I think by now everyone knows that Wordpress is by far the most popular self-hosted blogging platform around, with over ten million different users employing the platform as their blog back-end of choice. Wordpress offers such a huge range of features, customization options, and controls, it is no wonder the platform has achieved such immense popularity amongst bloggers, web developers, and online professionals.
Marketers love wordpress for a number of reasons, it’s easily customizable, it allows you to create text-heavy sales pages, multimedia website intros, and a call-to-action service pages on a single platform. In my opinion, the biggest advantage of using Wordpress is that it offers unbelievable SEO benefits.
As blogging platforms go, Wordpress is the reigning champion of SEO. From extended page URLs to pingback links and header tags, these four SEO tips can help you turn your Wordpress blog into a powerful SEO resource.
1) Use keywords in your titles.
Marketers used to believe that submitting keywords throughout your site would increase your site ranking substantially however more often than not, it had a negative effect because your website was bursting with lots of keywords, often until the point where it resembled machine-style nonsense.
Nowadays thankfully we know that is not the case and keyword density is not the ultimate measure of SEO value. Websites that do rank highly, do so becaue they use keyword-heavy post titles. So when you are starting to write a blog post, do some research first to determine what your market is actually searching for.
2) Use the All-in-One Wordpress SEO plug-in.
You cannot do without the plug-in, it is an absolutely must for all internet marketers. This plug-in allows you to optimize your post URLs and categories for maximum SEO power, override default meta and title tags, and even highlight potential keywords to target. This little plug-in is simple, quick, and all so powerful.
3) Allow comments.
I think sometimes we’re afraid to allow comments on our blog because we don’t have the time to answer them or we’re afraid of what people might say, however comments are a great way of adding outbound links to your site and new content. Search engines love new content so if you have people commenting on your blog posts, this will help to increase your ranking. Marketers are always working on new content to add so comments help to make their lives much easier!
4) Be visible.
This is something that may surprise you. Almost all modern versions of Wordpress include a range of visibility options. Users can select to make their blog visible to all, block it from any viewing, or simply block search engines from indexing the content. I know, who knew!
Of course, no marketer would want to block their blog from search engines. However, some automated Wordpress installers -- particularly Fantastico and cPanel installers -- block Wordpress from search engines by default. To reverse this, simply use your Wordpress dashboard to change privacy options back to "visible by anyone" and viola!
Grainne Foley is the owner of Live-Hire, a Virtual Placement Agency matching business owners with 'elite' Virtual Assistants, thus allowing them to grow their business while still having the time to enjoy their life.
Visit her website at http://www.live-hire.com and get your Free ebook "How To Save Instantly With a VA".