WordPress fan and keeping on top of all the latest plug-ins isn’t always easy. If you’ve discovered the latest can’t do without WordPress Plug-in please share in the comments section..

Tags: Wordpress SEO