Comprehensive Guide to WordPress SEO - Part 1

Over the course of the several days/weeks I will be revealing comprehensive and indepth findings for Search Engine Optimization(SEO) in regards to WordPress. This time I will be covering the importance of Permalink Structure.

Permalinks:

Permalinks: Permanent Links, links that SHOULD not change.

The first thing you should do when installing WordPress is to deny the option to publicize your blog(you can turn this on later). When installing WordPress for the first time, after you enter your blog name and email you have the option for “Blog Visibility” presented to you. Select “I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors.” This tells WordPress that you will tell the Internet (i.e. google, yahoo, etc) when you’re ready to be indexed.

Why is this important?

If you go for a couple weeks posting without changing your permalink structure, you are practicing poor SEO, and are in essence digging yourself a hole. By default, WordPress’s permalink structure is not very pretty, nor is it Search Engine friendly.

Admin Panel -> Options -> Permalinks:

So deny the ability to publicize your website, then the first thing you should do is RUN to the Admin Panel -> Options -> Permalinks Tab and go buckwild.

Well not exactly, at the VERY LEAST it’s important that you have your post title within the permalink structure.

Custom Structure: /%postname%/
http://bloggercamp.com/comprehensive-guide-to-wordpress-seo-permalinks

If I had another post of that name, WordPress would automatically append a -2, -3 etc on the end (but I think that’s ugly and assumes that the post is paginated or multipart from the structure).

Instead, I use the following permalink structure:

Custom Structure: /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%category%/%postname%/
http://bloggercamp.com/2007/11/2/wordpress-tips/comprehensive-guide-to-wordpress-seo-permalinks

This allows me to include the category name (used as a keyword if you remember) and the entire post name. Besides, I just like the look of the date instead of -2, -3, -4, etc at the end of my post titles.

For the most part it is safe to write a few posts now, get used to the permalink structure, but I still recommend not publicizing your blog just yet. There is still a bit of optimization work to do before we get to that point.

Part 2: Title Tags and Headings

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