While most blogging platforms tend to do well in search engine rankings, the default WordPress settings are not very well optimized. There are a few changes you need to make which will give your blog the edge over those with no optimization, but it is worth noting that good search engine rankings depend more on your actual blog posts, posting frequency and the number of back links to your blog. Here are the basic "out the box" changes you must carry out on your WordPress blog:
1. Change the default permalink structure.
The /%category%/%postname% permalink is the most commonly advised, but to the search engines your blog post appears in two places. If you look at the URL as it shows in your browser, it appears as follows:
http://www.your-blog.com/your-catagegory/your-post/
But your post can also be found here:
http://www.your-blog.com/your-catagegory/your-post/index.php
To keep your permalinks constant you can force WordPress into naming posts with a URL which contains a suffix, for example you could use the following permalink:
/%category%/%postname%.php
Your blog post can now only be found at:
http://www.your-blog.com/your-catagegory/your-post.php
To change your permalink structure, open your WordPress Admin Panel and click on "Options" then "Permalinks". In the "Custom structure" text box enter the following:
/%category%/%postname%.php
Then click on the "Update Permalink Structure" button.
2. Next you need to rename the default category from "Uncategorized" to a phrase related to your blog under which all your default posts will be saved. It is not essential to name this particular category after a keyword phrase, think of your readers first. For example you could use the phrase "From My Point of View" as the name for the default category. Most of your posts will be fairly short, and often your point of view on some topic, making this the perfect place to file these posts.
You can change the default category by editing it in the "Manage / Categories" section of your control panel.
Any longer informative posts or reviews MUST be saved under categories which are named after a keyword phrase. For example if you had a blog related to promoting websites, you could name one of your categories "Increase Website Traffic" and all the posts you write about increasing traffic to a website should be posted under this category.
3. Delete all of the default links in the "Blogroll / Manage Blogroll" section of your WordPress control panel ("Links / Manage Links" in older installations). Linking to arbitrary blogs will hurt your rankings in the search engines. One of the best ways to link to other blogs is to use "in context" links by mentioning them in posts that you write.
4. Remove unnecessary links in your blog footer template. The links in your footer should only point to pages on your blog (unless the terms of use for the theme you are using require a link back to the theme creator). You can edit the footer template in the "Presentation / Theme Editor" section of your Wordpress control panel. The text will vary depending on which theme you are using, and how you edit this file depends on your personal preferences, but you should include a copyright notice which links to your copyright policy.
5. Make sure your WordPress theme only uses the
< h1 >
headline tags once in the individual post pages (and that should only be for the headline of your post). Most themes use
< h1 >
tags for the headlings in the side bar, so you will need to manually edit these to < /h1 >
< h2 >
or preferably
< h3 >
tags. Unfortunately this also means editing the CSS file to return the sidebar headings to their previous formatting.
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