WordPress is an immensely popular blogging and content management system. Its popularity is because of its ease of use, flexibility and reliability.
In addition to these commendable attributes WP is also very good at being search engine friendly. With a few simple steps you can optimise you WordPress site and pages for search.
Here they are….
Enable Permalinks
Permalinks are WordPress’ very own SEF (search engine friendly) URLs. An SEF URL is one that is made up of relavent keywords that search engines can relate to the content of the page.
In other words they will look like this:
http://domain.com/your-article-name/
Instead of this
http://domain.com/?page_id=24/
To enable Permalinks in WordPress:
- Go to Settings > Permalinks
- Choose ‘Custom Structure’ from the menu
- Enter /%postname%/ is the input box
- Click ‘Save Changes’
Install and Configure ‘All in One SEO Pack’
The all in one SEO plugin allows you to specify custom SEO settings for your website and allows you to create unique Page Titles and Meta descriptions for each page.
To install and configure this plugin:
- Go to Plugins > Add New
- Search for ‘All in One SEO Pack’
- Click ‘Install Now’
- Click ‘Activate Plugin’
- Go to Settings > All in One SEO
- Change Plugin Status to ‘Enabled’
- Enter your Site Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords
- Ensure ‘Canonical URLs’ is checked
- Leave the rest of the default settings and click ‘Update Options’
Make sure your Page/Post headings use H1 tags
Your page and post titles should be enclosed in H1 tags.
- View your page source in your browser by clicking on View > Page Source
- Locate your page/post title
- Check to see if it’s contained between these tags: <h1> </h1>
If not you’ll need to edit 2 template files single.php and page.php*
- Go to Appearance > Editor
- Click on the either one of the above files on the right hand side
- Locate the page/post heading and insert the <h1> and </h1> either side of <?php the_title(); ?>
- Click ‘Save Changes’
*Back up each of these files first. If the current element has any attributes like ‘class’ or ‘id’ be careful not to delete these. If you don’t feel comfortable editing these files get someone else to do it!
Create Unique Page Titles and Meta Descriptions for each Page
If you installed the All in One SEO Pack correctly you should be able to enter custom Page Titles and Meta Descriptions for every page.
- Go to Pages
- Choose any of your existing pages
- Scroll down until you see the All in One SEO Pack area
- Enter your Page Title and Meta Description
- Click ‘Update’
By following these steps you’ve put yourself in a strong position as far as ranking is concerned. For more information on how to optimise your site please contact us or take a look at our SEO Services.
