May 25 2011

A Beginners Guide to SEO’ing Your WordPress Blog

It seems that everyone has a blog these days; your boss, your favourite celebrities and even your gran are all ranting away about the most inane details of their everyday lives. Starting a blog is easier than ever now, particularly with user-friendly content management systems like Joomla, Dupral and most notably, WordPress. The rise of social media has also lead to an increase in the uptake of blogging as means to connect with likeminded communities, build a fan base and make money with blog. Revenue is indeed the reason that many people turn to blogging, with a little commitment and passion, it is simple to get the cash rolling in, simply by sitting in your room, writing about what you love.

Whatever your motivations for blogging, chances are you will want to build an audience, and to do that, people need to be able to find your blog, after all, great content is nothing if people can’t access it easily. With this in mind, it would be wise to spend some time thinking about WordPress Site Optimization. You don’t need to be an internet marketing specialist in order to do this, here are a few ways to get your site found in the depths of blogosphere –

1. Get the URL right

If you have a site about baking recipes, try at least to place these two keyword somewhere in the URL, something like

www.brilliantbaking.com

would be ideal.

2. Optimise the title tags

The title tag, also known as page title is the collection of words that show up when your site is found in Google, and in the browser. Best practice in SEO is usually to place the site of the site and a couple of keywords in the title tag.

Recipes | Baking | Cakes – Brilliant Baking

Is good

3. Optimise the Meta-Descriptions

Meta Descriptions is the section of text that appears under the title tag. This should be a brief description of what the site is about, again with a few keywords thrown in. Below is an example.

‘Brilliant Baking is a site dedicated to providing unique, cool recipes for cakes, breads and biscuits’

4. Create Keyword Rich Copy

After deciding which keywords you wish to rank for, you should make efforts to include them in the body copy of your posts. This doesn’t mean littering the copy with keywords, as this looks spammy.

SEO is a vast topic and one that takes years to learn. Even seasoned SEO practitioners are constantly looking for new ways to exploit search engine algorithms and get their sites up the SERPs. These four key aspects however are generally considered as the pillars of good SEO and are unlikely to change, at least in the immediate future. Getting  these nailed is the basis for any good SEO campaign and even if you don’t plan to do any further on or off-page optimisation, carrying out these four simple steps will do you the world of good

Joe is an SEO analyst for an automotive site specialising in used Mini cars.

8 Responses to “A Beginners Guide to SEO’ing Your WordPress Blog”

  1. Laney says:
    May 26, 2011 at 4:55 am

    Well Written! Perfect for novices like myself ;)

  2. Amy C. Teeple says:
    May 26, 2011 at 2:58 pm

    This is definitely a beginner’s guide and highlights some good points.

    However, I think point #2 needs to be expanded. Yes, it is important to optimize your title tags, but the simplistic structure of “Keyword | Keyword | Keyword – Blog Name” isn’t the best solution. Because titles are more often than not used in the SERPs, they need to entice the click. I would rather click on something like “Delicious Cake Recipes – Baking Tips from Brilliant Baking” (or some variation depending on actual post topic) than “Recipes | Baking | Cakes – Brilliant Baking” (still under 60 characters).

    Also, beginners should know where to put the meta titles. For WordPress, I typically use the All-in-One SEO plugin. It’s reliable, easy to use, and gets the job.

    Despite my critique, this was a good guide for beginners. Thanks.

  3. ballparkbob says:
    May 26, 2011 at 7:21 pm

    One more tip. Link out to others and then ask them to link back to you.

  4. It konsulenter says:
    May 28, 2011 at 9:32 am

    SEO is a process visibility to our website, we can come to our website to top rank from so internet marketing. various search engine work in SEO.regaring this issue website appear more frequent.

  5. Richard says:
    June 3, 2011 at 3:28 am

    Thanks for the tips man, I was going to use wordpress to start affiliate marketing

  6. Fayaz Ahmad says:
    June 3, 2011 at 11:51 am

    seo is the only process by that we can get targeted visitors to our blog . This post is really helpful for the newbie is seo

  7. gofavor says:
    June 12, 2011 at 1:22 pm

    Good article! I like it!!!

  8. Diversified says:
    August 17, 2011 at 2:56 pm

    Good article – definitely tips beginners like myself can put to use.