Make Wordpress blogs SEO friendly - Part 1
For a long time, i ignored the importance of SEO. I figured that having quality content, and quality content alone would get me to the moon and back. It doesn’t.
Can you imagine how many of your first time visitors come from search engines? You can’t. Forget the return visitors for a second. The first time, a visitor ever visits your site - There is around a 70-80% chance that they will have arrived from a search engine. (others including email refers, website refers, etc).
Let’s just imagine your website gets 10,000 visitors a day. We take your search engine traffic away.. which leaves you with around 2-3,000.. Poor. Now, imagine the opposite effect, and you get more search engine traffic than you already do..
Markets for blogs such as this one, are saturated. So, you need to take time into increasing your rankings, because they account for more traffic than you think. I’ll show you a few techniques that you should be using, and how to easily achieve them in your wordpress blog.
1. Proper Placement and Use of Header Tags
Depending on what theme you’re using, especially if it’s a custom one — Your header tags will be poorly placed, or non existent. the h1 being the most important tag! Make sure you put it as soon as possible after the <body> tag.
<h1><a href=”<?php echo get_option(’home’); ?>/”><?php bloginfo(’name’); ?></a></h1>
Make sure that is in your header.php; The first thing that a search engine wants to know is what your blog is about.
There’s also a <h2> tag, which should be placed in your Main index template, Search Results, Single Post and Page Template, which stands as the title for the posts. Obviously, the titles of the posts are EXTREMELY important!
<h2><a href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>” rel=”bookmark”><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
Search engines take the header tags seriously. Make sure you include h3, h4, h5 and h6 too (They get less important as the number gets higher)
2. Domain Canonicalization
Many people think that http://Website.com, and http://www.website.com are the same, search engines don’t.
I can’t really elaborate anymore on this. Those are effectively seen as different, different page ranks, different search results.. make your life, and the search engines life allot easier and just stick with one of them.
http://scott.yang.id.au/code/permalink-redirect/ — Wordpress Plugin
If you’re not using wordpress, I wont leave you out.. Just add this to your .htaccess file
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
3. Permalinks
As useful as PHP and other server side scripts are, search engines doesn’t see it as a static page. Let’s take for example..
- http://www.site.com/page.php?page=photoshop
‘page’ is only a variable there.. That could be changed to anything, but.. effectively - it’s still part of page.php.
Wordpress is set by default to present your site in the exact same way.. http://www.andyrew.com/?p=123 — See?
In wordpress, go to Options > Permalinks - And set your custom permalink structure to..
/%category%/%postname%/
And then just copy and paste your new .htaccess file that wordpress gives you. PHew!
Again, for those of you not running wordpress.. here is a basic code (Obiviously, you’ll need to play about with it)
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/pages/([^/]+)/?$ pages.php?&page=$1 [L]
(If you’re having trouble, leave a comment and i’ll try and help you out)
That’s it for part 1. Check back in a few days, and i’ll post section two. Please subscribe to the RSS feed
Selling AddMyLayout
Firstly i made some subtle changes to the design of the blog. By subtle, i mean adding a big orange RSS button to the bottom of every post. Tada.
Time has come to sell things that I no longer need. I probablly snet about $200 on AddMyLayout in total, and maybe 10 hours personal work time. I don’t expect my $200 back for the site, but it would be nice.
It’s probabalyl safe to say this project failed. Not failed in a sense that, i tried the site and it didn’t work like i wanted it to, but - Failed in a way that i never had time for it.
12 Ways to make your potential RSS subscribers, subscribe.
If a potential RSS subscriber visits your page, how do you get them to subscribe.. rather than scare them away? Very subtle differences can make a reader self-consciously lean one way or another.
Post everyday/Stay on Topic
I’m sorry. I know this is a cliché.. so I wont delve any further into it.
Use large Orange RSS button
People often associate RSS with the huge orange button. Having a small green one, like i have at the minute, wont mean anything to allot of readers. Get their attention. It goes without saying that something that is large or colourful will often stand out in a crowd>
RSS button above the fold
Everything that has any important goes above the fold in a page. The headers, the adverts, the navigation… Having your button in view when the user first visits the site, makes them aware that it’s there. Having it in the footer, isn’t going to help anyone
Subscribe by email
You know that millions of people use RSS readers, but that’s only a percentage of people that use the Internet. Giving users the option to subscribe by email will include almost everyone with access to the Internet, not just the ones with a feed reading program
Steps needed to subscribe
“Visit this page, and then this page, then click here, and here” — Noone wants that. ‘Click here’ is fine.
What is RSS and how to get started
RSS seems to simple doesn’t it? It isn’t for someone who has never used it. Can you remember where you first learned how to subscribe to someone’s RSS feed? Having a quick little guide on your site wont do any harm
Ask them to subscribe
As the saying goes, ‘those who don’t ask, don’t receive’.. Just having a little message at the bottom of all of your blog posts reminding your users to subscribe. The worst that can happen is that they don’t.
Email your commenters
If someone has took the time to comment on your blog, chances are they’re interested in what you have to say. Emailing them asking to subscribe again, can only really help you. Whilst you’re never going to get 1,000,000 subscribers by doing this - You can get a few just for the short amount of time that it takes
Interesting headlines
What’s better, “How to get traffic to your website”, or.. “10 Guaranteed ways to get traffic to your new blog”. Imagine seeing them both on your RSS program, or in a search engine.. or anywhere, which one would you click?
Offer something for subscribing
As hard as you might think this is, you’re wrong. I have found a great little program that will only show links and text to those who are reading through RSS. Having a “Please subscribe for the link to this free template” For example..
Guest blogging
Imagine blogging on a similar related blog to yours, with 1000 RSS subscribers. They are all interested in what you have to say.. they already know and use RSS, and chances are they’re not subscribed to your feed already, success!
Don’t publicise the number you have
Let’s face it. The fact that you have 4 RSS subscribers isn’t going to convince anyone that your blog is worth reading, unless you have about 150+. Keep it a secret.. at least for a little while.
7 Ways to Keep motivated whilst working
Being very lazy, I find it difficult to keep motivated throughout the day, and without these simple procedures.. I’d imagine it would be allot harder.
Whilst working a straight 6 hours without blinking can be rewarding in the short run, it will tire you out and put you off doing similar sorts of work in the future.
1. Stay away from caffeine
When your body is tired, it’s time for sleep. Caffeine is just a short-term fix. Eventually, you’re going to have to replace the sleep that you’ve lost by drinking it. Go to bed, and wake up earlier feeling fresh and distressed.
2. Take short breaks
Working yourself silly for 6 hours straight will do more bad than good. When you’ve been working on something for so long, your workpace slows down to about 70%. Just a 10-minute break will ensure you come back to your computer focused and feeling focused again.
Anything such as going outside for a cigarette, walking to the shop, listening to music.. anything that will take your mind off of your computer for a little while.
3. Eat well
Just because you have lots of work to do, it doesn’t mean you should deprive yourself out of good nutrition. Having a good breakfast is key; it will give you an energy boost for a good 4 or 5 hours. Giving yourself little energy boosts at lunch and snack times will make you feel lots happier
4. Don’t dilly-dally
Distracting yourself with emails and games whilst you’re trying to work, to pass some time does not work. Getting your head down and concentrating makes time fly by a whole lot faster.
5. Set goals and targets
Setting targets will not only keep you focused into doing your work, it will also help motivate you to do it. Noone likes to set a target and fail it, because it feels bad.
6. Reward yourself.
Don’t confuse this with having breaks. But, if you complete a target.. then reward yourself. Have some chocolate or a beer (Maybe not the most exciting, I know). Maybe even then you can start checking your emails and playing games.
7. Inspiration & visual aids
Being in a small room with black walls isn’t going to help anyone. Put your computer in a big room, with posters and windows. If you have a laptop, swap positions and go and sit in the garden.
Oh.. What’s this.
I’ve been busy the past few days working on another new site. (Hmms.. yes.. i’ll do anything to put off completing pornaroo) If there is any LOST readers, you’ll know that LOST season 4 came out in the US a couple of days ago (It comes out in the UK later on this evening). So, whilst i was looking around the internet for some LOST released dates.. i stumbled upon a few sites.
Quite obviously it seems, lost-related sites took a staggering increase in traffic over the last week. Perfect! I took my CMS and everything else from NarutoResource, and bought a domain.. made a few adjustments and added some content: Lost Resource. This isn’t really “webmastering” at it’s best.. i know.. but seeing a i’m a keen lost fan.. and it would only take me a day to complete.. i mgiht as well.
As another method of putting off finishing Pornaroo, i decided to focus some attention on Doonuts. It’s probabally a couple of years old now. I did once start marketing it, and it was getting around 1,000 uniques a day for a while. However, since i started to venture into Porn a little more, i have gathered an insight of what these sites need to succeed. In this case, it needs a links system. A place for folks (mainly other website owners), To submit links. In exchange, i will put my plug on there.. voila.
The site runs on smarty.php - I don’t know why i want to attempt modifying it to add a plug system, because it’s as confusing as hell as it is.. If you’re ever going to start a similiar site, try to stay away from SMARTY.
So, i decided to start anlysing the site, coming up with a few new ideas and whatever. I know the site is at a steady 150 visitors a day (No monster, i know) So as far as i’m concerned, it’s sustainable. The site works.. and probabally has some regular visitors. Now i just need to increase that number…
I decided to have a look what kind of traffic search engines were bringing in, and like usual, i cannot hlp but look at the search queries used.
There were others.. gay mud wrestling, goth torturing.. I think what’s more worrying is that my site comes up for thoes queries.. I have thoes phrases on my site.. Hmm.
I think next update, i’ll write some sort of article.
-
Make Wordpress blogs SEO friendly - Part 1
March 7, 2008
-
Selling AddMyLayout
March 4, 2008
-
12 Ways to make your potential RSS subscribers, subscribe.
March 2, 2008
-
7 Ways to Keep motivated whilst working
February 8, 2008
-
Oh.. What’s this.
February 3, 2008