SEO Strategy for WordPress

Some analysts estimate that over 70 million websites are built with WordPress. In fact, WordPress powers about 1 in 6 websites, making it the most popular content management system (CMS) on the planet. First, decide whether you want to use WordPress.com or WordPress.org. Your choice will determine your SEO strategy.

WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org
Take some time to think about whether .com or .org will be better for you in the long run. With WordPress.com, you choose a theme, create a blog entry in the WYSIWYG editor and publish. You can add widgets, such as Facebook or Twitter buttons, but you have limited options for customizing your site. Also, you will have minimal control as far as using SEO techniques, and you won’t be able to use plug-ins. WordPress.com says that it handles 80 to 90 percent of the SEO for you, and you’ll have to decide how comfortable you are with that estimate.

Alternatively, WordPress.org is the nerve center of the open-source WordPress CMS. You can still create a website using a theme. However, you also have the option to code your site, and you can easily customize it with code snippets called plug-ins. WordPress has a thriving developer community that is always uploading and fine-tuning plug-ins, and many of them are free (of course, you should, if you can, donate to your friendly neighborhood developers). With WordPress.org, you can take advantage of multiple SEO plug-ins. However, with more customization comes more responsibility. You’ll have to find a place to host your site, and you’ll have to keep up with updates and maintenance.

If you don’t need a custom domain, don’t want to learn how to code and don’t want to deal with maintenance, then WordPress.com is better for you. On the other hand, if you want control over your site and you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty, then you’ll prefer WordPress.org.

SEO for WordPress.com
These straightforward techniques will add a little search ranking mojo to your WordPress.com site:

1. Post often. Google loves high-quality content that is frequently updated. For this reason, you should frequently add new posts to your blog to improve your search engine rankings.
2. Use keywords. You can use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to find keywords that perform well for your blog’s niche. The tool is no longer available without creating an AdWords account, but you can use the tool without creating and paying for a campaign once you register.
3. Change your URL settings to “post name”.  By default, WordPress sets your post URLs to URL parameters. Instead, update the settings on your blog dashboard to use post names in your URLs.

SEO for WordPress.org
Having a WordPress.org website enables you to harness the power of plug-ins. Try some of these to give yourself some SEO juice:

1. WordPress SEO by Yoast. WordPress consultant and developer Joost de Valk has created the definitive SEO plug-in for WordPress. The plug-in generates previews of your title and meta-description so that you know that your listing will look like in the search results. You also get a number of other features including high-quality XML sitemaps, social integration and access to .htaccess and robots.txt files.
2. Local Search SEO Contact Page. In addition to harnessing both schema.org and hCard formats for rich snippets, this plug-in generates a Google Map image of your business and incorporates geo-tagging.
3. All In One SEO Pack. This plug-in is similar to Yoast. Recent versions of WordPress may have this plug-in already installed, so take a moment to check your version to see if you already have it.

If you’re interested in WordPress websites or SEO techniques, give Infintech a call at 504-717-4837. Let us do the work so that you don’t have to.