Setting Up WordPress for SEO Success
Use the right Server
Make sure that whoever is hosting your blog installs it on a Linux server. Windows servers are basically for Windows applications and WordPress is definitely NOT a Windows application. It may cost an extra few dollars to set up your blog on Linux, but it can save you technical headaches in the future that can be difficult or impractical to correct.
Enable Pinging
Pinging sends a signal to the Search Engines to come take a look at your blog every time new content is added or changes are made. This gives you a big SEO advantage, as it ensures your content is seen immediately by Google and indexed quickly. This can help your posts rank right away for less-competitive keywords.
Take advantage of slugs
No, not the slimy garden creatures, Post slugs allow you to insert a topic or keyword phrase into your URL. For example, you can use www.blog.yourdomain.com/blog-setup-basics.php instead of
something like www.blog.yourdomain.com/?p=187
In order for post slugs to appear in your URLs, you must do some easy customization. This capability is built right into WordPress, but you need to enable it before you begin blogging. Changing your permalink structure after you’ve added content is tricky and it is difficult to switch when posts are already existing on a “?p=” URL.
In your WordPress Dashboard, go to Settings and then to Permalinks.
Under Common Options, click on the radio button for Custom, specify below and in the Custom Structure field add /%category%/%postname%/.
This will make your URLs appear as www.yourdomain.com/category/postname (where postname is the slug you give each post.)
For example, a post in the videos category of this blog, with this post slug:
Will display this URL:
After setting this up, try a test post or two to make sure it is working properly prior to adding a lot of content. Using a Linux server is key to making sure this step works!
You can customize your URLs to display in many other ways, but this configuration gives the Search Engines and human viewers additional hints as to what the post is about, which will help with your SEO.
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