WordPress SEO

Last year I created a personal blog and wanted to optimize it for search engine traffic. So, as expected, I googled “wordpress seo” to see if anyone had written tips on optimizing a WordPress blog. Sure enough, I came across a number of articles on the subject.

One of my favorite articles is Joost de Valk’s WordPress SEO: The Definitive Guide to Higher Rankings for Your Blog. Joost takes a “holistic view of SEO” and goes through many of the steps necessary to set up a blog for search engine optimization. Some of these include:

1. Basic Technical Optimization reviews permalink structure and optimizing, titles, descriptions, the “more text”, and images.
2. Template Optimization which covers how to use breadcrumbs, headings, code, speed, and sidebars to advantage.
3. Advanced Technical Optimization shows how to avoid duplicate content penalties and manage the flow of “link juice” through a site.
4. Altering a Blog’s Structure for High Search Engine Rankings points out the importance of turning posts into “pages” and linking to related posts.
5. Conversion Optimization shows how to turn readers into subscribers.
6. Comment Optimization and Off-Site Blog SEO give tips about how to involve readers with a blog and connect with other bloggers.

Even though the article covers a number of technical considerations that are specific to WordPress blogs, bloggers using other platforms can benefit by applying these guidelines to Blogger, TypePad, and other platforms.

And of course, just setting up a blog is only part of the work. Unless the posts make effective use of keyword research, they won’t be optimized. However, we’ll save that topic for a later post.

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