A Guide to an SE Optimized Wordpress Setup

A Guide to an SE Optimized WordPress Setup

[ Digg this! ] Since I’ve been installing and managing WordPress blogs for so many bloggers/clients, I have already outlined lots of steps to optimized blogs for search engines. I cannot guarantee that these steps will send you to the top of the SERPs but based on experience and experimentation, they’ve been helpful in one way or another.

Install in the root domain. This is one of the lessons I had to learn the hard way. See, the basic problem was some people are installing their WordPress blogs under a sub-folder like /blog/ or /wp. Not only will it affect your Adsense ads but it also lengthens your blog URL.
Once you’ve installed WP, go and fix the WP Options esp. the “Blog Title”, Tag Line and Blog URL/Address. Blog titles should be descriptive and just don’t limit it to 1 or 2 words. Same with the tag line. Settle with a fixed URL. If you want http://domain.com or http://www.domain.com it’s up to you but make sure to use this URL all the time – blog comments, forum signatures, email signatures, etc.
Change the permalink structure (if you have mod_rewrite support) to something keyword-rich. My usual format is customized for /%category%/%postname%/ which uses the category title and post title as part of the URL structure. If you are targeting a certain niche or topic, you can add that keyword as a Category Base. Say if you want to blog about arowanas and bought the domain myfishpondblog.com, you can use “arowana” as the category base so that all permalinks have the structure myfishpondblog.com/arowana/category/post-title/ — you’ll have the keyword “arowana” on all your permalinks. Also good for Adsense keyword targeting.
Choose an SEO friendly WP theme. The basic rule of thumb for an SE optimized theme is to` compare it with the default Kubric theme. That includes H1/H2 tags in text blog title, links to archives and categories on the sidebar and permalinked post titles. I try to avoid Ajaxy themes or features as they are hard to index by the SEs and post titles that uses Flash or image objects (Alexified theme).
Edit the footer of the theme to add a link back to your blog homepage. Some WP themes have this by default though. Just don’t use generic text link anchors like Home, Back to Main, etc. — use the blog title itself as the anchor text.
Add as many categories as you can think and setup your category links that lists them all even if there’s no post categorized under it. Most people only add categories when they do a post which is still uncategorized. Each category represents a single page and these pages will soon have their own pageranks so you’d rather have them linked to as early as possible. Word the categories as descriptive as you can — say use “Gadgets & Gears” instead of “Stuff I tinker with…”
Install these SEO-friendly WP plugins — Optimal Title, Related Posts, Simple Tags, Ultimate Tag Warrior, Permalinks Redirect, Google Sitemaps, Top10, Get Recent Comments, Add Meta Tags.
Remove excess links like the default blogroll, links to xml or css compliance sites and other stuff. Just leave the link back to your WP theme creator/designer.
Be aware of the “Post Slug” feature when composing really long post titles. If you don’t know where is that Post slug, it’s just on top of the Category drop down menu in the Write Post section. So, if you have a really long post title like “The Ultimate Guide to an SE Optimized WordPress Setup” you can put in the post slug “guide seo wordpress setup”. Your default permalink would have been domain.com/category/the-ultimate-guide-to-an-se-optimized-wordpress-setup/ but by fixing the post slug, you’ll end up with just domain.com/category/guide-seo-wordpress-setup/ — it’s shorter but still has the essential keywords.

Ok, the last point isn’t really about WordPress setup but I think it’s worthy to add that to the list.

Again, the guide assumes that you’re just starting out setting up a new blog. If you already have one for quite some time, some of the changes might have adverse effect on your SE traffic.

Anybody want to add to the tip list?

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

25 Comments

healthwave ks says:

11 years ago

Nice blog here! Also your website loads up fast!
What host are you using? Can I get your affiliate link to your host?

I wish my website loaded up as quickly as yours lol
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timesnewstoday says:

14 years ago

hey thanks for the suggestion…this article was very helpful for me cause I am new to internet marketing…
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SkyTitles says:

14 years ago

I’m really impressed with this blog and the info that I’ve just read. Keep up your good job!
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downligh4you says:

14 years ago

Thats great guide optimizing the wordpress for great search engine optimzation for a newbie. I I just started to use wordpress as my platform and some of your guide, I use it for my blog thank you for this.

^_^..good luck to me!
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14 years ago

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14 years ago

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StrayArrow says:

15 years ago

Thanks for the tips… I would like to add one thing… look for somebody who really knows thnings like this and ask for help or better yet hire their services…. thanks….
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Mao says:

15 years ago

This would be a great help since I’ve been planning to create a new blog. thanks for this post I’ve got an idea.
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sandrar says:

15 years ago

Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. :) Cheers! Sandra. R.
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ikogsakanding says:

16 years ago

wow thanks for the help… i
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16 years ago

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SELaplana says:

18 years ago

I actually did it on my blog. And I want to add something:

Left sidebar is better than right sidebar if talking about SEO. Actually, that’s what I have observed. However, if you can make the right sidebar appear first before the content (it will be done by hacking the css), then i think it will be better… that is if you will use the right sidebar instead of the left sidebar.

In my blog, I am using the three column design and all the side bars appear first before the content. I decided to do this so that search engine will scan first those links posted on the sidebars before the content……. however, i am not really sure about it really helps…
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Noel says:

18 years ago

Yep, it’s a fresh domain I got about 3 months ago.

I originally thought it was a problem on either my htaccess or robots.txt even though Google wasn’t flagging any error on the Sitemaps site so I kept tweaking for about two weeks. At the time, the site was indexing well on Yahoo (didn’t check on MSN.)

I suspected it was a sandbox/trustbox issue since the site was new with only a few incoming links. I decided to try moving the thing to a folder and wrote a static index page since all my sites on that setup indexed very well.

That did the trick though I never really figured out what the problem was in the first place. :)
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Abe Olandres says:

18 years ago

Noel, that seems strange. I would look at it as an exception rather than the general rule. Is it a fresh new domain with no history of any sorts?

If crawlability is the issue, there could be other factors why it happens that way.
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Noel says:

18 years ago

My experience is engines crawl my sites faster when I put the blog in a sub, and leave a static index page with links to blog posts. Whatever works for you, I guess.

I actually moved one of my blogs which I originally put in the root into this format recently because none of the posts were getting indexed even though it’s being crawled with no error by Google Sitemaps. After doing the change, I had over 40 pages indexed within three days. Google loves static obviously.
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Dave Starr says:

18 years ago

Ummm that would be a very good reason not to change links … thanks
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Elliott C. Back says:

18 years ago

I like how you suggest that we leave a link to the theme author in. Take it out–it’s not your link!
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Abe Olandres says:

18 years ago

Hi Dave,

In the last part of my post, I mentioned that these steps are highly recommended for newly set up blogs. If you have an old blog like mine, there’s a huge risk that some of the tweaks you do could actually affect your current traffic negatively.

In my case, if I change my permalinks, all existing PR of pages will reset back to zero.
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Dave Starr says:

18 years ago

Yuga, thanks for this, there’s a lot of good tips here. I notice though a couple places you don’t follow your own advice.

Put the blog only in the root directory: This is often inconvenient. especially on an established site. My best AdSense performer is in a sub-directory .. what exactly are the disadvantages of leaving it there … I see other sub-directory blogs seem to get crawled pretty well … but I’m so inexperienced on this I may be missing something.

Change the permalink structure: Last month I changed my blogs and my wife’s blogs to %postname% structure _Bam_ double the identifiable searches and nearly double add revenue in a month … highly recommended. So my question is: why aren’t you doing it here?
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Abe Olandres says:

18 years ago

@ Migs

That might be a good layout for some niche blog though for SEO purposes, the more text you have on your front page (usually the page with the highest PR) the better the ranking for those entries.

@ Manuel

Didn’t DreamHost gave you some mod_rewrite rules to overcome this issue?
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ManuelV says:

18 years ago

Thanks, Andrew and Markku…

Each time I try to add another folder (for static html files), I’ll just edit the htaccess file. But if I put the WP blog in a folder of its own, then I won’t have to touch the htaccess file anymore. :-)

(I’m testing the notion that a site that has a combination of a WP blog and the traditional, hierarchical old-style static html structure helps earn more SEO points.)
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markku says:

18 years ago

@Manuel: I think that is a .htaccess issue, since WordPress generates it programatically. Just edit it manually to fix the problem. But note: I don’t use their stats app myself. :)
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Andrew says:

18 years ago

@Manuel: I’m also on DH and I always install in the root folder for my other blogs. I do have the issue with the /stats folder, but since I use more reliable and real-time stat programs, I have nothing to worry about.

@Migs: Any theme can display just one article if you set it to.
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Miguel says:

18 years ago

Chief,
I’m contemplating a sidewide reformat (not just the blog and other stuff inside…)

For WP, what do you think about themes with only one article on the front page? I don’t see you use these.
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Manuel Viloria says:

18 years ago

Thanks for this, Abe! :-)

On the issue of putting WP in the root, I did that before in a DH and had problems accessing the website’s stats (which were in the /stats folder).

Also, when I tried to create a folder such as /photos I just ended up with a WP page indicating a 404 or missing page error.

So, in the case of DH-hosted sites, I would install WP blogs in a folder (i.e., /blog). Besides, Yugatech.com ranks well even if the blog entries are not in the root. :-)
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