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The FUNdamentals of Wordpress & SEO
Any marketer knows that online marketing, social media and search engine optimization are constantly changing, ever evolving, tools. That is why online media specialists exist. It’s our job to stay abreast on the latest methods in online marketing and make them part of our client’s programs, while also continuing to maintain the fundamentals marketing strategies that work.
That why I’m writing my little Wordpress series, it’s not about the constantly changing factors or the continual quest of debunking the Google search engine algorithm, its about the fundamentals. The fundamentals always work, as long as they are done correctly. Wordpress and web development is no huge secret. Wordpress has the one of the best user bases ever and the fundamentals are FREE (Click and Read People).
Six Fundamental Things You Should Know
1. XML Sitemaps - Site maps tell search engines what information on your site is crawlable content. The latest version of Wordpress does it for you automatically on your .wordpress.com blog.
2. Excerpts - What is that funky field under the post box? Well, that’s were you can put a summary of your article. Think of it like a title, a keyword rich, yet targeted sentence about what your post is all about. It displays when someone links to the post. If you don’t include it, it will be the first 55 characters of your post.
3. Validations - .Wordpress.com blogs are already SEO ready. But let’s say you have used Fantastico to install Wordpress and you have integrated 3rd party plug ins to add some nifty features like HeadSpace, Event Calendar, CurrencyX and a language translator. Well, you need to make sure the code validates or it could prevent search engines from moving through your content.
4. Alt Tags - If your site doesn’t have much content or is image based, keyword rich alt tags and image tags are essential. They make your site more accessible and provide search engines with more searchable content. You can tell if you have them my putting your mouse over an image and seeing if a description pops up.
5. Linkage Love - Blogrolls, pings and track backs are integrated into Wordpress. Basically, if you link to it, it should like to you. And what you link to should have good page ranks and Alexa rankings too. Some sites are newer than others - like this blog itself - so do your homework and look at the content. You can see who links to you by typing in your nifty Google bar link:www.YourSite.com.
6. Site Submission - Contrary to popular belief, monthly submission services are a bit of a scam. $49-99 per month for submission? Ummm, you can do it yourself. And there are also good free services. If your blog is structured correctly, there is not need for paid, monthly services, it does it automatically with all the tools above. These services don’t help you place higher in search rankings.