Optimizing WordPress for search engines

It is not always known, the choice of theme, as well as the use of plugins, has a decisive role in sending a site managed by Wordpress.

Subject

Default themes are not optimized for search engines, as they have the following disadvantages:

• Using the <H1> tag for the site name, the <H2> tag for the page name and in general, the fantastic use of heading tags, the natural role of which is to give its exact meaning to each part of the page. This deceives the engines on the topic of the article.
• The presence of the same slogan on all pages: this can be interpreted as a throw in of keywords.
• Use <H3> tags for formatting in the sidebar, which further obscures the purpose of the product.
• The presence of a number of links unrelated to the content of the page, including cloud tag, calendar, archives, etc. This, in particular, prevents PageRank from being transmitted.

The topic of the optimized site must be cleared and comply with optimal organizational rules.

Site optimization

It goes through the configuration stage, and ends with the installation of plugins, which we will see below .

Checking the openness of the site for robots

By default, Wordpress bans the site from robots. After installing Wordpress, see the source code. Presence of <meta name = "robots.... means the site will not be indexed.
To fix this anomaly, go to Administration -> Settings -> Privacy and Check Box: "I want my blog to be visible to everyone, etc."

Heading

To avoid repeating the name and slogan on each page, delete them in the header.php file and replace with the logo in the image.
The procedure is explained by setting the Cryonie theme.

URL addresses

Meaningful URLs are really preferable to article numbers used by the default configuration. The easiest and best way to set them up is this:

Custom structure: %postname%

Thus, URLs will be formed from keywords that will appear in links from other sites on your site/blog.

robots.txt file

An example of a code-based robots.txt file that is appropriate for the meaningful URLs configured above:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /wp-admin
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /trackback
Disallow: /feed
Disallow: /comments
Disallow: /category/*/*
Disallow: */trackback
Disallow: */feed
Disallow: */comments
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: /*?
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Of course example.com replace with the site name .

You cannot block access to JavaScript code and, therefore, to the topic, since Google will fine your site.

Page Optimization

In its webmaster guide, Google gives "Design and Content Tips." They apply primarily to page organization.

Multi-level structure

The name of the page in the <H1> tag, subtitles in the <H2> tags, and so on.

Relevant references

All links on the page should be relevant, closely related to the content. Links should not be too large, as, as reminded in the article What you need to know about PageRank, the popularity of one page of the site is transferred to other pages by links.

Archive, cloud tag, etc. are very useful for accessing content, but rather they should be on the home page or page dedicated to it.

The list of recent articles is not necessarily relevant to the content, it should be excluded or limited to 3 links, on the other hand, the list of relative articles is suitable for both visitors and engines. Plugins allow you to create it automatically.

Images

Fill in the ALT field when inserting images. It is designed for motors and is a textual representation of the image.

Nofollow

Don't worry about the nofollow attribute for your connections, no matter what we say. This brings nothing and Wordpress adds it by default in the comments to curb spam: this is the only place they are useful.
(Ref: Nofollow и PageRank.)

Useful plugins for SEO

Indispensable plugins:

• Google XML Sitemaps.
  It will help Google better index your pages and take into account changes.
  In my experience, a site equipped with sitemap gets very good results for frequently updated pages.
• All-in-One SEO pack.
  Not very flexible, it allows non-ammoins to control indexing and meta-tag content. Indexing each tag will be more harmful than useful. In the face of all or nothing, choose nothing.
• YARPP or Simple tags.
  These two plugins create a list of relative articles and place it at the end of the ticket, which is "perfect ."

Other plugins:

• Wordtwit.
  Promotion tool, allows you to advertise each new page on Twitter.
• Cookies for comment.
  Help protect comments from spam by robots.

Conclusion

Creating a blog is easy. Creating a successful site is harder. Wordpress is not set up by default for success, it will become so after we take a little optimization time. This one goes through a selection of SEO-Friendly theme and plugins.
The necessary steps before you can devote yourself to content...

Documentation

• Tips for webmasters, Google.
• Install WordPress locally for testing.