G1eagle's World

Headings
It’s now more important then ever to do critical things to improve the SEO in your wordpress

blog. Make your Blog name H1 and your blog title H2 on your home page, but on your pages and post they need to be reversed. This allows search engines like google to figure out what’s important on your pages and posts by telling Google what post and page topics are important.

SEO is about defining and spelling out for search engines what is important on the page, semantic web is taking off Google has already said there going to be using rich snippets, that’s semantic web. So with search engines telling you they want this information why not give it to them? Many themes I look at still get the simple heading tags wrong. So how do we fix it? It’s not very easy.. but I’ll give you an example of what I’ve done.

Look for the part that has bloginfo('name') in your theme.

<?php if(is_home()) : ?>
          <h1 id="logo">
			<?php if (get_option('tbf1_logo_header') == "yes" && get_option('tbf1_logo')) { ?>
<a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/"><img src="<?php echo get_option('tbf1_logo'); ?>" title="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> -
					<?php bloginfo('description'); ?>" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> - <?php bloginfo('description'); ?>" /></a>
            <?php } else { //If no logo, show the blog title and tagline by default ?>
            	<a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>" id="blogname" style="background:none;text-indent:0;width:auto"><span class="blod"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></span><br /><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></a>
            <?php } ?>
          </h1>
<?php else : ?>

    <span id="logo">
			<?php if (get_option('tbf1_logo_header') == "yes" && get_option('tbf1_logo')) { ?>
<a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/"><img src="<?php echo get_option('tbf1_logo'); ?>" title="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> -
					<?php bloginfo('description'); ?>" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> - <?php bloginfo('description'); ?>" /></a>
            <?php } else { //If no logo, show the blog title and tagline by default ?>
            	<a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>" id="blogname" style="background:none;text-indent:0;width:auto"><span class="blod"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></span><br /><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></a>
            <?php } ?>
    </span>
<?php endif; ?>

What that does is pretty much tell Wordpres if your on my home page, Wrap my blog name and discription in H1 tags. Now I don’t use a discription. So if your wanting to just do your blog name I’d narrow it in to the bloginfo(‘name’) portion.

Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs help users navigate your website, you can see I use them. They are simple links that tell the user were they are, and how to get back to your home page. Every page should have these and they’ll look something like Home >> Webmaster >> A Simple SEO Toolkit for WordPress this tells you which page your in, which category your under, and where my homepage is listed. This also helps Crawling your website. For this simple SEO tip I recommend finding a breadcrumbs plugin.

Rich Snippets
Google has already declared that your results may begin showing up using this data.. But how do we deploy it in wordpress? Well I used a simple script from yoast to try and it Failed. So I figured out how to fix it, and now my hreview tags work in Google rich snippet tester. The issue lies at least with my wordpress it sets a hentry tag, and then the rich snippet hreview tag doesn’t get recognized. So I had to move the tag to the front of the array. I’m not going to give a code example here. But I will try and make a new post about it soon as it’s a lot of coding to employ rich snippets the first time.

Page Loads
Google has said page loading is going to be a factor in it’s search results. Pages that load fast, also have the added benefit of keeping users on your site longer. So if your wanting faster load times a couple solutions to help you out.
1) W3 total cache.
2) Cloudflare
3) Use less images or convert them to CSS Sprites. (I have not converted mine… yet.) If you know an easy way of doing this. Please drop me a comment.
4) Convert a subdomain to a CDN, then use W3 Total Cache’s features to move images to it. It’ll speed up your page loads.

Google+/Facebook likes
Google is now including social media in there rankings, more + you get. The higher your ranked. Bing I’ve heard is tapped into Facebook likes but I can not confirm this at this time. However both also allow you to easily put your information out there. So why not simply add a couple buttons to your theme, and some java script? Then make sure you toss every post in google+ and facebook, and + and like them all… Perhaps while your stealing my code, why not like and + my post!

Here is how you Add Google plus.
Add this to your post, single post, and pages

<!-- Place this tag where you want the +1 button to render -->
<g:plusone annotation="inline"></g:plusone><br>

Then in your footer place

<!-- Place this render call where appropriate -->
<script type="text/javascript">
  (function() {
    var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true;
    po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s);
  })();
</script>

Just above the closing body tag, now your plus one buttons will appear on you main page, post and pages. Better yet, if you have javascript file, place the javascript in there and make sure your javascript load is in your footer.

Here is how you Add Facebook.

Add this to your post, single post, and pages

<div class="fb-like" data-href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" data-send="false" data-layout="button_count" data-width="450" data-show-faces="true" data-action="recommend"></div><br>

Then in your footer place:

<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script>(function(d, s, id) {
  var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
  if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
  js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
  js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1";
  fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script>

Google + and Facebook will now appear where you wanted them I added mine right above the comments and tags sections. Better yet, if you have javascript file, place the javascript in there and make sure your javascript load is in your footer.

Permalinks

Change your permalinks settings into something easier for a human to type, and better for search engines to index!  I find the most common and recommended setting to be /%postname%/ which is what I use. So go fix your permalinks!

Choose WWW or Not to do the WWW

Choose one and leave the setting alone, flipping them back and forth can make search engines think you have more duplicate content then you do.

Stop words

Either strip the stop words from your permalinks, or find a slug plugin that will do it for you. You get a small and simple url to type, they generally aren’t ugly. Plus it narrows down your keywords, which helps your SEO. You can find a Slug plugin that will do this automatically as well.

Configure your titles.

Consider your Titles, many SEO plugins like to help set your titles for you. Make your keywords come first, and your blog name after. Search engines notice early words first, and so do your users! On pages, I take off my blog name it’s my preference but I have noticed better rankings when I’ve done so.

Remove Uncategorized

This isn’t an SEO tip, but why would you want to have any posts as Uncategorized? It doesn’t take that long… and if your posts are mostly News why not change it to that? Many times uncategorized turns me off. Some people find it’s ok, I don’t I suggest you remove it.

That’s all for this post, if you wouldn’t mind leaving a comment I’d appreciate it!

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