While writing a blog may have sounded like a good idea at first, finding out that nobody reads your blog can be quite depressing. So why isn’t anyone reading it? It could be as simple as not having your blog set up in a way that fully maxes out your SEO potential. In other words, you’re writing great stuff, but people are having a hard time finding it. Here are 8 SEO tricks for your WordPress blog that could help people find your blog.
- Optimize permalinks – While many people use dates in their URL titles, from an SEO standpoint it is not such a great option. As time goes on you don’t want people to shy away from posts that are older. Even if nothing has changed regarding the information, just by having the date in the URL some people might disregard it because it is too old. To change this, get to the section of options where you can change your URL permalink titles, and choose “custom title” and use /%postname%/. Very simple. If your blog is older and you have a lot of posts with a permalink structure you want to change, there are plugins that can help, such as Permalink Redirect or Permalinks Migration.
- Install SEO All-In-One plugin – A plugin designed to optimize your WordPress blog so that search engines see it far easier than without it. Works just like it is out of the box for beginners or provides high levels of tweakability for the advanced user. It’s the gold standard of SEO plugins for a reason.
- Akismet – making sure this plugin is installed and running can have a marginal effect on a site’s SEO profile, but being able to worry less about spam and focus more on your writing or the marketing of your blog does affect your site’s SEO profile.
- Image optimization –Don’t neglect to set up your images to give you an SEO boost. For every image you put on your blog, make sure to several keywords in the ALT tag. Additionally, put a description in the title attribute. Finally, you can even use keywords to name the image. While this may not give you a huge SEO boost, every little bit can help.
- Blog Titles – Making blog titles simple clear and direct will help the Google bots realize what your article is about more easily than with a really clever title. The best titles? Well, if the keyword is “purple ferret sweaters” then those should be the first words in the title, for example – “Purple Ferret Sweaters: 4 Things You Might Forget When Shopping” or “Purple Ferret Sweater – The Legend Lives On”. Obviously you can’t title every post in this manner, but at the very minimum you should have the keywords in the title.
- Google Sitemaps – this is a great way to hand deliver all your URLs to Google’s index and have them produce reports detailing how Google sees your site. However, making a sitemap isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Luckily the Google Sitemaps Generator plugin does it for you, effortlessly and relatively pain free.
- Ping – don’t forget to make sure other people can ping your site. Although WordPress is set up automatically to use Pingomatic, alternative ping services like Feed Shark and others do exist. Heck, use ‘em all if you can!
- Test, test and retest – Many blogging superstars will tell you what works best. To determine what really works best for your site and your niche is by testing. Once traffic reaches a certain level, say 500 or 1000 visitors change something and see what happens. If more sales are made or more traffic is the result, then it works. If not, change it again and see if the next change is the one that works.
So there you go – 8 SEO tricks for your WordPress blog that you should implement today. Yesterday, in fact. And don’t forget to make sure your blog loads as quickly as possible. Slow loads irritate readers, plus Google takes page load speed into consideration when ranking a page. Good luck!
Melissa Tamura is my second guest blogger in as many weeks. She wrote about weird scholarships for Zen College Life, an online directory of online degree schools.
SEO All-In-One plugin and Akismet are two of the most reliable wordpress plugins used by most bloggers/webmasters today. The only problem with Akismet is… Sometimes their system is not judging that fairly so the tendency of some decent comments will ended up to trash bin for sure!
Angela@Dog fleas´s last [type] ..Frontline Plus FAQ
Akismet has helped me a lot.Once,I was tired of spam I was getting on my blog,almost hundreds of spam comments a day,but after installing Akismet those spam comments are under check now.
Besides I agree with you on other tips too especially image optimization.
Rohan@Reverse Phone Lookup´s last [type] ..Reverse Phone Lookup- What Is Exactly Reverse Phone Lookup
Thanks for the tips. I am doing most of them but the one I have a question on is the one about the images. I know you can add the alt=”x” but are you saying that you can also add the title=”x” to an image?
I am also not that familiar with pinging. I found a list online of all the sites you can copy and paste into the section of the wordpress back office. Is it possible to get penalized for pinging too much? I read something about ping spamming but I don’t really get it.
Thanks
Selina
Selina @ Total Curve´s last [type] ..7 Secrets To Younger- Firmer and Fuller Breasts
I just started using Akismet for my blog and so far I am satisfied with it. I don’t have to worry about spams and would just approve the comments if they are good or bad.
i have both all in one seo pack and akismet…they are useful as hell but some other plugins block spam even more effictevely (G.A.S.P for example).
Make Money Online´s last [type] ..Interview With Carlocab – The Kid Blogger
Thanks for the useful tips. I have installed on my blog SEO All-In-One plugin and Akismet.
Softworld´s last [type] ..Fast Audio Converter 17 Shareware
You are advising changing links to /%postname%/ …. I started my blog using this but then found some comments on WordPress.org saying do not do this because it is inefficient requiring more resources to resolve. Thus I changed to the date structure you are advising against . Unfortunately I cannot quickly see the comment now on wordpress.org advising against but it definitely says “%postname%, require more server resources to resolve than structures such as, Day and Name” at http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Permalinks_SubPanel#Customize_Permalink_Structure. Before I change back any view on this? I would greatly appreciate your advice. (Thanks for the useful article).
Kevin
Kevin@YourKeywords´s last [type] ..How Competitive is Your Local Market
All are great seo plugins. Another beneficial wordpress plugin is Top Commentor. With the use of these plugin, it helps encourage people to leave a comment on your blog.
Aybi@log cabin home plans´s last [type] ..Solar Log Home Community
It will be best if you change the permalinks from the beginning, not when you have posts already. Be very careful if you change the permalinks when you have posts in your blog. First make a complete backup, then use a redirection plugin to make a 301 redirect from the old URLs to the new ones.
Also I wanted to say that you can improve the internal linking of the posts by installing a related posts plugin. This way old posts will receive some links too and will not be left out from the index, or something like that.
Regards.
Mark@Социална мрежа´s last [type] ..Лечебните свойства на зрелия боб
I agree all of your tips but Akismet is not too reliable as it also block the comments that are not posted by the spammers.
Smith@steam showers´s last [type] ..Featured Product
Yeah, using the image tags to incorporate some keywords is a great idea. A lot of people don’t realize the search engines, without those, are unable to read what the image actually is.
Thanks for the tips about Akismet. Spam sucks and will ruin a blog real quick.
Nice tips. I agree with nearly all of them. Might be a bit careful about pinging too much though. Cbnet Ping Optimizer plugin works to make sure you don’t do this too much. Might be worth adding in to the arsenal.
Mark@One Day Car Insurance´s last [type] ..Short Term Car Insurance and Your Girlfriend
The SEO all in one rocks I personally love it plus it saves me time from doing manual labor.
So Akismet is the way to prevent spam from a WordPress site? Or is there any other plug-ins that can serve as a spam filter?
These plugins are great. I personally use some of them on my own blog. The best thing about them is that we all benefit from using them.
nice.. thanks for your trick.. i will try it
igjepara´s last [type] ..Perjanjian Multinasional Konvensi Paris
I think a site cannot get ranking without the installation of “SEO All in One” and Akismet is to stop the spammer. Presence of spammers also lower the ranking of your site.
Khan@supercuts´s last [type] ..Featured Product
@ Khan: “I think a site cannot get ranking without the installation of “SEO All in One””
Is this true?
Most people i know personally have advised me to go for Blogger instead of WordPress, since it is easier to use. I have to admit, they are right to an extent. WordPress has features that i still struggle with. Good thing is you can choose to totally ignore something you don’t understand.
Mohammed@Mange in dogs´s last [type] ..Common Symptoms of Mange in Dogs