Know SEO Blog

This post lays out some quick and easy things you can do to make your WP Blog search engine friendly.  So here goes:

After installing, log into your wp-admin page. If you installed with Fantastico or by some automated process, there is a good chance that it is not the latest version.  If you see a notice on your WP dashboard, the first thing that you should do is update to the new version.

Next, start with the Settings button and carefully go through all of the options.  Fill out everything that you can.  If you don’t understand something you can skip over it.  Here are a few important things to change.

Under writing, at the bottom replace your update service with this:

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

Next under Privacy, change the option so search engines can find you.

Now click on Perma-links.  For this you have several options.  What is important is that you have the post-name in the link.  Select either Day and name, month and name, or ideally you can do the following custom structure:

/%category%/%postname%/

This will display the links showing the category and the postname and is the way that this site has been set up.

Now you need to download several different plug-ins to get started.  If you don’t know how to install a plug-in, then go here.

Here are the Plugins that I recommend you start with:

All-in-One SEO Pack

Google XML Sitemaps

MaxBlog Press Ping Optimizer

Askimet Spam Protection – This may be included in your WP install

Download these plugins and configure them.  All-in-one SEO is self explanitory.  Just activate the plug in and fill out the first 3 fields.

Google XML Sitemap you have to go to settings and compile the sitemap manually the first time.  Your sitemap will be yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer is a pain in the butt to register, but it is worth the hassle.  This plugin keeps your blog from making excessive pings to RSS feed directories to avoid having your site banned.

Askimet usually comes with WP, so just activate the plugin, get a WP API key and you are good to go.  This stops spam comments and is a must.

That should be enough to get you started, more to follow…

Tags: beginner, plugin, seo, wordpress

This entry was posted by Jimmy on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Basic How-To, Plug-ins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.