Make Wordpress Search Engine Friendly
March 19th, 2007 by Michael Gray in videoIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Here are some tips for setting up wordpress and making it more search engine friendly, please feel free to rate the video if you like it
Sphere It
March 19th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
I might have missed it, but again, why worry about this? Will Google penalize my blog for having a blog post show up in multiple “places” in my WP install?
These videos are good, thanks. You need to work on your lighting. If you can’t get some more lighting on you, then try an overhead light, or actually, get a light and bounce it off the wall next to you, on you.
Or, mess with your level settings. I use Sony Vegas editing software, and I just apply a levels filter on most of my videos and play with the gamma, pretty easy and fast.
March 19th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Basically you only want the content to be available on one page of your site/blog. If the individual post exists in the “page archive”, “year archive”, “month archive”, and multiple categories you’re trusting google to figure it out (aka guess) at the best spot for the actual content. You are also letting Google figure out is 2007 the most relevant category, is march 2007 the most relevant category, or are any of the three categories the post is in th emost relevant category.
Now factor in hundreds of posts, are you still comfortable letting Google make the best guess, or is telling google where you want it a better idea.
Yea lighting is an issue I’m working on, turning my kitchen into a video studio isn’t going to win me any points at home
March 20th, 2007 at 12:28 am
“please feel free to rate the video if you like it”
Lol only rate the video if we like it?
Love the shirt, and I like the premise of the video as well. However, get your hand out of the freaking light. The shadow drove me nuts.
Also, can’t you get some screen recording software? The white board isn’t really doin it for me.
Overall though, I think your videos are improving. Keep it up (as long as you continue to get better).
March 20th, 2007 at 2:01 am
This is just one possible alternative, probably more ideal for niche sites or sacrificial sites, although those would be better off with a different linking structure.
As soon as you start reducing duplicate content, you reduce relevance.
March 20th, 2007 at 8:51 am
Don’t forget instead of more - which requires manual input - you can simply and easily set up post excerpts to occure everywhere except the individual post page.
ie, replace:
with:
That way, only your individual posts are displayed in full, and the various categories are simply hallways to find the individual posts.
March 20th, 2007 at 8:52 am
Damn that WP code stripping.
I’ll complete a post on WP as a CMS and link to that.
March 20th, 2007 at 9:18 am
Sweet vids, Michael. I would love to see you produce more of these “how-to” clips. Camtasia is pretty sweet for doing screen captures; check it out. Are you ranking for “seo videos” yet?
Bentley007
March 20th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Hey Michael. Thanks for sharing.
What about “tag” pages. I assume you’d apply the same rule here? For every post, I tag the story with multiple keywords. Then…you can find that post under every /tag/keyword page on the site. As far as I can tell, hundreds of these tag pages have been indexed and show up all over the place in the SERPS. Are you suggesting those are coming at a much higher price I’m not aware of?
Thanks for your time.
March 20th, 2007 at 10:02 am
@branden are you talking about technorati tag pages or tag pages on your own site? drop a link if it’s easier to explain.
March 20th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Michael.
Thanks for replying. Yeh, i was referring to actual tag pages on my site. So, lets say for example I write an article about a new model of car from BMW. Below that post, I would have:
Tagged As: bmw, bmw m5, 5 series, m series
Each of the words above is linked to a specific “tag” page containing all the stories every tagged with the word “5 series” for example.
Thanks again for sharing your advice.
March 20th, 2007 at 10:17 am
To run with Branden’s inquiry, as much as multiple categories would confuse Google, wouldn’t it also increase the chances that users themselves would stumble on the multi-tagged post through either navigating the site, or using google/technorati?
March 20th, 2007 at 10:27 am
That’s why defining your categories correctly is so hard/important. For example having a comedy section, having a romance section, and then having a separate romantic comedy section. The occasional item that finds it’s way into two categories isn’t going to throw a wrench in the works IMHO, but if 90% of 1000 posts have more than one category you’re looking for trouble. Of course the amount of self inflicted foot shooting you can get away with varies considerably with the amount of trust/authority/crawling frequency you have.
March 20th, 2007 at 10:33 am
How come you are using seomoz Google bot?
Thanks for the tips, it sure helps us understand better the duplicate content issue, I will be checking my wordpress blog.
March 20th, 2007 at 11:29 am
The categories appear in the title tag (if set up properly). Keywords in the text combined with a higher chance of keywords in the title tag through multiple categories increase your chance of a higher relevance rating. My experience shows that categories with duplicate posts still get indexed.
Since nobody is going to search for a date I agree with removing calendar and archive or blocking bot access to them.
March 20th, 2007 at 11:37 am
>My experience shows that categories with duplicate posts still get indexed.
Right but here’s the thing Google sees the same post in three category archives, and it now has to “figure out” where that content belongs, are you comfortable letting Google make it’s best guess or do you think it might serve your interests a little better if you did it yourself.
March 20th, 2007 at 11:49 am
No matter what i always seem to pull one thing out of a post or video from you Michael.
I thought for sure i would not have anything i missed but i did forget one mondain thing that you pointed out and i will stop doing it now.
Nice video and very good info for someone just looking to try to SEO their blog.
You should put together an additional screen capture on how to restructure and change wordpresses stock code to improve the title tags and take the >> out…
Also how you can dynamically insert a meta description and H1 as well.
Would make for a good part 2 video.
March 20th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Michael you can actually rank extremely well going the mass tag, lots of interlinking duplicate content route, as long as you don’t have lots of external leaks on your duplicate content pages.
It is true that sometimes tag pages appear in results, but quite often that is for terms you wouldn’t have ranked for if you hadn’t made it a tag page, including things like misspelling.
I have mentioned some of the results I get, and the only possible explanations are massive growth in links (unlikely because it is not massive) or my heavy use of tag pages.
With so many variable in the Google ranking calculations, you can actually rank well taking totally opposite strategies.
My whole site is in supplemental, yet I outrank Matt Cutts for Toolbar Pagerank - at least I have done for the last week or so on multiple datacentres.
Now whilst that isn’t a competitive term, Matt was as always heavily linked to, and has Toolbar Pagerank in the title.
He has every possible SEO advantage over me other than he doesn’t use extensive LSI tagging.
March 20th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
I don’t see why Google has to ‘figure out’ where content belongs. The combination of title tag and key word density will be different for every category. The most relevant category (other posts with the same key word) will get listed. I must be missing something… thanks for replying anyhow.
March 20th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Andy here’s an example of duplicate content on your blog
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Rather%20than%20nudging%20people%20to%20take%20part%20in%20this%20meme%22
Click the “repeat search” to see all the places Google is finding the content. Google “guessed” the best place for the topic was the “memes/feed” page I don’t think that’s the result you are looking for
March 20th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
That is an awesome shirt you got there Michael. You should sell that to the guys at Jinx
-Nick
http://adgridwork.com | free advertising and text link network for bloggers
March 20th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Another way to look at it is this way too. Let’s say you don’t block anything in robots.txt and you have like 70% of your site in the supplemental index. Don’t you think that Google is going to look at that in some way, shape or form and notice the fact that 70% of your pages aren’t really worth indexing and factor that in somehow?
March 20th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Michael I totally agree, but I am not saying what I am doing is perfect.
There is a lot I still need to do with title tags, and some thing are being put off until I switch over design slightly, and that certainly includes cutting off some of the feeds from being indexed.
I hit a similar problem with comments feeds on lots of blogs, including Matts
@tacimala
I would totally agree with you, however I make small changes so I can see the effects in results, and not just on the one site.
I make changes on andybeard.eu I intend to write about and improve things step by step.
The Google patent application revealed on 16th showed they use tags as part of their calculation. My SERPS in both blogsearch and the main google search correlate fairly well, and I have been writing for a number of months about the benefit of using tags, and possibly duplicate content isn’t so evil if there is a benefit in relevance without leaking.
You could easily achieve many powerful linking structures using Wordpress such as “Stacked Pyramids with Tunnels Home” but external links tend to throw a spanner in the works, and you need a lot more internal links to compensate.
March 20th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
That is the most brilliant point you have yet to make. I tested it out and sure enough, you are correct sir.
March 20th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
What about local tagging like with Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin? Having a blog post and a duplicate page with the /tag/
Isn’t that another duplicate issue that should do disallowed in the robots.txt?
March 20th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
And we should also not assign more than one category to a post? DOH I’ve been doing this for the last year! Time to edit 150+ posts?
March 20th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
>external links tend to throw a spanner in the works
Well I’m almost always outlink friendly so …
As far as creating dupe with tags I’ve seen more than one potential client create millions, yes more than one and yes millions, of duplicate cross linked tag pages, when more of your site is supplemental than not supplemental you’ve got issues
March 20th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
I find that if you have enough pagrank that a default wordpress blog with all it’s “noise” (including the stOOpid archives) does just as Andy says. The noise actually benefits you (look at Matt Cutts blog to see this in motion) It is kind of interesting though, there are examples that just do not make sense until you look further.
You can hot rod wordpress blogs but each individual one has a unique footprint and requires just the right amount of salt and pepper.
If you are worried about changes to your blog structure and Google do not worry, Google takes a few days to get used to the changes but as for benefiting with higher rankings because you have a wordpress blog you do so simply because of simple things like your RSS feed, sitemaps and trust via Google webmaster tools. *takes breath*
March 20th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Was curious if anyone has tried out the Semiologic plugin/theme for Wordpress. I “think” they have a free and a professional version. I have heard very good things about how it makes tweaks that will improve theme relevancy. The pro version is not cheap at $295 so I would love to know if anyone thinks it is worth the investment.
March 20th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
My spidey sense is tingling for a sock puppet endorsement …
March 20th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Love the videos. I have wondered which was the best way to control the dup content w/ wordpress. Siloing makes sense.
March 21st, 2007 at 11:23 am
Michael this was the first I have heard that Aaron has even tested some of the things I have been writing about for months.
I am actually shocked he did test it, and mentioned doing so, because we often don’t see eye-to-eye on many things.
Hmm I wonder if he put a large blogroll on his test site
It is actually interesting that you criticise people for regurgitating the same content, but then when people write original material, and one person decides to test it and then mentions it in your comments, you think he is a “sock puppet”.
My first comment was “This is just one possible alternative”
I am not saying your method is better or worse that what I discuss.
Your method could also be improved by use of dynamic linking and reducing the number of sitewide links to unrelated or unimportant content.
March 21st, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Andy, I spent two years doing what Michael talks about then when you challenged me to make some noise I tested your theory and sure enough, it had no ill effect BUT at the same time it did not improve my rankings in Google. In other words, Google understands blogs now (they didn’t a year or two back and it was a mess). Think about it, if you were trying to make a more balanced algorithm and by removing noise someone could outrank someone else, what would you do? I believe Google is trying to avoid having a very few skilled webmasters and SEOs ruling the conversation. Throwing blog duplicates into supplementals is nothing compaired to the effort it takes to figure out messy code that is not Wordpress.
If you believe archives (a good example of something duplicate and thrown into supplementals) somehow lowers your rankings, shorten the text snippet or remove the text all together leaving you multiple sitemaps for archives AND categories. There is a correct number of characters that is ok and a word Adam Lasnik from Google used to describe this but I do not have time to find this reference. This goes along with Google’s guidelines BTW, multiple sitemaps are good.
As for two full pages that are identical, well then you are making Google choose so that could be an area to fix to help the crawlers as Michael correctly mentions.
You ask about blogrolls Andy? I have a video clip of Vanessa Fox saying something like “We ignore everything in the sidebars, headers and footers if you follow me.
Michael seems to be more fucused on traffic, if something is true or not no longer seems to matter? What’s up with you man?
March 21st, 2007 at 5:41 pm
This is the perfect timing for this video. I started looking into this in the morning, and I take a break to read my feeds, and I see this video.
I was just struggling with the idea of whether to disallow /feed/ in my robots.txt, but I see you don’t. Having a full feed, is there any reason for this?
Anyway, GREAT video, and hopefully many MANY more to come. Learning while eating lunch or dinner is great.
March 21st, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Not wanting to spam your comments, but have you considered saving some time with this and using Wordpress Bundles ? (visit http://www.wordpressbundles.com or just search G for Wordpress Bundles).
It needs an update, but the SEO/SEM bundle makes the whole process of launching (and maintaining) an optimized blog a hell of a lot easier - even the installer is customized.
As for ranking - it definately works. In fact, the demo worked TOO well (if thats possible).
PS: The video could use a little extra ambient lighting..
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Aren’t you breaking your own rule by not having nofollow tags on the homepage links pointing to the bulk of the articles that appear on the home page? Shouldn’t everything from the homepage be “nofollowed” except for the links to your categories?
Vic
March 23rd, 2007 at 5:19 am
I would prefer to keep the internal link structure, but only hide your text in certain areas.
For example: Instead of putting your archives in the robots.txt i would use a wordpress script to hide the text of the post and only showing the links to you post.
you can do it like this:
Text of your post (something like "the_content")
you can see it on my page, although you might not understand my “local language”:
http://www.lopsta.com
March 23rd, 2007 at 5:19 am
oh, i tried to post some code, didn’t work.
March 23rd, 2007 at 7:50 am
Michael if you do the same search again, you will find that that stray feed isn’t ranking now.
It does normally take Google around 7 days from first discovery to work out linking patterns, and the permalink page plus the various archives gain a lot more different links than anything other than my main feed.
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:19 am
Hey ,
that video is great! Hope that there’ll follow more videos from you :).
Greetings
March 23rd, 2007 at 9:27 am
You kept talking about the “more” feature in your video when posting on a Wordpress blog…what exactly did you mean?
-Peter Kleitsch
March 23rd, 2007 at 10:54 am
Strategy depends on the percentage of your site sitting in the supplemental index. If you have over 50% of your site excluded from the main index, I would recommend following Michael’s suggestions. If you don’t have problems with supplemental pages, then I wouldn’t talk anyone out of taking Andy Beard’s route. The internal links on catery/archive pages will improve your ranking as long as those pages stay in the main index. Ultimately, you can play fast and loose once you have enough people linking to you.
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:03 am
AKA PageRank
Well said Halfdeck. =P
March 23rd, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Ahhh. You should take your cameras white balance off auto if you can. It keeps changing and flickering throughout the video.
March 24th, 2007 at 12:03 am
Nice video.
Instead of using the more tag I simply changed the setting to display summaries rather than full articles:
Options -> Reading -> Syndication Feeds -> For each article, show: Summary
March 24th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
re: tags and blogrolls mentioned here, any thoughts on Philipp’s review of the Google blog ranking patent - http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-03-20-n24.html
March 24th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Philipp credited that information to Search Engine RoundTable and more specifically Bill Slawski
http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=541
I also did my own analysis and spotted a couple of things that Bill missed.
March 26th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Google is a 3 year old! Funny but true. Thanks for the wonderful analogy.
March 28th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Great video. I have a question related video content. Is it necessary to keep wordpress from following the pages that are shown when the “more” tag is followed since it’s the same content? If so, would it be Disallow: /*#more ? Thanks for the video!
March 31st, 2007 at 9:50 am
I was wondering the same thing about the “more” tag. I use it on my blog, and sometimes I see links coming in to toshuo.com/2007/blablablah/#more-thepostnumber
Won’t that confuse the crawlers? Also, do you know of any way to change the behavior of the more tag to make it link to the post’s normal permalink?
April 8th, 2007 at 11:42 am
I would like to say you don’t need to worry about this. You are in the top 5 in the keyword phrase ‘SEO blog wordpress’. Good job!
April 9th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Even more importantly, putting #more onto the end of your URLs is just ugly.
April 26th, 2007 at 5:58 am
[...] Share This [...]
May 8th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Thanks for the video. Everything you have stated was clear and easily understood.
One query:
I have found that by simply widgetising a wordpress install blog and not using the calender widget tends to fix the core supplemental problem.
Maybe for your average hoe blogger thats an easier fix?
regards
patrick.
May 10th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Greywolf thx for this video!
May 12th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
I wanted to know what is the best CMS that is compatible with Word Press? Right now I only a regular site set up that uses only xhtml/css. I know this isn’t directly related to the video but I figured everyone here’s Word Press users.
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:00 am
I’ve SEO’ed my website. It’s so easy with wordpress!
Great video
May 28th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Great video… I am learning on setting up my own wordpress blog and this video contains great info… in an easy to learn video…
Thanks.
May 29th, 2007 at 7:46 am
Thank you for the vid and the SEO firefox add-on link. I’ve discovered that I have 149,000 supplemental links. That explains a lot.
June 17th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Michael - Really good video full of tips thanks
June 27th, 2007 at 9:37 am
The video was very informative. Thanks!!
July 3rd, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Thanks for the tips. I see this duplicate content issue is far more complex than I used to think it is.
Waiting for new seo videos!
July 7th, 2007 at 10:29 am
great post… thanx
July 15th, 2007 at 1:37 am
To me it comes down to just a few things. 1) research search phrases 2) use relevant content 3) get quality inbound links 4) ensure you use permalinks 5) No duplicate content
July 26th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Isn’t there a better way than blocking your archives completely in your robots.txt file? If you have a solid archives page that cuts content off after a short number of words, (probably b4 the more tag even), you should be in good shape with regards to duplicate content.
August 5th, 2007 at 11:45 am
It’s very beautifully.
August 15th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
thanks… good article
September 7th, 2007 at 2:08 am
Very blog -:)
September 10th, 2007 at 2:08 am
Probably the best 4.5 minutes I have spent in a long time. Thanks for the tips.
September 20th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Thx 4 all.
September 28th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Nice Site!
October 1st, 2007 at 3:14 am
Very blog -:)
November 16th, 2007 at 3:39 am
very good
November 21st, 2007 at 12:46 pm
good.
November 21st, 2007 at 12:46 pm
thanks
November 21st, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Good blog…
November 21st, 2007 at 12:48 pm
very goodd…