I wrote a general SEO Tutorial some years ago, the vast majority of this search engine optimization tutorial is still relevant, but like the rest of the world I’ve moved on and now use WordPress as an SEO CMS and so this WordPress SEO Tutorial will concentrate on WordPress users. This tutorial will still be very useful to non WordPress users, but there’s going to be a lot of highly WordPress SEO specific search engine optimization information.
I also sell WordPress SEO/AdSense Ready themes and will aim this SEO tutorial at my customers to help them get the very best search engine optimization out of my WordPress SEO themes.
The WordPress SEO/AdSense themes sold on this website supports the WordPress SEO Plugins. The plugins add useful features not already present within WordPress out the box. It is well worth taking 15 minutes reading the features of these WordPress plugins, it can make search engine optimizing your WordPress blog much easier.
WordPress SEO
The majority of my WordPress theme customers are looking to incorporate AdSense into their sites to monetize their content and not SEO their WordPress content per se. This is a BIG mistake, although WordPress out the box with almost any WordPress theme is better than your average website from an SEO perspective, WordPress is clearly NOT designed by an SEO expert for maximum search engine results (it’s very good, but it’s not awesome).
My WordPress AdSense/SEO themes include the very best SEO template optimization code possible** and so even if you didn’t have a clue what SEO was when you wrote your content, the SEO theme code will help a LOT with search engine ranking. That being said there is also a lot more you can do to improve the SEO of your WordPress blogs content especially when using one of my AdSense/SEO themes.
** If you can find a better Search Engine Optimized WordPress theme for free or paid (that’s not stolen my SEO code) I will give you a copy of any one of my SEO/AdSense themes for free! This offers been available for as long as this template sites been live and to date not one person’s even tried to claim a free WordPress theme.
Lets cover the technical details first, please note some of the information described in this SEO Tutorial will sound like you need a computer programming degree to perform if you’ve never attempted similar before. My wife is a bit of a technophobe, she just doesn’t get it fast! So I’ve learnt to explain computer terminology in a VERY detailed way that almost anyone can follow (I have to write little computer tutorials for my wife 
). Be patient and I’m sure even the least confident WordPress user will be able to get this working just as I do on my WordPress SEO’d blogs. If you do get a little stuck feel free to post a comment and I’ll try to help out.
WordPress SEO Tutorial
1. WordPress SEO Friendly Permalinks
2. Naming Your WordPress Blog for Better Search Engine Rankings
3. WordPress SEO Title Tag Optimization
4. WordPress SEO Meta Tags Optimization
Website - WordPress SEO
18 responses to WordPress SEO Tutorial
WordPress SEO CMS Migration
I am interested in moving my website or at least creating subdomains and hosting a wordpress CMS
I understand totally what you are saying about SEO and I would rather pay for a genuine guru like you to assist via the templates --
however -- where do i get started?
where do i go and what do i do?
WordPress SEO Installation Service
I don’t offer a WordPress installation service or anything like that. I offer SEO services, but currently only taking on long term SEO clients and even then I’m very picky which domains I work with, has to interest me as I get way to many potential customers to take them all on.
All that being said my Talian 05 theme (linked on the menu) is the only WordPress theme I use on my own sites. If I did take on WordPress work it would be installing Talian 05 and to be honest I’ve set it up so well most people can use the theme to setup a site running WordPress as an SEO CMS using Talian 05: takes me about 15 minutes to install WordPress with everything I use, not worth charging for something like that.
My sites like http://www.45-year-old-millionaire.co.uk/ and http://www.chileblogs.com/ (wife’s site
) are Talian 05 out the box with a few clicks of the mouse on the Talian admins screen (so no template file editing needed).
David
WordPress SEO Tutorial
WordPress YouTube Preview
How do I show YouTube previews in my blog posts?
I like the theme but my YouTube posts all went to Text.
Post Teaser WordPress SEO Plugin
The Talian theme shouldn’t have any negative impact on embedded code.
Is the problem on the actual blog posts or the archives like Categories/Home Page etc…?
If it’s with archives that will be because the theme is set to show an excerpt of posts on archive pages to reduce duplicate content problems. If this is the problem suggests you’ve been using a theme that shows the entire blog post on archive pages (not a good idea SEO wise).
If this is the issue (if the site you’ve linked to in your author name is the site, it is the issue) there’s a plugin at http://www.google-adsense-templates.co.uk/wordpress-seo-plugins “Post Teaser WordPress SEO Plugin” this uses the full content of a post to generate an excerpt which means embedded code and HTML (links, images etc…) is shown on archive pages if it falls in the excerpt.
I see you are using a WordPress autoblog plugin, I’ve been playing around with those types of plugins recently and they can generate a lot of high bandwidth content on your home page if you use themes that show full posts. I have my own quite powerful dedicated server and even using the Post Teaser plugin generates home pages with a lot of images, YouTube videos so for that type of site I’ve not activated the plugin (I tend to use the Post Teaser WordPress SEO Plugin on most sites as well).
There’s also an SEO argument for using an HTML free archive pages (like the default Talian 05 theme creates) on autoblogs as they have quite a lot of affiliate links and though you want to send your traffic to Amazon etc… majority of your traffic is going to be long tail SERPs that go direct to the blog post with the content rather than archive pages, so it can be argued you only need the affiliate links on the blog posts.
If you do use the plugin above and want full posts for posts on archive pages set the number of words to a high number so the entire post is shown.
David
WordPress SEO Tutorial
WordPress SEO Plugin Installed
Thanks. The plugin worked.
Can’t say that I understood most of the rest of your post.
I am relatively new to this game.
SEO Post Teaser Plugin
LOL, should have just said use the SEO Post Teaser Plugin
Glad it solved the problem.
David
Google AdSense TOS Infringement
It says that you can have a maximum of 3 ad blocks in Google’s Adsense TOS.
I setup Talian 05 and I find it has 5-6 blocks.
How can I limit the number of Adsense blicks to 3?
No Google AdSense TOS Infringement
Actually it’s 6 AdSense ad units per page, 3 content AdSense ad units and 3 search AdSense ad units.
The Talian 05 theme is set to show 6 AdSense ad units by default (3 of each). If you use widgets and don’t know what you are doing you could add 8 as there’s 4 AdSense widgets (2 different formats) for the sidebars.
One format shows a header saying “Adverts” for the content ad unit and “Related Searches” for the search ad unit. The other format has no headers at all. Only add one content and one search ad unit as widgets and you’ll not go above the 6 ad unit limit.
It’s explained in the Talian readme files as well.
You can disable any of the 6 AdSense ad unit locations by editing the adsense.php file, there’s instructions within the file.
Basically changing a 0 to a 1 disables an ad unit. for example to disable the search ad unit above the banner image change
$HeaderAd = array(30,1,0,0,6);to
$HeaderAd = array(30,1,1,0,6);Trying to think of a way to include this in the Talian admin page, but so far not found a suitable solution, would results in adding 11 more options.
David
WordPress SEO Tutorial
WordPress SEO Post Teaser Plugin Options?
Hi David
I have a problem with Youtube videos not playing so I installed your SEO Post-Teaser but there is still no link on the post?
http://exceptionalproductreviews.com/
Any Ideas?
I have Talian Theme and 5 plugins
1.Truncate Title
2.Calais Auto Tagger
3.Google XML Sitemaps with multisite support
4.New Blog Template
5.Massive Passive Plugin which creates WP MU sites and pulls in content from amazon and Youtube etc
Thanks in advance!
WordPress SEO Tutorial
WordPress SEO Post Teaser Plugin
I see the SEO Teaser Plugin is working.
Do you mean on the current top two posts (YouTube videos) lack the continue reading link at the bottom?
If so that’s normal behaviour for the plugin, if a post is small and the plugin posts all the content on the archive page (like your home page) it leaves the Continue Reading link off as there’s nothing more to read. There’s still the link at the top of that post (the title of the post) and the comments link to get to the post.
You can setup the Post Teaser Plugin to show that link if you want.
Under the Post teaser settings page under
“If the post is displayed in full, I want the message to be in the following format:”
Replace the contents of the box with:
Continue reading <a href="%permalink%"><strong>%title%</strong></a><br /><em>%word_image_count%, reading time ~ %reading_time%</em>Update Settings and all posts will show the link.
David
WordPress SEO Tutorial
WordPress SEO
I often try WordPress SEO but never appear @google…
Debug WordPress Plugins
David
I am an ID10T when it comes to fault finding. I have installed a few plug-ins based upon the recommendations made by a few brilliant people like yourself. (I bought Talian template from you!)
I am experiencing something strange: My Categories are not working correctly -- when I click on the category that is the “default”, no problem. When I click on any of the other links it reports that no content can be found.
WordPress Plugins installed:
———————
Massive Passive Profits Plugin
Platinum SEO Pack
SEO Super Comments for Talian 05
WP Auto Tagger
WPEasyContent, Platinum Edition (Deactivated)
To see what I mean, goto and click the categories (Top left).
Also, my site looks BAD! What do I have to change to make it look like this site of yours? I also want to include the “LINKS” widgit as on your page.
Please help and any suggestions would be most welcome.
This is my first site -- when I am happy with this one, I will create many more provided I can get this one to work correctly and look more pleasing.
Thank you in advance!
Barry
WordPress SEO Tutorial
SEO Friendly WordPress Permalinks Tutorial
Check your WordPress Permalinks Settings and the .htaccess file that’s crated by those settings. Looks like you’ve either made a mistake on the Permalinks settings page and/or on the .htaccess file.
SEO Friendly WordPress Permalinks might help.
I would strongly advise not using the “Platinum SEO Pack” plugin, you’ve made some awful SEO settings (you’ve nofollowed Categories and Tags, BIG mistake) that’s going to seriously damage your sites SEO by deleting link benefit and making it harder for search engines to spider your site! Never use nofollow or a plugin that uses nofollow as an ‘SEO feature’.
You’ve gone a bit overboard on the ads. In my experience AdSense tends to perform better than anything else so prioritise the AdSense ads near the top on your sidebar. The AdSense link ad units however perform poorly so if you are running more than one ad system don’t add the link ad unit to the sidebar. In the next update will be easier to disable ads within the content, has to be as you’ll have Chitika ads as well as an option. Also added Kontera, Infolinks and Linkwords for the intext ads as well.
For the Link widget go to the widgets page and drag and drop a links widget on one of th sidebars.
Take a look at the WordPress SEO Plugins page for plugins like the Post Teaser Plugin that can make your site more attractive.
In the update there’s some built in features like using featured images/other images on the archive pages so there are images even without using the Post Teaser plugin. If you add YouTube videos to posts the archive links to them will use the YouTube screenshot like a featured image for that post. You can see it on my youngest sons site Caleb Law Digital Artist as he’s testing Stallion 6 and writing reviews (he’s going to add an affiliate link when I release the Stallion affiliate program
).
David
WordPress SEO Tutorial
WordPress SEO Plugins
David
THANK YOU for this reply and all the awesome advice! Like I said, I am still an ID10T but that will hopefully change as I learn more.
I have de-activated and deleted the Platinum SEO Pack. It stands to reason that Talian is ALREADY OPTIMISED for SEO and in addition I am also using SEO Super Comments? (Nothing else really required)
I will also install the Post Teaser Plugin as suggested.
Something for you to look at in Talian: (Bug?)
1. Using FireFox: The “Read more” link at the bottom of the post is clickable -- but when I click it, I am taken right back to where I was -- I still cannot see the full post. (Might be my own self induced problem)
2.Using IE 8: The “Read more” link is NOT clickable.(Bug?)
For both FireFox and IE 8 above: When I hover my mouse on the TAGS displayed at the bottom of the post (Auto-Tagger) -- For example: “Buy Ipad” the IE 8 and FireFox toolbar on the bottom of the page also shows iPad/ but when I hover my mouse over the Read more link in IE 8 nothing is shown (That is why it is not clickable!), in FireFox is shows the path as:
I went over my settings many times and cannot find where I could have made this mistake. The only place where I could find this is on my PermaLinks settings: Custom: /%PostName%/ . Category Base and Tags are still blank.
As to the no-follow, I cannot find any settings. Must have been removed when I removed Platinum SEO.
Just to check, I visited your son’s site. The same “Read more” link on the bottom of the post is clickable in FireFox and IE8 AND the full post is shown.
Now I can only think that my website is FUBAR! Maybe I must just wipe everything and start over? Unless you could detect my stupidity from everything I said above?
(PS: I also discovered that my backlink setting in Talian to you is off -- it is now ON! Sorry!)
WordPress SEO Tutorial
WordPress SEO Permalinks
The Platinum SEO Pack Plugin would have been responsible for the nofollow links, as you’ve disabled it they have been removed.
The messed up URLs for posts etc… that have a URL ending %PostName% will be related to the Permalinks settings and/or the .htaccess file.
Under
Settings >> Permalinks
The Custom Structure box should contain something like:
/%postname%
Looks like you are using
/%PostName%
The uppercase P and N is the problem, it’s not recognised by WordPress as postname. Change it to
/%postname%
And the problem should be fixed.
BTW You don’t have to link back here, that’s why there’s the option to turn the links off (it’s your site). In Stallion 6 those links will turn into Clickbank affiliate links if you add your Clickbank username on the main options page (like you do with Talian 5) so if you leave them on and a visitor clicks on the links and orders Stallion 6 you get part of the sale price.
David
WordPress SEO Tutorial
WordPress SEO Permalinks Tutorial
David
I nearly wiped my website! BUT thanks to you, the PROBLEM is now fixed! Everything is working as it is supposed to!
It is people like you that make ID10Ts like me continue and not give up hope! THANK YOU!
At least I know I can now continue with my other micro niche sites without further problems. You really don’t know how much this means to me.
Please put me on your “early notifier list for “Stallion 6″.
Take care
Barry
WordPress SEO Tutorial
Best WordPress SEO Theme
Hi Dave,
I got the theme going great now.Looks like the seo is the best yet.I was using an seo optimizer software that ranks pages from A to D.I got my main page an A+.Oh also found a plugin that was messing up the theme also.
WordPress Image Alt Text Optimization
I have a website. But the visitors are poor.
Someone advised to optimize my image and use alt tags to get more traffic.
But how shall i do that.
Can you give me a guide line or web link from where i can be benifited.
Leave a reply to WordPress SEO Tutorial