Automatically Perfect Your Blog’s SEO
On the last day of March Marko from HowToMakeMyBlog.com wrote a post, Do not worry about SEO, just concentrate on your blog readers encouraging bloggers to worry more about interacting with their readers and creating great content instead of SEO. As someone who is active in the blogging and social media world, I agree that this is solid advice for bloggers. However, as someone who also works in the SEO world, I do know from experience that a well-optimized blog can increase the amount of traffic that you receive from search engines. So, while Marko provided several good tips for your initial blog SEO in his post, I wanted to write today about how you can automatically do SEO for your blog.
Balancing blogging, social media and SEO; photo from Marcio Okabe
As long as you are using WordPress, you can perfect your blog’s SEO with the Platinum SEO plugin. Now, before I discuss this plugin, I want to address one issue. I am sure that many of you have heard of the
Now that you know why I recommend the Platinum SEO plugin, let’s dive into it’s features:
-This plugin will automatically optimize your post and page titles for search engines. This means that you can focus on writing great titles that will attract human readers, and the plugin will make sure that the titles are optimized for the search engine crawlers.
-The Platinum SEO plugin will generate all of your meta tags automatically (however, if there is a specific change you want to make to a meta tag, you can easily do so). So, instead of spending five minutes creating meta tags for your post, you can use those five minutes to embed a great picture into your post from Flickr that will grab the attention of your visitors.
-Although WordPress is a great platform, one of its biggest problems in terms of SEO is that it creates a lot of duplicate content issues (which can negatively impact your search engine rankings). Fortunately, this plugin has features built into it which will take care of those duplicate content problems.
-While Marko mentioned that you should change your blog’s default permalink structure to a “prettier one”, if you already have a blog, you may be worried that changing your permalink structure will create a lot of broken links. However, with this plugin, you can change your permalinks in the WP Dashboard and the plugin will automatically take care of any broken links by creating a search engine friendly 301 redirect.
-Since there are certain pages of your blog that you may want readers to have access to but not search engines, the plugin makes it easy to add the following tags to any post or page that you choose (all of which are designed to block search engines from indexing that specific post or page):noindex, fnofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noodp or noydir.
By using this plugin, you will be able to get the best of both worlds: not only will you be able to enjoy more search engine traffic, but you will still be able to keep your focus on interacting with your readers and writing top notch content that keeps them engaged!
Do you have any , questions, opinions or insights? Please let us know in the comments below.
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"Ask Gerald" Gerald answers SEO questions on a monthly basis through his newsletter.
About The Author
Gerald Weber
I'm a professional SEO & founder of Search Engine Marketing Group in Houston, TX. I'm part of the team at MyBlogGuest.com , which is a guest blogging community. I am also the creator of MySEOCommunity.com which is a global search & social community. Feel free to follow me on Twitter @the_gman or @MySEOCommunity.33 Comments
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It has recently come to my attention that the redirect is the only feature Platinum has over the AIO SEO plugin.
<abbr>Dennis Edell’s last blog post..How I Publish Guest Posts</abbr>
Twitter: the_gman
April 9, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Actually the robot.txt is included in the platinum plugin but an addition plugin is required if you are using the all in one SEO pack.
Just to clarify, it is the ability to control the Robots META tag on individual pages and posts that is integrated into the Platinum SEO Pack plugin – it does not provide access to the robots.txt file.
<abbr>Alysson’s last blog post..Canonical URL Issues and Link Equity</abbr>
It has recently come to my attention that the redirect is the only feature Platinum has over the AIO SEO plugin.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..How I Publish Guest Posts
Twitter: the_gman
April 9, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Actually the robot.txt is included in the platinum plugin but an addition plugin is required if you are using the all in one SEO pack.
Just to clarify, it is the ability to control the Robots META tag on individual pages and posts that is integrated into the Platinum SEO Pack plugin – it does not provide access to the robots.txt file.
<abbr>Alysson’s last blog post..Canonical URL Issues and Link Equity</abbr>
Houston Search Engine Marketing and Optimization Services » Blog Archive » Automatically Perfect Your Blog’s SEO…
On the last day of March Marko from HowToMakeMyBlog.com wrote a post, Do not worry about SEO, just concentrate on your blog readers encouraging bloggers to worry more about interacting with their readers and creating great content instead of SEO. As so…
Twitter: kikolani
April 5, 2009 at 6:28 am
I use the Platinum SEO plugin, and it proved it was worth when I got a PR 3 on my first ranking. I wasn't aware of WordPress duplicate content issues.. how does that happen?
~ Kristi
<abbr>Kikolani’s last blog post..Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, PageRank Updates</abbr>
Hey, Kristy…the reason the WordPress platform creates so much duplicate content is a result of how many different ways there are to access information. Often posts are available either in part or in their entirety not only at the post URL itself, but in category, tag, date and even author archives – meaning the same content would be available (and indexed by search engines) at five different URLs.
The issue can be resolved pretty effectively through the use of robots META tags, but I always recommend addressing the issue using the robots.txt file, as well. Better safe than sorry.
Alysson’s last blog post..SEOAly Makes the TopRank “BigList”
Twitter: the_gman
April 19, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Alysson,
Your are so good at answering reader questions I think I’m going to hire you on at Search Engine Marketing Group. he he
Hi Gerald,
I am dealing with SEO in Turkey,I agree with you,I saw Alysson’s answers and explanations here,good.You could take her for SEO Team:))
Twitter: kikolani
April 5, 2009 at 6:28 am
I use the Platinum SEO plugin, and it proved it was worth when I got a PR 3 on my first ranking. I wasn't aware of WordPress duplicate content issues.. how does that happen?
~ Kristi
<abbr>Kikolani’s last blog post..Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, PageRank Updates</abbr>
Hey, Kristy…the reason the WordPress platform creates so much duplicate content is a result of how many different ways there are to access information. Often posts are available either in part or in their entirety not only at the post URL itself, but in category, tag, date and even author archives – meaning the same content would be available (and indexed by search engines) at five different URLs.
The issue can be resolved pretty effectively through the use of robots META tags, but I always recommend addressing the issue using the robots.txt file, as well. Better safe than sorry.
<abbr>Alysson’s last blog post..SEOAly Makes the TopRank “BigList”</abbr>
Twitter: the_gman
April 19, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Alysson,
Your are so good at answering reader questions I think I'm going to hire you on at Search Engine Marketing Group. he he
Hi Gerald,
I am dealing with SEO in Turkey,I agree with you,I saw Alysson's answers and explanations here,good.You could take her for SEO Team:))
Use AIO plugin but considered to use the platinium instead. But har to change old habbits.
About duplicate content, I think Google is pretty good in handling dublicate content on the wordpress platform … never seen any big problems.
<abbr>Steen Öhman’s last blog post..SEO David Naylor on reputation management</abbr>
Whenever someone makes a statement like "Google is pretty good at handling duplicate content…", I can't stop myself from chiming in.
You are tempting fate if you choose to rely on Google to sift through and decide for themselves what information to index and what is duplicate. Control absolutely everything you possibly can as much as you possibly can.
Search engines are smart, but they're not that smart. Spoon feed Google the information you want them to have and make it as difficult as possible for them to access that which you don't.
<abbr>Alysson’s last blog post..Use Twitter As A Tool – Don’t Be One</abbr>
Twitter: the_gman
April 19, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Agreed! Thanks for the well thought out insightful comment.
Use AIO plugin but considered to use the platinium instead. But har to change old habbits.
About duplicate content, I think Google is pretty good in handling dublicate content on the wordpress platform … never seen any big problems.
<abbr>Steen Öhman’s last blog post..SEO David Naylor on reputation management</abbr>
Whenever someone makes a statement like "Google is pretty good at handling duplicate content…", I can't stop myself from chiming in.
You are tempting fate if you choose to rely on Google to sift through and decide for themselves what information to index and what is duplicate. Control absolutely everything you possibly can as much as you possibly can.
Search engines are smart, but they're not that smart. Spoon feed Google the information you want them to have and make it as difficult as possible for them to access that which you don't.
<abbr>Alysson’s last blog post..Use Twitter As A Tool – Don’t Be One</abbr>
Twitter: the_gman
April 19, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Agreed! Thanks for the well thought out insightful comment.
Very good summary of the Platinum SEO plugin. I recently set up a blog, too and had to look at a reasonable SEO plugin. Finally I also chose Platinum because of the mentioned features above. I like the feature to noindex tag and category pages and that you don't have to bother about permalink changes. But still you have to install a bunch of other plugins to make WP even more comfortable.
<abbr>Bfri’s last blog post..Hilfe! Unterschied AdWords und AdSense?</abbr>
Twitter: the_gman
April 19, 2009 at 9:23 pm
I'm glad to hear that this post helped you make your decision. Also check out 15 WordPress Plugin That I Can't Live Without for a look at some of the other plugins that I use and also recommend.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Hi Gerald,
thank you for the hint. Another WP Plugin page to bookmark. Definitely some gold nuggets there. Thanks again!
<abbr>Bfri’s last blog post..Hilfe! Unterschied AdWords und AdSense?</abbr>
Very good summary of the Platinum SEO plugin. I recently set up a blog, too and had to look at a reasonable SEO plugin. Finally I also chose Platinum because of the mentioned features above. I like the feature to noindex tag and category pages and that you don’t have to bother about permalink changes. But still you have to install a bunch of other plugins to make WP even more comfortable.
Bfri’s last blog post..Hilfe! Unterschied AdWords und AdSense?
Twitter: the_gman
April 19, 2009 at 9:23 pm
I'm glad to hear that this post helped you make your decision. Also check out 15 WordPress Plugin That I Can't Live Without for a look at some of the other plugins that I use and also recommend.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Hi Gerald,
thank you for the hint. Another WP Plugin page to bookmark. Definitely some gold nuggets there. Thanks again!
<abbr>Bfri’s last blog post..Hilfe! Unterschied AdWords und AdSense?</abbr>
Thanks for the tips. I was using the All in one package and switched to Platinum SEO based on your recommendations.
Chri's last blog post… how to increase traffic with stumbleupon
Thanks for the tips. I was using the All in one package and switched to Platinum SEO based on your recommendations.
Chri's last blog post… how to increase traffic with stumbleupon
Very useful information, I have all in one seo at the moment, i might check this platinum seo, thanks.
.-= Mrs Moody@video tutorial blog´s last blog ..Earn or Make money Online with a simple way =-.
Very useful information, I have all in one seo at the moment, i might check this platinum seo, thanks.
.-= Mrs Moody@video tutorial blog´s last blog ..Earn or Make money Online with a simple way =-.
I couldn't agree more.. I've been using it for a while and my page rank is ok considering the little time that I've put in. My SEO skills have been brutal recently and I needed to update a ton of post with Tags. With the plugin, you can do a "quick edit" and painlessly add them. Made my life so easy for forgetting something so simple.
I couldn’t agree more.. I’ve been using it for a while and my page rank is ok considering the little time that I’ve put in. My SEO skills have been brutal recently and I needed to update a ton of post with Tags. With the plugin, you can do a “quick edit” and painlessly add them. Made my life so easy for forgetting something so simple.