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Wordpress Seo Tips
There is a wide concept in publisher’s mind that using wordpress means getting maximum traffic from search engines because wordpress is a very good CMS which hardly requires Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Well this concept is not as correct as it sounds. WordPress also requires some optimization to get max out of search engines. For this purpose i made a list of 10 Important Changes which should be a part of your wordpress blog.
Points to the sitemap in first line.
Disallow unnecessary pages, folders so search engines get to your content instead of wasting time and getting less important stuff.
Here is a sample : http://www.designzzz.com/robots.txt
This Attribute tells the search engine bots not to follow the specific link or do not share that page’s Rank with this link. This is a very important tip , you can control your site’s SEO and Page rank by just using proper nofollow attributes. Here is a post i wrote earlier which can show you how to control your page rank and seo by using nofollow. Ok, the Less Important links includes links like Read more.. , Click here etc. This can be done by editing the template files easily.
Some plugins which we use in Wordpess blogs requires a must nofollow and we never thought about that. Here is a very cool example. You are using the easy retweet plugin and Retweet buttons are shown on start of every post even on your homepage. Lets say you have 10 posts blocks on your homepage and have 10 retweet buttons on it link to twitter.com !!! that means there are ten outgoing links, you are sharing your site’s page rank and getting lesser visibility in search engine. it can be nofollow from its settings.
It is the most important part which we neglect while publishing a post. Lets take a simple example. I am about ot publish a post lets say.
10 Awesome Graphics Designs and Digital Artworks the URL would be :
www.yoursite.com/category/10-awesome-graphics-designs-and-digital-artworks
Seems pretty much alright, right? Well..here u miss about 30% of your visibility!!
A simple reason using STOP WORDS in title and URL are the worst idea u can think up of. !! AND is a stop word. About the url why make it so long using extra stuff in it like the word 10 , and etc. Trust me no one will search for your content in search engines with these words 10 graphics design. If they look for that they will search graphics designs etc.
So get rid of 10 , and from your URL. Here is how they should be:
Makes sense? well i don’t even use the category name in the URL structure to make it smaller and more powerful!
Ok, i have noticed that most of the bloggers use very tiny keywords. Well, guys small get a habit of using long tail keywords,because with them u get traffic for life time. Lets take the example of that above title post. keywords/tags which bloggers normally select are: graphics, design, digital, artworks. Why don’t you spice them up a bit to get even more traffic? If i would do it , I would use these keywords:
Graphics, Design, Digital Artworks, Graphic Designs, Digital Graphics.
I actually spread the same keywords with order and words variation!!
About meta description keep it below 160 characters and add your keywords in it as well as possible like each keyword should be mentioned at least once.
Well, I have used several plugins to test which one is good and the only plugin which satisfied me is Headspace2 SEO. I Recommend it.
Ok, this is an important part which none of us actually look at. Title and alt attributes in links plays an important role in telling search bots that what this link or image is about.
Title and alt attributes are written like this if you are unaware of it:
My site gets 10% of its traffic from Google image search!! Because I use proper alt attribute.
Consider this example!! Like the graphics design post we discussed above. Your post consists of 10 Images. That means not much text to get good ranking and visibility in search engines. So why not use alt attribute in an optimized way!! in 10 images add alt tags with picture name + keyword/tag.
For example, the image name is abcd. i will add the alt attribute as alt=”abcd design” or abcd graphics etc. That means in 10 places on your page’s source code your keywords are used! I think you get my point.
Here is a list you might consider putting in your ping section in admin>settings>Writing:
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
See this post for proper info about no-following homepage and why is it important.
Hope this helps! Maybe you have some more tips you would like to add? Feel free to write them in comments! Thanks and enjoy!
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I am a web designer, developer and Search Engine Optimizer work as a SEO from about last 5 years. Also running online photoshop and art community called Blasting Art and design blog Designzzz
Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 16:36
In the robots.txt file, why do you want to disallow the web-archiver bot (the last line in your sample robots.txt file)? I would think that you want to have it archived, so people can find older information that may have been lost (or so you can find old information that you may have accidentally deleted).
Thursday, March 15th, 2012 13:55
The Title and alt aspects should be first on the list, they are very important.
Saturday, February 11th, 2012 08:31
Thanks Ayaz this is fantastic I APPRECIATE your generosity this to will help
me understand and use seo like much better. AWESOME DUDE !!!
Friday, February 3rd, 2012 22:11
Thank you for sharing the above, I am setting up a new blog and searched out of Google and you where number one so you obviously have some good info. Thank you for the share and good luck all.
David
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Jakub
Saturday, October 17th, 2009 23:03
Can I just ask you why you disallow /about or /contact-us ?
Ayaz Malik
Sunday, October 18th, 2009 23:48
hey , yes. the thing is disalow/nofollow are to tell the search bots that these pages are not or less important in this website. in the example case. its my site’s robots.txt so i dont feel the contact and about page an important part of a design blog to be indexed in google search results. so instead of going and indexing it why not index useful pages.
Tomas
Saturday, October 17th, 2009 18:13
Very useful article. I’m using All in One Seo plugin should I choose Headspace2 SEO? Which one is better? Thanks
Ayaz Malik
Sunday, October 18th, 2009 23:50
hiz, ok well both of the plugins are good and get the job done. As for me i prefer using headspace. no such comparison which differentiate them much from each other just that headspace makes things alot of automated.
Steve Sipress
Saturday, October 17th, 2009 19:08
Good tips. Very useful.
Ayaz Malik
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 18:14
yes i checked thts a good share