Some useful WordPress SEO tips…
WordPress has good SEO settings when it’s first installed but with a few more WordPress SEO tips you can make it even better.
If your website is new I’d recommend you change your permalinks. I use /%postname%/ this adds the post title as your url. This makes it much more obvious to Google and your visitors what the individual page is about. BUT BEWARE! If you already have a lot of posts on your site and you change the permalink structure, the links from other sites pointing to your site will stop working. So only change your permalink settings when you know what you are doing.
Here’s an example of what I mean, instead of this… http://example.com/?page_id=92
You get this… http://example.com/how-to-make-ice-cream
When writing your post or page title (WordPress SEO tips in my case)
Include your key word phrase near the begging if possible, you might want to include your brand name at the end of the title if searchers know who you are and look for posts specifically by you.
Your title should look interesting enough to make people want to click the link to read the full article.
When your site is listed in Google, the page title is the blue link text and below this is a description of the page. There is no guarantee that the description that you add in WordPress will be used by Google but I recommend that you write a good description just in case. Your description should include your main search string and be interesting enough to make searchers want to go to your page to find out more.
Images on your site have alt tags, these are good for you and good for your visitors too. People who are partially sighted use screen readers that speak the words of your web page. Its a bit like listening to the radio. Google also likes alt tags (they describe the image using words) so don’t forget to include an accurate alternative description (alt tag) with each image on your site.
One of my favourite WordPress SEO tips is…
Once you have a good selection of posts or pages on your site, put links in your pages to other relevant posts on your website. This helps your site visitors find related information and pleases Google too. For instance, if you are writing a post about ice cream recipes and you have a post on your site about where to buy the best ice cream cones, tell your visitors about it. (Check out my ice cream cone page for more info). And don’t forget to make it in to a click-able link.
This list of WordPress SEO tips just scratches the surface of what you can do using WordPress. A great place to start learning more is http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/
Some more things to consider.
If you are in a trade body, chamber of commerce or you are connected to any trustworthy organisation, find out if you can have a link from their site to yours. One of the best ways to make Google love your site is to have high profile businesses, organisations or people link to your site. Google sees these links in the same way that you would treat a recommendation from a trustworthy friend. It believes them.
No list of WordPress SEO tips would be complete with out at least one book recommendation, here’s mine.
There are many books about SEO and Google, 50 Ways to Make Google Love Your Website is a good guide without getting too technical.
And don’t forget to pepper your key words throughout your page without getting silly. If it sounds natural when you read the page, not spammy then you should be OK.
A quick recap of the WordPress SEO tips…
- If your site is new change your permalinks.
- write title and description text that include your key words. Your title and description should convince people that you can provide the information they need or solve their problem etc.
- If you add images to your page, include an alternative text description, just say what the image is.
- If you have related pages or posts to the one you are writing, link to them in your body copy.
- Include your key word phrase in your body copy but don’t go crazy. If it sounds natural to read it will probably sound OK to site users and search-engines.
- Try get inbound links from trustworthy influential sites in your industry. Be very careful, if you buy links from some untrustworthy sources Google could penalize you. Stick to trustworthy sites.
- Get a good book.
- Consider using a WordPress SEO plugin.
- Download the Google search engine optimization starter guide (PDF).
Good luck and I hope you find these WordPress SEO tips useful.
