WordPress SEO: Double Check your WordPress installation for better SEO

by R Zaman on December 17, 2009 · 2 comments

in Featured Articles, SEO, WordPress, WordPress SEO

In my last post I told about what WordPress SEO is & how to do it. Those were only the intro to WordPress SEO. So why not I explain every points I mentioned? That’s because I what you to understand those and move forward like a expert. Now I’m gonna show you specifically what are to be done for better search engine rankings.

What we need to start with WordPress SEO? Obviously a WordPress blog installed at your server. If you are about to begin the process of installation just check the issues I explain below. What if you have WordPress installed already? You have to double check the issues. Nothing more!

So I think you are pretty clear that today I’m gonna tell about the very basic steps of SEO while configuring newly installed WordPress.

Let’s begin the process by clicking the “Settings” from Dashboard.

WordPress SEO: General Settings

> In the “General Settings” you’ll get two core option for your website and those are “Blog Title” & “Tagline”. “Blog Title” & “Tagline” are extremely important for your website’s optimization because those will be showed in the “Title Bar” of your website. So you must give a Search Engine friendly title & tagline that will be the main theme of your website.

WordPress SEO: Writing Settings

> Under the “Writing” settings, you can see a service named “Update Services”. This section should carry a list of Ping Websites that will notify the Search Engine that your website has been updated. So may say “what’s the big thing is with that? I can go to the Ping Websites and ping the new url I updated or posted.” Yes, that’s the big thing. Why will you waste time? Just make a list of ping sites and add them up. They will be notified automatically whenever you publish a blog or something.

> Leave the options “Reading”, “Discussion” & “Media” as it is. They are not related to SEO.

WordPress SEO: Privacy Settings

> Do you like your blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines? Sorry, silly question. You know what to do in “Privacy” section.

WordPress SEO: Permalink Settings

> Here comes another major issue. You MUST make changes to make your WordPress blog SEO friendly. The URL structure comes default with WordPress must to be changed. Under the “Permalink Settings” you’ll get a lot of options to change your permalink structure to. The option “Day & Name” & “Month & Name” is better. But I always prefer “Custom Structure” because it lets me to change the structure to /%postname%/ format. So click the “Custom” radio and write exactly /%postname%/ in the box. That’s it.

If you need other options, here are the shortcodes:

/%year%/ - Shows Year of publication in the URL. e.g. 2010

/%monthnum%/ - Shows Month of publication in the URL. e.g. 12

/%day%/ - Shows Date of publication in the URL. e.g. 28

/%postname%/ - Shows the name of the post in the URL. e.g. here-is-the-custom-title

/archives/ - Shows the archive in the URL.

/%post_id% - Shows the ID of the post in the URL.

That’s it. The basics are done. I’ll be writing about the other specific points soon. You may want to read those as quickly as I publish them by subscribing my RSS Feed. Stay connected!