Wednesday, December 7, 2011

WordPress SEO - Errors To Prevent



Social Media Management

WordPress provides numerous amazing benefits over static sites which can make WordPress SEO easier:
* Many settings apply site-wide in fact it is very simple to create and update pages/posts.

* You may use plugins to add virtually any functionality an individual may think of without the technical knowledge.

Even so, to improve your WordPress SEO there are still errors to avoid:

Supposing WordPress is Search Engine Optimised "out of the box" - There are many of facets of a standard WordPress Installation that could be improved from a SEO point of view and these are best addressed at the outset.

Displaying unfriendly URLs - By default WordPress will offer your pages and posts a number and display this in the URL. For WordPress SEO purposes you want to have your keyword in the URL, so you have to change the Permalinks to "/%postname%". This can put all the words in the post/page title in the URL but you might need to edit this if the title is long. You may as well obtain a plugin to eliminate common words.

Not Setting Meta Description - For WordPress SEO functions you need to personally write an excellent description for every page/post with the keyword near the beginning. There are many of Plugins which provide the means to do this the best. This also includes an option of auto-generating the description however this is not to be recommended since it is no better than leaving the search engines to pick an extract from the content.

Internal and External Linking - It is important for WordPress SEO that all your pages/posts contain internal links. All well as counting as links they assist spread the advantages of backlinks around the site. It is also important to have external links to relevant authority sites but these can be made "no-follow". There are plugins to assist with both of these.

Allowing Duplicate Content - The structure of WordPress generates duplicate content as, for example, posts exist in their very own right, under their category, under their tag, under their author and through date. For WordPress SEO purposes this is a wise decision in order to avoid the duplicate content being indexed. The All In One local SEO plugin can take proper care of this if correctly configured.

Not setting up a Site Map - It is necessary for WordPress SEO to create a site map for the search engines and there are plugins to accomplish this.


You'll find so many other things that you can do to further improve WordPress SEO in little ways but one worthy of mentioning is caching. To avoid your site slowing when it gets busy installing a caching plugin a great idea.

Acquiring the above right there are other mistakes to avoid for WordPress SEO:
Missing Legal Pages - Not having the essential standard/legal pages with a link from each page/post (e.g. in the footer)
Poor Onpage SEO - Not organising your page/post around a keyword such that it is clear to the search engines what it is about. In fact this is the most vital element of WordPress SEO. Understand this wrong and everything else is a waste of time. However you will also have a WordPress SEO plugin to help with this.



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