Looking for WordPress SEO Tips and Tricks, read the basic WordPress SEO Tutorial for Beginners below. WordPress SEO Tip 1 Name your Blog Posts and Static Pages with SEO in mind. If you create a post about “How to Save Money on Groceries” you should title the post something like “How to Save Money on Groceries” not “Had a Good Idea Today”. Might sound obvious, but many WordPress bloggers title their posts in an anti-SEO way by being too general like the “Had a Good Idea Today” title. By naming your posts with SEO in mind the posts title tag will have your keywords, the posts slug (the URL to the post) will use the post title. In our example […]
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CSS Background Image SEO Value
The landscape image code is generated as a background image (it’s CSS code), so there’s no value in SEOing them, they won’t increase (or decrease) a pages rankings as they aren’t indexed by Google.
You could easily change the code from being a background image using CSS to a standard image (so it would be counted SEO wise), but it wouldn’t be easy to change the name of the image to match the content of the post with WordPress (this is part of the template and something like that would have to be plugin generated and not related to the theme per se), but it would be easy to add an alt attribute using the title of a post etc…
I considered using banner images that are indexable etc… in the theme and adding relevant alt text to those images, but decided against it as it’s going a little greyhat SEO since the landscape images have nothing to do with the content of each post, so it would be adding more SEO because we can and not because we should (if you know what I mean :-)).
You have to be careful with this type of SEO, it’s easy to get carried away, for example I could have smiles (which can be images in WordPress ;-)) to have relevant alt text, but it’s crossing into that grey area of SEO and though you might get away with a couple of iffy things like this, do too many or get a manual Google reviewer on a bad day or before they’ve had their coffee and you might get a penalty! I’ve had sites penalised where I thought I was 100% whitehat SEO, so better keep one step away from the grey areas.
If you have posts with no images you could add images from a set of images, like a money image for posts about money and give it relevant anchor text (I see this sort of thing on some sites) and there might be plugins to automate this. I tend to shy away from that sort of SEO as it’s a grey area that I could see a Google manual reviewer not seeing it as whitehat SEO: I see it as greyhat SEO and I’ve broken plenty of Google’s guidelines to test SEO ideas to see just how close to the line we can safely go: I’ve found a BIG step from the line is advisable, if it’s iffy don’t do it unless you are happy to have the site banned by Google forever.
David
CSS Background Image SEO Value
WordPress SEO Tips for Bing and Yahoo Rankings?
Hi,
Finally upgraded to latest version a couple of weeks ago & love it! My blog does ok in google but not so good on msn bing & yahoo. Google is my main push but do you have any tips (other than build more links to my site) in regards to bing & yahoo rankings as well?
EG: both on bing & yahoo, I’m beaten for search term ‘the unlottery’ by the same blog that does well on all 3 search engines. Is this just because his blog has more links to it than mine?
WordPress SEO Tips for Bing and Yahoo Rankings?
WordPress SEO for Bing and Yahoo Search Engine Rankings
Regarding Bing, Yahoo and other search engines I have to admit I’ve stopped worrying about them because getting it right with Google can be on such a knife edge it’s not worth doing something that only works for a less important search engine.
That being said I find my sites tend to do well in the major search engines anyway, but then I know how to write SEO content and that SEO content works for all search engines (some better than others).
My recipe site for example is number 1 in Bing for Free Recipes, (about 8th in Google.com) but the traffic from Bing is piss poor! For that main SERP that site does better in Bing than Google, but look at the traffic below!!!
My recipe sites search engine traffic for this month (less than 5 days data).
– Google 9082
– Yahoo! 353
– Microsoft Bing 296
– AOL 111
– Unknown search engines 89
– Ask 74
– MyWebSearch 11
– Earth Link 4
– AT&T search (powered by Google) 2
– Rambler 2
– Others 6
To the Unlottery SERP :-)
Comparing your site to the page that’s ranked number 1 in Google and Bing, the other page is better optimised.
The other page uses the term Unlottery a lot more times than your site (almost twice as often).
You have Unlottery used three times as anchor text, with two of those times a link to the page you are on (the Unlottery article). The other site has Unlottery as anchor text five times with four of the Unlottery links to the same page (they all count and anchor text counts more than standard body text).
You have no images related to Unlottery, the only image on the page lacks alt text! The other page has two images, both are image links (so links to larger images) with four images associated with those two links with the file name unlottery.png for all four images (two are thumbnails). The folder structure for the image location is awful and they have no alt text, but the image filename is perfect SEO wise (you can’t improve on unlottery.png).
View source of this Talian page and note how I build my image links. The filenames are optimised, the folders the images are stored in are optimised, the alt text is optimised, everything is optimised (I don’t use WordPress to upload images, I do them manually via FTP for complete control).
The author of the other site also got his article online a couple of days before you, not a major factor long term, but short term important.
The other site is better linked as shown by the higher PR of the home page as well, that sites going to be ‘trusted’ more than yours, so you have to make sure you get all the on page SEO right.
So though your page is quite well optimised, it could be improved quite a bit with more use of the search term, there is no such thing as over use of a search phrase as long as it reads fine: if you can get away with Unlottery, Unlottery, Unlottery, Unlottery, Unlottery, Unlottery and it reads OK you should use it.
Using a search phrase as anchor text and alt text is very important, far more important than as basic text. Ideally you’d link to other pages about Unlottery **, but as you’ve seen with the Talian page a link to images can have both alt and anchor text, note the anchor text “Click for large screenshot of AdSense theme” associated with the images that link to bigger images. Because this page is well commented and I use the SEO Comments plugin (edited to work with Talian 05, you have a copy that came with the Talian 05 zip file) every reasonable size comment has two sets of anchor text using the title of this post. One of the links goes to the comment on this page and the other to the comment page (link is at the bottom of this comment for example) created by the SEO Comments plugin **this fulfills our need for links from this page using relevant keywords as anchor text (and the single page comment links back to this page with anchor text of the title of the post adding relevant backlinks).
Remember Talian is an SEO optimised theme, it can not optimise the actual content though. Talian takes your SEO and improves on it, but if you don’t add the SEO content in the first place there’s nothing to work with. What’s particularly important is the title of posts because the title is used in so many areas of the theme. Looking through the posts on your home page most of your titles are very good SEO wise.
Now look at adding phrases and related phrases as much as you can in the content and don’t be afraid to use headers like H2, H3, H4 and even strong, I’ve deliberately not used these within the post template pages so we can add relevant content in the posts and mix the SEO up a bit.
As mentioned above images with optimised filenames and folder structure, optimised anchor text and even anchor text if you link the image to something.
BTW I would not use the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, it’s stealing a link from your pages and lacks the SEO formatting I’ve added to the related posts plugin I use and recommend.
David
WordPress SEO for Bing and Yahoo Search Engine Rankings
WordPress SEO Friendly Permalinks
You need to set WordPress Permalinks as described at SEO Friendly WordPress Permalinks.
I’m tending to go with
/%postname%
Which results in
example.com/post-name
Because it works better than the html version with a plugin I use (SEO Super Comments for Talian: included in the themes zip file). With the html version the comment URLs are messy and don’t work with the Tweetmeme plugin (the little green Tweet box on each article).
Next update the SEO Super Comments Plugin is built into the theme (just tick an option box to use it rather than install and activate the plugin).
David
WordPress SEO Friendly Permalinks
Double Meta Tags WordPress SEO Plugin?
Hi David,
my site has two sets of meta tags on my pages. Is there any way just to use what my WordPress seo plugin puts on the pages?
WordPress SEO Plugin Meta Tags
With Talian 5 if you want to use a WordPress SEO plugin to generate meta tags you’ll have to edit the header.php file and delete the built in meta tags code (two lines of code).
In Stallion 6 I’ve added the ability to disable the built in meta tags so you can use SEO plugins to generate them.
Take a read of the WordPress SEO Plugin Reviews on this site, some of the so called WordPress SEO plugins are downright SEO damaging if used in particular ways! Don’t use nofollow or noindex features, they are SEO BAD.
Meta tags have no ranking value in Google (they will not give you better search engine results), I no longer waste my time on them, better to spend the time generating more articles and optimizing the text, the title element etc…
David
WordPress SEO Plugin Meta Tags
Google Site Verification Meta Tag in WordPress
Did the Google site verification meta tag work for you on your site?
There’s an error in the code. You know once you’ve verified a site you can safely remove the Google verification meta tag (only needed once).
I’ve added this as a feature in Stallion 6 along with Bing and Yahoo verification.
David
Wrong WordPress SEO Meta Description Tags
The reason i wanted to take out the meta tags is that Google is listing my site for the wrong keywords and description.
Thanks Bill
Wrong WordPress SEO Plugin Meta Tags
Hi David,
an update on the meta keywords and title tags. I have a page instead of posts on my home page. I wrote the text on the page and setup the WordPress seo plugin to use the keywords i am trying to get listed on Google with. The meta keywords and title tag from the theme isn’t quite the right keywords. The posts tags and titles is perfect. I wish there was a way to shut off the title and keywords for the pages. And still have everything for the posts.
Bill
Wrong WordPress SEO Plugin Meta Tags
WordPress SEO Meta Tags Value
The meta keywords tag has no value, it is completely ignored by Google (check with Google’s official info). You are wasting your time if you think setting a meta description tag will increase SERPs. In Stallion 6 I’m turning this meta tag off by default (can be turned back on via the options page, will be turned off on all my sites).
In Talian 5 if I’ve understood you correctly you want a specific title element (it’s called title element not title tag) and a specific meta description.
The meta description has no SEO ranking value, but can be used by Google etc… as the description snippet for a SERP, so might increase click through, but it will not increase rankings.
The title element is extremely important SEO wise and should be optimised.
The page or post you are using to generate the static home page, the title from that page will be used as the title element for the home page. So the title element can be set to whatever you want it to be by editing that pages title.
A snippet from that post will be used as the meta description. The meta description is automated, but you can set a custom meta description for any post by editing the post and edit the excerpt field. This option is not available by default in WordPress (strange WordPress development didn’t add this feature) for static Pages. In Stallion 6 I’ve added this as a feature, there will be an except form like you find in posts.
If you don’t want to wait for Stallion 6 you could add this yourself by editing the function.php file and adding this code:
<?php if ( function_exists('add_post_type_support') ) { add_action('init', 'add_page_excerpts'); function add_page_excerpts() { add_post_type_support( 'page', 'excerpt' ); } } ?>You could then edit the static page you are using for the home page and add a relevant excerpt that will become the meta description.
I hope to release Stallion 6 this month, so not much longer to wait for this as a built in feature.
David
WordPress SEO Meta Tags Value
WordPress SEO of Categories
David,
What do you think would be the best way to minimize my “Category” section (without deleting any category or damaging SEO) at my site There are so many categories now (and more growing daily) that it appears it’s getting out of hand in it’s sidebar length. Any suggestions on how to handle this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Randy
WordPress Categories SEO
WordPress Categories Widget can be reduced in size in two ways.
Forward planning: Put categories within categories like you see at this site of mine with over 130,000 recipes (127,000 pages of that site is indexed in Google which is very good) and loads of Categories but only 27 are shown. I have 27 top level categories the rest (hundreds of them) are sub-categories and are not shown on the sidebar. They still receive links via the Posts as they link to the categories they are in.
Include/Exclude Categories: You can add code to your functions.php file that will either block lots of categories or include a set of categories. This involves a lot of effort and I’d not advise this for a growing autoblog as you’ll be editing your functions file all the time and you might find some post and categories lack links from within the site if you aren’t careful. If you need to go that route LMK and I’ll point you in the right direction.
Although the current categories are already live and it’s usually not a good idea for changing categories after they are live and indexed, I’d go with the forward planning option.
Either put current categories within current categories that makes sense: if you had a category called “WordPress SEO” you could put Categories like “WordPress SEO Themes” and “WordPress SEO Tutorial” within it. Or add new categories to put your current and new categories within, only took a quick look at your site, but an example might be “American Articles” and put anything American within it. Get it down to a reasonable number of top level categories and any new categories have as sub-categories.
You might take a short term SEO hit if the categories you move around (when a categories is made a sub-category it’s URL is changed), but for the medium term it’s what I’d do.
If it was a popular site with loads of traffic going directly to the category articles I’d setup 301 redirects within the .htaccess file, but as this is an autoblog it’s probably not getting a lot of traffic so I wouldn’t bother.
David
WordPress Categories SEO
WordPress Categories Drop-Down Menu SEO Value?
David,
Thanks for the reply and suggesting “Forward Planning”. Will the categories in a drop-down menu be seen by the search engines? Does a drop-down box create inefficient or bad SEO?
Thanks,
Randy
WordPress Categories Drop-Down Menu SEO Impact
The Category drop down option is invisible to search engines, so if you want the categories indexed efficiently by Google etc… (which you do) you’d not use it.
David
WordPress SEO Meta Title Tags Keywords
Hi David,
I turned off the WordPress seo plugin. I am wondering why my keywords are the same as the title?
Or does it matter?
Thanks..Billy
Yoast SEO Title Tags
Which of the WordPress SEO plugins was you running?
If you view source of your homepage it doesn’t show the usual commented out code that says which WordPress SEO Plugin is running and is generating meta tags etc…, but there are still indications a SEO plugin is running.
You have meta description and meta keywords tags and a robots meta tag with noodp,noydir within it. Also the Google verification code (BTW once you’ve verified a site you can remove the code).
It looks like you are running the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin as the Google verification and robots meta tags is a feature of the Yoast SEO Plugin.
Not looked at the latest version of the Yoast SEO plugin, but when it was in it’s early releases it wasn’t setup particularly well (no built in defaults) and if I recall correctly you had to disable it via the plugins page not the Yoast WordPress SEO menu. Or was it the All In One SEO Pack Plugin that turned things on before you click activate on the plugins menu.
I wouldn’t use any of them with Talian 5, the only useful feature is the ability to have some more control over the home pages title element and the title element of posts. I’ve added the former in Stallion 6 and looking into the title element of posts for a future release. I name posts with the keywords I want the post to rank for, although nice to have the options to call a page one thing and give it a different title element it’s not an SEO feature you can’t live without: when I add the feature to Stallion for posts (I’ll find a way), I doubt I’ll use it.
BTW your home page title element is using the title of the Page you are using as the static home page. If you want a different title element for the home page rename the title of the static Page.
David
Yoast SEO Title Tags
Removing WordPress SEO Plugin Improved Google Rankings
Hi David,
Remember me turning off the WordPress seo plugin? My site went from nowhere in Google to 8th place for my main keywords. It happened overnight also. I wasn’t going anywhere with that WordPress seo plugin.
Thanks ..
Billy