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Make your WordPress blog more Search Engine friendly

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Search Engine Optimization is an important part of making your blog more visible to search engines, and if you’ve got a blog that’s optimized for search engines, with unique content you’re gonna get hell lot of traffic for sure. So, here’s a short and simple post on 3 little things you can do to make your WordPress blog more SEO friendly:

Change the post permalink structure

By default, WordPress Post permalinks are like this:
mywordpressblog.com/?p=123
you can change them to this:
mywordpressblog.com/my-first-post
But why? These URLs filled with keywords can help in increasing your rankings on SERPs. Mind you, search engines also look at page URLs rather than just the content. Blunt URLs with post numbers won’t aid in SEO.

Post Permalinks on a SERP

You can alter the permalink structure on WordPress by navigating to Options >> Permalinks. You must get this done in the initial stages when you start a blog. If you’re gonna alter this in the middle, try the Permalink Redirection Plugin

Titles on individual post pages

The title on pages is an important part of SEO. Most WordPress themes have the following title structure on individual post pages:

My Blog >> Blog Archive >> Post Title

Too lengthy, too many words, and it is not a good thing. The most fitting title on single post pages would be only the post title or the post title followed by the blog’s name. Such a title will have a greater emphasis on the keywords you have used in the title of your post, rather than unnecessary stuff like Archive etc.

As Daniel points out, here’s how you can achieve such a title structure on WordPress:

<title><?php if (is_home () ) { bloginfo(‘name’); }
elseif ( is_category() ) { single_cat_title(); echo ‘ - ‘ ; bloginfo(‘name’); }
elseif (is_single() ) { single_post_title();}
elseif (is_page() ) { single_post_title();}
else { wp_title(‘’,true); } ?></title>

This code will display the blog name on the home page, the post title on single post pages and the blog name plus category name for category pages.

Alter the Footer

This tip is a kind of relevant to all blogs, irrespective of the blogging platform you use. The footer is a piece of text that is displayed at the bottom of your page, and it’s the last thing that a crawler sees on your page, as Mani tells us.

Here’s how the footer looks usually on WordPress blogs:
© Blog Name

Adding some appropriate keywords to the footer along with your blog’s name and links to posts/category pages will only make your blog more SEO friendly.

On WordPress blogs, you can edit the footer by navigating to the Theme Editor and modifying the footer.php file. But, make sure you don’t spam the footer :D

Hope you enjoyed these simple tips.
What steps did you take to make your blog more search engine friendly? Share with us in the comments.

Note that this entry is a part of Daniel’s Blog Project: Three

Popularity: 2% [?]

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 7th, 2007 at 9:03 am and is filed under wordpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

65 Responses to “Make your WordPress blog more Search Engine friendly”

  1. Good Post.
    Stumbled!

  2. @Kuanhoong: Thanks for the stumble

  3. Another gr8 post.. nice tips.. I’ve already changed the permalink structure, title is by default in my theme, changing the footer now :)

  4. Cool, Deepak. Go ahead.

  5. Nice tips! Stumbled already :-)

  6. Nice! Stumbled too! :)

  7. Thanks guys.

  8. Very useful information though I cannot implement it on my blogger blog. Surely a good post for the competition. All the best. Stumbled too.

  9. Cool article man. I just Installed the All in one SEO plugin for WP.

    Regarding SEO, I’ve made almost all the mistakes. By doing and experimenting I’ve learnt more. :D

  10. Only thing I hadn’t done was the footer, thanks for the pointer!

  11. [...] Ganesh gives 3 tips to making your Wordpress blog more search engine friendly.   Dosh Dosh offers instructions and [...]

  12. [...] ShankarGanesh tells us how to Make your WordPress blog more Search Engine friendly [...]

  13. [...] Shankar tells you how to make your blog more SEO friendly [...]

  14. Never thought of tweaking the footer. Thanks for that one.

  15. @Ram: Thanks, looking forward to see you switch to WP, good luck.
    @Ashwin: Yeah, I too have done many mistakes. Learning things :)
    @Sean, Brown Baron: Welcome, thanks for dropping by.

  16. I use the Optimal Title Plugin for modifying my webpage’s title. Even with the plugin you do need to edit bit of code manually (one line to be exact).

    I really need to put a Creative Commons licensing note in the footer. May be this article would inspire me enough to finally make the change :P

    And best of luck in the Group Blogging Project. I am also in it.

  17. [...] Make your WordPress blog more Search Engine friendly - Shankar Ganesh [...]

  18. Better just go for the post title as the header and to include the post title for sure in the permalink!

  19. @Pallab: Thanks for telling us about that plugin, and good luck to you too.
    @Rishi: That would be the best thing to do.

  20. [...] Make your WordPress blog more Search Engine friendly by Shankar [...]

  21. Awesome Post. There are also a lot of plugins for wordpress. My personal SEO plugin is “SEO All in One”. It helps with dupe content issues, title, keywords.

  22. [...] Make your WordPress blog more Search Engine friendly by Shankar [...]

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  27. So me being curious, what would you change your footer text too??

  28. Nice post Shankar…..all things can be done through “all in one SEO” its a great tool for all wp owners.

  29. [...] Make your WordPress blog more Search Engine friendly by Shankar : Another great post from my friend Shankar. Three simple yet often overlooked steps to make your blog more Search Engine Friendly. [...]

  30. @San Diego SEO: Thanks, and I think that’s a great plugin that every WordPress blogger who cares about SEO should use.
    @Jermayn Parker: You can see my footer text as “Web 2.0, Tips..” :)
    @Shashank: Yep, that’s right.

  31. [...] Make your WordPress blog more Search Engine friendly by Shankar [...]

  32. I would almost classify that as spamming and adding extra words just for seo effect.

    but you could be onto something there, to add keywords on the footer….

  33. Though the first two are pretty well known, I liked the last tip. I never thought of this before.

    Thanks

  34. [...] Make your WordPress blog more Search Engine friendly by Shankar [...]

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  40. [...] I participated in Daily Blog Tips.com’s Project Three (you can read my entry here). The contest got 115 entries in total, and here go a list of my [...]

  41. To me it comes down to just a few things. 1) research search phrases 2) use relevant content 3) get quality inbound links 4) ensure you use permalinks.

  42. [...] Make your WordPress blog more Search Engine friendly 3+1 Ways to Make Your Website Load Faster 3 really simple ways to speed up your blog Top 3 Mistakes of Rookie Web Designers PreviousTags: No TagsCategory: Blogging Get RSS Feed Email This Post [...]

  43. [...] Make Your WordPress Blog More Search Engine Friendly A few nice tips for improving your SEO status using WordPress. Actually one idea I’ll be implementing here that I haven’t yet. Good one! [...]

  44. Hello there,
    It was a great read.
    I think a must read for novices like myself. :)
    Thanks for it.

  45. [...] Make your WordPress blog more Search Engine friendly by Shankar [...]

  46. You’re all welcome.
    @PHP Developer: I completely agree with what you said.

  47. Yow! that’s cool men!!

    thanks a lot!

  48. [...] Make your WordPress blog more Search Engine friendly by Shankar [...]

  49. [...] SEO tips for your WordPress blog [...]

  50. such a lovely blog, keep writing :-)
    Amaging Facts of India

  51. Thanks much, I’d been needing to change my blog name and post tile.

    thanks so much for your code.

    Paula

  52. @Paula: You’re welcome :) For more such articles, you can subscribe to the feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/shankarstechblog

  53. I think I might need this code. But WHERE exactly do i place it?

  54. [...] Make your WordPress blog more Search Engine friendly by Shankar [...]

  55. thanx for sharing… i have make it done all here…! :)

  56. That’s a important post on SEO..no doubt..
    But what you can do with wordpress can also be done with blogger.But why is it said that wordpress blogs are more search engine friendly?…

  57. ok agree with you but
    can you tell me how can post in our blog so that my bloger more SEF
    first any post only one cat.
    don’ use any tag in site

  58. I never knew about the footer. Nice advice indeed! Also, how important are the keywords? And how many keywords should you use in a post?

  59. Hey, great tips. I have been thinking for days now on how I can make my site search-engine friendly. So this post helps. Kudos! :)

  60. [...] Make your WordPress blog more Search Engine friendly by Shankar [...]

  61. I am using Wordpress as my blogging CMS. However, I did not yet change my permalink structure. It is set to WP default. Now, I realized how important it is on the SEO aspect…

    Thank so much for the great information! :) It really helps….

    junior, Technology Blogger

  62. Just when I was about to cum, Jaime mindless foreman came from her bhi and was raming me to extend and drop her with something.

  63. I can’t get mine to work correctly, what would you charge to set it up for me / SEO?

  64. I just used that code, it works AWESOME! You’re amazing!!!
    Do you know how to change the permalink structure of my blog? When I use the wordpress Options >>> Permalinks >>> Date and name based
    » http://befit4free.com/blog/2008/05/22/sample-post/ etc. or any other option than default, the individual post pages show a 404 error.

    I have it hosted through Apollo commerce, so is that the problem? I’ve emailed like 15 different blog SEO experts, and no-one-replies.

    You seemed very knowledgeable on this, any way I can fix it?

  65. Search engines base what keywords are the most important for a site by determining it’s relevance. The more relevant it is, the higher the rank it is given and the more likely it is to be displayed when someone searches for it.

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