SEO Guide & My blog

After reading WordPress SEO Guide i took something from it and apply for my blog SEO. Here is what is choose to use… i also want to tell you that most of those other SEO tricks was used already on my websites.

1. I’ve change post titles to h1 tag !

2.2. Headings

Although most themes for WordPress get this right, make sure your post title is an h1, and nothing else. Your blog’s name should only be an h1 on your frontpage, and on single, post, and category pages, it should be no more than an h3.

These are easy to edit in the post.php and page.php templates. To learn more about why proper headings are important read this article on Semantic HTML and SEO.

2. I use Breadcrumbs for single posts, pages and category archives.

If you want do the same here is quote text from WordPress SEO Guide:

2.1. Breadcrumbs

You’ll want to add breadcrumbs to your single posts and pages. Breadcrumbs are the links, usually above the title post, that look like “Home > Articles > WordPress SEO”. They are good for two things:

* They allow your users to easily navigate your site.
* They allow search engines to determine the structure of your site more easily.

These breadcrumbs should link back to the homepage, and the category the post is in. If the post is in multiple categories it should pick one. For that to work, adapt single.php and page.php in your theme, and use one of the available breadcrumb plugins.

Now what plugin works best for me, i choose : Breadcrumb Navigation XT.

The first one from search scores was Wordpress Navigation List Plugin NAVT but it was too complicated. Second one Breadcrumb NavXT works only with WordPress 2.5 because it uses functions that was implemented for newest version. So i choose the third one and it works ideal, Breadcrumb Navigation XT.

3. I’ve installed SEO Friendly Images but it doesn’t work for me good… i think.

1.5. Image Optimization

An often overlooked part of WordPress SEO is how you handle your images. By doing stuff like writing good alt tags for images and thinking of how you name the files, you can get yourself a bit of extra traffic from the different image search engines. Next to that, you’re helping out your lesser able readers who check out your site in a screen reader, to make sense of what’s otherwise hidden to them.

You should of course be writing good titles and alt tags for each and every image, however, if you don’t have the time for that, there is a plugin that can help you. The plugin is called SEO Friendly Images, and it can automatically add the title of the post and or the image name to the image’s alt and title tag:

4. In the end of big changes i use robots meta plugin.

Install my robots meta plugin, and make sure the settings prevent indexing of all archive pages, like this:

Robots Meta setting to prevent indexing of archives to improve WordPress SEO

Now the search engine will follow all the links on these archive pages, but it won’t show those pages in the index. Not everybody will agree on this policy, and others will tell you to just show a snippet of each post on the archive page. That’ll also work, but in my opinion completely throwing them out is better.

5. I’ve add “No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome »” to my comments template.

6.1. How should you get people to comment

The easiest way of getting people to do anything is: ask them to do it. Write in an engaging style, and then ask your blog’s readers for an opinion, their take on the story etc.

Another important things is your comment links. Is your comment link “No comments »”? Or is it “No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome »”? Feel the difference? You can change this by opening your index.php template, search for comments_popup_link() and changing the texts within that function.

I hope this post will encourage you to make some changes on your pages too.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!