WordPress SEO Techniques

Whether a brand new blogger or a seasoned writer, WordPress is one of the most popular and versatile content management systems (CMS) available.

You can set up a quick, good-looking, fully-hosted blog using one of its many templates, or you can get into the world of self-hosting and coding to build your own professional site from scratch.

Last year I wrote a complete guide to setting up and running your own WordPress site along with an SEO for WordPress best practice guide. That latter SEO guide has become somewhat out of date now, so this is a revised and updated version of that previously published post.

What is SEO?

Very simply, it’s an umbrella term for all the methods, tactics and processes by which you can increase the likelihood of your website appearing, and possibly ranking highly, in the organic (non-paid for) search engine results pages (SERPs).

In actual fact, good SEO requires a level of attention to detail that will only improve the functionality and usability of your website. If it’s easy to access and navigate then it’ll be all the more appealing to your visitors. Appearing higher in the SERPs is a positive by-product of this ‘best practice’.

However don’t think that because you’re ‘just running a blog’ that traffic from higher SERP rankings is a fanciful notion.

With a regular routine of internal linking to other relevant articles on the site, writing quality content, optimising headlines, permalinks and images, it didn’t take long for my own music and film site to appear in the first couple of SERPs under certain search terms.

There are some bad practices too, such as artificial link-building and keyword stuffing, just bear in mind that Google is quite good at catching you in the act, and is not only quick but severe in its punishment.

As a WordPress user you will be ably assisted by various SEO related plugins, the most useful and popular of which is WordPress SEO by Yoast, however that doesn't mean that all your work is done for you though.

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