Over the last year or so the hot topic around the WordPress community has been the ongoing saga over premium WordPress themes being GPL or not, but a couple days ago the debate shifted over to the true importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in not only the general WordPress software, but more importantly in premium themes.
The idea to write this post not only came from the recent SEO debate on Twitter, but also from a blog post by Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land titled Some SEO Advice For Bill Gates after Bill recently launched his new blog The Gates Notes and Danny noticed his site was not only very hard to find for even a simple Google or Bing search for “Bill Gates Blog”, but Bill had the same title tag for every single page and even blog post on his site.
He also wasn’t using any page descriptions, linking to his blog from his Microsoft page or using anyway to set his blog apart in the search engines from fake or unofficial blogs. Danny went on to detail a few short steps Bill could take to ensure people were easily finding his blog and content when using search engines. After writing the article he Tweeted to Bill in hopes he might hear back. Danny said he wrote the post in fun and that it was meant to hopefully help other new bloggers or small businesses take the proper steps to get the most out of their content, but never thought he’d hear from Mr. Gates himself.
Here’s a quote from the article…
Let’s get this fixed! I also hope you’ll take the advice in good humor. I’m going to keep everything in basic terms and use your blog to help others who may be in the same situation as you, with a new blog or web site but not up on how search engine optimization may help them.
Well it wasn’t too long later that Bill Gates himself responded to Danny on Twitter with this…
@dannysullivan, thanks for the advice – the people who work on the site are on this now, should see improvements tonight…
I just checked the site after only about half a day and Bill’s blog seems to have incorporated most of Danny’s simple SEO tips.
With almost every premium theme developer (including us:) touting their themes as “SEO friendly” or SEO “optimized” it begs one to ask what exactly that means, why do I need to do SEO and shouldn’t I just pay someone else to do it for me? The answers are as follows…
What exactly does it mean when a WordPress theme developer says their themes are “SEO Friendly”?
Typically this means the content is as close to the top of the unstyled page as possible, keeping sidebars and footers towards the bottom as most search engines only scan the first third of a page before moving onto the next one. Also using proper headings and sub-headings like h1 tags once for page titles and h2 tags for sub-headings is good practice along with serving your sidebar headings in h3 or h4 at most. Some developers are even putting in built in sections for adding title tags, descriptions and meta-tag keywords without the use of a 3rd party plugin.
Why do I need to incorporate SEO into my site?
Just like a library or book store has sections that are dedicated to certain topics, so does the most used search engines by scanning the worlds sites and then spitting out that information when someone types in certain keyword phrases. If Google, Bing, Yahoo or any other search engine can’t easily find that info then your “awesome post” might never be seen by many people as Danny pointed out in his article when talking about Bill Gates having the same title tag for every single one of his pages/posts, but this also falls into general SEO practices…
This is the same as publishing a bunch of different books, on different topics, but giving them all the same title. It hurts your potential to be found for what those pages are about. It hurts the chances for people trying to find the good information you’re putting out to locate it.
You could have the best content in the world and even get a decent amount of traffic, but if it’s harder or impossible for users to find your information you could be throwing away tons of traffic and depending on your business… tons of revenue. You simply want to make it easier for people to find the information you’re writing about and if following a few easy steps does that job then why not do it?
Shouldn’t I just hire someone like a so called search engine marketing genius or guru to just handle it for me?
Although there are some legitimate SEO firms out there that can help you with things outside of the basics, it’s far more likely they’re out to get as much money as possible out of you for not much more than you could so yourself with a little work and some are simply out there to “game the system” and could even damage your search engine ranking by using blackhat SEO techniques. If you do go this route make sure to really research the firms and don’t get involved in long, drawn out contracts as it’s simply a waste of money once all the basics are setup and you or your staff continue to follow the basic guidelines.
With so much information out there… I’ve decided to put together a small list of what truly are the 5 most important aspects of SEO in order of importance. I’m sure there’s plenty of other tips and tricks, but in my experience the average blogger/site owner needs simple, yet powerful, tried and true easy to do steps. I’m listing 5, but one that’s really at the top of the list which I’m taking a leap of faith you already have is… CONTENT. As the saying goes… “Content Is King”! It truly is! If you write awesome, kick ass content people will not only visit your site, but link back to you from blogs, social networking sites and more. An important aspect of great content is also to keep it coming. Solid content on a consistent basis will kick the crap out of your competitors.
WordPress does have some basic SEO options built in and some premium theme developers are now putting more advanced SEO options into their themes, but if your theme doesn’t… I would highly recommend using a free plugin called All in One SEO Pack. It’s easy to install and gives you all the necessary tools to make your WordPress site SEO friendly.
Top 5 Simple SEO Tips for WordPress
1.) Keyword rich title tags with informative descriptions.
This is by far the most important and simplest tool in getting better search engine rankings “out of the gate” on a new blog/site. Here’s a simple example… If I have a site called PinkJordanShoes.com that sells pink Jordan’s I sure as hell don’t want the title tag of my homepage to be “Home” (actually still see this quite often). I wish people would realize that they are then fighting millions of idiots who also have the term “Home” in their title tag and if you’re site isn’t about “Home” you’re never going to be found. What you want to do in this case is narrow down your competition while still using descriptive, keyword rich title tags. Something like “Pink Jordan Shoes | Michael Jordan Sneakers” would be better. Even better yet, let’s say you actually have a shoe store and it’s located in Las Vegas. This makes it even easier since now you’re competing against even a smaller group of sites so a title tag like “Pink Jordan Shoes | Michael Jordan Sneakers | Las Vegas” would do the trick.
I’m obviously just using simple examples off the top of my head, but when you do this Google and other search engines will then know what your site is about and even more importantly so will users who see your search engine link. Each page/post on your site should have it’s unique title tag and description. People want to know what the link they’re about to click on is all about and so do search engines so they can index and rank based on relevancy. I also think it’s sometimes ok to use your sites name in the title tag to set your brand apart and people know even more about who they’re clicking on, but if you do… try to use it at the end of the title tag as search engines just like people read from left to right so make sure to put the most relevant keywords towards the beginning. Plus, most sites will pick up your sites name from the top level domain url.
2.) SEO friendly urls. Otherwise known in WordPress as “pretty permalinks”.
Example… it’s better to have http://www.modthemes.com/wordpress-seo-tips-made-simple/ than http://www.modthemes.com/?az11-00030-44900.html. Having keywords in your url not only strengthens its chance of a higher ranking, but also gives readers that are searching more information about what your page/post is about before clicking it giving you a better chance to get them to visit. This option can easily be changed from the Settings > Permalinks link in your WordPress dashboard.
3.) Write content for people, but use keywords when possible. Link within your site.
Most gurus always say “write for people and NOT for search engines”. While this is true, it’s not exactly right. You obviously don’t want to sound like a robot in your writing, but when possible you do want to use keyword rich words and link them to other pages or previous posts within your site.
4.) Get powerful incoming links from trusted, high traffic sites that have similar content.
Back in the 90’s the big thing was link exchanges and although that can still work, it’s typically frowned upon and is generally looked at as spam to most site owners that get requests in their email inboxes. If you are going to do it, make sure to be short, detailed on who you are and your site info and ask nicely if they would like to exchange friendly links. Most links are derived from people simply reading your content, liking it and linking to it to tell others cause they found it interesting. This is where great content is so important.
Buying incoming links was also standard practice for a while, but even as far back as 2005 Google announced it was going to start penalizing sites pagerank when caught doing it and even delisting them from Google.
The most important thing when it comes to getting incoming links is to try to get them from heavily trafficked, trusted sources. A simple example of this is if you had a blog about iPhone rumors and you happen to post an article about some new feature your friend who works at Apple let slip last night when he was hammered at the bar. Then sites like TechCrunch, Mashable and CNBC started reporting your rumor and linking to it from their sites. This would be fantastic for numerous reason… not only would you gain tons of traffic and potential long time visitors from these sites, but you would also gain trust and reputation in the eyes of the search engines. Over time this will catapult you up the search engine rankings. Danny said it best in his article to Bill Gates when he said…
I mentioned that your site will take some time to build reputation. The search engines, they’re really into rewarding sites that get a lot of important links pointing at them.
Think about it as if you were in a big auditorium full of people and someone asked, “Who knows about Microsoft?” If everyone started pointing at you personally, you’d soon be ushered to the stage. On the web, people point with links — and getting on the stage is being in the first page of search results.
It’s not about just getting the most links, however. Think about it a bit differently. You’re in an auditorium, and on stage there are five experts. You’re out in the audience. Someone asks who knows about Microsoft. People in the audience start pointing at all sorts of people. But all the experts on the stage point at you. They carry more weight, and you come on up. In the web world, it’s the important links that count.
5.) Use an XML sitemap and user sitemap if possible.
Sitemaps not only make it easier for search engines to crawl your site deep into folders, but user sitemaps also make it easier on your readers to find relevant pages/posts. A great, free XML sitemap generator plugin for WordPress is Google XML Sitemaps. It not only generates and alerts Google of your site structure and new posts/pages, but it also alerts Yahoo, Bing and others of fresh, new content.
Hope that helps clear up a little of the confusion around search engine optimization. I’m sure it’s not a perfect list, but does cover the basics so please list your thoughts or any suggestions in the comments section below.
Great article. Very straightforward and informative. You mentioned the SEO plug-in. There is also a Google XML Sitemaps plugin that I found that automatically updates the major search engines with your updated content. I just installed it, so I’ll see how it goes.
Great read, we also recommend the related posts plugin to build internal relevant backlinks.
Great article. But We Need some Plugins
And Thank You