Since the search engines love fresh content, a blog is one of the best ways to create a website that gets a great search engine ranking. However, there’s more to optimizing a blog than creating and posting fresh content. You also need to make sure your meta tags, keywords, and page titles are sufficient for the SEO goals of your website. You also need to set up the site to attract traffic that boosts your positive customer behaviors. Since WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems for building blogs, this article focuses on the tools needed to quickly and easily optimize your WordPress blog.
Common Misconceptions about WordPress SEO
When creating content with WordPress, you can assign categories for each post as well as “tags” which are commonly used in those posts. However, the search engines are only paying attention to the actual keywords used in the content, the meta descriptions, and the page names. It is difficult to optimize these things with WordPress as it is when you first install it. However, your WordPress dashboard has a place where you can search for and install WordPress plug-ins. These plugins are the key tools for optimizing your site for search engines and for making it visitor-friendly. The following are the most essential plug-ins and how you can use them to optimize and promote your site…
Plugin #1: All-In-One SEO Pack
This plug-in creates a form at the bottom of your admin area for you to create the keywords, page titles, and meta descriptions which will make it easy for the search engines to index your content. Remember that your page title must be specific and relevant enough that your visitors can read it and know exactly what to expect from visiting your site. Your keywords and meta descriptions also need to support this page title and to compliment the primary theme of your blog.
Plugin #2: Google XML Site Maps
When a site comes up on search results, you’ll notice smaller links beneath the site’s main link. These links are the site map of that website. A site map does two things: it tells people more about your site before they click on it and it helps the search engine spiders to find and to index the content on your site. Installing the Google XML Site Map plug-in will automatically create an XML site map for your blog.
Plugins for Visitors
Since the search engines are paying attention to your visitor’s behaviors (see Google Patent Article), you need to optimize your site for premium visitor interaction. CommentLove encourages visitors to comment on your blog by automatically adding a link back to their blog. Of course, the more interaction that you get from visitors, the more likely they are to return to your blog to check on their discussions which they are a part of.
Plugin #4: Share/Bookmark/Email Button
Sharethis allows your visitors to share a post on your blog by linking to it from popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Stumble Upon Delicious, and many more. It also allows your visitors to email your posts to others, further promoting your content and your site. This plug-in is the key to exploding traffic and setting up a viral marketing strategy that runs on complete autopilot. Sharethis also gives encourages your visitors to help you build valuable bank links to your WordPress blogs without you doing any more work than posting the original content.
Once you get some visitors commenting on your blog, adding the WP-Forum can explode the interactive value of your site. This plug-in allows your visitors to set up a profile and to create their own discussions and interactions within your site. This means fresh content and highly targeted traffic which will add tremendous value to your site.
Plugins for Traffic Management
This plug-in automatically protects your WordPress blog from spammers and makes it much easier for you to manage the comments on your blog by creating settings for how many links can be included in your visitor’s pots. This is especially important as you are gaining more traffic to your site and encouraging more visitors to leave comments.
This plugin is vital for effectively marketing your site and managing the flow of traffic. WordPress Stats provides detailed feedback on referring sites, search engine keywords used to find your blog content and it keeps track of your incoming links. Since tracking and measuring visitor behavior is so important for optimizing your sites, this plugin is a must-have for any serious blogger.
Once you have the basic plug-ins installed, try supercharging your blog with these amazing plugins. Don’t worry, if you are afraid of the ramifications that plugins have on your site, the effects are minimal and sometimes non-existent. Read this article from WP Engine for more information.
Scroll Triggered Box
Increase your conversion rate by identifying engaged visitors and get them to take action. This awesome plugin helps ensure that your visitors respond to your call-to-action and dig deeper into your site.
WordPress SEO by Yoast
Similar to the all-in-one SEO pack earlier in this article, Yoast provides tweaks for just about every element on your page. A great feature in the plugin is the bright red and green colored text that shows you how well your post compares using the keywords entered.
Hello Bar
The bright orange Hello Bar is a great tool for collecting email addresses as well as for testing various power words and CTA’s.
Disqus Comments
If you want an easy, and attractive commenting system, Disqus is one of the best. The admin area allows you to manage the comments easily, and the plugin even allows you to manage them straight from the blog.
Pin It Button for Images
If you love Pinterest, then use this quick and simple plugin to create a button overlay on any image on your site.
Editorial Calendar
If you need an easy way to stay organized, the Editorial Calendar is a great plugin. All scheduled posts, drafts, and other content are neatly gathered and organized in one neat place for you to manage.
WP Hide Post
Do you want to increase your Twitter traffic? MyTweetLinks allows readers to easily share your blog posts' main points on their Twitter account.
Conclusion
Installing and setting up these plug-ins is a simple process that can be done from your WordPress dashboard in less than an hour’s time. In addition to this, you should visit the plug-ins area of your dashboard and update them about once every month. This will take 5 minutes tops. Once you have these tools set up, they work for you 24 hours a day seven days a week without you having to do anything more than post valuable content.
