Best Practices To Optimize Your WordPress Site
24 Jun
1. Use custom permalinks
This is an easy setting but one I’ve seen overlooked on many, many WordPress sites. The default setting is http://yourdomain.com/?p=123. How useful is that? If you leave your permalinks set this way, you lose all the value of those keywords that you used in the title of your post or page. Instead, select the custom option and set the format to /%postname%/ or /%category%/%postname%/. Add the category if you have been strategic with naming your categories using your main keywords. Otherwise, use just the post name and make sure you use keywords in their titles.
2. Create a sitemap in XML
With WordPress and plugins like Google XML Sitemaps it is a very easy task. Google has a variety of other useful tools, too, such as Website Optimizer and Webmaster Central.
3. Add tags to your posts
WordPress enables you to tag your post with focused keyword phrases so that the search engines can index them more effectively. Don’t confuse Tags with categories. Categories are your file cabinet draw where you file a document under one particular topic. Tags allow you to describe your post in more specific terms that help people find your information. By properly tagging your posts with relevant keywords, you help people find and cross reference your post with others. Stick to just a few tags, however, as too many tags will dilute their effect.
4. Add your posts to social networks
But please don’t only promote yourself. Promote other posts and websites you like. People will honor your kindness and link back to you.
5. Add SEO to your pages
Using WordPress for your website platform also gives you control of your major SEO components: title and description through the All-in-One SEO Pack. You can also set up your keyword metatag specifically for each page for completeness, but most search engines do not use it in its page ranking algorithm so it’s really up to you if you put a few choice keywords on each page. My recommendation is focus on the title, description, content and the anchor text for your links, using the appropriate keywords for each page on your site. Remember that search engines consider each page independently and will index the page based on the content it finds only on that page.
Not sure where to find your best keyword? Try the Google AdWords External Keywood tool or the Google Search-based Keyword Tool. Once you get your big list, select the top 10 keywords for your business and start using them in all of your marketing materials.
Conclusion
Stay tuned for 5 more tips in my next post on site optimization. Let me know if you have any other tips that make WordPress that much better.
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Great tips buddy. Will take a closer look at a google site map.
btw, permalinks are good example too… i would like to change on designi1.com but i´m trying to get a solution to keep RT numbers and other referals available. For now didnt found out the solution :/
Will wait for the next 5 tips!!
nice tips mate, thanks for sharing
look forward to a few more tips in the next article.
All are known but grouped together well.
I second Kishore’s response: all are well-known. Nothing new.
They might not be new but they are important steps to follow.
I’ll find you a quote but I’ve read that links separated with “/” are refreshed by search engine less frequently, so it’ beter to use links in form similar to this %category,%post-title. Search engine recognizes this as a file and not as directory like in the previous case
I’ve never heard of that but it’s great to keep in mind. Thanks for sharing.
Hey guys,
I would also recommend preparing an extremely personalized title structure for the website, we different page names for each section of the website (pages, posts, archives, etc), focusing on your top keywords.
Also, the way you categorize your posts will tend to be crucial throughout the “life” of your website. Make sure you think about the categories you are going to have before even start writing your articles (with a father and son structure if needed) as they’re gonna impact the whole website indexation in the future. The cleaner you see your content, the cleaner will the crawlers will look at it as well.
Last but not least, use a breadcrumb feature in your website, search engines love it as it will allow them to perfectly understand where they are on the context of the website.
All the best!
R