Wordpress SEO The Quick and Simple Way
Published March 28th, 2008 in Blogging Resources, Reviewed Freebies, Search Engine Optimization, WordPress ThemesWordpress is not very SEO friendly “out of the box” and if you have not done anything to optimze your blog then you are really limiting your blog’s potential. I have read countless numbers of posts on various blogs, including one recent entry on John Chow dot Com.
How To SEO Your WordPress Theme | John Chow dot Com
This post was guest blogged by Courtney Tuttle of Court’s Internet Marketing School.
Now Courtney has made some really good points regarding headline tags, and their misuse. I highly recommend reading this post and following the recommendations infact I have found a few details in my theme that I intend to fix right away.
These are definitely a good start and will provide a strong base, but what about all the SEO plugins out there? Most of them work however most require some tedious configuration, and I would rather spend my time writing posts then worrying about my SEO optimization. Which brings me to my list of plugins that I use and fully recommend to everyone running a wordpress blog.
Link roll please…
- Add-Meta: a meta tags plugin.
- Google XML Sitemaps: well I am sure you can guess.
- XHTML Sitemap: Not really a plugin but a page formatted to provide an XHTML 1.0 Strict Sitemap
What you expected more? Ok now for an overview of each plugin and the pros and cons.
Add-Meta:
Add-Meta does exactly what it says it does, it adds the important meta tags to your pages automatically and it does a damn good job in my opinion.
Pros: Using the post title, and tags it creates the description and keyword meta tags for you on autopilot.
Cons: You have to manually add the default description and keywords for the main page only, what I am lazy, sue me.
Quick Note: The authors site seems to be down so you can grab it right here. Download Add-Meta.
Google XML Sitemaps:
Pros: Creates a valid xml sitemap based on Google’s specs, one click setup and automatic updating and notification to search engines upon update.
Cons: None that I can think of.
XHTML Sitemap:
As stated above this is not really a plugin but a page template for Wordpress.
Pros: Creates a basic no frills link page to make sure that the search engine spider doesn’t miss a thing, and provides an interface to your site that is easier for disabled people using text readers like JAWS to navigate.
Cons: Again none really.
If you use these plugins and the suggestions from Courtney you will have a fully SEO optimized theme for your blog.
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I just use the wordpress plugin “All In One SEO”, and it works awesome! I would highly recommend it. There is really nothing easier than just slapping on a plugin and plugging in some quick information
Yes that plugin is a great one, how ever it is not a complete solution by no means, and I think add-meta is even easier to configure. The other changes recommended in Court’s post cannot be accomplished by All in One SEO or add-meta for that fact. Furthermore I cannot impress upon the importance of the sitemap plugin/page that I mentioned as they will help big time in search engine spidering.
BTW great blog Jim infact I have something for your latest post