Simple WordPress SEO in 3 Steps

Blogs are more Search Engine Friendly than a Website. While the Blogosphere is talking about WordPress. We’re here to tell you 3 simple SEO steps that can improve your Search Engine Listings.

SEO your Blog in 3 Simple Steps:

1. Change your permalink structure

Change your permalinks from www.yourblog.com/?page_id=2 to www.yourblog.com/your-post-title. As We’hve already discussed What are Permalinks? You can read all about them, and usage here.

2. Change your TITLE tag

As it stands unaltered WordPress displays your title thus: Your Blog Title >> Your Post Title. It would be much better from a SEO perspective if it saw your post title first, before the blog title or better still (in some cases) without the blog title at all.

Here’s how:

Log in to your WordPress dashboard (version 2.6.2 at time of writing)
Click on ‘Design’
Click on ‘Theme Editor’
Click on ‘Header (header.php)’ in the list on the right hand side
Find the following code:

<title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?> <?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> &raquo; Blog Archive <?php } ?> <?php wp_title(); ?></title>

and replace with:

<title><?php wp_title(); ?></title>



or if you want to include your blog title:

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

Now your title should show as Your Post Title or Your Post Title – Your Blog Title.

A little more about Tags is also discussed here.

3. Make a Sitemap:

The best Plugin I’ve ever found for creating an automatic sitemap for WordPress is Google XML Sitemaps (Download Here) which generates a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap.

Make sure you do steps 1 and 2 before activating your XML-Sitemap plugin.
Install the plugin and activate.
Click on ‘Settings’
Click on ‘XML-Sitemap’
Click the link to build your sitemap for the first time.

This sitemap can now be specified within Webmaster Tools in your Google Account.