Making a website (especially a WordPress website) search engine friendly should be the focus of every webmaster but many independent website owners get it all wrong, so let’s take a quick look at 25 things every website owner should do to make sure their website is making the most of free marketing tools.
The title tag
In HTML there are two tags that can make a website sink or swim. The first is your title tag. Located in the <head> section of your websites HTML the <title> tag controls what search engines think your sites name is. This title commonly includes both the name of your website and the name of the article that is stored on a specific page but which is more important?
To search engines the answer is easy, it’s the name of the page that people are on … not the name of your website, so placing the content in the right order is critical! Instead of placing My Site Name || My Post, I can instantly improve my ranking by posting My Post || My Site Name. To do this in WordPress, simply open your header.php file and make the required changes.
The H1 tag
No tag is more misunderstood or more poorly used than the poor H1 tag. It’s the most critical tag in the entire body of a post, yet people waste it on their website title! It’s not really you’re fault … WordPress themes often mistakenly use the <h1> tag as the title of a website.
To fix this, open your header.php file and remove the <h1> from around your site name. Replace it with a <div> tag such as <div id=’logo’> so that you can format your title to look how you’d like.
The H1 tag is meant to encompass the page title, so next you’ll have to open and edit your single.php and page.php files to ensure your title is using an <h1>. Remember, there should only be one <h1> on an entire page!
H2 … H6 tags
Document structure guidelines dictate how these tags should be used. They’re mean for headings, not formating! If your document has multiple depths, use <h2> .. <h6> tags to structure your document depth, for example an <h3> tag should only ever follow an <h2> tag. Remember, search engine robots are looking for consistent order and logic in a page.
W3C Validation
There’s a little debate over how important it is to validate your pages, my opinion on the subject is simply that if a robot (which is all search engines are) can’t read your page … how can they index it? Run your page through the validator at The W3C Markup Validation Service.
Images
When naming images, use descriptive keywords in the filenames as well as the ALT tags. ALT tags are used to “display” the images to people who can’t see but they’re also hand for companies like Google to understand what the image contains.
Friendly URL’s
Does Google really care if your URL’s include keywords? Wow, great question. According to Matt Cutts (Googler Prime) … no but it’s more attractive and it’s one of those simple SEO things that helps make our websites feel more friendly.
Anchor Tags
Remember to add titles and rel values to your anchor tags! The title can be added through the WordPress WYSIWYG editor but rel tags? You’ll have to delve into the HTML if you want to use them effectively.
Meta Descriptions
Like the <title> tag, Meta description tags are found in the header.php file for WordPress and instruct web search engines what your website is about. These description tags should be updated for every page and remember, it should reflect the content … not the site!
Meta Keywords
Meta keywords are also stored in your <head> section and summarize the article for search engines. Want a clever trick? Use the post tags as your comma separated list of keywords! That way, you’ll be sure to get rich, descriptive tags to match your content.
Content Placement
Remember that the content for your website is the most important part! Make sure it’s as close to the top of your HTML as possible or else search engines might not be able to find it.
HTML Clutter
One great way to keep HTML clutter to a minimum is to link as much as your code as possible to external files. This keeps your document as empty as possible so Google (and other robots) know that your content is key.
Fresh Content Matters!
Websites are like restaurants, people want fresh content and Google knows it. One great way to optimize your content for Google is to ensure your content is always fresh, using a blog or a forum is a great way to keep fresh content online.
Link to Quality Content
Search engines love links so if you have a favorite website that helps your audience, link to it (remember to use the title tag as well!), this will not only increase your standing with search engines but it’ll help build a great community
Avoid Flash
Flash is a great tool, we all love it and it sure is sexy but … no matter what anybody tells you it can not be read properly be search engines and if search engine robots can’t see your site, your website is worthless. It’s just that simple, I’m sorry.
Include a Sitemap File
Robots search for content on your website by crawling (literally traveling from link to link) this is a painful long process so help them out by posting a sitemap.xml file for them to read! This file orders your content and helps robots to understand where fresh content is located on your site.
Include a Sitemap Page
Sitemaps aren’t just for robots anymore! Help people find everything on your site by including a comprensive page with all your links in a single place. This also ensures that SEO robots can find all your links.
Build a better footer
Footers are an easy way to help both people and robots easily find important content on your website.
Use Tags and Categories
WordPress has some wonderful SEO features build right in, so use them! Every one of your posts should use categories to help optimize them but they should also link to each other! By linking your article to list of other articles which use those keywords, you’re helping index your content.
Deep link your articles
If you’re writing an article that could benefit from another article on your website, include a hyperlink to the supporting piece! It’s called deep linking but I like to think of it as common sense, after all if you’re not willing to cite your own articles why should others?
Keyword your titles
What words do you want people to use to find your site? Use those words in your title! Don’t push your luck though, nobody likes a keyword spammer so make sure your article title is natural but try to use the words that you’d search Google in hopes of finding your article with.
Keyword your page content
Don’t be shy to sprinkle your article with your keywords either, especially your header links! Make sure that whenever you have a chance you’ve used the words and phrases that you feel people would search for in Google.
Know your competition
Search for your competion in Google, what terms are they using? Should you be using the same to compete with them in search engines? You can optimize your website for your community, your industry or your products … make sure you’re doing the best job you can.
Don’t duplicate your content
Content should only appear once on your website and only on your website! Don’t fall into the habit of posting other peoples recycled posts on your site and be careful that WordPress isn’t duplicating content on your site. If you’ve posted your content to two categories, chances are that Google is penalizing you for it so make sure you’re only allowing it to be indexed once!
Format your text
We touched on this with regards to using headers but your website should also use tags to format your text! Search engines respect tags such as <cite>, <strong> (<b>), <em> (<i>) and <blockquote> so why not use the to help robots understand your content?
Write better content
I’ve said it before … but here’s tip #25 … write better content. Well written, formatted and structured content is still the best SEO value you’ll ever earn.
