Search Engine optimization, shortly known as SEO, is an extremely important factor to get traffic to your wordpress blog. You need to optimize your posts in order to rank better on SERP (search engine results page). The better your position on the SERP, the more traffic you get. That is what I will be explaining to you in a short while. After you have gone through this wordpress post search engine optimization guide, you will be able to achieve a better position on the SERP for the selected keyword. This guide has been written in very simple language so that even the beginners can understand.
In this guide, we will be covering:
SEO Lesson #1: Keyword Research
Keyword research is probably the only factor that most of the beginners ignore during search engine optimization. Actually, keyword research is the most important part of SEO. The keyword for which you want to get a higher rank on SERP, needs to be decided carefully. For doing keyword research, I recommend that you use the Google Keyword Tool. In the Google keyword tool, when you enter a keyword, the tool will display a set of related keywords and also show their search statistics. Here is the criteria for choosing a keyword using the Google Keyword tool:
- The Keyword you choose should have a low/medium competition.
- The Keyword should have above 10,000 global monthly searches.
- The CPC tells us the conversion rate of the keyword. The higher the CPC more the conversion rate, the lower the CPC, the lesser the conversion rate.
Put your keywords and their details on an excel spread sheet and arrange them according to the above mentioned criteria and select the most appropriate keyword. Now we are going to Search Engine Optimize your wordpress posts for the selected keyword. Continue to Lesson #2.
SEO Lesson #2: Heading Tags
Heading Tags (<h1>, <h2>) or simply the headings are very important places to include your keyword. You have to include your keyword in the main heading as well as sub headings in order to Search Engine Optimize your wordpress post better. This is important because these tags show up as the title in the browser and it is the first thing that a person sees on the SERP. While including your keyword in the title tag, remember to make it attractive too.
SEO Lesson #3: Images
Images too play a great role in Search Engine Optimizing your wordpress post. The alt attributes on your images are considered by search engines while ranking your post on the SERP for the selected keyword. When uploading images, add your keyword in the alt and description fields.
SEO Lesson #4: Sitemap Submission
To create sitemaps, I recommend that you use the Google XML sitemaps Plugin. For submitting your sitemap to Google, you need a webmaster tools account. I am sure you already have one. If you don’t you can create one here (using Google account). The sitemap that you submitted gets automatically updated by plugin and will be submitted to search engines.
SEO Lesson #5: Permalinks
Permalinks are nothing but the format in which the URLs for your wordpress posts are created. By default, the format will be a set of numbers and symbols, which means, that the URLs won’t contain our selected keyword. Here is how you change the Permalinks structure: Go to Settings >> permalinks, in your wordpress dashboard. Under common settings, change the default URL structure to Post name, like this:
Once you do that, all the URLs of your posts will be search engine optimized.
SEO Lesson #6: Meta Data
Meta data is the data that the search engines collect from your page header and use them while displaying your page in the SERP. Search engines don’t use meta keywords anymore, so you need not pay attention to it. But the meta description and meta title are important. Include your keywords in them and also make sure that you make it attractive so that people click on it when displayed on the SERP.
SEO Lesson #6: Internal Linking
Internal linking is a very important not only for your SEO but also for reducing your bounce rate.
When you link among the pages of your blog, then people will spend more time on your website and also will view lot of pages. This is good for getting more page views.
While linking internally, remember to use the appropriate keyword as the anchor text.
These are the best practices for getting good position on the SERP. If you follow these steps while writing posts on your wordpress blog, I can assure you a position on the first page of the SERP for the selected keyword. Happy blogging.
