1. Start With Modifying Your Permalinks
The permalink structure is one of the elements that the Blogger
platform doesn’t allow modifications on. The good thing for us WordPress
users is that here we have full control over that aspect.
And if you aren’t quite sure what a permalink is, that is basically
how your URLs appear in the browser’s bar. For instance a blog might be
set up to show blog posts the following way –
domain-name.com/year/month/day/blog-post-title.html.
The above example shows a URL structure that is not quite ideal. The
problem is that the main component i.e. the blog post is buried in the
archive in such a way that the search engines need to first go through
the year, then the month category and then the specific day until they
reach the article. The deeper the crawlers have to go, the better the
chance for them to decide not to waste time indexing a page. The latter
is obviously NOT what you want.
So how do you modify your permalinks?
You simply open up your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings –>
Permalinks. There you choose “Custom Structure” and add /%postname%/ in
the field. That will result in a flat blog post architecture, which is
best in terms of SEO and ease of navigation.
2. Get the WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast
Although I included that plugin in my list of the Best WordPress Plugins for
newbies, I would like to take a look at it once again. There are other
alternatives that work on a similar principle, but from the ones I’ve
tried, Yoast is my personal favorite.
The thing I found (and am still finding) most useful about it is the
tab that you get under the post editor. There you have the option to
choose the so called “focus keyword” for the post you are just writing.
Based on that focus keyword you get different recommendations in the
writing process, which aim to help you improve your on-site SEO efforts.
WordPress SEO by Yoast also allows you to write your own meta
description tags plus custom descriptions for Facebook and Google Plus.
Additionally you can also include a search engine title. That allows you
to choose one title to be displayed on your actual blog and second,
search engine optimized one for the SERPs.
Aside from that, there’s lots to do in the plugin’s settings page:
- You can set up breadcrumbs to help your interlinking
- You can modify your XML sitemaps.
- You have direct access to your htaccess and robots.txt files as well. That way you don’t have to go through the tedious process of using an FTP.
3. Premium WordPress Themes are a Good Investment
Last couple of days were quite a stress for me. After reading tons
and tons of reviews, I finally decided to give the Genesis Framework a
shot. With this came lots of designing, modifying and testing, but I can
safely say I am quite happy with the end result. I will be writing a
review on Genesis in the weeks to come so stay tuned!
Anyway the problem with choosing a default theme like TwentyTen is
not only that you don’t have as much control and flexibility over it,
but also that those themes are simply not meant for the professional
type of blogging. Having a framework like Genesis or Thesis and pretty
much any other premium theme (although I’d recommend choosing one of the
two) ensures that your content will be indexed by the search engines,
since the developers have taken special time to optimize every aspect in
terms of both security and SEO.
The unlimited support you get after purchasing a premium theme on the
other hand shouldn’t be underestimated as well. Whereas with a free
theme there are all kinds of glitches that can occur (the reason why I
moved to Genesis), the same can hardly happen with premium themes. If it
does happen however, you get full support on dealing with the problem.
And sometimes reacting timely can save you from losing search engine
positions and traffic.
4. The “Slug” Plays an Important Role
Wondering what a slug is? Well that’s the part of the URL of your
blog that you will point exactly to the post you are currently writing.
Again unlike Blogger, WordPress allows you to directly modify the slug
without much hassle, so that’s a practice well-worth following.
The slug is generated upon the title you’ve added in the title field
in the WordPress post editor. However in 99% of the cases the end result
is far from ideal. Modifying the slug is fortunately as easy as
clicking on it and writing your own version.
There are three factors you should pay attention to when doing so:
- Length – the shorter and to the point, the better. Best for both the reader (yes, some people do pay attention to the URL) and for the search engines would be to keep it under 3-4 words.
- Relevancy – Obviously the slug has to be relevant and it has to point exactly to what you are going to cover in the article. Best would be if it consists of the main keyword (preferably long-tail one) that you will be using.
5. Add a Related Posts Widget
The two plugins I would give my vote to are LinkWithin and nRlate.
The first I’ve been using when I was on Blogger and I was really happy
with it. nRelate on the other hand doesn’t have a Blogspot version and I
gave it a shot right after setting up my WordPress installation.
I don’t think there are many bloggers who don’t yet have one such
plugin installed, but if you are one of them, you are missing out. You
are missing out on more repeat visits, more internal links and better
conversion rates.
The idea is simple. Since those kinds of tools aim to provide
relevant content to the article that they are displayed under, the links
there are valuable in terms of SEO. Plus the only thing you need is to
download one of the two, install it, set it up and leave it do the rest.
In Conclusion
Those are pretty much the most useful tips I have currently applied
to my WordPress installation and that I believe are helping me improve
search engine results. Now let me hear what you think guys!
What other WordPress SEO tips can you add to my list? Are you using the
SEO plugin by Yoast? What do you think about premium themes? Let me
know in the comments !