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Search engine optimisation can be an overly complex task, especially for the novice webmaster. With so many factors to consider, it can be quite difficult to optimise even a single web page properly. Every aspect of the page needs to be structured properly, from keyword density to meta tags and everything in between. Doing all of this manually is time consuming, even after you know how it’s done. Luckily that’s where WordPress steps in, a content management system that simplifies almost every aspect of site management, including search engine optimisation. The following tips will help you to use WordPress to finish those SEO tasks in double quick time.

Important WordPress Plugins for SEO

Every WordPress user knows that open-source plugins are ultimately what makes this particular CMS so powerful. The following plugins can boost your search engine ranking with almost no effort on your behalf.

• Platinum SEO Pack

Platinum SEO pack handles every single aspect of search engine optimisation within WordPress, including but not limited to meta data, keywords, title tags, redirects, permalink settings, and even nofollow/dofollow settings on a post-by-post basis. Platinum SEO Pack is a drastic improvement over it’s commonly used counterpart, the All-in-One SEO pack, because it gives you more control over the settings of each page and post individually.

Platinum SEO pack will automatically generate search engine optimised meta data based on the tags in your posts, and you can even control what is displayed in the SERPs for each page! This means, instead of having the first 25 words of your pages indexed as your site’s description in the SERP’s, you can actually use the integrated Platinum SEO box to type in whatever you’d like to appear under your site’s URL in the SERP’s. This gives you much more control over what your visitors see, compared to what the search engines use to rank your site. Not to mention Platinum SEO pack is not riddled with advertisements, unlike All-in-One SEO pack.

• PingCrawl

Another amazing WordPress plugin for simplified SEO is Pingcrawl. Every time you make a post with this plugin enabled it will automatically scan the internet (using Google’s API) to find related posts that allow pingbacks. It will then post a specified amount of links below each of your posts to these related blogs. While this may seem like you’re simply giving other people backlinks, this is not entirely true. It is a win-win situation because the plugin only posts links to sites that allow pingbacks, which means you automatically get a backlink on each of these sites!

Not only will this help all of your posts get indexed quickly, but it will also give you a tremendous amount of backlinks. The process of getting links for all of your site’s pages is called deep linking. Deep linking is perhaps the best way to improve your search engine ranking, and the Pingcrawl plugin let’s you deep link to every single post on complete autopilot!

Side note: It is important to install a plugin called “Open in New Window” when using Pingcrawl. The Open in New Window plugin will make every link on your blog open in a new window when clicked. This way, when a visitor on your blog clicks on one of the related post links generated by Pingcrawl, instead of leaving your site it will open the link in a new window!

The following screenshot explains the process that Pingcrawl uses to operate:

Page/Post Optimisation

Aside from using the above plugins, it is advisable to change your Permalinks settings to a custom structure of – %postname%. This way, every time you publish a post or page the URL of that page will automatically reflect the post title. This helps tremendously with SEO because it makes every URL on your site keyword optimised on autopilot!

• Pages vs. Post for SEO

Another important aspect of page/post optimisation is keyword density. The problem with posts is that users are allowed to comment on your posts. Many people don’t realise that the comments contribute to the overall content of the post, and therefore can greatly affect the keyword density of the page. Thus, if you are trying to control keyword density precisely, it is better to publish the post with comments disabled, or simply make it a page instead since users cannot comment on pages. Remember, this should only be done in cases where keyword density is crucial. In some cases the user generated comments may actually help your SEO efforts.