WordPress is a fantastic way of creating a good, reliable content management system. For a web designer with knowledge of PHP and MYSQL the possibilities are endless with custom templates and designs.
In our experience WordPress gets indexed by search engines like Google very well. Google likes websites on blog platforms because they will be continually updated with information and content such as news and articles. You do however have to get a WordPress site ready for the search engine which means adding a few plugins and applying some careful thought.
Let’s have a look through the various plugins required and what they do:
On Page Optimisation Plugin such as SEO Ultimate
Firstly you will need an on page optimisation plugin that allows you to create good page titles, descriptions and keywords. One of the best for this is Ultimate SEO.
This plugin will allow you to create unique titles, descriptions and keywords for each WordPress page and post. You can do this from the dashboard area once you have added your content which keeps things very simple.
Sitemap Creator Plugin such as Google Sitemap XML
Every good website needs a good sitemap and WordPress is no different. You will want to create a good XML sitemap in order to add it into your Google, Bing and Yahoo webmaster accounts. Then a HTML version is required for the website itself.
A sitemap is very important to a website because it allows search engines to see every page you have on your website, which is especially good if you have any hidden away.
Custom Structure Permalinks
This is not a plugin but is something that has to be done to improve the performance of any WordPress website with the search engine results.
Permalinks are the URL’s created for each page, if you leave this to the default setting you will find that the URL’s contain characters such as pageid=3 which are not good for SEO.
Simply adding the following code to custom structure in your permalink settings %postname%/ will ensure that your URL’s represent your pages better and help with ranking.
Getting your website onto the WordPress platform is a great thing to do because it gives you control of your website making it a more dynamic experience for your users. Do make sure that it is search engine ready and you will reap the rewards that this system has to offer.
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