Doing SEO for websites is nothing unusual and I bet most of us hear this term a lot especially in the internet marketing industry. Without any doubt, we know the importance of SEO don’t we?

Although we write for our audience who are “real people” and not bots, we still tweak and twist our blog posts in someway so that even the search engines love it and rank it well. Whether you talk about ranking a blog, a video, a simple website or even niche sites, you need to know at least the basic SEO.

Most of us fail to realize that SEO which stands for Search Engine Optimization is not as hard as it sounds like; most of my clients stare at my face when I tell them, “You need to do a little bit SEO to get your site on top”, …….. and then I tell myself, “Gosh, who am I talking to about SEO ”. I love my clients so I decided to write up 7 simple steps to help you better understand wordpress seo.

I found a re-brand able infographic which had 8 steps listed. I believe these points are legit and can still be applied today to do simple yet effective search engine optimization on your blog. I was not satisfied with the order in which they were listed so I decided to do some photoshopping and wala, its right in front of you.

So without further ado, I present to you the

7 simple steps to wordpress seo

1. Keyword Rich Domain

If you think that only niche sites should have keyword rich domains then sorry my friend, I have no idea who told you that. Look at problogger.net which has the term “blogger” in it. It is not only awesome for SEO but tells us what the domain or website is about. How about this blog? It also has the term “blogger” in it and I do rank for certain keywords just because I have the term “blogger” in the domain name; just like Pat Flynn’s smartpassiveincome.com that ranks for “passive income”.

However, don’t mistake me. It is NOT necessary to have your keyword in your domain name. Although you should try going with an EMD (exact match domain) for your niche sites, it’s not required that you do the same for your personal or even business blogs.

I chose “mastermind blogger” because I thought it was a cool name for a brand. My choice is solely for branding because I wanted to stand out. Blogs like johnchow.com, viperchill.com, davidrisley.com might not have any generic keyword in the domain name but they have established themselves as a Brand and rank very high in the search engines.

An awesome name like socialtriggers.com or zenhabits.net is already rich in keyword . Have a cool name? Go for it!

2. Permalinks

You got your domain, your hosting and installed wordpress, now what? First thing I always do after installing a fresh copy of wordpress is setup permalinks. Those who are new to the term, according to Wikipedia: A permalink is a URL that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to link rot.

Most bloggers who complain that their website links are messed up or not working is usually having problems with their permalink setup. The name might be fancy but there is nothing fancy about it Although, it’s a must do after wordpress installation.

Go to your wordpress, dashboard, settings, permalinks and then change the link structure to “/%postname%/” without the quotes. I think this is the best setup and is awesome for SEO. Some people even include months and years in their link; however, I don’t prefer that.

/%postname%/

3. SEO plugins

This is probably the best thing about wordpress; lots of awesome plugins and widgets to help you make SEO easier. There are ton of wordpress seo plugins out there. I often receive emails from my readers requesting me to post my recommended plugins. I use a few free ones and some premium ones.

Do not just use any random plugins without having much knowledge on it. You might end up with something messy or at most, download a malware that will hijack your blog.

I have listed several wordpress seo plugins in the past and I would still recommend them.

I do not want to post any other new ones that I am using on my blogs at the moment because I don’t want to confuse you. But the GOOD NEWS, I will write a detailed post on the top seo plugins that I personally use and recommend very soon.

4. Keyword Research

If you don’t do research before you purchase an item, you end up being scammed or getting the wrong stuff. In the similar way, if you don’t research your keywords well, you might end up writing on an unpopular topic or even do seo on a keyword that no one searches for. I am sure you get the point. Keyword research is very important.

Whether you write for a niche site or for your readers, you must find out what people are actually looking for and to do that, you need to do some keyword research. I would highly recommend the free google keyword tool which is just awesome. You can also use wordtracker or Market Samurai if you want to take it to the next level. However, stick to the basic for now.

Once you find the keyword you want to rank for, come up with a catchy headline for a blog post and then do SEO based on that specific keyword. I am not going to explain On-Site and On-Page SEO on this post but I will definitely write a guide on that too. Btw, if you are using Thesis theme, you shouldn’t find on-site seo that difficult.

5. Quality Content

Writing hundreds of rehashed articles to impress Google will take you no where my friend. Google has become smart and you cannot fool it by spinning articles or copying them from elsewhere. If you want to survive in the search engines and rank high, you need QUALITY CONTENT, period!

It’s pretty easy to get your blog sandboxed these days. In simple term, if your articles suck, google will penalize your blog and may even remove it from their search result.

So how do we write quality content? What makes an article worth reading or interesting? I bet these are some of the questions hitting your mind at the moment.

Now let me tell you, I don’t think I am a “great” writer but not bad either what do you think? I am so jealous of Glen Alsopp and his awesome style of writing long detailed posts. I also don’t know how Seth Godin writes less than 500 words which get tweeted out x 1000 times. Or, was there anytime when I have not clicked on the email link sent by copyblogger.com; these guys know how to write killer headlines and content.

I cannot teach you how to write. It is either inherent or something that you master in the long run. The more you write, the better you get. Don’t write just for the sake of writing; write when you really want to do it.

Have an idea? Don’t wait! Take out a paper, list down the points or draw an outline. Once you have those ready, do a research and try to find relevant but popular blog posts that talk about your topic or idea.

List down the blogs and take notes from their posts. I said take notes; don’t copy their work. If you decide to use a large chunk from one of the blog posts then at least mention them on your post or give credit.

Now I bet you have enough content that you can put into a blog post. Think, research, write! Be passionate, practice often, read some of the popular blogs that I have mentioned and you will definitely produce some quality content for your blog. I have faith in you.

6. Social Media

Ok, I ran out of words now. Hey, do you have a facebook? Nah joking I don’t think I even have to explain the importance of social media when you know that most of us are active on social media sites everyday.

First of all, you must install a social plugin on your wordpress blog. As I said earlier, wordpress plugins make things easier so why not make use of it. You can either use digg digg or simple social bar plugin which will display social icons on your blog posts. And whenever you write a post, make sure you share it with your network.

If you are blogger then you probably use facebook, twitter, google +1 in general. I highly suggest that you be active on these network and share your content with your fans and followers.

Why share on social network? What a stupid question! Are you willing to lose tonne of targeted FREE social traffic? Alright, how about this… Social sites also help with SEO and it has been proven many times before. As a matter of fact, I still remember when some of my tweets were re-tweeted by the mass, it went viral and not only it brought in some extra traffic but also got my link ranked in the first page of google. Now beat that!

7. Backlinks

Backlinks are like the backbones of SEO. If done wrong, might penalize your blog. If done right, it will increase your page rank.

Most newbie bloggers make several common mistakes when creating backlinks to their blog. Don’t fall into the trap of push button softwares that promise to create legit links. I am not saying that all softwares are bad and even I use some . But, sadly, most people who purchase such software have less to no knowledge about it and they end up abusing it; hence, causing backlinking disaster.

Creating hundreds of backlinks in a short time is considered SPAM and trust me, you don’t want to make daddy google mad.

So how do you get backlinks? When and from where? Alright, I won’t tell you to comment on hundreds of blogs relevant or irrelevant because both just don’t seem right. This is very common and we all know that most people who comment on the popular blogs are trying to get a backlink to their site. Maybe not all but most.

Don’t let this discourage you to comment. I love your comments so keep them coming . Again, I am not saying it is something bad to do and my opinion is that I comment on blogs only if I have something to say. Most of the time you see people leaving irrelevant or short comments like “hey, nice article” or “ok thanks” or “some long weird story with porn links…” I mean w.t.heck…

It’s all good when you genuinely follow a blog and provide feedback; in return get some backlink juice . Some other basic backlinking strategy includes articles directory submission, paid links, contextual links etc which I will get into details in the upcoming posts.

And if you want to build some awesome backlinks Pat Flynn’s way, then check out THE Backlinking Strategy That Works. Pretty awesome guide but once I write my version, his will look peanuts…ouch (PS: I love Pat)

When I write a guide, I make sure I include each and everything so if you see me MIA for a while, don’t panic. Know that I am working on something awesome for you guys.

Now go get that awesome blog with seo, quality content and backlinks… you know you can do it. If this blog post was too basic for you then go get some pop corn and get ready for the advance seo and wordpress guides coming soon. I would love to see your comments. Let me know what do you think and would like to see more on this blog.

Blogs are like trees in a forest, there are thousands of them that all look the same until you get up close, and even close up sometimes it is hard to tell one from another! If your blog is like one tree in a huge forest, indistinguishable from hundreds or thousands of others and struggling to be noticed, then you need to concentrate on your marketing strategy.

In this post, I will focus on 7 basic tips which are actually very important and should be considered a part of blog marketing strategy. Some of you might not find it new but as I said, these are basic tips that are often ignored by lots of bloggers. Your job is to pick 1 at a time and implement them because I know they work. Whether you are a pro blogger or just starting out in blogging, make sure you put these tips to work if you really want to see results

1. Host your own blog

Marketing from a hosted solution such as wordpress.com will limit your options. I have always preferred self hosted blogs since you own it and you have total control over it. Let’s assume that you have a blog hosted on blogspot.com which is owned by Google. You start building backlinks day and night and do a lot of marketing. One day you wake up and find out that your blog was suspended for whatever reason, how would you feel? This is some freaky stuff that you don’t want to encounter. The solution is not that expensive. Purchase your own domain name from namecheap, select a good reputable host like hostgator and then start working on the marketing strategy for your blog.

2. Select a stable platform

Marketing your blog becomes easier when you host your blog on a stable platform. There are many options for bloggers and marketers for choosing a platform for their online business. Your selection of which platform to use will dictate how easy your blog updates are and how well they are picked up by search engines. WordPress, Blogspot, Joomla, Drupal, Moveable Type and Typepad are 6 of the largest blogging platforms and they are all well supported. According to me, in marketing perspective, I feel that WordPress beats the rest. Selecting a stable and popular platform should definitely be a part of your blog marketing strategy. Why? Simply because the structure and architecture of some blogging platforms like WordPress is good for SEO. Beside that, WordPress has some amazing plugins and search engine optimized themes that can take your blog to the next level. I am sure you know that SEO can be related to marketing. If you can rank, you are getting better

3. Stand Out

Make it Unique. Remember the forest and tree analogy? You need to make your blog stand out from the rest, and if you have selected wordpress as your blogging platform then this will be easy. This is because wordpress has ton of themes, plugins, hacks etc which you can easily customize and use it on your blog. There are several free themes if you search on google but, if you are serious about blogging and want to look professional then go for thesis; its one of the best search engine optimized wordpress theme available today. With just a few tweaks and clicks, you can customize the theme to suit the requirement for your blog. I have been running my blogs on thesis since the beginning and I can vouch for it. Check out some awesome thesis skins from Kolakube.

I. Unique Logo – Design a unique logo for your blog that stands out and serves as a visual reminder to your visitors. A logo is the most important part of marketing. It represents your blog, company or website. If you don’t have the Photoshop skills then, outsource it and get something done professionally. I recommend logonerds for all your logo designs. They are simply awesome and cost effective. They have created some of my logos including the one on my personal blog. Check them out

II. Tagline – Your blogs tagline is the short piece of text next to the logo or header. It needs to be short, memorable and unique to your blog. It usually describes the mission, purpose or goal of the site. Taglines help increase your blog’s brand identity and are often underestimated in marketing strategy. Sometimes your visitors will remember your tagline more than your domain name. If you look at some of the popular blogs and my favourites like Amish Shah, he has a unique logo and his tagline is “Make Money, Give Back, Create Happiness” which is pretty neat. Another example would be on this blog itself where the tagline reads “Learn the Skills To Build a Profitable blog” which tells you the mission of this blog. Sometimes a logo is powerful enough to create brand awareness. However, taglines make it even stronger.

4. Proper On-site SEO

As I mentioned earlier in point #2, SEO should be a part of your marketing strategy; It is actually a very essential part. Remember that marketing means exposing your blog to search engines, not just visitors. Spend a couple of days researching your keywords and on-page SEO strategy. If you use themes like thesis then, on-site Seo will be easy breezy.

There are plenty of tools out there to help you with keyword research, Meta tags and keyword density. Check out Google Keyword tool, wordtracker and Market Samurai for choosing the best keywords. Use these tools to ensure you stand the very best chance of getting good results from search engines. I have also listed some nice wordpress seo plugins that work and I am sure you will find it handy. Last but not the least, here is an easy wordpress seo guide and a comprehensive wordpress seo guide, check them out and read them all the way to make your blog seo proof Make sure you take action.

5. Marketing your Blog with Press Releases

Most bloggers think that a press release is something that large corporations do when they have an announcement to make, but it is actually a viable way of marketing your blog. When I started blogmasterpoint, I hired some writers to create some awesome press releases for the site. I then had someone send it to major outlets and just in a few days, I had several pages indexed. There was also an increase in visitors on the site. Press Releases might not give you tonne of traffic but if you do it right, you can get huge benefits from them in the long run. Use Press Release outlets such as www.prweb.com to distribute new content on your blog. It’ll reach all the search engines, thousands of journalists and bloggers bringing you new traffic on a regular basis. Writing a press release is a no-brainer. If you can blog, I am sure you can write one up and start marketing your blog.

6. Leverage the Power of Social Media

Social Media is so powerful that some marketers are starting to rate it above backlinks. And you know what, it’s free. You can easily create a facebook page for your blog, a twitter account, a google page, a linkedin page and more. These are free to create and if you can optimize them well, you can get huge amount of traffic. One other important benefits from creating pages on these popular social network sites is that you get free traffic from search engines; because, these sites have a high PR and rank pretty well on Google. For example, if you search for “Mastermind Blogger” on google, you are most likely to see its official facebook page and twitter account on the first page of the search result. This should explain the power of social media.

With the introduction of the new Google +1, it is obvious that google gives priority and importance to the links that get lots of quality +1s. This means the more +1 your website or link gets, the higher it will rank in Google. This is a great time to create an official Google page for your blog and optimize it for more visitors and better conversions. Same thing goes for a facebook page and a twitter account if you haven’t already created one for your site.

Sign up for ping.fm. Make sure you are at least signed up with the popular social networks. Now link them all together in ping.fm. In this way, when you make a blog post, your post gets directly sent to the connected social networks and then instantly gets indexed This not only saves time but gives you lots of backlinks and traffic.

Social media is just growing enormously and if you are not scaling up with it, you are missing out on a lot of important stuff. Get on with it and rock it.

7. Collaborate!

Collaborating with blogs in the same niche can reap rewards if you can find a way to encourage this participation without seeming too competitive. You can reach a new audience and potential visitor numbers can increase as a result of project collaborations, so be creative, think outside the box and use your initiative.

I. Guest Post- I have seen lots of great minds collaborate and create something astonishing. Guest posting is a great way to reach out to different audiences and start collaboration. For example, let’s assume that I write a guest post on Smart Passive Income Blog. Pat Flynn, the owner of the blog never got to know me until I made the guest post. Since my post was awesome Pat saw my skills and decided to collaborate with me on creating a new product. How cool is that? I am sure you get the point. Guest posting allows you to network, reach out to new audience and get more traffic; you also get backlinks, media attention and maybe future JV opportunities. This is huge so get on with it and show your skills.

II. Reciprocal Promotion- John Chow has collaborated with Shoemoney in some projects in the past. John mentions about Shoe’s stuff on his blog and Shoe does the same for John on his blog. Both of them are a leader in the industry and are exchanging links and promotions. I call this the “Reciprocal Promotion”. Can you see the power of collaboration now? It doesn’t only open doors to new opportunities but also to new relationships which could be really profitable in the long run. Have a great idea? Don’t wait! Find an industry leader and collaborate. This is actually one best way of marketing your blog which is pretty much Free. You just have to know the art of networking

Bonus – Build that List!

Probably one most important aspect of marketing is building your email list. Whenever you decide to start a blog, try signing up for an email list program like aweber which I use and recommend. I realized the power of list building and email marketing after 1 year of starting this blog and today, I feel I have wasted that particular year for not implementing one of the most powerful marketing systems available today.

Building an email list is more than making money online. It helps to keep track of the subscribers who are serious about your stuff, who look up to you and want more stuff from you in the future. An easy example would be the “14 days Blogging Course” I offer on this blog. People who sign up for this course should definitely be interested in blogging and want to learn more. This means, I can send them more blogging tutorials and related stuff down the road.

If you see this from a money making perspective, imagine you have a list of 1000 targeted loyal subscribers. These people are hungry for your stuff ‘cuz they love what you provide. These people see value in your stuff. Let’s assume that I have created an awesome product which is related to blogging and priced it at $27. I feel that the product will help my subscribers so I sent out an email to the 1000 loyal subscribers. Guess what? 50% converted which means $27 x 500 (50%) = $13,500 in sales Now note that I said only 50% converted. If you have a targeted list and if you really deliver the best stuff, I wouldn’t doubt 80%+ conversion rate. Can you now see the power of email marketing?

Verdict

I have seen a lot of articles on blog marketing and frankly speaking, most have somewhat similar points. The main purpose of this post is to educate you on the importance of several marketing aspects that most bloggers often ignore or are not aware of.

If you can follow all the 7 tips mentioned on this post, then you will have developed a great strategy for marketing your blog, and be several steps closer to blogging success, talk soon!

There are over 28,000,000 results on google for the term “WordPress Seo Plugins” and there are currently 936 plugins in the wordpress plugin directory that show up under the term “seo”. As a matter of fact, I have found out that most blogs say similar stuff about wordpress seo plugins. Everyone has All in One Seo Pack, Google Sitemap generator and a few others in their list. I knew there was much out there and the sources I found redirected me to the same stuff so I could not rely on them. I started digging into wordpress seo, worked on keyword ranking and wala this post was born. Read, take notes if necessary but make sure you go till the end to see the result

Seo is very important if you want to take your blog to the next level. Seo is not spam and should not be ignored. If you want good amount of organic traffic which I know we all do, you need to optimize your blog for search engines. Organic traffic is always good and several past case studies showed that they even convert better. Most bloggers are not seo experts and this is where the kickass wordpress seo plugins come into action. I have been playing around with wordpress seo for a while and in this post, I am going to reveal some top wordpress seo plugins that I found amidst millions. I personally use them on my blogs and would recommend to all. They will not only optimize your blog posts but help you rank for certain keywords.

6 WordPress Seo Plugins you must have

1. All in one SEO Pack

This plugin should be installed in all blogs by default. It is the first seo plugin that you should get and activate. All in one SEO Automatically optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines. For your convenience, I have posted an image below that shows my plugin’s setting. You can follow mine or do whatever suits you. Just make sure you don’t stuff the meta keywords section. Keyword stuffing is bad for seo.

Screenshot of my All in One Seo Pack Setting

2. SEO Smart Links Pro

Matt Cutts had explained in one of his videos how smart internal linking can boost your seo performance in 2011. This is a plugin that improves your overall blog’s seo by interlinking your content. It also converts your keywords into cloaked affiliate links which is a great feature. Previously I used MaxblogPress Ninja affiliate plugin but after discovering SEO Smart links pro, I think this is the best. So in short, this plugin gives you the seo juice by interlinking your pages. This helps to pass page rank from one page to another which improves your overall search engine rankings. On top of that, you can also create cloaked affiliate links with a click of a button and check statistics. I use Seo smart links business which is almost three hundred bucks. I like the pro version because it has some good additional features like cloaking and statistics. However, I don’t want to be mean by stuffing you with my affiliate link so you can download the free version by clicking here: Seo Smart Links When you make some money, come back and check out the premium version.

A Screeshot of Seo Smart Links Business- Known as One of the Best WordPress Seo Plugins

3. SEO Friendly images

Images speak thousand words but it is not useful in the eye of the search engines until they have proper alt and title attribute. It’s easy to upload images but often we forget to add the proper tags/attribute. Seo friendly images is a plugin that will automatically add ALT and TITLE attributes to all the images in your posts. Why Title and Alt is important? – Alt describes your image to search engines. You can drive massive traffic from google images if you add proper alt. Title is less important than alt because it only matters to the visitor as they will see it appear when they hover over the image.

If you are still not convinced then check out the amazing post by seomoz- Using Google Image Search to Drive Traffic to Your Site

4. SEOPressor

Imagine a seo expert standing next to you and guiding you while you write a blog post. This plugin is just like that. This plugin will help you optimize your blog to rank better for keywords and drive massive search engine traffic. Frankly speaking, this plugin alone is equal to hundreds of other seo plugins combined.

In short, seopressor analyses Title, H1, H2, H3 Tags, keyword density, content length, alt tags, font decoration and more. It also intelligently bolds, italizes and underlines your keywords which is good for seo. It will produce a score based on your blog post’s seo so you know what to improve in order to get a better score. I love this plugin and it does wonders for my niche sites. If you are into mini/micro niche then you definitely want to get this. SEOPressor is not free but for the price, I would definitely recommend it to all bloggers and affiliate marketers. Check out the screen shot below to see seopressor doing its thing. If you think you can do all the stuff manually then its your choice.

Screenshot of SEOPressor in Action

5. SEO No Duplicate

This is a seo plugin that helps tell search engine bots the preferred version of a post page by specifying the canonical properly within your head tag. This plugin improves your site’s seo by simply helping you manage your duplicate content by setting your post page’s canonical to the permalink. Google tries to penalize duplicate content (I don’t know how far this is true) but to be on the safe side, this plugin is a good add-on to wordpress seo plugins. Just activate and go. Alternatively, you can download Canonical URL’s for WordPress created by Joost which does the same thing.

6. WP Nofollow Post

This plugin adds nofollow to all external links on posts / pages automatically. You can add exception to some URLs. Why nofollow is important for SEO? If you link to sites that google thinks are spammy then you might hurt your own ranking. This is why the “nofollow” attribute is important.

In short, using the ‘nofollow’ attribute is one of the most effective ways of ensuring that your outbound linking doesn’t harm your website’s SEO.

As Matt Cutts of Google has explained in the past:

“The rel=’nofollow’ attribute is an easy way for a website to tell search engines that the website can’t or doesn’t want to vouch for a link…Nofollow is recommended anywhere that links can’t be vouched for.”

The ‘nofollow’ attribute is a simple, easy-to-implement way to help your SEO efforts and protect against penalties. It should be included in your SEO best practices.

Add-on: WordPress Seo Plugins

• Google Sitemap Generator
• Redirection

Show me the money!

Here’s a screenshot I wanted to share. See how I rank for “prevent wordpress spam”. Although I am not at the top but I am still on the first page. With a few more backlinks I could easily outrank others. SEOPressor assists in ranking for keywords while other seo plugins automatically optimize each posts and your entire blog. I just wanted to show that the methods and plugins mentioned above works and if you do it right, you can rank better.

Verdict

An effective SEO strategy is not only dependent upon boosting your ranking but maintaining it and protecting it. I am not a seo guru but I know this stuff quite well; I have personally installed these plugins on my blogs and would recommend you do the same. If you think any of the above plugins are shit, you are most welcome to share your view or even prove me wrong. What other wordpress seo plugins would you recommend?

[Updated] April 2011

You know how important SEO is, right? The steps I am going to mention are pretty simple and if you really make the commitment to blog regularly then it is about time that you take the next step.

Whether you plan on monetizing your blog, communicate or build a relationship with your audience, your primary and shared goal is to get as much traffic from the search engines. A lot of people ignore this (I did it too and that’s how I learned from it).

First of all, whether you believe it or not, content is the key factor in SEO. Producing good content might not be easy at first but as soon as you make the commitment, you will eventually own it.

WordPress SEO Tips

1. WordPress SEO Theme- Whether you ignore this or not, according to me, I think that a blog should always have a good SEO theme. If you are a pro, have SEO skills and can afford a custom design then check out UBD. They create magical themesJ. If you don’t want to hurt your wallet then I would suggest Thesis (this blog runs on thesis), Genesis or Woo theme. They are pretty good in terms of SEO.

2. Meta Tags- This is the first step after you have installed your blog. Meta tags, description and keywords are  important. It is true that they are not the main factor search engines consider to determine the ranking because in the past, people have misused metatags and that pissed off the search engine creators. Some search engines use the contents of the Meta keywords and description tags to determine the content of the page and that is wht I think you should set it up.

I am not posting any tutorials here but if you need help, I will write one soon. This blog runs on thesis as mentioned earlier; setting up Meta tags on thesis is the simplest thing. When choosing the title and the description, bear in mind that these will be used on the search engines as descriptions which mean anybody who searches for your blog will see the title and description you will provide through Meta tags. When choosing keywords, remember not to add irrelevant keywords; for example, you run a health blog but you added “make money”, “go green”, “blogging tips” to your Meta keywords list. Do not do this because it is not going to help. You will not be able to rank for other irrelevant keywords. Stick with your niche and add every possible related keyword but at the same time avoid keyword stuffing.

3. Reader before Search Engines- Always write content for your audience/visitors first and then Google. Most people focus on SEO and they write for bots or search engines. This is because they want to get their blog indexed faster on Google. DO NOT DO THIS. Your content might get indexed quicker; it may rank well and also get you ton of visitors. But, are these visitors going to stay and browse on your blog for long? I don’t think so. If your content is shit, it may rank well but at the same time it will piss off your visitors. Write it simple and in your own style so others like you can read and understand. Always think of your visitors first and write for them, search engines should be considered last in this case.

4. Do Not Use Multiple “Similar” SEO Plugins- This section is corrected. I had to add “Similar” because some people found it confusing. First, avoid installing any unnecessary plugins that you dont need. Some plugins slow down your blog’s speed and may also conflict with one another. Feel free to use several seo plugins but do not use the same type at the same time such as using Platinum SEO along with All In One SEO. There are some good premium seo plugins that I use on some of my blogs. I will post a list pretty soon.

Although, I do not think plugins are directly connected with WordPress SEO, according to me, certain plugins slow down your blog’s speed. If your blog does not load fast, people will not bother checking it out. Use plugins only if you cannot code it directly into WordPress.

The Best SEO Plugins

1. All in One SEO Pack- This is the most popular SEO plugin up to date and it has recorded over 5 million downloads. This plugin will allow you to write custom Meta tags, descriptions for your pages and posts. This is probably the first plugin a blogger will install after WordPress. As a matter of fact when you Google “WordPress SEO plugin”, you are most likely to see this plugin in the first result.

2. Platinum SEO Pack- One of my favourite. All of my blogs including this one use this plugin. Platinum SEO Plugin offers complete onsite SEO solution for your WordPress blog. This Plugin offers a lot of features; it claims that it also includes all the features of All In One SEO plugin. I would suggest you use either one.

3. SEO Smart Links- SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more. This plugin will interlink your posts and pages as you write and publish them. It is a perfect solution to get your blog posts interlinked or add affiliate links to other sites. This tool can have a huge impact on your SEO ranking so check it out and install it.

4. Google XML Sitemaps- with over 4.5 million downloads, this tools is sweet. This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog. Additionally it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post about the new content. This makes it much easier to index your post.

5. WP-DB-Backup- I was freaked out when last week, my servers were down and my databases were gone (I talked to the support and got it fixed, it was a minor issue, geez). Seriously, it is not funny when you work so hard to build an empire and all of a sudden it disappears. Don’t let your hard earned content go wasted. Backup all your files and databases every week or twice. Now the best part, this plugin is pretty cool. It will email you a copy of your database whenever you want. Schedule it and it will do its magic.

I have a feeling that I am not done yet. I think I’ll be back soon to update this post or maybe create an advanced version. Trust me, successful SEO starts with producing quality content. And, it doesn’t stop there. You also need to implement other shared strategies like SEO, link building etc. For now, use these tips and plugins to get a head start on your WordPress SEO. I know you guys are hungry; I will be back with more food soon

[Updated] PS: Thanks to Antti Kokkonen for contributing and clarifying some stuff on this post. Please read our discussion below in the comment section.

Wordpress Optimization

If you have high traffic to your blog then you must optimize WordPress and your server to run as efficiently as possible.  This is very important and I have provided a step by step guide on how to do that. Follow and Implement. Let me know how this worked out for you.

SEO

Part 1- SEO

1. Permalinks are important so make sure you set good ones which are visually attractive.

2. Change settings with Robots- Nofollow/noindex  wp-admin, login pages, inappropriate categories etc

3. Write better titles. Make use of All in 1 Seo Pack or Platinum Seo Pack Plugins

4. Do not generate meta descriptions automatically. Write them yourself or just leave it blank

5. Create proper pagination- WP-pagenavi might help

6. Disable comments on Pages (About, Advertise, Contact etc)

7. Check out my wordpress optimization guide. Follow and implement every step you find in there.

Speed

Part 2- Speed

1. Install WP Super Cache

2. Move .htaccess directives to your server config ( only if you have the option). Disable .htaccess parsing

3. Combine CSS files into 1 big CSS file

4. Make sure that Java script is loaded in the footer

5. Use CSS Sprites

6. Add a php opcode cache

7. Replace the crappy plugins with the better ones available online

8. Switch to a better hosting. Check out the reviews at King of Hosting- Yes, this is one of my site and you are most welcome to add your reviews.

Maintenance

Part3- Maintenance

1. Use WP-dbmanager to backup your files frequently

2. Optimize and backup your database everyday if possible

3. Check your queries with the debug wordpress plugin

4. Use anti-spam plugin to kill spam in your blog comments

5. Remove any irrelevant and useless widgets

6. Track your uptime. You can use several tools to do that.

7. Check for 404 errors and fix it using redirection.  404 notifier can be helpful

8. Remove unnecessary meta tags, info or details.

Social

Part 4- Social

1. Use good social plugins that will allow your readers to submit the posts they like. Good ones would be sociable, sexy bookmarks, Digg Digg etc

2. WP greet box is awesome. Use one on your blog and greet your visitors

3. Allow visitors to subscribe to your comments with a link or plugin

4. Enable discus or gravatar to allow the readers display their avatars.

5. Add a ReTweet Button to your post

Analytics

Part 5- Tracking/Analytics

1. Google analytics is the best so far. You can use a plugin or insert the code in the footer section

2. Signup with feedburner to track your RSS

3. Use a twitter analytic to track traffic from twitter

4. Use Blog metric plugin and improve yourself everyday

I hope you found this useful. If you think I have missed any which are worth mentioning then feel free to add them in your comments.