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Jan 15 2008

Search Engine Optimization for WordPress-Powered Blogs

Written by John Raul II at 6:38 pm under Search Engine Optimization

WordPress DashboardSearch engine optimization (SEO) is one of my favorite buzzwords in the Web 2.0 era. It refers to the process of improving the volume of visitors, the quality of traffic from search engines, and higher ranking of a website in search engine results page (SERP).

SEO is significant to site owners (regardless of the nature of the site) because it promotes greater chance of getting a higher position in SERP. Higher rank usually means greater probabilities of being searched by people, bringing traffic to their website and creating opportunities. If you just created a blog website powered by WordPress or you have an existing site that is not optimized, here are the most common effective methods you can do to improve your SERP rank.

Provide quality content at higher frequency

This is easier said than done. Providing fresh, quality content at higher frequency remains the most effective method of SEO. Quality content refers to the significance of information or services presented on your website. For instance, if you’ve published an article (or any content) that interests your users, chances are great that they might visit it again, promote it or create link to your website.

Search engines nowadays are getting smarter and more sophisticated that it can nearly bring visitors exactly to the page they really want. Search engines will look less on the syntactic composition of a web page, and focus more on the real, actual content. Since this is the trend, it’s wise to strive to provide quality content. The content, for me, remains the “king” when it comes to website marketing.

Make your pages searchable

Validate your pages and make sure they adhere to W3C coding standards. Having a good code in your pages basically will help spiders crawl and search relevant information on the page. Spiders are automated programs or scripts that search engine use to browse and discover the pages of Web. While validating your code does NOT improve your SERP ranking, it does contribute to an effective SEO by its nature. Use absolute links, and try to avoid making a Flash-dominated page because, as of this writing, it performs poorly in improving SEO. Dead links and HTML/JavaScript/CSS syntax errors should also be eradicated so that the page will properly be indexed.

Join the social community bandwagon

If you ever heard of social community and bookmarking sites (e.g. Facebook, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Digg, Del.icio.us, among others), they are hot these days because they promote socialization beyond borders. Fortunately, webmasters can take advantage of them because they can be great tools to improve the exposure of a website. Most sites work by submitting to them your content through Web feed formats (like RSS), online bookmarking and personal submission, which they publicize. Squidoo, for instance, lets you create blurbs to promote or sell just anything. If interested online readers found them, they can potentially bring huge traffic to your blog or website. To participate, visit social community websites and create an account to them.

Install SEO-friendly WordPress themes and plugins

Personally, the Themes and Plugin feature are among the myriad things I love in WordPress blog platform. They are easy to install and you don’t need to be a geek to be able to add widgets and extended functionality (well, it helps when you know HTML, CSS and PHP – but don’t be scared if you don’t). If you own a WordPress-powered blog, visit their official website and browse for SEO-friendly plugins and themes. You may personalize them if you want.
This website, powered by WordPress, uses the following plugins:

  • Adsense Deluxe
    Place Google AdSense ads in your WordPress Posts. Requires WordPress 1.5 or higher. For complete usage and configuration click on AdsenseDeluxe under the “Options” menu.
  • All in One SEO Pack
    Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog.
  • Digg This
    Adds Digg story link on detection on digg referrer.
  • DoFollow
    Selectively disable the “nofollow” tagging for comments.
  • FeedBurner FeedSmith
    Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
  • Google Search Widget
    Adds a sidebar widget to let users search your site with Google.
  • Google XML Sitemaps
    This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo.
  • Social Bookmarks
    Adds a list of xHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts that allow your visitors to easily submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites.
  • Text Link Ads
    Really Simple Web/RSS Advertising For Personal or Commercial Use
  • WordPress Database Backup
    On-demand backup of your WordPress database.
  • WP-Cache
    Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system.
  • WP-Print
    Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.
  • WP 2.3 Related Posts
    Generate a related posts list via tags of WordPress 2.3
  • WP YouTube
    WP YouTube makes it easier for you to post embed YouTube videos in Wordpress. It also features YouTube options , for you to control all the YouTube videos at the same time.

I’d like to give credit to the creators of the above-mentioned plugins. It is up to you to discover how they work and what benefits they bring. Also, please note that there are other plugins that you may want to install for your WordPress site. My personal advice, however, is not to install too many plugins because they may consume too much CPU resource if you are on a basic hosting.

Spread your links to the world

In SEO, it is generally better if you strive to have more inbound links. Inbound links are links pointing to your website from other sites. If you are blog is new, it is wise to submit your website’s Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to free web directories. This can initially build inbound links that can be beneficial. Your next option is to exchange links with other bloggers or sites. Making friends online, blog commenting and link baiting usually help. If more of your inbound links come from sites with high PageRank and belongs to your blog’s niche, you might increase your blog’s PR as bonus. There are still quite a number of methods to spread your links to the Web, I leave it to you to discover. Enjoy!

24 Responses to “Search Engine Optimization for WordPress-Powered Blogs”

  1. Jens Törnell Says:

    Hi!

    Thanks for spreading the word of WP YouTube! =)

    Regards Jens Törnell (creator of WP YouTube)

  2. SEO Meter Says:

    That’s quite nicely written pieces of advice!
    I find all-in-one SEO pack quite valuable.

  3. John Raul II Says:

    @Jens

    Your WP YouTube plugin is really very useful!!! Thanks for creating it!

    @SEO Meter

    Yes, it’s a nice WordPress plugin. Thanks for reading my post.

  4. John Masters Says:

    Once again I have found a good post of yours

  5. John Raul II Says:

    Thanks, John. I’m happy that you read it.

  6. Robert Eckert Says:

    Great content deserves a round of applause!Absolutely an amazing blog you have here.I just started my blog a few years ago and realize with great content you can acheive high pr rankings in google.With articles within your niche market.

    I you have a chance maybe you could give me some pointer’s or a simple review of my blog.

    ThankYOU!

  7. George Says:

    Hi, I visited your blog just now. Very nice. Thanks!
    Best Articles Site

  8. John Raul II Says:

    @Robert Eckert

    Okay, I will try to find time to review your website.
    Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this post.

    @George

    You are welcome. :)

  9. Lioni Says:

    Very good comments. Thank you

  10. Jim Mirkalami Says:

    I have been a frequent visitor of this blog for some time now, so I thought it would be a good idea to leave you with my thanks.

    Regards,
    Jim Mirkalami

  11. John Raul II Says:

    Thank you, Jim Mirkalami. I’m so happy to know that. :)

  12. Jim Mirkalami Says:

    I have been visiting this site a lot lately, so i thought it is a good idea to show my appreciation with a comment.

    Thanks,
    Jim Mirkalami

  13. Doug Steele Says:

    Interesting. There are some good ideass presented here. I need to do spend some time reading more about these topics.

  14. John Raul II Says:

    Yes, that’ll help Doug Steele.

  15. Dan (future gadgets blog) Says:

    I like your blog theme. I want to use it on my blog.
    Can you please tell me from where I can download these theme?

    Many thanks

    ——————————————————————————–
    Dan owner of the future gadgets blog future gadgets and inventions

  16. Janet Says:

    Interesting! I’m really helped. It’s really smart idea. Do you know you can make your blog more popular? maybe I can help you, you may contact me at anytime you want.

    Cheers

  17. John Raul II Says:

    Thanks, Janet. Okay, I will try to contact you, but I will have to save if it costs for me to be popular. Well, obviously it costs.

  18. Bubbila Says:

    Sweet tutorial, just what I have been looking for.

  19. Bubbila Says:

    Sweet resource, just what I have been looking for.
    I have added you to Stumbleupon.

  20. John Raul II Says:

    Thanks Bubbila for reading this article and for adding me in StumbleUpon.
    I truly appreciate it. :)

  21. Cindy Says:

    Great post ! Good sound advise. Some of these tips I didn’t know anything about. You helped me and thanks.

  22. Gadget Review Blog Says:

    Nice post thanks!

  23. Ödev Says:

    Yep - I think wordpress is a much

  24. John Raul II Says:

    I thought the same Odev. :)

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