Top 5 SEO Tips for WordPress 2.3

The following tips will increase your search enging rankings for keywords, articles, and your blog in general. In combination with obvious SEO techniques such as link baiting with clever post titles this is a no fail combination.

1. Permalink Structure:

The permalink structure is exactly that, a permanent link to your articles and pages. By default WordPress uses sitename.com/?p=123 … the 123 being the post number. Not very descriptive is it? There are 2 main options when considering your page for SEO methods. Either date and namebased:
/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ or the custom field.

However, I personally use the custom field and use the following tags as a base for all my blogs:

/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%category%/%postname%/

The belief is that if you add the category to your permalink structure you will increase “search engine awareness” of your posts, and add one more item for search engines to associate with your post. Which brings us to the next WordPress SEO tip.

2. Use Only One Category:

By using only one category you can reduce confusion for your readers, reduce the chances of google(or other search engines) thinking you’ve got duplicate content(and being penalized for it). If you follow tip #1, you’ll have less headaches as well.

An added bonus of using only one category is returning more results for that category.

3. Categories are Keywords:

In wordpress categories are a prominent feature for you blogs/websites. Avoid using non-descriptive category names… such as “ranting, miscellaneous, dribble, etc”, these naming schemes don’t do you or SEO any good.

Each category name should be descriptive, short(1-3 words), to the point. Each time you write an article and have the category it’s under listed in the post, that is another internal link to associate with your blog.

4. Tags are not the same as Categories:

In WordPress 2.3, tags and categories are identical from a database point of view, but are treated entirely differently. WordPress 2.3 automatically adds rel=”tag” to each tag(a href) you put in your posts. The rel=”tag” symbolizes that the link is for internal purposes only.

Do not attempt to flood your posts with unrelated or undesirable tags. It won’t help you and your individual posts will suffer in rankings.

5. One Plugin to Rule them All

All in One SEO Pack by uberdose is THE one stop shop for search engine optimization.

Read over the help file to grasp exactly how powerful this plugin is for SEO.

One this plugin is installed and activated be SURE to check ON ALL of the following in the options panel:

• Use Categories for META keywords:
• Use noindex for Categories:
• Use noindex for Archives:
• Use noindex for Tag Archives:
• Autogenerate Descriptions:

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