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 )?

We’ve all heard of Google bombing and we’ve all had some fun over the years with it. Google bombing is when you create lots of links to a site with specific keywords. For instance, have everyone link to the George Bush website with the words ‘miserable failure’.

Google bowling is not so fun. Bots crawl the net, link to your site using terms better suited to pornography websites or other such shady sites. This can and will hurt your Google ranking and more than a few webmasters have been victimized.

There is little you can do except have an overwhelming collection of legit links to your site. Something not so easy for small websites.

It seems to be happening in very competitive areas on the web. For now, watch out for it. In time I’m sure Google will learn to filter these links out.

Keywords are the words that people type into search engines like Google and Yahoo when they want to find information. For instance people looking for house plant information might type ‘house plants’, ‘houseplants’, ‘house plant care’, etc.

When you write your blog entry you want to use those same keywords in your blog entry. And use them in the post title.  This will give you a higher placement for those terms and make it easier for customers to find you.

There are several free sites that will help you find and choose keywords:
Overture excellent site when up.
SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool
Free Keyword suggestion tool