WordPress is amazing platform for blogging,one of the reason of making it amazing is awesome plugins that can able to enhance the performance of any WordPress blog. But many of bloggers enjoy the use of plugins in such an extent that they forget to make use of basic SEO practices which is the most important thing for any article for indexing in the search engines.
After all traffic from the search engine matters the most because Search engine traffic remains for ever, where as referral and social bookmarking traffic, may or may not last for ever.
Here I am giving 5 basic practices you should mind before writing any article :
1) Improve the Permalink structure of your URL: So what is the structure of URL?Lets see an example:
a) http://www.shoutmeloud.com/folder/1327497364/xl/3587397.htm
b) http://www.shoutmeloud.com/importance-of-seo-for-blogging-and-bloggers.html
a and b are same URL but you can say about URL b that this page should be about importance of SEO in blogging, while URL a contain no information about the content of post.
Search engine crawlers also found URL b type of articles easy in comparison to URL a. For changing the URL structures of your article go to Dashboard> Setting > Permalink. And change the Permalink settings.
For permalink settings You can refer to shoutmeloud previous post on :
Change your permalink without losing traffic
2) XML Sitemap: A sitemap is a simple page of you site that displays the structure of your website, it consist of a hierarchical listing of the pages on website.You can submit an XML Sitemap through Google Webmaster Tools which can make Google relatively easier to discover the page of your site.
Note:You must have your site verified in Webmaster Tools. Use Google XML Sitemap Plugin :This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Every time you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.
3) Write Keyword optimized quality content: The most important point of SEO, the words I heard from many on in the Bloggers meet at Wordcamp: Content is the King. It means you can use any tactics to improve your blog or advertise it, you will be definitely a loser if you don’t have a quality content. If you write quality content on your blog,it is most obvious that visitor may comment on your post, give applause, some may track back your post, spread it through social media like Twitter,Digg and Stumble and emails and forums. Make use of following practices for writing quality post:
- a) Write easy to read text
- b) Avoid Grammar mistakes
- c) Avoid spelling mistakes
- d) Stay organized around topic
- e) Create unique content
No one is perfect in the beginning and there is always a scope for improvement so learn from your mistakes.
4) Better Anchor Text: Anchor text is a text written on a post on which user can click and visit to other page. It is basically a link provided by author to increase the credibility of the post.
Note: The link you provide may be external(content of other site) or internal(content of your own site).There are certain habits you should follow:
- a) You should give descriptive anchor text,it should provide some info about the linked page.
- b) Don’t use generic anchor text like “Click here”,”page”,”article”.
- c) Don’t use page URL directly as an anchor text.
- d) Avoid concise anchor text, don’t use long descriptive anchor text.
Note Google is not stupid so don’t use excessive anchor text for making your page search engine friendly.
Also read : Why you should link back to your article and Anchor text technique?
5) Use Robots.txt:A robots.txt file tells search engines weather they can access and therefore crawl parts of your site. To check robots.txt of any site open: www.yoursitename.com/robots.txt. If you want to prevent search engines from crawling your pages go to Google webmaster Tools to create the file.
Do read : How to use Robots.txt to prevent your blog from post duplication issue
Do let us know if there are any other SEO Technique you use to optimize your post for search engine?
Article by Himanshu Yadav
Himanshu has written 26 articles.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Good post refreshing few SEO.
Point two and three are new for me.
rahul™s last blog post..Paypal Alternative Alertpay
I’ve used the Sitemap plug-in for some time, but later gave up. I’ve to start using it again.
But, will there any problem if we are not using robots.txt file?
Good post! I’ve used most of the techniquest except robots.txt
Cheers
Sandeep
Curious Little Person™s last blog post..Monetize your Blog the Right Way
Excellent! Also post to-do list after installing WordPress Blog.
gr8 post….more informative…for all bloggers..!! tnx and keep posting..buddy..
I’d also be sure that you are using , and tags in the right places in your themes
good one dear waitin 2 read mre stuff