Herself's Webtools

Always there are trade offs. The more information you pull from your database to put in each page, the greater the drain on your server.

To do well in search engine rankings you want individual titles and meta descriptions for each individual page. To do this in WordPress you pull the information from the database in your header.php file.

When I ran into server problems I took this out and yes, it hurt my search engine rankings. Now that I’m with Media Temple and things seem to be running smooth I’m adding them back in.

Most, but not all, themes do have the title customized, few have meta tags customized and even fewer have them done properly.

To have an individual title for each separate post and page use this in place of the current title<title>…</title> in your header file.

<title><?php if (is_single() || is_page() || is_archive()) { wp_title(”,true); } else { bloginfo(‘name’); echo(‘ &#8212; ‘); bloginfo(‘description’); } ?></title>

To have a customized meta description for each page and post use this in your head.php file

<?php if (is_single() || is_page() ) : if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
<meta name=”description” content=”<?php the_excerpt_rss(); ?>” />
<?php endwhile; endif; elseif(is_home()) : ?>
<meta name=”description” content=”<?php bloginfo(‘description’); ?>” />
<?php endif; ?>

I looked at several SEO optimized themes at WordPress and very few had the custom meta tags.

To see if the meta tag is working on your site pull up an individual post:

In your browser look for view->page->source

Look through the top of the page source and you should see <meta description and specific information for that page.

To see if the custom title is working bookmark the page and see if the title defaults to your blog name or the title of that page.

How do I know Google wants this.  Google told me.  Are you using Google Webmaster Tools?

And have you read Google Search Engine Optimization Guide ( pdf )?