The Newbie’s 9 Simple Steps for Search Engine Friendly Wordpress Blog Posts

September 15th, 2007 by Alan  

Following are recommendations for basic SEO Friendly Wordpress blog posts and plugins. This is how some of SEO Image’s clients are set up - depending on the needs and goals some client structure, configurations, and plugins may differ.

We like things kept simple until the blogger gets more experience and can utilize additional methods and plugins. This is basic, but will keep the posts SEO friendly. There are other strategies.

1. Login to your Wordpress Admin and from the dashboard click onto the “Write” tab in the top navigation.

2. Write a Keyword Rich Title and keep it interesting. Know your terms or spend some time doing keyword research. Don’t spam the post title as the terms here are important and a good post title may get additional traffic from news aggregator and social websites. This is very important to try and be a bit “hip” with. A trendy and interesting title can go a long way. Keep in mind the content page will be the archived page and this is most likely the page that will rank for the terms in several months. So make sure you get trendy and a good keyword rich title.

3. Write a Good Post. A good post consists of some relevant and good quality information. Links to related resources and references can help add credibility. Take your time. There is no reason to try and whip out 10 to 20 mediocre posts a day, One great post a day, a week or even a month is all any blogger needs, unless your blog is your business then it’s a different case. If you are a business - a goal to shoot for would be to have one post a week if possible. I know if you manage a business and are very “hands-on” your clients, then you will have little time to blog. Don’t let the goal of the blog be to recycle content, let the goal be a good post, or a hit from a potential prospective client for your business. If you’re not a blog business then your goal should be long-term traffic from great quality posts.

4. Use Tags. Using Technoratti tags on posts or another tagging system that can help drive in traffic. I add the “SimpleTags” Wordpress plugin to our client sites and teach them to tag using the following format: Place the text above directly into your post at the bottom and be sure to replace “keyword 1″, etc. with your actual keywords.

5. Add it to the appropriate category by checking it off. You can use multiple categories if it makes sense, but try to avoid that because of Google duplicate content filter may cause quality issues if it detects a duplicate.

If you do not have categories you need to add them by going to The “Manage” Tab then selecting “Categories”. When adding categories all you need to do is enter the “Category Name” and then click add. Ignore the other fields.

6. Use the Read More (Split-Post) feature; this will help protect against automated penalties from chaotic and/or dopey filters like a “Duplicate Content Filter”. This filter will place the importance of the full post on your home page and NOT the archived page where it belongs if you post the full post to the main blog page. So let the blog application use a summary by using the “Spit-Post” feature after the first or second paragraph of the post. This is more important if you do not post regularly.

7. Use the “Post Slug” feature. This is for naming the URL of the page. It’s no secret that Search Engines like keywords in the URL. It’s not a must, but when you’re writing on competitive terms on a blog post, you want to utilize every little SEO aspect that can help, and this does. You also want to avoid long URLs that are the complete post title. Make things word of mouth friendly.

8. Use Meta Tags. Add a related Meta Description that is a “Summary of the Post”. The Meta Description tag shows in the search results pages and should be used like your title; to drive in traffic and make readers want to click through and read. If you deal with Pay Per Click management and take a marketers approach to SEO, you will know that the messages in the PPC ad are extremely important, and your Meta Description should be handled the same way. Use the Keywords field as well. Keep it simple and consider the Social Tags to use on the post as you would use keywords. Use 5 to 10 terms – Do NOT spam it. We generally add BTC Keywords and Description plugins to sites as it works well and is a simple plugin.

9. Click Publish and then you’re done.

Additional Things You Can Do:
We will be adding your site to social sites and syndicating some of your content. If you’re one of our client the extent of what we will do for a blog varies so you may need to inquire about what you should expect if you started a blog.
Here’s what you can do… add it to Netscape, blinklist, blurpalicious and anywhere else there is traffic. Ask your friends to digg it, bookmark it or use one of the digg or del.icio.us clones to get links to the post. This will get it some additional exposure. What you have to remember is that some bloggers claim they never syndicate it. Well if you work for a world famous company and are a known employee or rep, then chances are someone will be finding your post and do the work for you. If you’re new, you have to be proactive. The web is NOT an “If you build it, they will come” world, you have to push it till you get recognized and then others will start to notice and point out your posts. I think is crazy when famous people tell you to never digg your own posts, there’s a bit of traffic to be had by diggin your work till your work gets noticed and gets dugg then do it, because when they started they probably dugg their own stuff as well or had a friend do it.

Take some time, if you have it, to market the blog by writing about other posts of other bloggers and linking to them, this is called a “trackback” and will display a link from the site you are commenting on back to your site, if the blogger will allow it.

Please make sure your robots.txt file blocks spiders from trackback and feed indexing as we have seen some Search Engines fumble and place the importance on the feeds over the actual posts. We have done this already if you re a client.

Your robots.txt for Wordpress should include the following:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /blog/wp-
Disallow: /blog/feed
Disallow: /blog/comments/feed
Disallow: /blog/feed/$
Disallow: /blog/*/feed/$
Disallow: /blog/*/feed/rss/$
Disallow: /blog/*/trackback/$
Disallow: /blog/*/*/feed/$
Disallow: /blog/*/*/feed/rss/$
Disallow: /blog/*/*/trackback/$
Disallow: /blog/*/*/*/feed/$
Disallow: /blog/*/*/*/feed/rss/$
Disallow: /blog/*/*/*/trackback/$

If your blog is in the root of your site then use:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-
Disallow: /feed
Disallow: /comments/feed
Disallow: /feed/$
Disallow: /*/feed/$
Disallow: /*/feed/rss/$
Disallow: /*/trackback/$
Disallow: /*/*/feed/$
Disallow: /*/*/feed/rss/$
Disallow: /*/*/trackback/$
Disallow: /*/*/*/feed/$
Disallow: /*/*/*/feed/rss/$
Disallow: /*/*/*/trackback/$

Using Mod_Rewrite:
We generally like things spelled out so In the Options tab click on Permalinks.

Then make sure you are set to use Postname.

A mod rewrite needs to be added to the htaccess file for unix users. We have done this already on our clients.

Technorati Tags: wordpress, search engine friendly blog posts, guide to blog posts, guide to wordpress, how to post in wordpress

Posted in SEO Tutorials and Training, seo   

2 Responses to “The Newbie’s 9 Simple Steps for Search Engine Friendly Wordpress Blog Posts”

1. on 26 Oct 2007 at 4:17 pm   david
   
   

   Those are great little tips. Are tags only useful for technorati? I heard meta tag no longer plays a role in SEO. Is split-post that important? because splitting the post means the visitors can't preview your latest blog posts and determine if he/she should spend the time to read it.

2. on 30 Oct 2007 at 10:52 am   Alan
   
   

   For getting Technorati traffic it can be helpful. I find that Technorati needs a little push to get the posts to show so I like the tags, many bloggers do NOT use them. Also technorati links are blocked and do NOT pass PageRank so from an SEO perspective its worthless same for del.icio.us and stubmleupon. Only good for traffic!

   Split has pros and cons, bloggers get annoyed having to click to read more and Search Engines get annoyed at duplicate content.

   My opinion is that if you post 5 to 10 posts per day then duplicate content won't effect you, but if your posts sit on the home page for a few weeks or even months, then it would hurt you with duplicate content and devalue the archive page, which is the one you want 6 months from now.

Leave a Reply