Seo for Wordpress Blogs

[Sam Dodd]

Hey I found this article about Seo for Wordpress blogs. It covers some things I had not thought about doing for my wordpress blog. You can find it here.

ps. I am not associated with this article or website in any way.

[Graeme]

Thanks, thats a good starting resource.

Also try to pick up a plugin called smart pinger. It will only ping when you first publish as opposed to any time you edit the page since this can get you banned.

Do a lot of you use WP? If so I can post some more tips, plugins and best practices.

[webmaster]

Moved to blogs forum

[Eric Blackwell]

Graeme;

Yes. It is pretty common for us to have WP blogs. It would be great to have you post up your favorite plug ins. I am on my way to work right now or I'd post up some of mine. Will do that later today if time allows.

You are correct that his are a pretty good basic package. But there are more out there,..(grin)

Thanks Cedar

Best;

Eric

[Eric Blackwell]

Graeme;

As well since you are fairly new here...check out the REW blogs. Great opportunity if you are into blogging. I did not see your name on there, but could have missed it...

Cheers;

Eric

[Graeme]

One of the big issues with Wordpress is that it stores your content in many different spots. Unless you are careful with the implementation you can end up getting caught with duplicate content.

To help Google index your content we want to tell it exactly where to find it. By explicitly telling the bot where each post lives we avoid it tripping over the same posts in another section of your blog.

Here's how to keep everything on track.

Only assign posts to one category.
This helps keep your content focussed and creates silo effect. For SEO this means that your category will be stronger as it is not getting diluted with multiple KW spin offs and cross links to less relevant pages.

Use the more function
Wordpress has a built in "more" function that breaks the post when viewed on the home page. It is a good idea to use this every time so that your entire post is not getting indexed on the home page and the category.

Set rules for bots in your htaccess file
It may seem a little strange blocking SE bots from indexing your content but by letting them index your categories and archives they are getting the same content twice at two different urls.

Use your htaccess file to block your archives and any other groupings you may have set up (posts by author etc).

Update Your Permalink Structure
Your permalink structure, while helping SEO, can also be manipulated to hurt your rankings.

Google may index the url as domain.com/%Category%/%Post Title%/ but the same page also lives at the domain.com/?p=123 . So if a competitor wants to sabotage they can link to your site with a variation of the url.

Plugin to the resuce- Search google for the Objection Redirection plugin. Once set up this will 301 redirect all variations of the url to you defined permalink structure.

[Graeme]

another a plugin I use is

Search Meter- Stores the exact queries your users enter into your WP search box. Great for building out new articles or PPC campaigns.

There are a few plugins that you can use to adjust your page titles. In essence it moves your blog name to the end of title and uses the post title first. This can also be done by editing the header.php file if you are comfortable enough with coding.

[Boston Condo Guy]

First off, I like where this thread is going.

In regards to:

Also try to pick up a plugin called smart pinger. It will only ping when you first publish as opposed to any time you edit the page since this can get you banned.

I've found two separate plugins for this, however, I just came across the following: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/73639. Based on this, it appears there is some debate about whether a smart ping plugin (which I think is really cool) is actually necessary. Is there an authoritative source on this one?

[BrandonSternfield]

http://wp-plugins.net/

Use it, love it, add to it.

[Nickie]

Thanks for all the great WP tips.

I'm always looking for info on better ways to work with my blog.