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Basic WordPress SEO tips: 6 Settings for Search Engine…

  • January 30, 2011
  • by Gradiva Couzin

WordPress is an excellent blog authoring tool and can also be used as an all-around content management system (CMS) for your site.  Best of all, it’s inherently search-engine-friendly.

People often ask us for tips on WordPress settings for SEO. Here are the bare-bones basics:

– In Settings > General Settings, choose a site title and tag line that contain keywords you might want to rank well for.  Of course, the site title should also be recognizable as the name of your blog!

– Under Settings > Permalinks, we recommend a custom structure for permalinks that includes the post name, as seen here:

/%postname%/

This will create permalink URLs containing the words in your post title,  for example, “this-is-my-best-post-ever.html.” If you would prefer to include the date or other elements, scroll down on this WordPress Codex page for a list of other available tags.  Here’s an example of a URL format that includes the current year as well as the post name:

– Under Settings > Writing, be sure that the update service is filled in. A respected updating service is the following:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

– Under Settings > Privacy be sure to select that you want your blog to be publicly available.

– We recommend including breadcrumbs on each post. We use a plugin called Breadcrumb NavXT to make ’em.

– HTML titles are important for SEO. You can install a plugin called All in One SEO Pack to gain the capability to edit HTML titles on each post, and to set up a good default format for all posts.  Some examples of good default formats are the following:
“Post Title | Blog Name”
“Blog Name: Post Title”

This screenshot shows an example of All in One SEO Pack settings for a breaking news website:

With these basic settings in place, your site will be indexable in search engines, and have at least a minimum level of on-page optimization built-in.  We’re guessing that was a lot easier than you thought it would be!  Congratulations – aren’t you glad you chose WordPress?

Readers: do you have an WordPress SEO tips to share?

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3 COMMENTS
  • Tweets that mention Basic WordPress SEO tips: 6 Settings for Search Engine Health | Gravity Search Marketing -- Topsy.com
    February 1, 2011 at 12:44 am

    […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by WilloToons, Gradiva Couzin. Gradiva Couzin said: I get asked for these so often! Basic WordPress SEO Tips: http://bit.ly/hpShZs […]

  • Carl
    March 8, 2011 at 7:11 pm

    First of all, you guys are great. Love your blog and writing style. I’m constantly trying to improve on presenting clear, informative and useful information that contains technical info but very readable. Your post above is an excellent example of providing simple to implement SEO tasks that many take for granted.

    Secondly, my apologies for posting to an older blog post, but wanted to get your take on the WordPress SEO (Yoast) plugin for WordPress. We were using all-in-one seo prior to this for most of our clients and no major complaints. Recently we switched over to the Yoast plugin, and so far we have been pleasantly surprised. Very feature rich and has made the back-end seo process easier.

    I tend to agree with most of your past posts (sorry, haven’t read the book yet) so your opinion would help or any ‘beware’ problems i should know about.

  • Gradiva Couzin
    September 19, 2011 at 8:45 am

    We’ve heard great reviews of Yoast from readers and from other SEOs. I haven’t worked with it personally but I’m familiar with the author and I hold him in high regard. I would definitely recommend giving the Yoast plugin a try for your WordPress SEO needs.

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Gravity Search Marketing was formed in 2006 as a partnership between Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin. Gravity’s clients include Fortune 500 companies, global entertainment brands, niche B2Bs, large and small retailers, and non-profits.
As SEO industry veterans, Couzin and Grappone co-wrote Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day (Wiley, 2006, 2008, 2011) and Five Stars: Putting Online Reviews to Work for Your Business (Wiley, 2014), and enjoy sharing their expertise in speaking engagements and press interviews. 
Gravity's small, talented team has expertise in analytics, paid search, social media and technical SEO. Gravity team members are located throughout California, in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

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