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Applying On Page SEO Factors to a WordPress blog is easy and can be somewhat automated once you take a few simple steps.

If you’re an old hand at SEO and WordPress then little if any of this is new to you. However if, like me, you’re still learning about one or both subjects, then a cheat sheet like this might help you get up to speed much more quickly than going out to aggregate all of this information yourself. I hope that a few people find it helpful even if it’s not new and original.

The 4 Factors
1) On Page Keyword Usage & Content Relevance
2) Link Juice
3) Incoming Anchor Text
4) Domain Authority

According to Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz On Page SEO is one of the 4 factors that account for 90% of the search engine ranking equation. It’s the only one of the four that webmasters have complete control of.

Choose Your Keywords – You can’t optimize until you know what you’re optimizing for. Once you have your keyword / key phrase you need to put it on your page in all of the following places:

• In the Page URL – this is a two step process in WordPress:

1. In the administrative interface select Options>Permalinks, then select an option which includes the postname in the permalink structure. You may also want to include the category names in the Permalinks – and thus in the URLs – and propagate broad keywords via the categories.
2. When you write your post/page include your keyword/phrase in the title of the post. If for some reason you want the page URL to be different than the title then you can change the URL by modifying the “post slug” in the menu options on the right side of the write post page.
3. Remember that the Site URL is for branding, the page URL is for SEO and usability.

• In the Title Metatag - By default WordPress uses the reader visible page title as the title metatag, which is better than nothing, but less than ideal. I suggest that you use SEO title tag plugin to decouple the two. This plugin requires you to edit the theme.
• Description and Keywords Metatags – The easiest way to control the inclusion and content of metatags in WordPress is by using a plugin. There are several free plugins available for this purpose but the one that I use (at the time that I’m writing this) is called “Add Meta Tags” It allows me to include any metatag that I want and modify it from the write post page. This plugin isn’t all that automated, but the ones that I’ve tried which generated tags automatically really don’t do an outstanding job. Anyway, find a plugin that works for you and use it. Keep your title metatag to 65 characters or less, and your description tag to 160 characters, and remember that the text in these tags will be the first impression that you get to make on searchers. Think of the title and description tags as sales copy with the conversion goal of interesting the searcher enough to get them to click through.

  Don’t forget proper use of the the other heading tags. Ideally not only would your title be in an <h1> tag, but section headings would be in <h2> tags and subheadings in <h3>… etc. This will naturally help your page to be more relevant for narrower long tail terms. Add these tags manually via the code view tab of the WP post editor - thusly: <h2>heading</h2>

• In an H1 Heading near the top of the page – Your WordPress theme might already take care of this for you. To find out browse to one of your post pages, and view the source code of the page (at the top of your browser click View>Page Source) and scan for the page title - not to be confused with the <title> tag. If your page title is enclosed in h1 tags then you’re in luck, if not you have 2 options – 1) Find a new theme that uses h1 tags for the titles – easier said than done. 2) Hack your existing theme – sounds scary, but it’s easier than it might seem.
• 3 or more times in the content text
• In the Optional Excerpt - Found on the post editor in WP under the write post window. Write a unique summary for the optional post excerpt - don’t just copy part of the post. The excerpt will appear on your category page making it into keyword rich SE fodder while avoiding duplicate content.
• At least once in bold
• In image alt text - the image description in the WordPress add image dialog box- the tree icon in the post editor.
  
• NOT in the anchor text of outgoing links - But do link out to your other posts using their keywords / phrases in the anchor text.
  
• Consider nofollowing superfluous out links - But don’t be too stingy. The link juice that you save may be more than offset by the good will among bloggers that you sacrifice.
• Split your post with the More tag - (the icon that looks like a page torn in half in the post editor) to help minimize duplicate content between your index and single post pages.

These easy steps will supertune your WordPress posts, clearly targeting your chosen keywords. It’s easy and it really does make a difference. Combining On Page SEO for your WordPress Blog along with strategic linking between posts for leveraging the longtail search phrases can be a potent SEO combination to help your blog get noticed.

So, what about those other 3 factors? Even though you can’t have complete control over them, you can gain much benefit by doing all that you can. I’ll be working on those articles too. Soon. Why not subscribe now so you don’t miss them?

What WordPress plugins or techniques do you use or recommend for on page SEO? If you can add something relevant that I’ve missed leave a comment, and I’ll add your point to the article and credit you with a live link.

Related articles:

• Michael Gray on Optimizing WordPress Titles and Slugs
• Joost deValk on WordPress SEO

Tags: Search Engine Optimization //