How I SEO my WordPress Blog - A Beginners Guide Part 3
Read Part 1 and of How I SEO my WordPress Blog - A Beginners Guide right here. Part 1 explores what to do with your domain and how to configure it correctly for your SEO needs. Read it first!
Seeing as part 1 and part 2 of my SEO beginners guide has covered the domain and Wordpress, this article will focus on writing your first post. This will act as a template for writing further posts on any subject but still getting all the SEO goodness from it.
Keywords for SEO
With any page that wants to get attention there has to be a certain amount of keywords. Keywords are those that have significance and relevance that could be used as search terms. For example this blog post is titled ‘How I SEO my WordPress Blog - A Beginners Guide Part 3′. Obvious keywords are SEO, Wordpress, blog, and beginners. The other words have little or no relevance to the content of this post. The URL has the same four words in the page name. Using my All In One SEO Pack (see my first SEO post here) I can again use the same keywords in this page’s META description and keywords - more on the use of META tags below.
So keywords must be used in the above mentioned place but also in the body of your post. Plan to have your keywords be 6-8% of the total words on the page. This will allow search engines to calculate what your content is about and rank it accordingly.
Semantics for SEO
A very useful part of the Wordpress kit is what is called the ‘Kitchen Sink‘. It allows you to format the text you write in a post into H1, H2 and other headings. This is part of the semantic web. Semantics is giving words meaning and in this case the search engines will interpret that as having extra meaning. So the text ‘Semantics for SEO’ above this paragraph is in H2 tags just as the title at the top of the page is in H1 tags.
The image below shows the kitchen sink formatting options on the second row of button down from the top. To toggle it on/off press the far right button the top row.
You can also use semantics for making certain words bold and others emphasised. Remember not to use <b> tags but <strong> and <em> for emphasis rather than <i> when writing in HTML. There are many more semantic elements you can use in Wordpress and on basic webpages. See Semantic XHTML for more of them. So remember not only to pack your body text with your chosen keywords but to make them semantic!
Meta Tags for SEO
As mentioned earlier Meta tags help search engines find out the basics of your page. The big three meta tags you want to always define are Title, Meta Description and Meta Title (technically Title isn’t Meta but I’ll list it here for now).
Any keywords you choose to use in your title should also be used in your URL. The same applies for using those same keywords in your meta keywords and meta description fields. The All In One SEO Packas shown below lets you define your own keywords and description so you can have any keyword of your choice appear in those META tags.
Here are some rules of thumb when writing these fields.
- Keep your Title to a maximum of 64 characters
- Keep your description to maximum of 160 characters (as noted by the plugin)
- Keep your keywords down to less than 15 words but more than 10
For more information on META tags and those that are available to you look at Meta Elements: A Field Guide by Jamesp over on SEO Chat.
Content is King!
This is kind of an SEO industry buzz-phrase and you’ll likely hear that from a lot of SEO’ers (is that even a word?). It’s used as a reminder that despite someones best efforts to optimise their site, Wordpress or not, the one thing that will guarantee high rankings and good traffic is quality content. If you’re writing something that is useful and informative search engines should pick it up nice and easily. Anything in plain text such as this sentence is still analysed by web crawlers and will be ranked. The more people who see your page and link back to it generates traffic and traffic will generate more interest and more back links.
So remember when writing your blog posts that your content really does have to be of some use to people. The bigger the use to the greater amount of people is what you’re ideally looking for. Consider using paragraphs and headings; breaking text down into more manageable pieces. Use a spell checker and use correct grammar - write in Word and spell check then re-read over and over. Update previous posts with new information if you wish and update your Wordpress blog regularly.
See David Callan’s Content is King article.
Final Thoughts
The material on this post and the two previous ones covering SEO in Wordpress should help you get started with your Wordpress website. Remember that SEO is something that is always changing and the methods you employ will have to change with the times. In my next post I’ll show you the stats and figures I get from my own Wordpress installation. They’re not anything to write home about but I feel they’ll give you a good insight into the kind of stats you might expect to see from an early website trying to get some attention on the Internet.
Hi very informative blog.Excellent guide for the beginners.Good tutorials.