5 Point SEO Checklist for WordPress Bloggers
by vinay gautam
Checkpoint #1: Gut Check
Before you even write a new blog post, seriously ask yourself if what you’re writing about is useful, interesting and fresh for your readers.
Sometimes, we bloggers become so focused on constantly creating content that we don’t put out our very best 100% of the time. To help you out with your own quality checks, here are four blogging styles which I’ve found to be the most valuable to readers:
- Write a step by step tutorial on how to do something
- Write about something controversial or “edgy”
- Write a list of tips, like a top 10 or “5 Tips for___”
- Write about something newsworthy
This might not seem to have anything to do with SEO, but it does. Readers want good content and Google wants to see that you’re attracting people who are actually reading your content. So before you write or post anything, run a gut check and ask yourself if it’s good enough to be published with your name on it.
Checkpoint #2: Turn on the Rankings By Turning on the Traffic
You don’t always have to wait for traffic to come to you from the search engines.
Sending your own traffic from the beginning can actually help kick start your search engine rankings.
Repeat visits are good for SEO, and so are long page visit times. This is why you should do everything you can to get your blogs off to a good start from the moment you post them. If you have a Twitter following, and email list or just a lot of Facebook friends, send a shout out and ask them to come check out your new post.
This isn’t organic traffic, but if you’re in the habit of doing this every time you publish a post, you’ll get a lot of repeat visits…and from people who will actually spend time reading your posts. When the search engines see that you’re getting repeat visits and long on site times from the start, they’ll be more likely to rank your content high.
Checkpoint #3: Be Ready to Engage Your Readers
Have you noticed that your posts usually get a spike in traffic right after there have been some comments posted?
This is because user generated content is the most valuable kind of content in the eyes of the search engines. So be sure you’re ready to respond quickly to people who leave comments on your blogs and that you have some good Social Plugins installed for soliciting responses from readers.
WPMU DEV makes a WordPress plugin for Google + and for Facebook. I also suggest the “1-click-retweet/share/like” WordPress plugin which lets your readers share your content via Facebook, Twitter and Google + . The more “social votes” and comments you get on your blog posts, the better change you’ll have of getting traffic and rankings.
So when you get your first comment, respond quickly and keep the conversation going. If you keep the conversation going, your post could end up generating repeat traffic AND new traffic for years.
Checkpoint #4: Relevant Keywords, Tags, Titles and Meta Descriptions
Okay, this sounds really obvious, but sometimes the simplest actions are the ones we tend to overcomplicate. Instead of trying to use several keywords or tags in your WordPress blogs and your page titles, narrow your focus and choose only two or three.
You can use either the WPMU DEV Infinite SEO plugin or the “All in One SEO Pack” to add your meta information to your WordPress posts and don’t try to optimize for too many keyword phrases. Relevancy is, and probably always will be, very important for search engine rankings. I’ve seen credible sites receive penalties just from deviating a little bit from their primary topics.
At the same time, sites which are laser focused on a narrow range of topics and keywords and which keep their meta information simple receive the majority of the traffic for those terms.
Checkpoint #5: Publish or Perish
You’ve probably heard this ^ saying before, and it’s just as true today on the internet as it was back in the “old days” of print publishing. If you want traffic to your site, sometimes you have to put your content where the traffic is, build up your credibility with them and use that to up your repeat visits and to gain more credibility with the search engines.
Publishing your blogs only on your blog isn’t the ideal practice if you want to attract traffic and rankings. There are probably several highly traffic and credible content sharing sites within your niche where you could bookmark your content and invite people to come back to your site and read it.
Make it a point to discover these sites and to get your content published on them on a consistent basis. This will not only help you get repeat visits, but it could help you to build a following on that site, which will make it easy for you to turn those readers into repeat visitors for your site.
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