9 Must-do WordPress SEO Tips that you might have missed
I’m not going to talk about the much repeated permalink editing or heading changes here. Instead, I’m going to share with you some SEO tips for WordPress that you might not have bothered to check, the fine details that is. Keep in mind that some of them are the result of recent updates from Google. Let’s go.
1. Nofollow your RSS feeds
We don’t need the bots to crawl them. Google is clever enough to discard them but you might want to keep other bots awy.
2. Nofollow your Archives and Tags
They make the content show up at more than one place (the original article) and thus may create duplicate content on the blog. Why take chance ? Nofollow them.
3. Change the Post title to H1 from H2
Normally, all WordPress themes comes with the post title as H2. In my opinion you should change it to H1 as it could be the most important title on the page.
4. Add Titles and ALT tags to your smaller images
Many a times, you miss the smaller images. Tag them well with ALT and Title tags.
5. Test your page load time and keep it under 3 secs
Most of this depends on your server and code. Its not easy, but if you can keep it as low as possible – just great !
6. Take off any signs/characters from your page titles/ Change the page title format
Many a times, themes comes with fancy character signs like “>>” in the page title. Rip them off, you’re wasting SEO real estate there.
7. Change the blog/site name to H2 or H3 from H1
Most themes come with the blog/sitename in H1 on any page. Change it to H3 or so, and use the CSS to make it appear visually big. We need post titles to be H1. (Ref: step 3)
8. Fix your default 404 error page with a plugin
We don’t need them. They’re ugly. Use a plugin to show up a custom 404 error page. Alternatively the best thing to do is to find and kill all the broken links.
9. Make your meta descriptions unique and not a repetition of your content (snippets)
If you took the easy way, then you might have not touched the meta description. Instead of pulling the first few lines from the post itself, its always good if you can make them unique and descriptive so that it appeals to anyone on the SERPs and draws in a click.
So, it doesn’t matter if you use a SEO plugin or not, make sure these silly looking metrics are taken care of, because in the long run, these “silly” things could make a difference.
and for the tenth make sure you have installed the canonical links generator ..
The Canonical tag. I completely agree Dexter.
Great tips on wp seo….
Are these tips for wordpress.org blogs ?
Yeah.. These are for wordpress.org blogs! And these will also work for wordpress.com blogs, except the plugin tips!
Thanks for chipping in Mahesh.
Good post and will look into all these. Like the ones especially with the H1 tags.
Dexter: What is the canonical links generator? Can u point us to the plugin? Thanks.
Al
Good tips. i will try use it in my blog.
Can you explain how to Nofollow things? Good tips, but a little more detail would be nice.
Sure Logan, you can find m,ore about it in this article I wrote about the Nofollow tag quite some days ago.
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Awesome points… after a long time I’m coming across an article that’s fresh and precise, to the point!
Speaking of taking out signs (>>) from page title, my page title has a ‘|’ which differentiates the site name, is that OK?
Another question, what’s ur opinion – page titles should contain your website name or not?
IMHO It depends on how much you want to use the title for SEO. If you can pin down your idea into a precise title, nothing like it. But sometimes you also want some branding done, in which case you can reserve some space for the blog name. Otherwise, its not necessary/doesn’t give any advantage at all.
Cool tips, done the point ” 3. Change the Post title to H1 from H2 “
Do you mind if I translate this article into Vietnamese and post at my blog: blogviet.info? I will linkback and write source at the end of the blog. Thanks in advance
Do you mind if I translate this article into arabic and post at my blog: des-idea.net , and arabic wordpress forum : ar-wp.com? I will linkback and write source at the end of the blog. Thanks in advance ..
No problem Abdullah, as long as the credit remains. Thanks for asking.
Good tips.
The question I have is about the H1 suggestion. I was under the impression its best to have one h1 tag. For the individual posts it makes sense to change the blog title / tag line from H1 to H6, but for the index having all those H1 won’t help much, will it?
All solid tips, although I disagree with you in regards to nofollowing your archive and tag pages.
Tag pages can rank quite well for terms & don’t have to be duplicate content if you only allow them to include excerpts or post titles instead of the whole post.
I go a bit more in depth about this in my SEO Guide for WordPress
Great tips….
Thanks…
Another easy tweak to add to that list is to remove the extraneous links to WordPress, XML/HTML validity checkers, etc… These are traffic and PR leaks.
Granted, don’t go overboard and remove good links like the ones to the theme’s author. A little link love is worth it for some of the great themes out there.
Nice tips there!
Thanks for sharing… I’ll be returning soon for more tips!
Chris
Sorry, had my blog address wrong on my previous post. Oops!
what is the solution, so that my website back in the search engine google
now i’m understand my mistake.. i don’t know that we have to add alt to image in the posting and header H1, H2, H3 syntax i don’t know to that we have to use it ..
thanks for the tips this is very hepful for me thanks a lot
Hi Mani thanks 4 tips, i like to do most of things manually rather using a plugin 4 my wp. anyway your source prints meta generator info twice. 1 probably 4 header file another 4 all in one SEO plugin. check these out.
Great post – Just subscriped to your RSS feed.. Thanks
Very interesting post – Might be old new, but it was new to me. Thanks.
Some very valid points. SEO is a bit of a minefield but if you find a good company then it can be a ggod investment.
Do you think that the H! stuff still makes a difference with Google? It seems to irrelevant with CSS resizing everything nowadays,
Nice tips, thanks!
Good post, But its a little strange to your concept on nofollowing your archive and tag pages.
good stuff…
http://www.top-dog.org/tricks-of-the-trade.html
Thanks for exploring my mind about SEO.
Re: #7 This tip is misleading. Heading tags should ONLY be used for your blog/site name if you want your blog/site name to be indexed as part of your SEO strategy.
This is what I meant Kristof, normally the site name is placed in H1, on normal templates. Unless you can get mileage out of it, I’d consider converting them to H2 or H3 (lesser important ones) and shifting the focus to the post title, which is likely to contain more “leverageable” info.
Hey… these all are the great and appreciating techniques while doing seo for wordpress.. Its really an amazing tips and if we lose any of the tip.. its being little bit difficult to achieve the target..
Wow, some genuinly differant SEO tips for wordpress – Or at least the no-follow for the archive and RSS feeds
Hi Mani, Great SEO Tips! I was trawling the web looking for “how to reduce the font size of my & tags” in my first post to my new blog (My URL, blog title and post title are all the same 3 keywords) but none of the previous results offered by Google gave me the right answer!
After reading your post I checked my new blog source code and sure enough the the blog title was and the Post title was so Eureka my post title is which is just the right font size for my post!
I have set up over 25 blogs under the assumption that the blog title is coded the same as in my other html sites with the the meta tags “Title” and “Description” etc
Thank you for your enlighting tips which shows it’s never to late to learn even at 66!
I have marked your blog as “Read it Later” for reference!
Thanks Mani