21 WordPress SEO Tips

Search Engine optimization for WordPress is easy means you does not have to work hard but it is tricky. WordPress is designed with SEO in mind. So if your blogging van is on WordPress you do not have to worry about SEO because you are already in good company. I have experienced this many times. Blogs that are using WordPress CMS have higher ranking in search engines. However if you are willing to do SEO for your WordPress blog let’s do it.

Some SEO after installing your WordPress blog:
In WordPress admin panel there is a navigation menu on left side. Menus have submenus also. You can call these menus WordPress components. You have to navigate to settings (you can see screen shot).

(1) In settings first option is General this is the first step of SEO in WP.
In general first field is
(2) site title: here you may choose a site title as I have chosen TechShali as site title.
Second field is
(3) tagline: here you can set a tagline for your blog in tag line I have chosen a blog on social media and technology.
Third field is
(4) WordPress Address or URL of your blog that you have registered to use.
Next is
site address it can be same as site URL or different. My blog has same URL. If you want to show your homepage other than installation directory you can use this setting. When you install WordPress it depends on you where you installed WordPress in main directory as techshali.com or in sub directory as techshali.com/blog. If you have installed WordPress in techshali.com/blog but want to show your homepage as techshali.com you can enter URL techshali.com in site address field or in fourth field.
WordPress let you set and promote your bog URL with or without www. As when you enter www.techshali.com in address bar of your browser it will be redirected to techshali.com or it will be withoutwww because I have chosen not to use www taking inspiration from twitter.

Other fields in general setting are not SEO related so you can choose whatever you want think.

(5) In settings menu there is another submenu privacy settings, here is located site visibility setting. Choosing first option is recommended if you want to get crawl your posts by search engines.

Again in settings there is another section called Permalinks for permanent link settings. This is very important setting once you have chosen a permalink stricter you may change it again because that not recommended for SEO purpose, your all links will be broken.
This section has some options that you can set.

Any of settings you can use:
I am telling these settings in detail.
Default: Default is not good by default for SEO so may change it to whatever you want. Because this seeing will show your post ID.
http://techshali.com/?p=123
Day and name: This is good; this option will set post publishing date with month and year and after post name.
http://techshali.com/2010/06/19/sample-post/
Month and name: This will set post publishing month and year, and post name, this is also good.
http://techshali.com/2010/06/sample-post/
Numeric: This setting will set permalinks based on archives and post number. This is also not recommended.
http://techshali.com/archives/123
Custom Structure: This is recommended you can use custom structure. I am using /%postname%/. F you set to this you permalinks structure will look like this:
http://techshali.com/sample-post/

However custom structure gives you full freedom to set permalinks structure.

Further study on permalinks:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

In this section you will find optional setting as category base and tag base. If you set category base and enter “topics” in category base filed your links will look like this:
http://example.org/topics/uncategorized/
If you want to see live example you can visit Mashable.com
If you set tag base or enter “tags” in tag base field your links will look like this:
http://example.org/tags/untagged/
To see live example you can visit makeuseof.com

Do SEO: When you compose a Post

(6) Write often, write interesting and useful:
Perhaps this is the best tip if you can write often, useful and necessary your 80% SEO completes here.

Most of your SEO get done when you compose a blog post. You should use headline tags for headlines in your post.

Choose a definitive post title. Title link can be different from the actual post title. Title should not be so long.

Choose right tags for your post, tags get listed in search engines and users can search posts by tags. Posts should not be without tags.

(7) Create categories: If you do not create a category your posts will be uncategorised. But you should create meaningful category for your post. You can create more than one category for a post; once you have created a category you can use that for new posts if that are suitable if not you can create new categories. You can create subcategories as well. Your posts should be categorised it is good for both on page SEO and off page SEO.

(8) When adding an image
all the posts do not need to add an image but it is necessary you can add images but do not forget to give a title for that image because your image get listed in search engines and when someone search image results it will be listed with its title name so it should be relative to image. And do not forget to add alternative text because when many users like surf internet by disabling image and in Linux you cannot see images so an alternative text is very good to use.

(9) Interlinking posts
If you are using related posts interlinking is not so useful but if you want it necessary you can do it. You want to give a reference to your old posts you can link your old post. This is also good for readers and search engines.

(10) Choosing an SEO optimized theme
SEO optimized theme is very important because most of themes we choose that are not SEO optimized. However if you have some theme editing knowledge you can make it SEO optimized. Thesis theme is well known for its SEO capacities.

(11) Optimizing your theme for SEO
No any theme is perfect but you can make a theme perfect by making some necessary changes that are suitable for your blog. Making your theme looking good is a part of SEO.

In my theme when you read a full post at the end of post you can see tags in blue background and previous/ next post in yellow background, it was not in my theme but I added it later.

Adding logo
Adding custom search box
Adding custom menu
Adding important tags and categories in menu bar
Adding RSS feed form feedburner
Adding social media profile links
Adding tag cloud widget
Adding categories and archives widget in sidebar
Adding random posts recent posts and popular posts in sidebar
Creating mobile version
Creating mobile version of your website is good because everyday new mobile users are being added. So many people surf the web with their mobile devices and normal web version is not compatible with that. I have a post on sites list there you create mobile version of your website.

(12) Making your blog faster
Read post:
5 tips to seep up your wordpress blog
Optimize image download to improve site speed
In most of cases speeding WordPress points to optimizing your theme. To speed up your blog you can make some changes by removing unwanted codes options from it, installing caching plugins.

(13) Install important Plugins for SEO:
Read post:
35 wordpress plugins for SEO
Installing so many plugins will make your blog slow so may avoid unnecessary plugins. I have missed some of important plugins in that collection as navigation plugin and related posts plugins and sharing plugins.
Here again I am discussing some of useful plugins.

All in one SEO: Most famous plugin for SEO
Platinum SEO: Also very useful SEO Plugin
Google XML Sitemaps: Plugin to submit your sitemap in Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines.
W3 Total Cache: A plugin for caching
Contextual Related Posts: Related posts plugin
WP-PageNavi: A plugin for page navigation

Offsite SEO:
Above discussed all tips are for onsite SEO, onsite means you do not them outside of your blog

(14) Give back links from your posts: Be careful! Your website can be penalized if you do not this wisely do not give backlink to inappropriate sites. Otherwise they will be counted as paid links by search engines.

(15) Submit your contents on social bookmarking sites.
(16) Submit your contents on micro blogging sites.
(17) Submit your sites blog directories
(18) Submit your site to RSS submission sites
(19) Submit your sites to web directories
(20)Submit your articles in articles submission sites. Below your posts you can give your name and website link to get backlink.

(21) Promote your website in forums by asking relevant questions and answering questions.

Promote your website in question answer sites: Search questions that have been asked in these sites and write a post on your blog about that question and give your post link to that question as your answer or you have already a post that is very good.