WordPress is one of the most popular blogging content management system and it is quite SEO competent too. But with the growing number of sites using wordpress and overall number of sites, competition for higher ranks on search engines like Google has gone up tremendously.
So a wordpress which is quite good enough on its own, is now “Not So Good” to rank high. You need to make certain changes in your wordpress blog to make it work for SEO. WordPress SEO settings can significantly enhance your SEO. Let’s go through some of settings and SEO basic.
WordPress SEO Tips
On Page Optimization — Most of the free wordpress themes are indeed crappy and may add up to your problems. In the last couple of years, Google has been quite particular about on page optimization. In fact, now on page seo factors are as important as back links.
So it is high time you start paying attention to on page optimization. WordPress theme coding is a very important aspect of wordpress seo. Proper Html tags like H1, H2, H3-H6 are essential for high ranking on search engines.
There are many free wordpress themes which result in multiple H1 tags on a wordpress page for page and widgets. There should be only one h1 tag on your page for adequate wordpress seo.
You should also look at the Optimization > HTML Improvements section to look at the status of your webpage. This section provide great information about duplicate meta description, long meta descriptions and short meta descriptions along with other vital informations.
Google Webmaster Tool
WordPress SEO- Remove Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is one of the biggest hindrance for Google. WordPress SEO require you to focus on removing duplicate contents from your blog. Tags, archive pages and categories are the biggest cause of duplicate content on your wordpress blog.
They create duplicate URLs pointing to same page on your blog. You can check duplicate content on your page using Google Webmaster.
You should always keep these pages as No-Index or use different description for them. Check if you theme provide the ability to control these settings for you. If not, then you should use themes like studiopress theme which provide seo settings along with faster page load speed.
Internal Linking
Internal links and internal linking is one of the most important aspect of WordPress SEO. You should always ensure healthy and optimum internal links. You can also use some wordpress seo plugin to do that. I have been using SEOpressor to do that. SEOpressor helps in automatically creating and optimizing internal links.
You should always use relevant keywords in internal links. Internal links form the the basic architecture of your wordpress blog. Therefore it is important to maintain a healthy and seo optimized internal linking for your blog.
WordPress SEO- Summary
WordPress seo is all about putting your content well to your visitors and search engines. You cannot avoid either of them. Google put a lot of focus on user experience so if your blog is clumsy or it loads slowly then it is not going to rank high your blog.
Similarly various tags on your webpage provide vital information about your blog and posts on it. If there are multiple similar tags like multiple h1 or h2, it is going to kill the ranking of your page. Internal links are exceptionally important. And also, don’t forget to link to reputable external sites also like Google, Facebook etc.
Therefore it is always recommended to use a good wordpress seo theme and seo plugins so that you don’t have to bother about these basic seo techniques. These are basic in nature but will have catastrophic impact on your site’s ranking if ignored.
As I have mentioned in my other posts, there is no point in keeping a blog with no returns so invest in your blog and reap benefits.
About akhilendra
Once, I tried recycling my content and since I’m not good at rewriting, I ended up with duplicate, poor quality content most of the time. That’s suicide for SEO. You reap what you sow, and poor content will get you nowhere near Google’s first five pages.
I also have a wordpress blog and I found your article to be very helpful. Thanks for taking the time to write this. Looking forward to reading more of your articles.
Maintaining duplicate content on your website is like SEO suicide. Google or other search engine giants will still find out about it, and if you don’t clean up your act, I doubt if your colorful theme can help you from being banned from the high ranks. Thank you, this article is a great help for starters.