Basic SEO for WordPress Blogs

Now that you've finished setting up your blog, it's time to make it easy for people to find what you have to offer and get them to visit your website.

This article will introduce you to the basics of Search Engine Optimization or SEO for your blog or website. SEO makes it easier for search engines to find you, which will help your target audience find you.

To simplify matters, I've divided this post into two sections, internal website SEO and external website SEO. Internal website SEO is how you present the content of your website to search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. External website SEO is how to cultivate traffic for your website.

Basic SEO for WordPress Blogs

Internal Website SEO: Content Descriptions

To start, you're going to want to install an SEO plugin on your blog. While there are a few to choose from, I use the popular and free Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin. Install and activate it in the plugin section of your WordPress dashboard.

To get you started, a few of the most important tasks you will want to perform are to change the post and page permalink titles and add meta descriptions and an XML site map.

Changing how the post and page titles are presented makes your content easy for search engines to indentify the site content. On your dashboard, go into Settings and choose the Permalinks option. Under the list of Common Settings, click on Post Name. This will add the title to the web address for each page and post.

Now add the Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions to your posts and pages. These are the titles and short descriptions that will appear in search engines for your site. Each page and post has to be configured.

While this might take a bit of time to do, remember that this is an essential element of SEO. Yoast has a Bulk Editor in its plugin that makes it easier to access all the pages and posts at once.

Select SEO in the dashboard (this is the Yoast plugin you installed) and click on Bulk Editor. There are two tabs at the top that let you switch from Titles to Descriptions. Insert the page and post Titles. For the Meta Description, I like to take a few important elements from the text to build a short 2 sentence summary of the content that includes your article and site's keywords.

An XML sitemap is a map of your website that allows search engines to "crawl" a website more intelligently and to index it. To enable this feature, go to the XML Sitemaps option in SEO and check only all of the boxes under the XML Sitemap, General Settings and User Sitemap headings.

External Website SEO: Backlinks and Creating Traffic

Backlinks are links from other sites that refer back to your site. They create traffic and also tell search engines that there is interest for your website, giving it more importance.

Start implementing your backlink strategy by creating social networking pages like Facebook, Twitter and Google + accounts for your website, and add a social sites plugin to encourage people who come to your site connect with you.

Another great way to create backlinks is to use the many free website directories, article directories and bookmarking sites that are available. While there are many sites that offer these services (Google the type of service you want to find extensive lists), here are some I use for blogonadime.com:

A Website Directory is a site where you submit your website address to be added to a list. You only have to do this once. Popular website directories include SoMuch, EzineDirectory, and Blogarama.com.

•  An Article Directory is a site where you can submit your posts. Some of the article directories I use are EzineArticles, Goarticles and Reddit.

• A Bookmarking Site (also known as Web 2.0) is a page where you add interesting website page links (like yours!). Some I use are Scoop It! and Hubpages.

• Make sure to create a free Feedburner account that will update automatically when you create new posts. Some Article Directories allow you to set up an account that will post your RSS feed automatically, which saves you from having to do it manually.

I'm not going to lie to you, SEO takes time and patience, not to mention an organized list of site accounts and passwords for quick reference. But once your strategy is established, you'll be rewarded with traffic and notoriety for your site.

For more great ways to enhance your SEO, visit the Yoast SEO Plugin tutorial page, and stay tuned for more great ways to make your blog amazing!

Stay tuned for my upcoming articles on affiliate income by subscribing to my blog at http://www.blogonadime.com Comments are the lifeblood of blogging. I'd love to hear if you found this post helpful!

Author : Sarastea

hi my name is Saras and I have learned blogging and this is my blog that I use to learn about blogging, I hope you all can appreciate it ... thanks " Saras "

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