Wordpress SEO Tips | Search Engine Optimisation For Wordpress

Now it has to be said word-press possesses a lot of search engine optimisation power straight out of the box, it’s a great platform for affiliate sites on the whole and is packed full of useful tools and features. There have been lots of posts on how to use wordress to start an affiliate blog (Kieron wrote an excellent post here) so I thought I would write a quick guide on how to make your blog more seo freindly, this in turn should help gain you more traffic and more sales.  These are the things I do when I set up a new blog and it works for me, it is by no means the definitive guide so please feel free to add any tips I may have missed.

Firstly: Sort out those permalinks

When you install wordpress you will notice that the links that are shown are ugly and include little or no words. They are of little use to the search engines and also offer very little value to your readers.  Thank fully wordpress is here to help, to fix your permalinks open your wordpress admin and click on options>permalinks. You will see an option for custom, if you want to display the post title as your permalink (this is what my pages use) then add /%postname%/ in the box and click update.

Next you need to update your ht access with some relevant code to make your new permalinks work, again word-press makes it easy for you as it is shown at the bottom of the page. Just copy the code at the bottom of the page and paste it into your htaccess. Now go and check your site - you should have pretty looking permalinks on your site that are search engine friendly, well done.

Now you have sorted your permalinks it’s time to tackle titles, meta tags, descriptions and duplicate content issues (one of the downfalls of blogs in the past!).

Thankfully there is a plugin that sorts all of this important wordpress seo in one go, it is called the All in one seo plugin. This clever plugin automatically optimises page titles, meta tags and sorts duplicate content on its own. The added bonus is you still remain in control as you can add your own page title, description and meta tags in a box that appears below your writing box in the admin section of wordpress. This plugin is a must if you want to optimise your blog for the search engines.

Next it is time to think about internal linking, wordpress already has interlinking through the categories, archives and through the inbuilt navigation but this is still not good enough for seo or your users. Wordpress has a tendency of being great for new posts in the search engines but poor for older posts, therefor it is important to bring older posts to the attention of your readers and the search engines. For this purpose I would recommend the related posts plugin by Alex King. This will add up to 5 relevant post links at the bottom of each post on your blog, this is great for seo and readership of your blog.

The final tip I can give you is ….

create link worthy and origional content that people will want to read. Your blog will not receive any extra traffic if no body links to it! So start writing good quality content and the links and traffic will follow.  This will also help you rank higher in the search engines! Best of luck and feel free to add your tips, comments or add a question

Popularity: 50% [?]

Top Ten SEO Tips

Over the years I have learned the hard way about how to carry out a successful seo campaign on any website, I have a variety of sites that cover a number of niches. The main thing I have learned over the years is that anything is possible as long as you have patience and do not take short cuts. I have narrowed down my top ten seo tips that website owners should abide by (please feel free to add your own):

1. The domain name:   Before you buy your domain name consider whether it is relevant to your chosen niche and relates to your chosen keywords. For example if your site related to super spider monkeys try and buy superspidermonkeys dot com. This is a benefit when you start your seo campaign as the search engines will already know you specialise in super spider monkeys.  Although it is a benefit to have your chosen keyword in your domain name it is not the be all and end all. A good example is the affiliate site named here.org.uk that ranks very well for affiliate key terms without using the keyword affiliate in it’s domain name.
2. The sites design:  When you design your site it is important that it is search engine friendly from the very beginning. I have seen countless sites that have the prettiest designs fall short in the search engines through poor design. For example ensure you use text links to each page of your site and not images because search engines can not read images and therefor do not read your anchor text. If you use a text link instead search engines can read your anchor text and know the page your link points to is about super spider monkeys.
3. Page title/Alt text/header tags: It is essential that your on page seo is up to scratch because it may give you the edge over your competitors. Make sure your title tags contain your target keywords, make sure you have alt tags on all of your images and that they are relevant to your pages content. When laying out your pages make sure you use header tags to a) tell your readers what is important and b) tells the search engines what the page is about. For example you would use a H1 header tag to display the main message of your page, for example super spider monkey and a H2 tag for Super spider monkey food.
4. Optimise every page of your site: It is important to remember every page of your site is a possible landing page (the point of entry from the search engines). So make sure each page has unique content relating to the chosen keyword for your page and make sure each page has a unique title tag and unique content that is aimed primarily at your readers and not the search engines (your readers are your bread and butter remember!).
5. Site-maps: A good sitemap has two main positive attributes. The first is that if built properly users will be able to navigate your site easily and secondly it can allow search engines to crawl/spider your sites content. There are two main types of sitemap that are essential to any good seo campaign. The first is a html sitemap, this is a normal html page which lists links to the pages on your site. A html site-map is usually used to aid navigation around your site but is also used by search engines like Yahoo to spider and index your pages. The second type of site-map is an xml site map, this is a useful tool that is used by search engines such as google to spider/cache your site. This type of site-map can also be submitted to Google webmaster tools so you can track your sites progress using their tools.
6. Content: I don’t care what anybody else says, but content is and always will be King (you have probably heard this a thousand times before). The reason content is important is that search engines love a site that is fresh and full of useful content, it is also essential if you want to attract visitors and keep them coming back for more (nobody wants to arrive at a site to see the last time it was updated was three months ago). Also if you have useful and unique content other webmasters are more likely to link to you!
7. Relevant links: Google webmaster guidelines clearly state that to improve your search engine rankings you should have other relevant sites link to yours. The key is to keep it relevant, don’t accept links from any old site. This takes more time but you will reap the rewards in the long term.
8. Anchor text: When other sites link to your site the words they show with your link is called the anchor text. For example this link online affiliate programs points to our home page. The anchor text relates to our sites keywords and is therefor telling the search engines what our homepage is all about. It is essential that anchor text is relevant to your chosen keywords, but be warned do not use the same anchor text with every link as search engines will think you are trying to directly manipulate their results (this is a form of spamming).
9. Patience: SEO is not a race, it takes time and patience. It is only natural that you want to reach the top of the search engines in the shortest amount of time, but the fact of the matter is this will probably get you banned from them. Search engine algorithms are based on natural linking factors, so you need to collect links ethically over a sustained period of time. This means you must avoid any thing that seems to good to be true - for example a link scheme that gets you hundreds of links in one go or any thing automated is a real no no. Also ignore any body who guarantees top spots (especially in a ridiculously short time).
10. Repeat:  It is important to remember tips 6 and 7, these are steps that you will repeat over and over again. It is essential to create more unique content than your competitors. This will keep your pages fresh and will attract search engines to cache and index your site more often, it will also encourage visitors to return to your sites more often.

That’s about all I have for today, I hope you have found these tips useful and as mentioned before please feel free to post some of your own.

Popularity: 36% [?]