Basic Tips To Help You In Your WordPress SEO Efforts
Install WordPress SEO by Yoast
This is the first and most important step. WordPress SEO is by far the best and most comprehensive SEO plugin for WordPress. To give you an idea of its popularity in the WordPress world, it has been downloaded a whopping 2,665,806 times since its creation. This plugin not only enables you to add Title tags, Meta Descriptions and optimise on-page content but it also adds an XML Sitemap, Breadcrumbs, Editrobots.txt and .htaccess files and Clean up the head section.
To give you a better idea of all of it’s features, juicy SEO benefits and to save me from rambling, go ahead and visit the WordPress SEO plugin page. To install it, all you need to do to install it on your self-hosted WordPress site is visit your Plugins tab via your dashboard, click on “Add New” and type in “WordPress SEO”. From there it will bring up a list, select the first one on the list and install. Then simply, go through each tab inside WordPress SEO and edit accordingly.
Make Space For Your Title Tag & Meta Descriptions
When installing the WordPress SEO plugin with your theme, it is often the case that when you view your source code that your Title Tag will be at the top of the page and your Meta Description will be somewhere down at the bottom of the head code. You can fix this by going to Appearance >> Editor >>header.php and moving your wp_head code to just underneath your default Title. This will ensure that your Title Tag and Meta Description are together and that your Description falls right below your Title in the source, right at the top of the page, right where Google wants it. It should look something like this:
<?php wp_title(''); ?>
<?php wp_head(); ?>
Configuring Your Default 404 Page
Not configuring your 404 pages properly can hurt you in terms of your website’s performance and ultimately result in a loss of traffic and rankings. If a visitor follows a broken link and lands on a 404 page, they may be likely to bounce fairly quickly, search engines won’t like it either. Follow the basic tips below to setup your 404 pages so that visitors and search engines alike find what they want.
For this, you have two options. You can copy the first code below and simply insert it into your 404 page which will redirect all of your 404 pages to your homepage OR with the second piece of code, you can redirect your 404 pages to a specific page. I personally redirect to a HTML sitemap (which requires a couple of extra steps) so that visitors and search engines can choose the page they want to view if they can’t find what they’re after.
To complete this step and redirected 404 Not Found pages to your home page or specific page instead of showing a boring old 404 page, go to Appearance again >> then to Editor >> then click on your 404.php template which should be at the top, right-hand side of your file list.
To redirect to the homepage, insert the code below:
<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: ".get_bloginfo('url'));
exit();
?>
To redirect to a specific page, insert the code below:
<?php
header("Status: 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location:http://www.yourdomain.com/any-page-you-like/");
?>
Or to redirect to a HTML sitemap page like I do:
- Install the following HTML Sitemap plugin
- Create a page with the slug “html-sitemap”
- Configure the basic options with the sitemap plugin.
- Insert the shortcode into the page and publish.
- Insert the code below and insert your HTML Sitemap URL:
<?php header("Status: 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location:http://www.yourdomain.com/html-sitemap/"); ?>
Configuring Your Robots.txt File
As a starting point (Maybe a Google search for more best practices on how to setup robots.txt files for WordPress) you should prevent the search engines from accessing the core files of your WordPress install such as the wp-content, wp-admin and the themes and plugins files. You can do this by adding the below code directly into a text document, saving it and uploading it into your hosting files or by using the editor in WordPress SEO. To do this, simply use the code below:
User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin Disallow: /wp-includes Disallow: /wp-content/plugins Disallow: /wp-content/cache Disallow: /wp-content/themes
Improving Your Websites Internal Link Structure
Recommended: SEO Smart Links
Internal linking and also, deep linking are an important part of your on-page SEO Strategy as well as helping Google to navigate between the pages on your website. Once you have setup the plugin and inserted your keywords and key pages, SEO Smart Links will automatically create internal links to related pages helping Google and your website visitors find your most important pages or posts.
Checking For Any Broken Links
Recommended:Broken Links Checker
Broken links will do one thing…Send Google on a wild goose chase! This is NOT what you want. Broken links will have a major, negative impact on your SEO. Ensure that all of your inner pages correctly interlink between each other and all external links and pointing to the right place simply by installing the free Broken Link Checker plugin by whiteshadow from the WordPress.org Plugin Directory. It detects broken links (obviously), it helps you to fix them and is super easy to use also.
Using Social Plugins To Help With Social Signals
Recommended:DiggDigg
Google has just introduced the Panda and Penguin updates which have shaken up the SEO world. As a part of the updates, Google has stated that it is now using Social Signals as one of its ranking factors. Social signals basically show Google that people value your content and are sharing it around. The DiggDigg and WP Socializer plugins help to increase your Social signals, increase your exposure and ultimately, help you to increase traffic back to your website.
Tracking Your Rankings In The Search Engines
Recommended:SEO Rank Reporter
The SEO Rank Reporter plugin enables you to track your SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Positions) and show you which of your URLs are ranking in the search engines. It’s super easy to install and is pretty nice to look at once you get it installed with neat little graphs and easy to read reports.
Caching Your Pages To Help Load Speed
Recommended:W3 Total Cache Plugin
I’m no whiz (I know absolutely nothing) when it comes to CDN or caching but I do know that a fast loading website is a happy website and a happy website ranks well in Google therefore, install the W3 Total Cache plugin on your website and watch the pages on your website load like lightning. If you have little know-how or knowledge when it comes to WordPress, I would suggest having your web host installing this plugin for you. If you have a decent host, they will generally do it out of the goodness of their hearts.
And To Put The Icing On The Cake
Recommended:JetPack For WordPress
Well, I haven’t got the words to describe this plugin and to be honest, its got more features than you could throw a stick at so here’s the link, go and check it out and just know that it will do wonders for your SEO efforts and for the performance of your website.
I know I haven’t covered off all of the best SEO plugins and tips for optimizing your WordPress website but in an effort to stop you from growing old and grey before I finish this post and having arthritis to the point where you cannot move your finders to write a comment below, I thought I would stop short and allow some room for suggestions and discussion. If you have used or know of any WordPress SEO plugins that gave you a great result, that you use on all of your WordPress installations or that you have come across somewhere out on the playground that got rave reviews, go ahead and list them below and if you need any help, I will stick around for some comment replies and to answer questions below.
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I think adding meta descriptions and removing the broken links from the blog is important apart from configuring the robots file properly.
Great tips, however I am surprised you did not touch on image sizes. As you know page speed is a ranking factor, and images make up a lot of the time spent loading a page.
A plugin I recommend for managing your images to make them better optimised is Smush.it. I have used this on a number of my blogs to great effect. It compresses images to a fraction of their original file size.
J
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Although I do a lot of my own SEO I don’t happen to use WordPress. I use to use it but after a while of not having used the platform I kinda forgot how the whole thing works and just eventually gave up on it. Having said this though, it is the platform of choice and in my opinion is favored by Google. Good post with good tips. I know that as much as I hate it, I’m going to eventually have to go back to it again as it really is the way of the web these days. If you’re not on WordPress, you’re going to get left behind.
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Grande post. Sono assolutamente d’accordo. Il plugin WordPress SEO by Yoast è il migliore in assoluto. Ha tutto il necessario. Inoltre, piacevole l’uso di immagini per spezzare il testo nel post!
Great tips related to SEO for WordPress CMS.
I already use some of them, and have to implement the others.
Thanks for the useful info!
its tips who can help me to build my website,cz im beginner..
Very Good Post!
I have checked all the points and worked on theme!
Hope It helps
my site ????is user w3
Thanks for this list, its wonder!
How about http://www.eachgame.com SEO LEVEL?
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Oh my, these are indeed helpful tips and plugins. I have never known DiggDigg to exist so I used a premium plugin on my site which is totally similar. I also have an SEO plugin by Yoast but SEO Smart Links is a great addition. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for sharing useful information, I think I need it. thanks!
A great and useful post as I’m starting to setup a multilingual WP site. Because I’m considering to do so by creating a blog network I’m curious about your opinion towards this solution and it’s consequences for SEO.
I use WordPress Seo by Yoast on every site I make. It’s my must-have plugin!
The broken link checker plugin is very useful for sites that accept guest posts.
I love your tips on the 404 page as I am always struggle to make some use of them. This helps me a lot, thanks!
Great post and this blog is a very good find for anyone just starting out with blogging and WordPress.
These tips are really helpful!
Added some of the tools that you shared on my WordPress SEO arsenal.
Thanks again.
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thank you for taking the time to compile this list, it would definitely help me thinking in the right direction.
Wow, I’m going to implement this immediatelly. Thank you very much. Especially the 404-thing. Obviously, you loose juice!!!
article. this good information
I agree, Dan. Used Blogger for a long time before migrating to WordPress about a year ago. All the professional blogs I’ve managed used WordPress and it simply has so many more options. There’s still a lot of broken links and I simply work on them bit by bit. Also, I did invest in a professional designer; well worth the money!!
nice tips,, thank for sharing
It’s help for newbie like me, thanks for this collection…
WordPress SEO Themes Super ..
Hey Lucas,
Great post. I totally agree. The SEO WordPress plugin by Yoast is the absolute best. It has everything you need. Also, nice use of images to break up the text in the post!
Thanks,
Chad
Nice List. SEO and DIgg Digg are really important ones. But i think CommentLuv is also somewhat useful and maybe suitable for this list
WordPress SEO Yoast,Jetpack and Digg Digg are must for any wordpress Blogger. Thank you for such a wonderful list
WordPress SEO by Yoast, Digg Digg & Jetpack are Must have for any WordPress Blogger. SEO smart links is really useful to Auotolink the Content. Really useful list of Plugins
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Thanks for the awesome tips!
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i use this plugin..thaks for sharing your knowledge
Nice for SEO… Ill try to use all the plugin suggested
One thing i like with this article is that all the plugins you recommended are all FREE. I particularly love SEO Smart Links a lot.
Thanks for tips
Great article you have provided here!
The basic tips are definitely the most fundamental, without the above wordpress sites would find it difficult to rank from the start. Completing all the steps above will go along way in SEOing your WP site for sure.
I think that without worrying too much about SEO, you can easily write good content, and use WordPress SEO by Yoast to get pretty decent results. All the other stuff might boost you a little, but the basics will do most of the work for you.
Among all the mentioned plugin on this post, I love W3 Total Cache Plugin the most. This plugin really helps in reducing the server workload.
I have used some of these plugins on http://Pashtolyrics.com and they results are really amazing. Not sure about the last one but Seo by Yoast is surely a must.
Thanks for the awesome tips! I would love it if you could check out my blog at http://summertimesweety.blogspot.com/ it is a blog about the beach, packing, and anything summer!
Good Luck! Thank you for sharing!
SEO by Yoast is the first plugin I install!
If you are using the 2011 theme (or any other theme that you didn’t create yourself) you have to make sure the wp_title looks exactly like you have it in this example. I have many customers that I refer to Yoast complaining that it doesn’t work. I check it for them and always find a crazy block of wp_title code that hard codes their blog name, site description, or other garbage into the title.
You can get full title control via Yoast by just using “wp_title(”)” in your header.
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i am already using all above plugins except seo rank reporter, and i have immediately install it and watched the amazing results.
These are not just useful plugins, they are life savers! In some cases clients come to me with self built wordpress sites and more often then not these plugins aren’t used. So long as they are light and flexible they are well worth incorporating. I’ve used plenty on http://www.reynoldsdigital.com check them out in the source.
The broken links checker is a very useful plugin, I usually use Xenu or “Screaming Frog” to check for broken links.
List of useful plugins. Thanks