WordPress SEO – Why Should You Care?

Dec 28, 2008
26 Comments

What is WordPress SEO?

WordPress is the world’s best blogging software. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization (or, if you’re on the other side of the pond, search engine optimisation). Search engine optimization is the strategy and tactics of achieving higher placement (rankings) in search engine results pages (SERPs). SERPs are the listed results you see after you type some words into the search box on Google and click the Search button. WordPress SEO is search optimization specifically for bloggers using WordPress.

Why You Should Care

Do you know that people are out there on the web, trying to find you right now?

How will they find you?

What are you doing to make that more likely? Or, worse, what might you be doing that could be hurting your chances of being found?

What we do to improve our rankings in search results is what SEO is all about. Most of us want to be read by as many people as possible in order to reach whatever goals we have for our blogs: influence, ad clicks, affiliate sales, ecommerce sales, community-building, whatever it might be.

Relevant search traffic is an important part of your blog’s traffic, because it’s a significant way to grow your audience. You already have search traffic. That’s not the problem. The problem is that it may not be for the words you want it to be for. You may not even know what words it should be for.

Why WordPress SEO is Separate from Blog SEO or “Regular” SEO

WordPress SEO needs to be its own thing because of all the unique factors a blogger needs to understand when applying basic SEO principles to a WordPress blog. For example, many of the common points of standard SEO advice have to be translated into how to specifically do them for WordPress SEO. Things like:

  • Title tags
  • File names
  • Headings
  • Redirects
  • Meta tags
  • Robots exclusion

This Ain’t the Old Days Anymore

Back in the day, web pages were edited by hand, and you had to know HTML, and, for some of this stuff, a little scripting. How is today’s blogger going to accomplish the above without any editing of HTML or scripting?

WordPress. With WordPress, about the most technical thing you need to know is how to install a theme or a plugin (and with the advent of WordPress 2.7, even plugins have become super-easy). There are plugins for WordPress SEO. Problem is, that’s not quite enough. You have to know what to do with them in order to really improve your search rankings. And in order to do that, you have to know SEO.

WordPress SEO Questions Answered

In the upcoming posts for the remainder of December and into early January, I’m going to be answering questions about WordPress SEO you have been asking me. I’ve been collecting these questions just for this. You’re welcome to submit your own questions about SEO for WordPress in the comments below or privately by email to me through my contact page.

  • Very nice blog article, I enjoyed to read. It's all right what you're saying, and now you should publish an article where you describe to all amateurs how to do it. At the beginning it's hard to understand SEO. I also struggeld to get traffic at the beginning, but there are some promotional SEO things which helps to get a better Pagerank. With my new blog startup I'm always changing something, it costs much time to optimize your website/blog. Especially with WordPress it's much easier than with other blogging software, search engines love WordPress!

    Cheers!
  • Hmm. While it seemed daunting at first, the pre-made Wordpress plugins definitely made this a cinch. It was actually straightforward to make these changes.
  • zupreem
    Great info. What is your recommendation for images in WordPress. Last time I checked my pagerank for my WordPress blog was 3, just wondering if optimizing images would help any. Thanks for the information you provided.
  • remarkablogger
    Optimizing images isn't going to help with your PageRank. PageRank is mostly
    based on the authority passed to a page from backlinks--the more authority
    the backlinks have, the better your PageRank. The numerous the backlinks
    are, the better your PageRank. As you can see, image optimization doesn't
    figure into that.

    What it does help with is Google's "universal" search, where oftentimes
    images appear high up in the in first page of results. That's where the
    right keywords in your image filenames and alt descriptions can help you.
  • I think that WP is great out the virtual box..The SEO for WP is very minimal, and in my opinion bloggers using WP should focus on off page SEO. Thanks for the great write up by the way.
  • You should focus on both.
  • Its great to have meta tags and all the essential web master stuff because it helps your SERPs as well as your rankings. If you are a webmaster you can't turn down these guidelines.
  • I think that Wordpress is a great place for Blogging but from an SEO stand point, I have yet to see a site rank on the 1st page of Google with top keywords. Yes there are allot of SEO Plug-ins, but the site is a template based application and for the most part this goes against most Search Engine guide lines.

    Wordpress uses Blogs to get paybacks on PPC's there has been some bad press about this. Just do a search on Wordpress and you should see what I'm talking about.

    SEO has a bigger undertaking then using a Wordpress application. Pure HTML/Coding is viewed better and is reconized by the Searcn Engines allot better then PHP/Coding

    Lyle Hawkins
    Owner www.Searchenginesurgeon.com
    9 years of Expertise in Internet Advertising
    lyle@Searchenginesurgeon.com
  • @Lyle - I guess you must have a pretty short list of "top keywords" then. :) A person who is using a content management system needs to know how to optimize for that platform.
  • Michael

    I love MT :)

    I used it when I first started my main blog, switched to WP, but got sick of all the security upgrades and the lack of caching etc., so switched back to MT. Being on the frontpage of Digg for a few hours just meant that the number of Apache processes had to be increased ie. no nasty DB errors :)

    Michele
  • @Michele - I see! Thanks very much for the extra info! I know next to nothing about MT, but now I know a little more. :)
  • Michael
    The key difference is the architecture.

    Wordpress does not make a clean split between templates and the backend, so a template can and often will include loads of PHP code, which can cause confusion and open up security issues.

    With MT the template are basically HTML with a couple of MT tags thrown in, so there's nothing to stop someone from making changes without knowing how to code ie. basic HTML skill is all that's required.

    Wordpress users rely on 3rd party plugins to make a lot of changes that an MT user can make via the control panel ie. simply removing a line of code or adding a template tag which isn't that much of a challenge.

    Michele
  • The templates are basic html split up into simple sections eg. the header, footer etc., so it's quite easy to rejig the "tags" that it uses to position elements, such as titles, keywords etc.,
  • @Michele - Most WordPress theme files never bothered to include meta tags at all, but it sounds like what you're saying is that MT cannot be SEO'd without coding or plugins. Am I wrong? That pretty much is the deal with WordPress. What is needed are non-coder solutions, where the right knowledge and a few plugins can make a huge difference. Having plugins is great, but one still needs to know SEO in order to use them effectively.
  • MovableType doesn't need plugins to make it SEO friendly.


    Michele
  • @Michele - I'd love to hear your thoughts on why, because everything I've seen shows MT to require plugins/add-ons to improve SEO capability unless it were to be hard-coded into the template files as part of the structure/design. Please, tell me more.
  • Just about everything counts in creating a site with great SEO!
  • @Erwin - Thanks for reading, nice to meet you! Hope you continue to enjoy and benefit from what you find here.

    @Donny and Franklin - Naturally, I agree. :)

    @Toma - I do indeed know that. I know that very well, which is why I'm writing these posts and will soon have a home study course available for WordPress SEO. :)

    One thing I feel I need to mention is that we do not need to know PHP to effectively manage titles for posts in WordPress, thanks to plugins. The technical barrier has been effectively removed by clever, easy to use plugins.

    @Robert - Thanks for commenting, but please let me direct your attention to my comment policy, which states you must use your real name in the comment name field. I'd appreciate it if you would do that next time, thank you. :)

    I find image SEO for blog posts generally highly overrated for the benefits. But... it really depends on the blog's niche and the post's topic. If a picture is a crucial part of the answer to a problem or question (like an instruction diagram, say), then you certainly want to optimize that puppy.

    @smallblogger - Please regard my comment policy, same as I just said above for Robert.

    I'll be addressing permalinks in tomorrow's post.

    To answer your question, creating a link for a picture provides very little SEO benefit. Search engines care about anchor text. One way to get some SEO benefit from a picture link is to give the anchor tag the title attribute in the HTML, and use keywords in it. This causes the title attribute text to act like anchor text when the image is not seen (such as by a blind person using a text browser).
  • Also, permalink is important. Permalinks makes it possible for search engine to link to your site because most permalinks are unique.

    If I may ask, does putting a link (URL) to a picture on your post important for search engine also or should the picture URL be removed?
  • Hi Michael very nice post and I wanted to point out if I may please that...

    An often overlooked potential to improve search engine rankings is image optimization. So if you plan to add images to your posts do a little investigation. There are some available as WordPress plugins and a little effort can go a long way and create long term effects for your efforts.

    Cheers,

    Robert "Butch" Greenawalt
  • Hi Michael,

    You know there are so many blogs out there that don't care for SEO - judging from their titles or filenames or just by the lack of headings ?

    And even if you know the basic principles of how to use titles to be SEO friendly, for example, you won't be able to do it in WordPress if you don't know a little bit of php and if you don't have some knowledge of how WordPress works.
  • If you want to be able to have a good source of traffic for a long time than you'd better be worried about how good your search engine optimization is.
  • I think you should care about wordpress SEO because it is important on taking your blog to the next level. If you ever want to take your blog traffic to the next level, I would advice you consider learning a little bit about SEO
  • Hi Michael,

    Very interesting. You have me curious. Looking forward to your posts. It's my first time to read your posts too. :)

    All the best!

    Regards

    Erwin Chua
    Winning To Win With Erwin Chua!
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