Who Needs Profits...When You've Got Good Rankings?!!

Search engine marketing is an intense game of strategy, analysis, and patience. But, it's also a game with multiple, sometimes even conflicting, goals. Depending on who you talk to you, some will tell you SEO is about rankings, while others will tell you it's about conversions. It's a classic political struggle trying to answer the question, "what will bring in the greatest profits?"
You need exposure to get the traffic that leads to new business. But, you need to be user friendly in order to convert the traffic you're getting into new business. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
Anyone who has been optimizing a site for more than a week understands the value of getting strong search engine placement. Anyone that has had top rankings for more than a week also understands that bringing in new traffic that doesn't convert is pointless.

Why SEO is Like Government (and why government isn't like SEO)

SEO is a lot like government. No matter how many years we've been at it, there always seems to be more to do. And, like a good (or bad) law, we often don't see the effects right away. But, unlike government, SEO's analyze the results of their work. When a bad strategy is implemented, it gets repealed. Not very often is a bad law or government program withdrawn, regardless of the "unintended consequences."
Sigh.
But, I digress.
With SEO, there is almost always something that can be done to improve your site and your search rankings. But, after making specific changes, you must be patient enough to wait for the results of those changes. Then you can come back and compare the new results against previous results. This is the same whether you're making changes to improve your engine rankings or to increase conversion rates.
The changes you can make to your site are virtually endless when testing is involved. But, making too many changes too quickly, without testing and comparing the results, will almost always lead to a less than optimal marketing campaign.

Making Changes that Make Sense (and a lot of cents)

When you make changes without implementing proper tracking and testing procedures, you will often get both positive and negative results (or a combination of both), but you won't be in a position to pinpoint which of those changes were responsible for what results.
Let's say you made two changes to your home page, one was for rankings, the other for usability. If both rankings and conversions increase, you probably have performed two winning changes. But, what if rankings went up while conversions went down?
Simple, go back and undo the usability changes, right? Not necessarily.
It may be that your optimization changes improved rankings, but negatively effected usability, despite having made other usability changes. The usability changes you made may have actually resulted in a positive improvement, but that improvement was counteracted by the optimization changes that, while improving rankings, had a larger negative effect on conversions. Performing both of these changes at the same time makes it hard to pinpoint cause and effect.
Had you performed these changes separately, say the usability changes first, you might have seen an increase in conversion rates with little or no effect on rankings. The following week you would then make your optimization changes to find that your rankings went up, but your conversions dropped to levels lower than they were previously.
Now you know what to do! You undo your optimization changes, because, in this case, better rankings reduced conversions. Since you measured and tracked the results of each change, you can easily undo the change that had the greatest negative impact and then perhaps try something different to improve rankings.
Looking for opportunities to improve your site is an ongoing process. Every change and every test gives you valuable insight into what's working and what isn't. If you uncover a problem, you can't sit on your hands and do nothing. But once a "solution" is implemented, be patient and look to the results to see if it was a viable solution after all.

The Goal is Profits (not first page rankings)

In search engine marketing, there are often many goals: improve rankings, get more sales, increase conversions, drive more traffic, etc.
Profits can be achieved by improving rankings, getting more sales, increasing conversions, driving more traffic, etc. But, none of these is the goal itself. It is a means to the goal. Each of those paths can, and often do, intersect, and any of them can also lead you further away from your goal as well, if you're not careful
When I talk about getting more conversions for less money, I don't necessarily mean being able to spend less money, though that would be nice. But, getting more conversions for less usually requires spending more money, but paying less for each conversion.
Testing every change on your site allows you to keep making improvements in SEO, usability, conversions, etc. so that you can achieve your goal of getting each conversion at a lower cost than the month before. The way I see it, if marketing works the way it should, your marketing budget should always be increasing rather than decreasing, assuming, of course, that you can handle the increased business that the improvements continue to bring in.
Making sure you are using a measured approach to all your marketing efforts allows you slow, steady, and consistent growth in profits. When it's all said and done, it comes back to doing all that you can to improve your business, and measuring the results to make sure that what you're doing is working. Measuring only the end result without measuring the success or failures of the processes along the way will only result in a nice tasting goulash of a marketing campaign. Why settle for that when you can have the prime rib instead?

SEO Techniques

SEO Techniques are a set of specific tasks that would be performed by a Search Engine Optimization Company, when employed by a Client who desires high search engine positions to attract targeted traffic, with the intention of increasing their conversion rates and brand awareness.

Effective Website Optimization should enable the Search Engines to Index a site, utilising the most relevant keywords, related to the content which is promoting the goods and services offered by the Client. Implementing successful SEO Techniques require's an extensive knowledge of logic and a very good understanding of the targeted market sector.

Search Engine Optimization must be focused towards Human visitors in order to achieve good quality traffic and conversion rates. Page Content should be specific, informative and relevant to a search query. Writing relevant, quality content is one of the most important factors or SEO Techniques, which will unlock the doors of your website to real visitors.

A website is a visual and graphic interface to a Company. The web designer will incorporate many skills including graphic design and expert coding to represent the Clients goods and services, to reflect the quality, expertise and brand of the Client. The foundation of strong SEO Techniques should be developed prior to the website design stage by an SEO Specialist. The combination of a professional web designer and SEO professional working in tandem will result in an effective Internet platform, for Search Engine Marketing.

The are many methods of installing good SEO Techniques, but be aware that there are bad techniques that should not be used and avoided at all cost.

Bad techniques include Hidden Text, Optimizing Irrelevant keywords, linking to bad neighbours, keyword stuffing and Doorway or Gateway Pages. These methods of SEO will reveal very little relevant traffic, bad conversion rates and have a high chance of getting your website banned from the search engine index. These methods are often used by "so called" SEO companies offering services at very, very cheap rates.

The Development of your Internet Marketing Strategy is an ongoing process, when optimizing for natural relevant search engine results. The SEO specialist will become an integral part of the Marketing Team.

Studying Market Trends and the analysis of competitors and consumers, combined with extensive keyword research will form the basis of the optimization methodology and will outline the SEO Techniques required for the Internet Marketing Strategy.

Key factors to combine within the SEO Project Plan are as follows;

Domain Name - Short names are easier to remember ! Include short Primary Keywords ! without hyphens were possible.

Domain Extension - .com or .net For the Global Market. Use .co.uk for UK Country specific traffic

Host Location - If your attracting UK business host in the UK.

URL Names - include relevant keywords - unique to each page.

Robots.txt - A file which permits or denies access to robots or crawlers to areas of your site.

Navigation Structure - Keep it simple.

Meta Tags - Title and Description. - Unique detail for each page, related to page content.

H1 Tags - Use for the short on page content description.

H2 and H3 Tags- Use for Headings for sub category's within the Content

Page Content - Critical Component.

Internal Keyword Link Strategy - Use targeted keywords to link between pages.

Keyword Visibility - Within page Content.

Image Alt Tags - Helps with Accessibility.

Privacy Policy - Assures trust and confidentiality.

The site should confirm to the W3C standards.

Create and submit sitemap's - formatted in either .xml -.htm - .txt.

Create and submit RSS feeds to relevant feed directory's

Create and submit Articles

Find relevant websites within the same market sector or niche and form a link partnership.

Submit your website to relevant or industry related directory's.

A link exchange should be formed by utilising relevant keyword Anchor Text.

Utilise relevant Social Networks and Forums related to your Market Sector.

Utilise Blog sites relevant to your Market Sector.

The above factors are proven SEO Techniques, that will help increase targeted traffic from achieving good or high ranking search engine positions.

Search Marketing Company's require an understanding of logical information processing, this article is a primary example of the organic optimization services provided by WebPageOne Solutions.

SEO 101 - Basic Optimization Techniques

Believe it or not, basic SEO is all about common sense and simplicity. The purpose of search engine optimization is to make a website as search engine friendly as possible. It's really not that difficult. SEO 101 doesn't require specialized knowledge of algorithms, programming or taxonomy but it does require a basic understanding of how search engines work.

For the purposes of brevity this piece starts with a few assumptions. The first assumption is a single, small business site is being worked on. The second assumption is the site in question is written using a fairly standard mark-up language such as HTML or PHP. The last assumption is that some form of keyword research and determination has already taken place and the webmaster is confident in the selection of keyword targets.

There are two aspects of search engines to consider before jumping in. The first is how spiders work. The second is how search engines figure out what pages relate to which keywords and phrases.

In the simplest terms, search engines collect data about a unique website by sending an electronic spider to visit the site and copy its content which is stored in the search engine's database. Generally known as 'bots', these spiders are designed to follow links from one page to the next. As they copy and assimilate content from one page, they record links and send other bots to make copies of content on those linked pages. This process continues ad infinitum. By sending out spiders and collecting information 24/7, the major search engines have established databases that measure their size in the tens of billions.

Knowing the spiders and how they read information on a site is the technical end of basic SEO. Spiders are designed to read site content like you and I read a newspaper. Starting in the top left hand corner, a spider will read site content line by line from left to right. If columns are used (as they are in most sites), spiders will follow the left hand column to its conclusion before moving to central and right hand columns. If a spider encounters a link it can follow, it will record that link and send another bot to copy and record data found on the page the link leads to. The spider will proceed through the site until it records everything it can possible find there.

As spiders follow links and record everything in their paths, one can safely assume that if a link to a site exists, a spider will find that site. There is no need to manually or electronically submit your site to the major search engines. The search spiders are perfectly capable of finding it on their own, provided a link to your site exists somewhere on the web. Search engines have an uncanny ability to judge the topic or theme of pages they are examining, and use that ability to judge the topical relationship of pages that are linked together. The most valuable incoming links, come from sites that share topical themes.

Once a search spider finds your site, helping it get around is the first priority. One of the most important basic SEO tips is to provide clear paths for spiders to follow from point A to point Z in your website. This is easily accomplished by providing easy to follow text links directed to the most important pages on the site in the navigation menu or simply at the bottom of each page. One of these text links should lead to a text-based sitemap, which lists and provides a text link to every page in the site. The sitemap can be the most basic page in the site as its purpose is more to direct spiders than help lost site visitors though designers should keep site visitors in mind when creating the sitemap. Google also accepts more advanced, XML based sitemaps, which can be read about in their Webmaster Help Center.

There will be cases where allowing spiders free access to every page on a site is not always desirable. Therefor you'll need to know how to tell spiders that some site content is off limits and should not be added to their database using "robots.txt" files. (To learn more about setting up your Robots.txt file, start with Jennifer Laycock's article on Robots.txt basics)

Offering spiders' access to the areas of the site one wants them to access is half the battle. The other half is found in the site content. Search engines are supposed to provide their users with lists of pages that relate to the search terms people enter in their search box. Search engines need to determine which of billions of pages is relevant to a small number of specific words. In order to do this, the search engine needs to know your site relates to those words.

To begin with, there are a few elements, a search engine looks at when examining a page. After the URL of a site, a search spider records the site title. It also examines the description meta tag. Both of these elements are found in the "head" section of the source code.

Titles should be written using the strongest keyword targets as the foundation. Some titles are written using two or three basic two-keyword phrases. A key to writing a good title is to remember that human readers will see the title as the reference link on the search engine results page. Don't overload your title with keyword phrases. Concentrate on the strongest keywords that best describe the topic of the page content.

The description meta tag is also fairly important. Search engines tend to use it to gather information on the topic or theme of the page. A well written description is phrased in two or three complete sentences with the strongest keyword phrases woven into each sentence. As with the title tag, some search engines will display the description on the search results pages, generally using it in whole or in part to provide the text that appears under the reference link.

Due to abuse by webmasters, such as using irrelevant terms, search engines place minor (if any) weight in the keywords meta tag. As such, it is not necessary to spend a lot of time worrying about the keywords tag.

After reading information found in the "head" section of the source code, spiders continue on to examine site content. It is wise to remember that spiders read the same way we do, left to right and following columns.

Good content is the most important aspect of search engine optimization. The easiest and most basic SEO rule is search engine spiders can be relied upon to read basic body text 100% of the time. By providing a search engine spider with basic text content, you offer the engines information in the easiest format for them to read. While some search engines can strip text and link content from Flash files, nothing beats basic body text when it comes to providing information to the spiders. You can almost always find a way to work basic body text into a site without compromising the designer's intended look, feel and functionality.

The content itself should be thematically focused. In other words, keep it simple. Some pages cover multiple topics on each page, which is confusing for spiders. The basic SEO rule here is if you need to express more than one topic on a page, you need more pages. Fortunately, creating new pages with unique topic-focused content is one of the most basic SEO techniques, making a site simpler for both live-users and electronic spiders.

When writing page content, try to use the strongest keyword targets early in the copy. For example, a site selling "Blue Widgets" might use the following as a lead-sentence;

"Blue Widgets by Smith and Co. are the strongest construction widgets available and are trusted by leading builders and contractors."

The primary target is obviously construction applications for the blue widget. By placing the keyword phrases "blue widgets" and "construction widgets" along side other keywords such as the singular words, "strongest", "trusted" and "builders" and "contractors", the sentence is crafted to help the search engine see a relationship between these words. Subsequent sentences would also have keywords and phrases weaved into them. One thing to keep in mind when writing page copy is unnecessary repetition of keywords (keyword stuffing) is often considered spam by search engines. Another thing to remember is that ultimately, the written copy is meant to be read by human eyes as well as search spiders. Read your copy out loud. Does is make sense and sound natural? If not, you've overdone the use of keyword phrases and need to make adjustments.

Another important element a spider examines when reading the site (and later relating the content to user queries), is the anchor text used in internal links. Using relevant keyword phrases in the anchor text is a basic SEO technique aimed at solidifying the search engine's perception of the relationship between pages and the words used in the link. For example... we also have a popular series of articles on the basics of SEO written by Stoney deGeyter. Linking the term "basics of SEO" is an example of using keyword phrases in the anchor text. Terms such as "SEO 101" or "SEO for beginners" could also have been used.

Remember, the foundation of successfully optimizing your site is simplicity. The goal is to make a site easy to find, easy to follow, and easy to read for search spiders and live-visitors, with well written topical content and relevant incoming links. While basic SEO can be time consuming in the early stages, the results are worth the effort and set the stage for more advanced future work.

Great Paid Directories - Effective way to get permanent backlinks with high PR

It's a well known that for site's promotion in search engines by popular queries it's important to get a lot of "dofollow" links from different websites. Almost always links from pages with high PR are purchased with monthly payments. But what to do if budget for SE promotion of website is small and there is no possibility to buy links for long term? There are old proven methods to get backlinks from forums, blogs and social networking websites. All these methods are based on writing comments in posts or threads already having PR or which could get it in the future. As you understand - it's a lottery. You can guess and get a good backlink in future, but in the most cases - pages where your links are located will never get high PR. Or your comments could be deleted by moderators thinking that they're advertising and you're a spammer. In any case using of such methods of getting link can not be used as systematic and guaranting a good results.


The solution of this problem is offered by GreatDirectories.org - popular website dedicated to the most effective directories. I must say I'm always somewhat skeptical of web directories. Until recently, until I've found the service described below. So GreatDirectories.org has selected 13 the most effective paid directories with high PR and availability of deep links. Many of these directories - are authorative general directories existing several years and having not only high PR of main pages but also inner pages - where links are placed. But the most important that all these directories guarantee permanent link - you pay for the submission only once - links remain forever. And this is exactly what we need!

So the list of directories contains - 12 general directories with PR6 and 1 directory with PR5. Each directory except link on site's home page provides 3 deep links - that in itself is a good opportunity to pump the inner pages. Almost all directories have different IPs. But the most important - service from GreatDirectories.org guarantee 25% discount for submission to these 13 web directories.

Benefits of using service of submission to great paid directories:

1. Opportunity to get backlinks from pages with high PR (up to PR5) by low cost.
2. Payment made once and links are permanent.
3. You save 25% through using of this service compared to submissions to each directory individually.
4. Opportunity to get deep links to inner pages of website - 3 links in each directory.
5. You can create for each directory different descriptions and titles. That gives opportunity to have unique content on the page where your links are located.

New Google Algorithm Changes

 Most online entrepreneurs know by now that content is king and this phrase just became more important than ever. Google has always stressed the importance of quality original content and while many webmasters followed these guidelines, some still decided to take the easy way out and risk the odds.

Google has been under a lot of public pressure lately to deal with the endless spam and large-sized, low quality websites that seem to still be getting top spots in the search result ranks. They have finally just released another algorithm change to help combat spam websites, content scrapers and websites that in general republish previously published content.

People have been getting these top rankings by using techniques such as:

• Commenting on blog posts with do follow links back to a website with specific keywords
• Putting links in forum profile pages
• Spamming an commenting pages with links

The point to this update is to help ensure the original publishers of content show up above the copied sources. While only 2% of queries changed in some way with this update, it is a significant step in combating spam. Now more than ever, it is vitally important that websites create and publish quality content that is totally original and related to their business.
Google is continuing to change their approach to managing this form of blackhat SEO spam that web marketers are using to rank new websites.

So, if you have not made a new years SEO resolution yet, you should consider making your resolution to start publishing great content and recommend to all your clients that they also should be adding original content on a regular basis. This is to ensure that your website will not be penalised and demoted by the google team.

Content has always been king and it will continue to reign supreme for the foreseeable future. Invest in good content and you will help secure your rankings for the future.

Do Sites Need Fresh Content for SEO?

0
inShare

A lot of clients often ask me if they NEED a blog or fresh content added to their site on a regular basis to keep their rankings. The truth is you don't need to add new content to hold your rankings. Many sites stay static for years and hold onto their rankings with few changes ever being made.

You do need some relevant content and so I would always suggest having a minimum of about 6-12 good content pages on various topics or pages answering questions related to your niche. When adding content you should always try and add content that would be useful and informative for your readers.

Avoid adding content just because it targets keywords or because you think you need to add it. That being said, it is good to have a blog and fresh content because the more content you have, the more traffic you can potentially get.

Publishing quality articles in your niche can also help you establish yourself as a very knowledgeable industry leader, which can result in more business overall. Blogs and content are also a great way to take advantage of social media marketing with sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Votes on these sites are becoming signals to search engines of quality.

So simply put, having fresh quality content can be a great benefit and is highly recommend, but it is not necessary to achieve or to hold onto rankings for your main keyword phrases that you have optimized your home page and other core pages for.

JC Penney Penalised by google for buying links

Today, the New York Times published an article about a search engine optimization investigation of  J.C. Penney. Perplexed by how well jcpenney.com did in unpaid (organic) search results for practically everything the retailer sold, they asked someone familiar with the world of search engine optimization (SEO) to look into it a bit more. The investigation found that thousands of seemingly unrelated web sites (many that seemed to contain only links) were linking to the J.C. Penney web site. And most of those links had really descriptive anchor text. It was almost like someone had arranged for all of those links in order to get better rankings in Google.

JC Penny was found to have hired a an SEO company who outsourced the buying of links to TNX.net, this meant that JC PENNY had ranked globally for highly targted keywords such as jumpers, shirts all one keyword targets. With the attempt of blackhat SEO New york times blew the whistle and wrote up a documented story on this SEO fallacy.
The New York Times Contacted Googler Matt Cutts, head of webspam, confirmed that the tactics violated the Google webmaster guidelines and shortly after, the J.C. Penney web site was nowhere to found for the queries they had previously ranked number one for. Matt tweeted that “Google’s algorithms had started to work; manual action also taken”.

Matt Cutts response on JC Penney
After google has manually reverted these rankings Jc Penny can now be found with highly searched keywords on the 4th and 5th page of google respectively.

Google Information from webmaster Central on Paid Links
Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.
However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.
Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

• Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a> tag
• Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

The results in traffic for JC Penny


Traffic has significantly decreased and sales have decreased online for JC Penny

Information on hiring an SEO Company
This is the due result of outsourcing SEO work to an SEO company that relied on blackhat SEO techniques and buying links in restricted or dead websites to raise rankings. Companies wishing to hire a reputable SEO company need to read up on ethical google guidelines and also be sure that the money they are paying for is whitehat seo and will result in postive results.

WordPress SEO: Optimal Permalink Structure

Search Engine Optimization

In recent years, most bloggers have the awareness of implmenting pretty permalink structure in their WordPress blogs. But pretty permalink structure does not mean it is optimal. Without optimal permalink structure, it will not bring you any additional benefits you can enjoy. In this post, we’re going to look at different permalink options and which permalink structure is best to choose. Of course, there isn’t a one solution fits all cases. Definitely there are better choices you can make.

What Is Permalink?

A permalink is the permanent unique URL pointing to a specific blog post, page, archive page as well as category page. To make it simple, a permalink is the unique address that is used by your blog readers to locate your blog’s entry in web browser.
Pretty permalink is the idea to craft the URL in such a way that it make sense to all non-technical people. It is the basic of the permalink optimization process.
Permalink optimization is one of the important element in SEO. The main benefit having permalink optimized is that it helps to increase the keyword ranking in search engine results. Ultimately it will bring targeted traffic to your blogs and help you to achieve business goal.

Permalink Structure

There are several types of permalink structure that you can implement on your blogs. However each of them has pros and cons. Depending on your situation, you can choose to implement one of them.

#1 Post Number

By default, WordPress is using post number as the permalink. It’s an ugly permalink and very unfriendly to the search engines and your readers. By simply looking at the URL string, you have no clue what is this article about unless you go through the full article. Same theory applies to search engines as they are designed to behave like human.

http://www.yourdomain.com/?p=123

This type of permalink is absolutely not recommended unless you do not want to rank your blog post well in search engines.

#2 Post Title

When you’re creating blog entry, WordPress allows us to specify post slug. It is identical to your post title by default. Post title (slug) is the second type of the permalink structure you’re going to into details.

http://www.yourdomain.com/your-post-title/

As we can observe from the example above, post title permalink is a keyword rich URL. It’s very simple and pretty enough to give you a clue whether the information on the page is what you want before you actually open it in your browser. Same theory, search engines are using keyword rich permalink as one of the important element when they are deciding the rankings of your articles.
There is one problem with this implementation. If you have more than one article with same post title, then WordPress will automatically add a number at the end of the permalink. For example:

http://www.yourdomain.com/your-post-title-2/

http://www.yourdomain.com/your-post-title-3/

It doesn’t matter to have a number at the end of the permalink because it does not affect how we and search engines interpret the relevancy of the article based on permalink.

#3 Date + Post Title

Another common permalink structure is to have date + post title.

http://www.yourdomain.com/2010/03/23/your-post-title/

The date in the URL is the date of creation of the blog post. It’s unnecessary to have date in URL in most situations. It’s not a keyword that you are trying to rank for in search engine results. Many readers have a bias for new content and more likely to click on something which is newer. Furthermore, if you change your date of publication to re-post your older article, your permalink will be changed and you might lose your SEO benefits that you have in your old permalink.
So this permalink structure is not recommended unless you have a very good reason.

#4 Category + Post Title

The last common permalink structure to be discussed is category + post title. Category is considered as a keyword and this structure allows you to insert more keywords into the URL. It certainly will bring you SEO benefits. From my opinion, it’s better than date + post title.

http://www.yourdomain.com/category/your-post-title/

But there are two drawbacks for this approach. First, if you assign two categories to a post, then you will have two permalinks for this article. WordPress will choose which one to show, not you.
The second disadvantage is if you plan to change the category of your blog entry, then your permalink will also be changed and potentially you may lose your SEO benefits. Of course, there are some plugins which can resolve this issue by redirecting your old permalink to new permalink but you have more work to do.

Which One Is The Optimal Permalink Structure And Why?

I strongly recommend to use post title as permalink. It’s short, simple and good enough to improve your search engine rankings. And you have less work to do when you re-structure your blog or category.

Conclusion

Post title permalink is the optimal permalink structure. As you can see from your web browser, I’m using it in this blog.
How about you? Which permalink structure you’re using and what is the reason? Do you have other permalink structures which is good to recommend? I would like to hear from you and please share with us in the comment box below.

20 Practical SEO Tips to Super-Charge Your WordPress Blog!

We would like to introduce WordPress Expert John Lamansky, who we managed to extract from the lab just long enough for him to compose this brilliant WordPress Top 20 SEO Guide.

Got a WordPress blog that you’re eager to supercharge for optimal search engine performance? Read on! We’ll cover pinging, sitemaps, canonicalization, link juice, header tags, slugs, tags, timestamping, social media, permalinks, and a whole lot more!

20 Practical SEO Tips to Super-Charge Your WordPress Blog, By John Lamansky
WordPress SEO Tip #20 — Don’t Block the Search Engines!

First and foremost: make sure you’re not inadvertently telling the search engines to go away! Believe it or not, some WordPress installations block the search engine bots by default.

From your admin panel, go to Options > Privacy and make sure it’s set to “I would like my blog to be visible to everyone.”
Bonus Tip #1 – Are Comments Enabled?

Some WordPress users restrict comments to registered users, or disable them entirely. While this may be appropriate in some situations, in most cases comments are a very beneficial factor, and a defining mark, of a blog.

Comments engage your readers, help you get more “fresh content” SEO brownie points, and give search engines another reason to come back frequently.

Here’s how to fully enable comments:

   1. Login to the WordPress administration center
   2. Click “Options” on the menu bar
   3. Is “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” checked? If so, consider unchecking it.
   4. Click “Discussion” on the submenu bar
   5. Make sure the following are checked: “Allow people to post comments on the article” and “Allow link notifications from other Weblogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)”

WordPress SEO Tip #19 — Does Your Blog Have a Topic?

Some of us would prefer to have a blog where we talk about anything that comes to mind: cars, movies, photosynthesis, dust mites, you name it.

In and of itself, such a blogging style isn’t wrong; however, you can leave search engines clueless as to what your blog’s about and thus for what search queries your blog should appear. And some of your readers might get annoyed in the process as well.
WordPress SEO Tip #18 — Ensure URL Canonicalization

If your blog posts are accessible from more than one URL, you could end up with:

    * Search engines confused as to which URL to display in the SERPs.
    * PageRank split between multiple pages.
    * Duplicate content penalties.

Starting with version 2.3, WordPress takes care of this and makes sure your content is accessible from only one place. So if you use an older version, either upgrade to the latest version of WordPress, or install the Permalink Redirect plugin.
WordPress SEO Tip #17 — Check for Valid XHTML

Most code errors are minor, but the more serious ones can cause content misinterpretation by search engines, lower rankings, and rendering errors.

WordPress itself produces valid code, but errors can crop up from two other common sources:

    * Poorly written plugins or themes
    * User-created coding errors (in the blog posts themselves, or through theme customizations)

First check your site for errors. If an error is found, look at the surrounding content to determine the source of the error.

If a plugin is the culprit, fix it if you’re good at that sort of thing (the beauty of open source!), or send a quick email to the plugin developer and let him or her know.
WordPress SEO Tip #16 – Don’t Leech Link Juice!

One characteristic of WordPress blogs is the sidebar, which is typically present on every single page. Do you really need to be passing link juice from every single one of your pages to every single one of those links? If the answer is no, consider adding rel=”nofollow” to the less important ones.
WordPress SEO Tip #15 — Use Images in Your Posts

Not only do they increase visitor attention and retention, they give you an opportunity to use keyword-rich “alt” attributes, “title” attributes, and filenames. Plus it’ll give your blog visibility in image search engines.
WordPress SEO Tip #14 — Does Your Theme Use Header Tags Correctly?

    * The blog title, or your main keyword should be in an <h1> tag.
    * If your subtitle is keyword-rich, you can put it in an <h2>; otherwise I recommend putting it in a non-header tag like <div>.
    * The post titles should go in <h2> tags.
    * Sidebar section titles should be <h3> tag or non-header.

Unfortunately, some themes (including the WordPress Default Theme) put the sidebar section titles in <h2> tags. Although this makes sense from a strict structural point of view, it also gives irrelevant sidebar headers (“Categories,” “Archives,” “Meta,” etc.) equal weight with your SEO-important post titles.

To sum it up: Use a theme that utilizes header-tags properly, or try fixing the theme you have.
WordPress SEO Tip #13 — Use Pinging

A ping is a “this site has new content” notification that invites bots to visit your blog.

WordPress pings one website called Ping-o-matic by default, which in turn pings others. You can also add additional services by going to Options > Writing in the admin panel. (For example, the pinging URL for Google Blog Search is http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2)

Another Bonus Tip: Once a post is published, WordPress issues pings whenever the post is edited. Try to cut down on after-publishing edits to avoid being considered a ping spammer.
WordPress SEO Tip #12 — Install the Google XML Sitemaps Generator Plugin

XML Sitemaps are search-engine-friendly directories of your blog’s posts and other pages intended to help search engines spider your site. Though pioneered by Google, they’re supported by Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com as well.

The Google XML Sitemaps Generator for WordPress makes creation of these sitemaps easy and automatic. It also lets the engines know when you post new content.
WordPress SEO Tip #11 — Avoid Sponsored Themes

There was a debate in the WordPress community not too long ago on the topic of sponsered themes. These themes include paid links (usually in the footer) than can suck PageRank and possibly result in a Google paid links penalty.

Stick with WordPress theme directories that don’t include sponsored themes, like the WordPress Theme Viewer.
Bonus Tip #2 — Write Right Post Titles

SEO isn’t everything: once you’re high in the SERPs, you need action words to prompt clickthroughs.

Put keywords in your title if at all possible, but not if it’ll compromise the click-trigger action title.
WordPress SEO Tip #10 — Use Traditional SEO Techniques

A WordPress blog is a website too, so the traditional SEO techniques still apply:

    * Use important keywords in the title and throughout the post, but don’t overdo it.
    * Bold your keywords when it makes sense.
    * Develop links to your blog.

WordPress SEO Tip #9 — Use the Power of the Slug

Ever wondered what the “Post Slug” on the “Write” page was? It’s the text that goes in the URL when you have “Pretty Permalinks” enabled (see tip #2).

By default the slug is a “sanitized” version of the post title. However, if your title is overly long or keyword-sparse, you can change the slug through the Post Slug box.

Yet Another Bonus Tip: The SEO Slugs plugin can take out common words like “you,” “is,” etc. out of the slug for you automatically.
WordPress SEO Tip #8 — Use Timestamping to Stagger Fresh Content

Search engines and visitors love fresh blog content on a steady, regular basis. But for a lot of us, creativity comes irregularly: 10 post ideas one week, none the next.

Enter timestamping. When writing a post, click the plus sign next to “Post Timestamp.” Set a date and time, and the post will publish by itself whenever you specify.

Search engines will keep coming back, and visitors won’t be inundated with a ton of new posts all at once.

Hint: If you’ve timestamped a post, don’t click the Publish button, since that’ll publish your post immediately regardless of your timestamp. Instead, select “Published” under “Post Status” and click the Save button.
WordPress SEO Tip #7 — Use Tags for Free Keyword Boosts

WordPress 2.3 and above include a tags feature that lets you assign keywords to your blog posts. Once you start using them, then since each tag gets its own webpage, you’ll be generating a ton of your own themed, keyword-oriented internal backlink pages.
WordPress SEO Tip #6 — Integrate Social Media
        12diggsdigg    

Adding social media links/buttons like the ones above makes it easy for visitors to promote your quality content (hint, hint). Social media is a great way to build links naturally as well as drive targeted site traffic.

    * Share This is a very popular “social media all-in-one” plugin.
    * If you’re a FeedBurner user, you can use FeedFlare to add action links, including social media ones, to the bottom of your posts.

Lots of social media sites provide code you can use to generate buttons like those above. Grab your own code from:

    * Digg
    * Sphinn
    * StumbleUpon
    * Mixx
    * Scoop

WordPress SEO Tip #5 — Implement Deep-Linking

Here are several great ways to implement deep-linking on your WordPress blog:

    * Within your posts, link to other posts on your blog and use important keywords in the anchor text.
    * Install the Similar Posts plugin, which inserts a list of related posts you’ve written to the bottom of each of your blog posts. This process will create aged deep links and increase visitor retention.
    * Display your most popular posts in your sidebar using the Popularity Contest plugin. Gives your most popular posts tons of internal links, and helps your visitors find your best content.

WordPress SEO Tip #4 — Make Scrapers Work to Your Advantage

Most of us would probably be upset if someone used scraping (automated content stealing) to publish our laboriously-written posts as his or her own.

But with a little work, you can make the scrapers work for you, not against you.

Here’s how to do it, courtesy of EarnersBlog.com:

    If you use WordPress it’s very easy to take full advantage of these sites linking to you, all you need to do is create links back to your content within your feed.

    What you’ll need for this:

        * Cave Monkey’s Full Text Feed Plugin
        * Solo Technologies Add Related Posts to your Feed Plugin

    These plugins simply show your entire post in your feed & also add some related posts in your feed only (which will also increase the amount of people in your feed reading more than 1 post).
    Now, everytime anyone scrapes your blog via your RSS feed & republishes it they’ll be deep linking to 5 or more of your existing posts. Bingo.

WordPress SEO Tip #3 — Install the All-in-One SEO Plugin

Like the name implies, this plugin covers a lot of the bases.

    * Puts the blog name after the post title, giving your keyword-rich titles more prominence.
    * Allows you to override title and meta tags on your homepage as well as your individual posts.
    * Lets you add “noindex” to your category and/or tag pages to avoid duplicate content.
    * And more.

A must-have for serious WordPress SEO.
WordPress SEO Tip #2 — Use “Pretty Permalinks”

Sure, you may already use Pretty Permalinks, but are you using the best possible permalink structure?

For those of who don’t use Pretty Permalinks, it’s a must-do for WordPress SEO. Permalinks, in essence, are the URLs of your WordPress blog posts. “Pretty Permalinks” put slugs (which should contain keywords — see tip #9) in your URLs instead of the default numbers.

To enable or change them, first login, then go to Options > Permalinks.

The two options you do not want are “Default” and “Numeric.” Here are my suggestions for picking a “pretty” permalink structure:

    * Date and Name Based: The problem with this is that your posts are several extra directories deep, which can decrease relevence in some search engines. However, such a permalink structure can nevertheless be desireable if your blog is news-oriented or date-sensitive.
    * Post Name Only: If your blog covers one topic that has no subtopics (which, though possible, is unlikely), select “Custom” and type /%postname%/
    * Category Based: If your blog covers multiple topics, implement category-based URLs. (You have to look into the Codex to find information on category-based URLs, so many WordPress users probably don’t realize that this option exists!) To implement it, select “Custom” and type /%category%/%postname%/

WordPress SEO Tip #1 — WordPress Secret: Use Category-Based Permalinks for SEO Siloing

Here’s the big finale. Problem is, this tip is so important (and lengthy) that it really merits its own post.

Here’s a teaser: it entails implementing the powerful siloing technique on your WordPress blog through a combination of plugins, settings, and strategies.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips for WordPress

 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips for WordPress

1. Write keyword rich post titles – it almost goes without saying, but the post title is the most important part of the blog post for many reasons. From your reader’s perspective, a descriptive and compelling title helps them decide if your post is worth reading or not. From an SEO perspective, think about the keywords or phrases people might type into a search box to find your post 2 months from now, and use those words or phrases in your post title. For maximum benefit, try to avoid titles that are cute, clever or cryptic.

2. Make your post titles live links – many of the WP themes already do this, but if yours doesn’t, you can add the necessary code pretty easily. In your Main Index Template and Page Template, find the code for the post tiltle. It’ll probably look like this:

<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>

To link your post titles, you’ll want to replace that code with the following (be sure to leave out the “#” symbols):

<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

3. Optimize your permalinks – the default WP 2.0 installation displays permalinks this way: http://www.savvysolo.com/?p-123. A more search-engine friendly permalink includes the post title in the link, like this: http://www.savvysolo.com/2006/01/16/keyword-rich-post-title/. This is a simple change to make. In your WP admin panel, click on the “Options” tab, then the “Permalinks” sub-tab, and choose the option just below the “Default” permalink option. See the WordPress Codex for more on permailinks.

4. Optimize your page titles – According to most SEO experts, the page title tag is one of the most important tags on your page. In most WP themes, you’ll find the page title tag in the Header Template, and the default version ususally looks like this:

<title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?><?php wp_title(); ?></title>

The best tweak I’ve seen to optimize this tag comes from Stephen Spencer, who suggests using the following code for page title tag (omit the “#”):

<title><?php if (is_home()) { print "whatever title I want to have on my blog home page."; } else { wp_title(' '); print " : "; bloginfo('name'); } ?></title>

This tweak does a couple different things. First, it allows you to use a more descriptive, keyword-rich title for your blog’s main page. And second, for the individual post pages, it will use the title of your post as the page title, which is another reason to follow the advice I mentioned in #1 above.

5. Use the related posts plugin – Alex Malov’s Related Entries plugin is a neat little addition to any WP blog. Not only does it enhance your blog’s usability, but it also helps create a dense link structure throughout your site, which makes it easier for the search engine spiders to find and index older blog posts.

6. Use the Google sitemap plugin – According to Google:

    “Google Sitemaps is an easy way for you to submit all your URLs to the Google index and get detailed reports about the visibility of your pages on Google.”

WordPress user Arne Brachold has made the sitemap creation and submission process fairly simple with his Google Sitemap plugin, which was recently updated for WP 2.0. This plugin will create a sitemap for you and submit it to Google.

Additionally, Elliot Kosmicki offers a script that will convert your Google sitemap into a Yahoo compliant sitemap that you can submit to Yahoo.

7. Add meta keyword tags and Technorati tags to your posts automatically – although it’s questionable whether or not meta keywords are still valuable when it comes to SEO, ultimately, they can’t hurt. As far as Technorati tags, they have little impact on SEO, but they can help increase your traffic directly from Technorati, so it’s a good idea to use them.Rick Boakes created the Autometa plugin that will add both tags to your posts automatically.

Another simple and effective Technorati tag generator I’ve used is Broobles’ Simple Tags plugin.

8. Validate your code – Use the W3C Markup Validation Service to ensure the code behind your pages is clean and valid. If you find your pages have errors in the code, hire or make friends with a savvy web developer to help you clean it up. See Google’s Information for Webmasters for more info on creating a technically valid site.