Make Money With Blog

2010-05-17T08:15:00.000-07:00

Basic "Out the Box" WordPress SEO settings

In this report I am assuming that you have already installed a WordPress blog, but if you have not, installing WordPress is not difficult. The easiest method is use Fantastico found on most hosting which uses cPanel.

If you want to install your blog manually and aren't sure how to do it, CNet has a video you can watch here.

If you want to know how to set up a MySQL database, watch this quick video tutorial here.

While most blogging platforms tend to do well in search engine rankings, the default WordPress settings are not very well optimized. There are a few changes you need to make which will give your blog the edge over those with no optimization, but it is worth noting that good search engine rankings depend more on your actual blog posts, posting frequency and the number of back links to your blog. Here are the basic "out the box" changes you must carry out on your WordPress blog:

1. Change the default permalink structure.

The /%category%/%postname% permalink is the most commonly advised, but to the search engines your blog post appears in two places. If you look at the URL as it shows in your browser, it appears as follows:

http://www.your-blog.com/your-catagegory/your-post/

But your post can also be found here:

http://www.your-blog.com/your-catagegory/your-post/index.php

To keep your permalinks constant you can force WordPress into naming posts with a URL which contains a suffix, for example you could use the following permalink:

/%category%/%postname%.php

Your blog post can now only be found at:

http://www.your-blog.com/your-catagegory/your-post.php

To change your permalink structure, open your WordPress Admin Panel and click on "Options" then "Permalinks". In the "Custom structure" text box enter the following:

/%category%/%postname%.php

Then click on the "Update Permalink Structure" button.

2. Next you need to rename the default category from "Uncategorized" to a phrase related to your blog under which all your default posts will be saved. It is not essential to name this particular category after a keyword phrase, think of your readers first. For example you could use the phrase "From My Point of View" as the name for the default category. Most of your posts will be fairly short, and often your point of view on some topic, making this the perfect place to file these posts.

You can change the default category by editing it in the "Manage / Categories" section of your control panel.

Any longer informative posts or reviews MUST be saved under categories which are named after a keyword phrase. For example if you had a blog related to promoting websites, you could name one of your categories "Increase Website Traffic" and all the posts you write about increasing traffic to a website should be posted under this category.

3. Delete all of the default links in the "Blogroll / Manage Blogroll" section of your WordPress control panel ("Links / Manage Links" in older installations). Linking to arbitrary blogs will hurt your rankings in the search engines. One of the best ways to link to other blogs is to use "in context" links by mentioning them in posts that you write.

4. Remove unnecessary links in your blog footer template. The links in your footer should only point to pages on your blog (unless the terms of use for the theme you are using require a link back to the theme creator). You can edit the footer template in the "Presentation / Theme Editor" section of your Wordpress control panel. The text will vary depending on which theme you are using, and how you edit this file depends on your personal preferences, but you should include a copyright notice which links to your copyright policy.

5. Make sure your WordPress theme only uses the < h1 > headline tags once in the individual post pages (and that should only be for the headline of your post). Most themes use < h1> tags for the headlings in the side bar, so you will need to manually edit these to < h2 > or preferably < h3 > tags. Unfortunately this also means editing the CSS file to return the sidebar headings to their previous formatting.

Improve Your Search Engine Ranking Potential: Essential SEO Plugins

The basic "out the box" WordPress SEO settings are not enough to fully optimize your blog, but there are a number of plugins you can use to enhance your WordPress blog further:

1) Make a decision - to use, or not to use, the www. prefix in your blog URL's...
If your blog uses URL's which include 'www.' and others which do not, the search engines will index two versions of your blog and aside from the possible waste of bandwidth from double spidering, one of them will be filtered as duplicated content. While this problem might be real or just a storm in a tea cup, being pro-active seems to be the wisest option. You need to decide which system you want to use and stick to it, always!

The Redirections plugin by John Godley allows you to specify which system you want to use and will automatically create '301 redirection' for other URL's. For example, if you decide to use the 'www.' prefix any link to your blog that does not contain the prefix will automatically be redirected to the correct URL which contains the 'www.' prefix.

The major advantage of using this plugin is that it also creates re-directs if you choose to change a post slug (used for the post file name). It also creates redirects if you decide to change your permalink structure and already have posts indexed in the search engines using the old permalink structure.

2) Create Optimized post title tags

The SEO Title Tag plugin by Stephan Spencer is an essential plugin. By default WordPress places your blog name, a separator and then your post name in the title of each page (i.e. between the tags). The SEO Title Tag plugin reverses this and places your post name before your blog name in the title. From a search engine optimization stand point this is advantageous, because:
- It gives the keywords in your title more prominence.
- It provides more meaningful search engine listing results.
- It provides more meaningful browser bookmark names.

One of the major advantages of this plugin is that you have the ability to create a unique title tag for your blog index page and separate title tags for your category pages. By default, WordPress just uses the blog name for the index title and category names for the category page titles.

3) Include description and keyword meta tags in your blog's tags...

Including meta keyword tags in your blog's header is not a necessity, most search engines ignore them, but including them won't harm your search engine optimization chances on some of the simpler search engines.

Some search engines will use your meta description in their search listings, others like Google will display all or part of a sentence which contains the first instance of the keyword or phrase being searched. The most obvious thing to do would be to add your keyword phrases into the meta description tag, but these must contain a call-to-action (e.g. make the reader want to read your article).

Creating a compelling meta description which includes all your keyword phrases makes it somewhat difficult for programmers to build a plugin for creating automated meta description tags...
The most common meta description solutions are plugins which take the first 100 or 150 characters from the first sentence to include them in the meta description. The most effective meta keywords plugins are those which also handle the tags you add to each post. Here are two plugins for you to consider:

i. The Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin by Christine Davis is the ultimate tagging solution for bloggers, but it can also include the tags you add to your posts as meta keywords. This plugin can be used for a number of different features on your blog, so it makes sense to use it instead of different plugins for each feature.

ii. The Head META Description plugin by Kaf Oseo takes your post excerpt or if you don't enter one, the first 20 words of your post content and includes them in a meta description tag.
To get the most out of this plugin you need to get into the habit of writing an attention grabbing post exert (or first sentence) for all your posts. This is a good article writing habit to get into whether you use the plugin or not.

Instructions for installing all the plugins in this report and for configuring your blog are given in "Installing the Plugins" chapter...

Effective SEO Techniques for Writing Blog Posts

Your primary aim for maintaining a blog is to make money, and for the long term success of your blog you need to focus on getting as many high ranking posts in the search engines as possible.

To start out your blog will not have enough backlinks or page rank to help drive your posts into top ranking positions. The trick is to target keyword phrases which have little competition in the search engines. One major drawback is these keywords is they are unlikely to attract much traffic, and so you have to concentrate on writing posts which target many different keyword phrases.

The single most important search engine optimization tip to employ when you are writing a blog post is to select a primary keyword phrase and then include as many related words and phrases as possible.
Keyword density is not something you should concentrate on. Rather than stuffing your post with your primary keyword phrase, use words which have the same meaning (known as synonyms) and add related phrases (or secondary keyword phrases). The days of creating one blog post for each keyword phrase are long gone.

You can use the WordTracker free trial to find keywords which you have researched (i.e. they are searched for regularly, but have little competition). Once you have identitfied suitable keywords, use the Google Keyword tool to find related phrases which Google associates with your main keywords. Enter your main keyword into the "Keyword Variations" text box. Make sure the "Use synonyms" check box is checked and click "Get More Keywords".

The Google Keywords tool will then return a list of keywords it thinks are related to your main keyword. Save these in either a text format or as a .csv file which you can open using a spreadsheet (e.g. MS Excel). Go through each keyword phrase and delete those that have no relevence to the blog post you intend to write.

When you write your post include as many of these related keywords as you can, but make sure your post has a logical flow to it and your included phrases makes sense. You should write for your readers first - make your post content informative and easy to read.

Include your primary keyword phrase in your post title, but make sure the post content closely matches your chosen title. You should also include your primary keyword phrase once or twice in the post content, and include the related phrases you have identified, for example if your primary keyword phrase is "increase website traffic" and the Google Keywords tool returned these related phrases:
-improve website ranking
-top website traffic
-get website traffic
-targeted website traffic
-guaranteed website traffic
-your website traffic

Here is how you could use them in your post title:
Dramatically Increase Website Traffic and Improve Website Ranking with These Top Website Traffic Tips

In your post you would refer to all the keyword phrases once or twice and back them up with even more similar or related phrases, for example: website traffic -> website hits -> unique hits -> site traffic. Don't keep repeating the same phrase over and over in your post content.
If you have written other posts which targeted some of the related secondary phrases, link to them using the secondary keyword phrase as the link text. Linking to similarly themed posts benefits your readers because they can find more information, but it also gives your posts a slight SEO boost from the internal "in context" linking.

One very important point to remember is 30% to 40% of all search engine queries are one time long tail search phrases which the search engines do not have any matching webpages to display. The actual results displayed will be the webpages which the search engines decide are the closest match. When writing your posts take this into account and create as many permutations as you can of the keyword phrases you are targeting. For example (this is a real example from one of my niche websites):
- facts about whether a plant grows faster inside or outside
- information on a plants growth rate inside and outside
- growing plants inside vs. outside
- do plants grow faster indoors or outdoors

Pay attention to your post slug as WordPress uses this to create a file name for your post. Make sure the primary keyword phrase is near the beginning of the slug. By default, WordPress uses the post title as the post slug, but it cleans it up by removing apostrophes, quote marks, and other characters.
For example, using the title in the "increase website traffic" example, WordPress would automatically name the post slug:

dramatically-increase-website-traffic-and-improve-website-ranking-with-these -top-website-traffic-tips

To write a new post slug, simply rewrite it with dashes between each word, for example:

incease-website-traffic-improve-ranking-top-promotion-tips

N.B. - Make sure you change your post slug BEFORE you publish the post, and don't include non essential words like a, the, but, my, with etc. Changing your post slug after you have published it can cause problems with the posts permalinks and result in a 404 File Not Found error...

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