How To Optimize Your WordPress Blog For Search Engines (Part One)

Garry Conn — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 17:02:50 +0000

Out of the box WordPress is very search engine friendly. However, there are a few adjustments that can make WordPress a search engine magnet. Over the next few weeks I am going to be publishing a series of posts that will teach you how to optimize your WordPress blog for search engines. No advanced skills are needed to make these adjustments. This first post covers permalink structures and the All in One SEO plugin. If you have any questions, or need assistance, you’re invited to share them in the comment section below.

Step One: Permalink Structures

WordPress default permalink structure creates URLs that look like this:

?p=123

By default WordPress uses web URLs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them, however WordPress offers you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your permalinks and archives. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links. But the real bonus is SEO.

Google and other search engines look for keywords in web page URLs. It’s not known exactly how much the keywords in the URL influence ranking, but in my experience it appears to hold a lot of weight.

Here is a video of Matt Cutts talking about keywords in URLs.

Adding keywords into WordPress URLs is a quick and easy SEO enhancement. In your WordPress Dashboard scroll down to the bottom of the page and look in the left column for the Settings section. From there you will see the Permalinks section.

Here’s a screen shot:

You can adjust your permalinks to display the day and name, month and name, numeric, or custom structure. Using the day and name setting adds the full year, month, day, and post title into the post URL. Using the month and name setting adds the full year, month, and post title into the post URL. The numeric option doesn’t add the post title into the post URL.

Custom structure is the option I choose. The reason I choose the custom option is because I don’t like to display the year, month, or date in the URL. I only want the keywords. In the past I have used this code:

/%postname%/

Lately, I have started using this code:

/%category%/%postname%/

You can learn more about using WordPress Permalinks here.

Here are some additional references that may help you:

Step Two: Install All in One SEO Plugin

Michael Torbert’s All in One SEO Plugin has really stood the test of time. I have personally used this WordPress plugin for many years. The plugin gives you the ability to customize the structure of your article titles, optimize the titles of your category, tag, search, and archive section, and auto generate meta descriptions and keywords. There are many additional features that you should learn about as well. I recommend paying a visit to Michael Torbert’s home page and learning more about the All in One SEO Plugin. Michael also has a PRO version which might be worth checking out. Personally, I have never used it.

Here is a helpful video tutorial I found on YouTube that will teach you more about the All in One SEO plugin and how to configure it:

By the way, the All in One SEO plugin is one of my personal favorites. Stay tuned for the next post that will offer you more information on optimizing your WordPress blog for search engines. All of your comments, questions, and even suggestions are welcome. You’re invited to share your feedback using the comment form below.

Matt Cutts SEO Video Tutorials

Garry Conn — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:46:22 +0000

Yesterday I wrote a post explaining about how Matt Cutts allowed the Google Webmaster Central team shave his head. I realized that some of the valuable information in that article that I wrote may have been hidden with all the excitement with Matt having his head shaved, so today, I want to bring the hidden jewels from yesterday’s post forward into this article. Specifically, I want to take a closer look at the 100+ short videos Matt Cutts published on YouTube and explain some things further that will help you understand more.

Should File Extensions be Used in URLs?

As most of you know, I am an avid WordPress user. Unless I am building from ground up, I use WordPress for all my website projects. That said, when I configure the permalink structure, I use the /post-title.php extension rather than /post-title/

The video provided by Matt Cutts confirms why.

Should nofollow links be used for Privacy Policy and Disclaimer Pages?

In the past, I have done this on my blogs. Usually I place sitewide nofollow links on my footer to my privacy policy and disclaimer pages. I am glad that I watched this video because Matt Cutts explains that the only reason why a webmaster would want to nofollow a page is to prevent the page from being indexed. The only reason why you would want to prevent a page from being indexed is if the page were to be determined useless. He further explains that privacy policy and disclaimer pages are very useful and they should not be nofollowed. An example of a page that should be nofollowed is a login page. Also Matt explains that it isn’t necessary to have site wide links to your privacy policy and disclaimer pages. A better idea could be to link to them from your home, about, and contact page instead.

Are Dates In URLs Search Engine Friendly?

I have debated about this for a few years with friends. I never believed that it was search engine friendly to include dates in URLs, if anything I felt like it placed important keywords too far to the right, causing some risk of them getting truncated in the SERPs. Matt Cutts explains that it’s a good idea to have a date stamp somewhere visible on your page for people, but it’s not something required by them, nor does it have any influence on ranking.

When I build niche sites that generate revenue using AdSense, typically I write 50 articles for the site and upload twenty of them immediately. From there, I use the WordPress scheduling feature to stagger the remaining 30 over the course of about three months. After watching these TWO videos, I suspect that doing this is unnecessary. Instead, I can now upload and publish all content in one session, and then use the extra time towards building quality backlinks.

How many pages can Google index from a single site?

Can I publish 100+ pages at once?

For now, that answers quite a few questions for me, I am sure that you’ll find this information useful as well. If you haven’t done so already, now would be a great time to subscribe to my RSS feed. As I drill down and watch more of Matt’s Grab Bag videos, I’ll piece more of them together here as I have done in this article today. Stay tuned… and in the mean time, you should take a look at his videos too. Be sure to check out the entire Google Webmaster Central YouTube Channel as well.