The reasons why use wordpress are a lots : semplicity, easy install, a lots of plugins, big commmunity and , naturally, is free.

Another advantage of this fabulous CMS is that is loved by Google and the other search engines, and , with some modifications and the use of the rights plugins, your blog will be really good indexed in the various search engines, bringing you more users and traffic.

How to make this? Changing something in your blog’s settings and adding some plugin.

First of all you need to change the URL Structure of your blog, when you install wordpress the blog URL structure is this :

http://www.myblog.com/?p=1

This is a good structure but you can improve and use a structure “SEO-friendly”.

Go in the Admin panel of your blog in Settings- permalink and change the permalinks, in my Blogs I use this :

/%category%/%postname%.html

Another good solution may be to add the ID or the date of the post, so you ‘ll give to the search engine an order, and this is better :

/%category%/%post_id%/%postname%.html

One important thing that you must consider when you change your permalink structure is that the search engine will index this pages and is better to not change more this structure, so choose what structure you want to use and never change this.

Although a recent article by Google says that the don’t care about the URL structure and the new algorithm can index without problem all the kind of URL, I’m still conviced that this is still important and improve your posistion in the search engine, and of course you will put keywords in the URL, and this is important for Google and others.

That’s all? No, sure, but from the panel control of wordpress there’s no more to do, wordpress is SEO -ready and the semantic code is loved by Google et company.

Of course there’s another important thing to consider that is important for the positioning : the title of your post.

The title is really important for improve your blog in google (or other search engine) so always, before to write a post, take some minutes to think in the title , how to put (with sense)  keywords in the title, and how to capture the attention of the users with few words.

One good solution may be this : go in google and make a search for the arguments that you’re going to write and  take a look at the first page, look the titles and the keywords used, this is a good way for inspire your title-post.

Of course remember to things : inspire doesn’t means copy-paste, and when you search don’t make the mistake that a lots of users do, don’t think as a SEO when you’re searching, but think like a user that doens’t know nothing about SEO or html.

Other step to improve your index in search engine : the categories. Use alwways the correct categories, if is necessary add a new category, don’t worry if you have a lots of categories, the important is that everty post is in the right category, I can’t put this post in javascript is has no sense, and i can’t use other categories, the only category where this post must be is SEO.

If you have planned, or have ready, articles to publish in your blog, better that starting writing all the post in the same categories, not jumping form on to another. I had my photoshop tutorials and other articles, wrote in my italian blog, so I translated this in english and starting posting here, i’ve started with the photoshop tutorials, how you can see.

I can write this article before, or the jquery sections, but, IMHO, is better start writing all the articles of the same categories and after pass to another category.

This must be considered if you have articles ready to be posted, if your are writing now your articles, there’s no problem but remeber is always a good idea give a sense and a order to your blog.

When you’r writing articles, try always(try no force) to link the previous articles of your blog, like I’ve done in the previous chapter, linking the photoshop section and jquery section, make this in a naturally way, and not force this.

All the links must be naturally, how the SEO says : content is the king. Never force links or text or keywords, everything must be naturally, is the best way to Google and company likes your blog.

If you are familiar with html and wordpress theme, take a look at the theme of your blog, some templates use to put the title in a h2 tag, change this to h1, this is not really important, but h1 is more important than a h2. take a look to the title attribute in the link of the titles post, usually there’s something like this:

permalink to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>

delete the “permalink to” and leave only the php code.

When you upload an images in your posts , remember always to give it a description, this will be the alt of your images. this is important for usability too.

When you add an external link to your post, put the rel=”nofollow” to the html tag, so the crawler will not follow the link, and don’t leave your blog.

Now, is time to “extend” our blog with some great wordpress plugins for SEO.

1. All in one seo pack.

king of the SEO plugin for wordpress. There’s no words for this plugin, simply download and install, it will add for every word a custom fields for title and the other meta tags, remember for SEO and positioning the tag title is, of course, the most important of the meta tags, be sure always to write a good title tag and put the keywords in this( not like keywords tag, but explain what your  post is about and don’t use more than 60 words).

2. WordPress Related post.

This is another great plugin, because permit you to add some related post at the end of a post. How I said link the posts in your blog is a good way to make the crawler index the pages and , of course, this will be util for your users that maybe want to read more about hte same arguments of the post.

3.Yoast breadcrumb

This plugin is to create the breadcrumb in your navigation, important for the users and for the crawlers to let they know where they are.

4. Pingpress

This is a great plugin. With this plugin you can ping and actualize your profile in a lots of social networks, like facebook or linkedin, automated. Simply sign in in the web site and configure the plugin, everytime you will write a post this will be automatically add in your status in the various social network that you have configured.

5. Social Bookmarking reloaded

This plugin is for add the share buttons in at the end of every post, you know how the social networks are important to drive traffic to your blog, but remember that the best way to drive traffic is write good post, not only to share in all the networks sites in the world.

6. Google Sitemap generator

Plugin for create a google sitemap in xml format, for the google webmaster tools. THis will not improve your position in google, but make faster the index of your site.

7. Sitemap generator

For generate a sitemap in your blog, is not the google sitemap, but a page , like my sitemap in the menu, take a look to understand how it works, I suggest to use this plugin is very useful.

Well… this is all? Not, but for your blog this may be good for improve it in the search engines. Of course if you want to learn and study SEO, this is only a start point and nothing more.

Anyway the most important thing that make the difference in SEO and make a website loved by Google and receive backlinks from other sites, is only one: write great cotnent and posts, this is the oly and best way to make your blog known.

Remember the first rule of SEO is : Content is the king! this phrase is not casually.

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