Straight out of the box, here are a few "must do's":
* Put keywords in your permalinks or enable "pretty permalinks" in Settings
> Permalinks - select Custom Structure and type: /%postname%
* Choose a quality theme. Or rather don't choose an old, crap theme. The
default Twenty Ten or Twenty Eleven are just fine. I use Genesis. Generally
speaking premium themes are slightly better but they are by no means
essential.
* Create Categories to group your blog posts and write meaningful
descriptions of them in Posts > Categories
* Choose whether your site's address will have a www or non-www. Why can't
Google work this one out themselves? Matt Cutts still says this is
necessary. It's 99% not likely to matter, but if both www and non-www work
in the address bar of the browser, you'll need to force one onto the other
with.htaccess.
* Use an SEO plugin or your theme's SEO controls to sort out your titles.
The best SEO plugin is Yoast's WordPress SEO. Page titles can be %%title%% -
%%sitename%% and post titles are usually %%title%%. Although it really doesn't
matter that much. You can also set titles and meta descriptions individually
with this plugin - more on that later.
* Create a Google XML Sitemap. This won't help with rankings, but it might
help with getting indexed quickly
* Create a robots.txt. It should say "User-agent: * Sitemap:
your-site.com/sitemap.xml" if you created your sitemap with the Google XML
Sitemap plugin.
* Register your site with Google Webmaster Tools (register sitemap), Yahoo!
Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Tools (if you can't be bothered, just do
Google Webmaster Tools).
So, if you're just setting up a self-hosted WordPress.org blog I strongly
suggest you do the above.
On-page WordPress SEO Best practices Going Forward
While you're regularly writing awesome content, you're going to have to
employ some on-page SEO best practices.
* Put keywords in your blog post titles. So, "Electric Guitar Playing
Styles": good; "Tra-la-la-la-la, look how I handle my axe!": bad.
* Add subheadings. Words in between <h2> and <h3> tags carry more importance
than
tags, so split your post up with subheadings. It also looks better and
helps the reader scan the article. Make sure the subheads are natural!
* Add images. Makes sure images have good filenames (e.g., banana.jpg) and
descriptive alt text (e.g.. alt="partially pealed banana on table").
* Word count/Density/Stuffing. Write at least 600 words on each blog post
and include your keywords in the text naturally - don't stuff them in. Write
for humans, not for search engines.
* Link internally to your own pages when relevant.
* Don't forget to link out to authority sites as well.
If you do the above, regularly write great content and engage in social
media, link and relationship building, that is all you need to know about
WordPress SEO.
The bad and the ugly OK, back to my experiences this week with the "SEO
professionals" - you are not going to believe some of the things I heard
them say. (Disclaimer: not all SEO professionals are bad, but there are many
that will waste your money with the following).
Here are some pieces of SEO advice that I have heard that are either
complete rubbish or a waste of time. Remember, people get paid for trotting
out this garbage.
* Adding meta keywords. This is a waste of time. They are not used as a
ranking factor by Google.
* Avoid duplicate meta descriptions and titles. Certainly, don't have the
same meta descriptions on two different blog posts but for many blogs,
titles and descriptions are identical on category archive pages, and Google
knows this. It's OK.
* Google doesn't like content below the fold. What?? I have heard it said,
trust me. Google doesn't like too many ads above the fold but long articles
are fine. Sure, it's maybe better to split a 3,000-word article into three
different 1,000-word articles, if that can be logically done.
* There should be an <h1> on every page. Wrong, I've tested this. I had my
single blog posts as <h2>'s and changed them all to <h1>'s, re-indexed and
zip, nothing, nada, no change!
* A site should be in validated HTML and CSS. Yes, but it's not an SEO
concern, it's a usability one.
I could go on, but you get the point. WordPress is the most ubiquitous CMS
on the internet. It pays for Google to understand its workings. Do the basic
SEO best practices outlined above (the good, not the bad or the ugly) and
you'll be fine.
If you have any questions or comments please contact me.
Regards Gerald
Website: http://www.webcraft.ws
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws
Twitter: WebcraftGuru
Facebook: Webcraft Guru
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