Since WordPress is extremely customizable, its really easy to make mistakes when it comes to optimizing it for SEO. The beautiful thing about WordPress is that it is simple to take the reigns and do it yourself . . .but you’ll need to know some basics. Things such as what categories and tags are, how they differ, and when to use each. With many options already built-in, and a plethora of third-party add-ons, it’s important to make the right choices for SEO so your content dealership can be found on the web.
1. Have an SEO-friendly WordPress theme
Of coarse this is any easy in for us to ‘sell’ our product. But even if you’ve decided to DIY your website, be sure it is SEO friendly. All of our sites are designed with SEO in mind.
2. Our recommended SEO WordPress Plugin
SEO Plugins provide a user-friendly dashboard for optimizing blogs and blog posts for optimal search engine benefit above and beyond what is built into the standard WordPress interface. Some SEO plugin options may also include meta descriptions, index/noindex, and 301 redirects. The plugin may automate the process for you, but it is usually best to review the automated recommendations or populate the fields yourself.
The one best plugin for SEO that we use heavily is Yoast. Unlike the other 3rd party expensive products, Yoast is free – and is practically just as good – so there is really no reason not to use it.
3. Use Optimized WordPress Categories
WordPress gives you the options of using categories and tags to organize your posts. Categories allow you to take your keyword research and integrate it into your URL structure, which is one important SEO factor. The Tags are good for further organizing posts for user experience, but are best given a noindex attribute so search engines don’t pick up the tag pages.
A good benchmark is five to seven categories which draw from your keyword strategy. For example, Lexus reviews, Dealership Testimonials, or How-To Videos. Then these categories will make it into your URL – www.Dealership.com/lexusreviews – – Good SEO 🙂
4. Use Keywords In Your Title Tags
If you’re using a properly optimized theme, your blog titles will be using an H1 header tag. Couple that with the fact that WordPress allows you to automatically integrate your blog title into your URL, and it becomes obvious how important it is to use the keywords that you want to rank for in your blog title.
For example, lets say one of the key phrases you want to optimize for is “2013 lexus LS review”. You will want to be sure that you place “2013 Lexus LS Review” into your blog title. With this in mind, you are getting ‘Lexus Review’ into your blog URL twice. www.Dealership/lexusreview/2013_lexus_LS_review – 🙂
5. Write well and post often
In the post-Panda era, it’s important that your blog content is compelling and grammatically-correct. Don’t post too much in the way of short content – 300 words is a good start, but don’t skimp on quality for the sake of making a post longer. In addition, make sure your blog has a strong focus on one subject area – Lexus Reviews or Dealership Testimonials and various types of each (if both are related in one way or another).
Beyond creating quality content, strive to post frequently. Search engines and readers alike want to see fresh content, and having more content on your blog means more content for search engines to index. Strive to create an editorial calendar to keep new content coming!
Overall WordPress is a great solution that can make blogging easy. But to get the most out of it, be sure to optimize it for SEO. The above seo tips should help you do exactly that.