11 Best WordPress SEO Tips (expanded)

WordPress is one of the best open “opensource” content managed systems around. The main reason that I like WordPress is that WordPress is highly configurable if you know what you’re doing.

What is SEO?

First of all, let’s talk about what SEO is and what it means: Search engine optimization (-SEO-) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. In layman’s terms: Technically, SEO is done for the two major search engines which are Google and Yahoo! .  However, a site that has good SEO may also find their sites in the first pages of other search engines. Your “SEO” mission is to get to the front pages of these sites… no matter how hard it takes! Getting on the first page = high sales = high profits!

SEO and WordPress

WordPress it’sself  is highly SEO’d and does a pretty good job of keeping it’s search engine optimization together well.  Usually a search engine has to “warm up” to a new website, if it’s SEO is done properly.  If it’s NOT doing properly, then it search engine doesn’t even know it’s online.  WordPress by default has it’s search engine optimization pretty good,  but , if you want true excellent SEO, then we should add some plugins and possibly make some edits to some parts it.  The plugins will make it simpler to adjust it’s SEO and the edits will give us the “one up” on others.

I’ll take the time to list out Below are the tips to create search engine friendly wordpress blog

1. First thing is to install “All in One SEO Pack” Plugin”. Activate it and make your edits to the settings page.
2. Add a search engine friendly theme with few images:
   1. Make your choice of an image for your logo, banner and bullets. Try to make them smallest possible.
   2. Add “alt” attribute or tags for your new logo and banners.  This is something I see allot: People not using unique “alt” tags during their wordpress (or blog) implementations.  For those who don’t know how to add “alt” tags to their logos and/or banners, there is a plugin available called “Custom Header plugin“.  This plugin allows you to add tags to the header of an individual page or post such as keywords/descriptions, custom meta tags, external style sheet links, or embedded style tags.
3. Make adjustments to your “Permalinks”:
   1. Found under Dashboard -> Settings -> Permalinks
   2. Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to link to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. The URL to each post should be permanent, and never change
   3. Make adjustments and use “Custom structure”.
   4. Add this tag /%postname%/
4. Create and configure .htaccess file and add the below code (click here for tutorial on creating .htaccess file):
   1. RewriteEngine OnRewriteBase /RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-fRewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-dRewriteRule . /index.php [L]
   2. Save and FTP upload this file into root directory of your site and confirm that .htaccess file is been enabled in your server
5. Make sure you that you are utilizing your theme’s “archive” section.  If your theme doesn’t have an archive section: add one. Your visitors that visit your site, may want to read some older dated posts
6. Install and Utilize “Popular tags”  on your site.  These are one of the most important parts of “SEO” for your site.
   1. Use the Most Popular Tags Plugin and activate it on your site.
7. Intall and utilize “Recent post” plugin and activate. This plugin helps to retrieve list of the most recent posts for your visitors
8. Install and utilize “Google Sitemaps. Generator” plugin and activate it . Chmod the root server(how to CHMOD) and then go to options >> Google sitemap and then click “Build sitemap manually” link and this creates site map and as you add new post xml file gets updated automatically with new posts URL.
   1. Your sitemap.xml file will be spidered by Google and Yahoo on a regular basis
9. Configure and add Google Custom Search and Google Analytics.
10. Sign up and register to Feedburner and add your RSS feed for posts to Feedburner.  Create an option in the blog for your readers to “subscribe” your posts.  This means, when you create a new post or add to posts,  your uses will be notified by email that you have updated your site with new posts.

I really hope that my tips for optimizing wordpress’ SEO helps your website or blog