Recently some major coverage has been given to the SEO of blogs, especially using basic plug-ins and changes to code to enhance the search rankings of content from Wordpress Blogs.
Neil Patel discussed his optimization of Jason Calacanis’s blog which led to enhanced search driven traffic and the Search Engine Journal SEO Clinic Team grouped together to help an independent blogger’s Wordpress SEO.
Bill Slawski lent his recommendations for Wordpress SEO Plugins :
1. In the titles for blog posts, put the post titles first, and then the name of the blog.
Ideally, your post titles should be good and fairly short descriptions of what the post is about. If that description includes a keyword phrase that people might search for in trying to find a site like yours, that’s even better. It doesn’t hurt to have the post title appear first in your page titles, and a plug-in that can help you do this is:
2. Meta tag plugin - for unique descriptions.
There are a number of different choices, but this one works effectively and automatically for all pages, and meta descriptions for individual posts can be manually created if wanted.
[SEJ uses Head Meta Description]
3. Use the Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin
There are two different URLs for every post; with and without a trailing slash, like this:
http://www.bigoceans.com/2007/02/26/presents-captain-cook-and-nice-hats
http://www.bigoceans.com/2007/02/26/presents-captain-cook-and-nice-hats/
Rather than have a search engine try to understand that those are the same page, and try to decide between the two, this plug-in can be used so that only the version with the trailing slash appears:
4. Sitemap page - sitemap plugin
It doesn’t hurt to have a sitemap for both your visitors and the search engines. The following plugin works well:
I’ve also looked into the Wordpress SEO Title Tag 2.0 Plugin and found it to have many useful options for optimized title tags.
In addition on Search Engine Journal I’ve used the Permalink Redirect Plugin for bypassing the mod_rewrite specifications for using SEO friendly URL structures with Wordpress.
What are your favorite Wordpress Plugins for SEO? Please leave your experiences with them and a link in the comments below.
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Comments
22 responses so far ↓
Bill on Apr 2, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Hi Loren,
Another one that I like a lot is the Related Entries Plugin:
http://wasabi.pbwiki.com/Related%20Entries
Bigoceans.com was already using it, so I didn’t include it within the recommendations.
In addition to providing some links that search engine can follow, the links to related entries may get people to explore more of a blog.
Pozycjonowanie on Apr 2, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Thank Loren for links to SEO plugins for wordpress - special thank for link to Sitemap Generator Plugin. Greetings
John Scott on Apr 3, 2007 at 12:48 am
Great tip, Bill. Thanks!
Hong Kong SEO on Apr 9, 2007 at 3:07 am
I prefer using auto meta tag plugin instead doing it by hand. In this case, I think machine knows what machines want.
Sites de Busca on Apr 26, 2007 at 4:31 am
Thanks for that Bill. Great list of plug-ins, been looking for something like that.
The redirect plug-in I believe is quite important as I can see from Google Webmasters tools that they indexed one single page with two or three diferent URLs.
Cheers
Eduard on May 1, 2007 at 3:52 am
For title and metas I use Autoheader plugin and works great for me*!
* Because I developed :)
The Hopeless Romantic on May 9, 2007 at 1:52 pm
I came across this site and love the tips. I had most of these plugins before, but now just added Permalink Redirect. Hopefully it will help me SEO.
Compaq on May 11, 2007 at 4:21 am
I don’t agree with you HKS .I prefer doing it by hand rather than auto meta tag plugin. It does not make me weary
Meble on May 22, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Very interesting informations for SEO users. Sitemap Generator Plugin is also nice. Thanks
Fable on Jun 30, 2007 at 4:12 am
Awesome list, Loren. I, myself, use all of those plugins except for the ‘Optimal Title’ plugin which is something I’ve come across before but wasn’t entirely sure of how beneficial it would be. I’ll be giving it a go now, though. ;)
Steve
Brian Turner on Jul 2, 2007 at 8:14 am
I think there are some nice little custom tweaks you can make - for example, I use the following tip for really pushing on the SEO with WP titles:
http://www.ibrian.co.uk/14-06-2007/some-simple-wordpress-seo-tips/
2c
Ben on Jul 3, 2007 at 11:01 am
I’d been meaning to load of a site map generator and this post gave me exactly what I needed. Thanks!
seo roi on Jul 17, 2007 at 10:54 am
Useful list, of which I am using/intend to use a few. You may also find semiologic (semiologic.com) to have some interesting plugins, if not necessarily for SEO.
dockarl on Jul 19, 2007 at 5:32 am
Shameless self plug here :)
I’ve adapted a plugin for wordpress that tries to ‘herd the bots’ to give your content a much better chance at avoiding the dreaded supplemental index.
It’s called SEO_Wordpress and you’ll find it (and a big description of how it works for those of us that like to understand things) at utheguru.com.
Cheers,
M
Josh on Jul 26, 2007 at 12:13 pm
For everyone who is not able to generate automated sitemap reports on the server side i recomend using sitemap generators for windows, there are several tools that worked fine for me.
Tim on Sep 30, 2007 at 11:49 am
I generated my sitemaps with gsitecrawler before, but your plugin is way better, thank you so much for this!
SEO Web Design on Jan 22, 2008 at 9:39 am
Permalink redirect is very useful for blogs. Sitemap generator plugin does not hurt your blog instead it does help your blog by providing sitemaps for both the visitors and engines.
voip on Feb 4, 2008 at 6:08 pm
I recommend All in one SEO plugin
Olga on Feb 9, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I was about to install the All in one SEO plugin for my blog, but I see now that there is more to it than just givin a proper title and meta tag. Thanks for the tips.
Internet Marketing on Jul 17, 2008 at 8:32 pm
The importance of having a sitemap has been highlighted constantly, however i still come across huge number of sites that do not have sitemap. Sitemap comes in 2 forms : The first is used for human visitors and the second is used for SE robots.
gifts on Jul 20, 2008 at 7:22 am
These are great and really useful. Now, second to these, what else do you need? Good content, please. I’m all for SEO (of course I am) and using these techniques – but there’s nothing I hate more than brilliant SEO techniques merged with shoddy content. If you want to go through all that effort to get me there, make sure your site is resourceful or a place I’ll want to go to again. Otherwise, all you’re doing is generating unique hits but certainly no consistency whatsoever.
WpReloaded on Jul 29, 2008 at 1:05 pm
these are all great plugins but by far the best one I have seen is WpReloaded. it can make a major impact on any SEO campaign.
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