Embracing WordPress SEO

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Damn I’m loving the change over to WordPress. The vast number of plugins out there make it so customisable, and I do love to tinker.

Today I’ve been playing around with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), and finding a bunch of features that were never there in Blogger. It’s all about Google PageRank, so I’ve added the little pagerank checker over the right there. Sure it’s saying my PR is currently 0, I’m hoping this is due to the recently registered domain and google is yet to glorify me.

I’ve now got META tags going thanks to a plugin called Headspace that give search engines a one line description of an article so those words rate heavier than the blog title or the first sentence, cause my titles are generally puns anyway.

Another plugin I’ve cranked up is do-follow so now if you were to leave a comment at Beer and Sport, google will follow your website URL, and it’ll help increase your ranking in google. Not very much, cause Beer and Sport is PANTS in the eyes of google…… for now…

Turns out this do follow thingamy is part of a blogging movement to turn off the rel=”nofollow” in links left in comments. So to show off my bandwagon jumping I’ve stuck their logo up too.
. How web 2.0 am I? Don’t answer that…

37 thoughts on “Embracing WordPress SEO”

  2. I’m impressed.

    Does it do forums and stuff?

    Sounds like a good way of getting away from Google warnings etc…

  3. Godamit mosses, day by day Im thinking of turning to wordpress.
    Damn you damn you to hell !

  4. Gagger, I’ve got a macbook pro and it’s a piece of shit. Thought I’d see what all the fuss is about.. turns out it’s fanboys who think the dock looks cool. Never mind it’s slow, has only one button, very few keyboard shortcuts and not much software that runs on it… it comes in a brushed aluminium case therefore is awesome. Did I mention that editing and encoding movies is heaps better on PC? True Story.

    @LB, you’re right in that by hosting this yourself you get away from the google unavailable messages that I seemed to get every few weeks. WordPress itself doesn’t do forums, but you can run it in conjunction with any of the PHP forums out there (vbulletin, ibpro… or the shit free ones like SMF or the dreaded FreePHP)..

  5. Hey DamithS,

    If you’ve got your own domain I’d recommend it highly. The import from blogger took 1 click!

    You do get much more spam with a wordpress install though, but there are good plugins to combat that too (Asikmet)

  7. No worries LB, you’ve got my email so just shoot if you’ve got any questions.

    I’m “in” IT, but not web technologies.. this is more of a hobby that started in London when I wanted to find things to do at work that weren’t work..

  8. [quote comment=""]No worries LB, you’ve got my email so just shoot if you’ve got any questions.

    I’m “in” IT, but not web technologies.. this is more of a hobby that started in London when I wanted to find things to do at work that weren’t work..[/quote]

    Like all of us when we were in London watching the clock run down…

    Will do.

  10. Mos> So if you dont have your own domain you cant make the switch ?
    Id think going from .blogspot to .wordpress might throw up some issues ?

  11. [quote comment=""]Mos> So if you dont have your own domain you cant make the switch ?
    Id think going from .blogspot to .wordpress might throw up some issues ?[/quote]
    You could switch to a wordpress hosted domain, though you’re going to be going through the hassle of getting all the links to you updated, might as well make the effort count. I’ll host it for free if you want, so you only need to pay the domain registration.

    http://www.godaddy.com have a sale at the moment – AUD$2.87 for a year of registration. The usual price is US$10 so even if the special ends that’s what you’d be up for to renew it next year.

    shoot me a mail if you like – moses at b & s.net (ie this domain)

  12. Well this post certainly cured me of thinking about your pain.

    Is it easy to transfer across? Because, well, I’m lazy, and while Blogger is far too user-friendly, I can’t be bothered learning…. things.

  13. Personally I find it easier than Blogger, especially with things like getting a real preview of your post before making it live. But then again I lean towards the technical side.

    [quote comment="315"]Is it easy to transfer across?[/quote]
    The steps are as follows

    • Register a domain such as http://www.missfield. com at godaddy for A$2.50ish
    • If you want me to host it for free send me an email and I can show you how to set that up ; moses at b & s.net (ie this domain)
    • I’ll then install wordpress for you, and give you the logons to your wordpress installation on your domain (might take a few days, probably only 1)
    • You log into wordpress, then click Import, Blogger
    • it takes you to your blogger account, where you click ‘allow wordpress access to my blogger stuffs’
    • working… working.. working… 2 minutes later your done. Could take a little longer since your blog is bigger.

  16. Moses I am thinking of starting a blog.
    If you could take a second to email me it would be appreciated.

  17. I am always using Joomla, but I find that WordPress is much more better , specialy for SEO purpouses. In my comments on Sokobanja page I always allow dofollow and I think it is fair and ok. Regards

  18. G’day Moses
    Thanks for the email.
    Drop me a line about how to join the blog ring when you get a chance.
    Cheers Dave

  19. Headspace sounds like just the plugin i’ve been looking for. Does it take precedence over the page title h1 tag that appears on every page of most wordpress blogs?

    Thanks,
    JP

  20. Yea wordpress is seo friedly, but i what i really hate is that it is so easy to hack, a while ago i bought a custom design and next day my blog was down!

  21. I don’t know much about blogger because I have never used it. I have been using WordPress Blog for the last 3 months and I’m quite impressed with it. It has great plug-ins, and it’s very easy to install and use. I’m still however, learning different ways to customized some of the pages to fit different websites without having everything look like blog.

  22. Hi Moses

    Thanks for the advice.

    I am going to get my blog up and running in the new year.

    Please give me a shout as I would like to join the web ring

    Dave

  23. I don’t understand the mac hate in here lol. WordPress has added some cool new features though. The V.I.P. is to expensive.

  25. Another good SEO plugin for wordpress is the All In One SEO plugin, Ive used this for a few years and it does a great job.

  26. Man I love wordpress too! There are so many plugins to do anything you want with your blog. I love using the ecommerce, video and music plugins to make my wp blogs the best they can be.

    I checked out that SEO plugin you suggested and incorporated it into a few of my blogs. I will see in time, if it is as good as the All in One SEO plugin.

  28. nice post. so you have enjoyed playing with wordpress. Really the plug in are wonderful and we can do lots of stuffs with them.

  32. Hey … I stumbled on this website by mistake. I was searching in Yahoo for Registry software that I had already purchased when I found your site, I must say your page is pretty informative, I just love the theme, its amazing!. I don’t have the time this minute to totally read your site but I have bookmarked it and also will sign up for your RSS feeds. I’ll back in a day or two. thanks for a great site.

  33. G’day Moses
    Thanks for the advice on setting up the blog.
    I have blog rolled you on my new blog http://www.cricketzone.eu

    Please do the same for me.

    If you get a chance please drop me a mail on houw to join the blog ring
    Cheers

    Dave

  35. Just wanted to thanks for the valuable info about SEO. I use ProfessionalOptimizer.com for my SEO services and have been very happy with the firt page ranking resut for my websites.

  36. G’day Moses
    Thanks for the advice on setting up the blog.
    I have blog rolled you on my new blog http://www.cricketzone.eu

    Please do the same for me.

    I have now joined the equator blog ring.
    Good luck, Hope you haven’t given up on Beer and Sport (very quiet these days).
    Cheers

    Dave