Optomising WordPress has been made much easier with the some really cool plugins. For this post I shall look at the plugin I use as well as how to slip in keywords and a way to choose them.
SEO All in one pack
extra fields for new posts
This handy plugin adds three extra spots to fill in at the bottom of the ‘new post’ page. The first one is Title, here you can override the title of you blog post. You can give a search engine a snazzy eye catching title while giving your readers a title that more fits in with your style.
The second is Description. This is the ‘meta tag’ description that normally appears on websites. The SEO pack advices the max length of characters you should be using (as it does for the title) and gives you a count as you type.
Keywords is again equivalent to the ‘meta tag’ version, it also has a max length and running count. Most search engines do not use keywords, however, the world of search engines keeps changing so in my view – fill it in anyway. Not as though it takes much time.
Researching titles
I do not advocate the use of keywords to the point where your post does not make sense. Just remember who is reading it and who it is for. However you can, where appropriate, slip in keywords and still keep it readable.
A rather easy method to find keywords is to use the Google Keyword Finder that is part of Adwords.
There are plenty of instruction so I shall leave the details for you to find out. Once you have a few keywords you want to use, sprinkle them in the text of the post. Use them in the title and within the ‘All in one SEO’ plugin section at the bottom.
Categories and tags
Ensure you create and use appropriate categories for each of your blog posts. Consider using keywords to name your categories, the way Google is going and considering the popularity of WordPress – I won’t be surprise if their names become more and more important for search engine ranking algorithms.
Tags are a way of crosslinking blog posts and also when users click on a tag they will find related posts. Again, use words that are meaningful or even keywords. Be selective, don’t use lots and lots!
Site Maps
You can create site maps for blogs, see my previous post about them (DIYSEO: Giving search engines directions with site maps). The extra thing about site maps is that you can also submit RSS feeds, becomes self updating.
Other options
Google now scans twitter for links, Facebook has teamed up with Bing. There are plugins and services that can automatically update these social networking sites. Already, search engines are finding content first on social networks before they find it by their normal means.
