Here’s how to get your WordPress web site optimized for search engines to index and display your site with the keywords and descriptions you want. With a few tips and tricks, you can make WordPress very search engine friendly, and customize it’s design to rank much better than a default WordPress site ever would.
The first tip would be to host your WordPress site yourself, not on wordpress.com. The reason for this is because a self-hosted site is completely customizable, and can include additional plug-ins and other custom code that really makes a difference. We offer WordPress hosting very inexpensively, and provide help if you ever get stuck or need help with doing something you can’t figure out. Here’s more information on all the possibilities for customizing your self-hosted WordPress site:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Blog_Design_and_Layout
The most popular plug-in for WordPress is “WordPress SEO”:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/
A quick overview of WordPress SEO is:
- Change your Permalinks to “/%postname%/”
- Optimize your Titles for SEO: “%%title%% – Blog Title”
- Optimize your Descriptions to add “%%category_description%%”
- Optimize the More text to be keywords from each post
- Image Optimization: Add ALT and Title tags to images using the SEO-Friendly Images plug-in.
These quick tips above give you the most bang for your buck right out of the gate!
Some links to plug-ins, helpful info, and more detailed explainations:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tags/search-engine-optimization
http://codex.wordpress.org/Search_Engine_Optimization_for_Wordpress
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/boost-search-engine-optimisation-seo-using-permalinks/
http://www.seobook.com/video-google-seo-friendly-page-titles
http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/
Let us know if you have any SEO tips to share in the comments, or reach out to us for more SEO help.