Wordpress Plugins for SEO

Almost everyone has heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What is it? Wikipedia defines SEO as “…a subset of search engine marketing that seeks to improve the number and quality of visitors to a web site from “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.” Put in plain english, SEO is anything you do to your website to maximize it’s visibilty in Google, Yahoo, MSN, and any other search engine spider that comes crawling your way.

So what are some things that you can do to move your site up in the rankings? If you use Wordpress, as many blogs do, you can start by installing the following plugins to give yourself a leg-up on the competition. You can see them all in action on billda.com.

• Google Sitemap Generator

This plugin will automatically generate a Google Sitemap for all the pages in your Wordpress database, and resubmit your sitemap to Google whenever you post something new. A sitemap tells Google where all the pages on your site are, and increases the chance that Google will fully index all your content.

• Head META Generator

Automatically inserts a meta description tag for your blog, inserting a dynamic description depending on the page being viewed. Search engines use this tag to link your site with search keywords, and to generate a short summary of what your site is about.

• Optimal Title

Replaces the default wp_title() function that generates titles in the form “Blog Name -> Post Name”. This format doesn’t put your content first, and can be confusing in search results. The plugin changes the default behavior to generate titles in the more readable “Postname -> Blog Name” format.

• Permalink Redirect

Ensures that there is only one URL for each blog entry. By default, Wordpress with accept URLs with or without a trailing slash. However, this means there are actually two URLs for each blog entry, and your hits and linkbacks will be split between the two. Permalink Redirect uses a search engine friendly 301 redirect to ensure your site isn’t penalized by Google or sabotaged by your competitors.

That’s all I’ve got in terms of SEO, however in the next few days I’ll have a post detailing ALL my favorite Wordpress Plugins (and everything I use on this site).

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