WordPress search engine optimization: H1, Title tags, Permalink/URL structure

July 31st, 2008

WordPress is a good blog publishing system. However due to the complexity and fast-paced evolution of the Internet there are actually a lot of tweaks and customizations that need to be done to maximize the power, reach and effectiveness your WordPress blog:

The theme’s index.php: Are the TITLE and H1/H2/H(n) tags used effectively?
index.php defines the appearance of your blog’s home page. Google and other search engines give more weight to words in the TITLE tag and H1/H2/H(n) tags. The H1 tag should probably be used for the title of the blog – this can be the same or different from what you use in the TITLE tag. H2 tags should be used for the titles of your posts. Not all WordPress themes use the TITLE and H1/H2/H(n) tags as described here.

The theme’s single.php: Are the TITLE and H1/H2/H(n) tags used effectively?
single.php defines the appearance of each single post’s page. This is where some themes screw up by using a TITLE string like “[Blog Title] >> Blog Archive >> [Post Title]”, and using the H1 tag on the blog’s title instead of the post’s title. For maximum SEO effect, the TITLE string should just be the post’s title. The H1 tag should only be used once on the page, for the post’s title string. The blog’s title should just be wrapped in ordinary SPAN, P or DIV tags – not in a H1 tag.

Use a search engine and user friendly Permalink/URL structure
The default Permalink setting (e.g. http://host.com/blog/?p=123) is not search engine friendly (search engines like/highlight keywords in URLs) or user friendly. Go to the Settings/Options => Permalinks page in the WordPress dashboard and define a custom Permalink structure that includes your post’s title, for example:
/%post_id%/%postname%/

Stay tuned - in a later post, I will discuss other WordPress optimizations/tweaks like caching and robots.txt …