I’m looking for any basic tips for optimizing Word Press. I understand that content is king and I’m working on that. Aside from content is there a way to further optimize a WP site? Modifying the header, etc? Just realized i posted in the wrong forum, admin please move to SEO forum.
Well, you want to use SEO friendly urls, and I recommend altering the page titles to put the name of the post first (assuming the post titles are keywordy). With WP, you tend to get a lot of "garbage" stuff that shows on keyword density reports, like "Add Your Comment" or "RSS2.0", so be aware of that. Either strip out as much as you can, substitute text images for that stuff, or just bulk up your articles with extra keyword instances (looks lame, though). Use plugins that create not only a Google Sitemap, but also the crawlpage plugin - good for SEs AND humans. Do interlink all your related posts. Your individual post pages will most likely be your most visited, so when creating each post, consider SEO (keyword density, etc) as if you were SEOing a whole page, not "just another post". Try to get backlinks to specific posts at least as much, if not more than to your index page. As you create a new post think "Who do I know that is a good candidate to link back to this?" and write it with earning that specific link in mind. Well, anyway now I'm drifting off into general blogging SEO, so I'll shut up now.
Well, if you have an interesting blog you may also consider registering it in directories. Another on-page tip is to use your post title as the h1 tag in individual posts, instead of the blog name, as is by default.
Where do I remove this stuff from, the template itself? Will that have any ill effect on the template's functionality? How do I "substitute images for that stuff"? thx
Yes, the template itself. there are two main places (varies from theme to theme) the main page template and the individual post template. Also, sidebars can benefit from this as well (Categories, Blogroll, Admin, etc) anywhere you have text that repeats enough to mess up your keyword density, change the text to an image you've created of that text. In other words, do a screen shot of the page as it is, then cut the screen shot up to create "buttons" out of the existing text you want to lose. In the template, where that text appears, simply delete the txt string and call the corresponding image. You can even use ALT tags for a wee bit of keyword stuffing (use in moderation). It will look just about the same, but load a tiny bit slower and have better keyword density on a per-page basis.
here are some changes i make to wordpress in header.php change the title to <title><?php if(is_home()) { echo 'keyword 1 | keyword 2 | keyword 3'; } else { wp_title('') ;} ?></title> PHP: in index.php if you use the post title to link to the full post change the post title bit to <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a> PHP: i also add this in (where it says which category the post was made 2) <p class="postmetadata">Posted in <a href="<?php echo get_settings('home'); ?>/">Home</a> » <?php the_category(', ') ?> » <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a> PHP: the above adds a link to home > the category > the full post under each post. hope they help and i have also found http://www.dech.co.uk/2005/11/ultimate-wordpress-seo-tips/ http://www.acmetech.com/blog/2005/10/06/wordpress-seo-page-titles-and-meta-tags/ http://rizm.nl/journal/2006/wordpress-seo/ and more can be found @ http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=wordpress seo&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
Wordpress is one of the best source for developing static or dynamic sites, you can make your site SEO friendly site easily through plugins like all in one SEO, images optimizer and other.
First off you want to install the correct plugins. You need a URL redirector which automatically redirects any URLs you chance For content optimisation i would recommend the plugin by Yoast it's great