Plugins are one of the great things about using WordPress. Being able to easily change the way your blog works with out having to dig into the code is one of the great advantages.

These can be used to improve the way your blog works.

Today I want to talk about two that can help your blog be more search engine friendly for the terms you are targeting. The first is a plugin to edit your title tags called All In One SEO.

Now before I get into what this does and why you should use it lets discuss one of the strengths and weaknesses inherent in WordPress. There are thousands of plugins written by hundreds of different programmers and for most things there are multiple plugins that will work.

Unfortunately because there are so many plugin authors not all of them will play nice together. Although there are more than a few plugins that will do what All In One SEO does or at least something similar I recommend this one and all of the other plugins I use because they have been tested together with the current version of WordPress.

One of the downsides is that the package of plugins will change over time due to changes in the WordPress script, plugin authors not continuing to develop them, etc. So if you are coming to this post a few months from now check my blog here for any updates because the package of compatible plugins is always subject to change.

All In One SEO will allow you to change your title tags on your blog for each post so you can target the keywords you want to rank for with good titles. This will definitely allow you to rank higher for those terms over using generic title tags of WordPress.

The second must have plugin is Simple Tags. One of the biggest things I use this plugin for is to add related posts to each post. This is important because your visitors from the search engines are not coming to your home page but to your individual posts.

Having related posts on the same subject allows visitors to find items that may be similar and may actually be the answer they seek easily.

These are just two of five must have plugins that will be covered in much more detail on the free call on WordPress SEO this coming Wednesday along with a lot more information on many topics related to making your blog rank high in the search engines for the keywords you are targeting. Sign up and plan to attend.

Free WordPress SEO Call

Hope to see you there.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. Get the details at Profitable Blog Steps

Technorati Tags: All-in-one-seo, plugins, serp raniking, simple tags, wordpress seo

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Yesterday’s post caused a few questions about tagging and Simple Tags.

The first had to do with setting the no follow. One of the items in the general settings is to make tag links use the no follow attribute. It is easy to do you just check the box and click update under the general setting

The other setting I like to change from the default is in the related posts section. I set it to show 5 related posts under each post on both the blog and feed. Because most visitors arrive at your site on a specific post this gives them related topics you have covered on other posts. It also adds related interior linking of your posts.

The other question was about the tag clouds. Having a tag cloud displayed allows the spiders to find and index your various tag pages which I have found gets the blog indexed deeper and often creates a double listing for certain keywords in Google. Both the appropriate post and the tag page get listed.

Any extra listings I can get in my buddy Google are a good thing as I see it and why I always use a tag cloud. Can’t prove it but do know that before I started using the tag cloud I was not seeing the double listings and within a week of adding the tag cloud it became very common.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

 Tags and Simple Tag Information [2:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Technorati Tags: search ranking, simple tags, tag cloud, tags

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Todays question:

You mention “I always want to add tags to my posts, I may want a custom title tag and description ” I just recently read a post saing that SEO All In One Plugin is not as usefull as it once was. Is that your opinion as well?

When you mention Title tag and description do you mean in the WordPress Custom field? Do you use the Excerp field and is it usefull.

I still like and use the All In One SEO plugin. I have seen people recommending Headspace2 as an alternative but it won’t work with this theme so I have not used it. It does look promising and may test it on a blog without the flexibility theme but at this point haven’t used it so impossible to say.

The custom title tag is added in the tile area under All In One SEO Pack when you are editing the post.

It is helpful but not necessary to add a custom description and keywords to this section also but the title is the really important item for how your post will rank.

The tags and having a tag cloud that will get indexed are also important but do use a plugin like Simple Tags and make them no follow through the settings.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

 Title Tags and All In One SEO plugin [2:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Technorati Tags: All-in-one-seo, description, keywords, simple tags, tags, title tags

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3 Easy Tips To Improve Your WordPress Blog

Copyright 2009 – Mike Paetzold – All worldwide rights reserved

Here are 3 easy ways to improve your WordPress blog and get better search engine rankings for your blog.

There is no doubt that the Big G likes blogs and one of the reasons so many people have switched from static websites to blogs. The interlinking inside of the blog is a great help but there is one thing that has not been addressed even in the latest version of WordPress.

Talk to anyone that does seo and invariably they will all agree that your title tag is the most important part of your on site optimization. (And getting any three seo experts to agree on anything is rare.)

Unfortunately, WordPress by default uses your blog title as the title tag across the board.

So the first easy change is…

Add a plugin to change the title tags. This way each page will use the post title as the title tag and you even can use a custom title tag.

The plugin I currently use for this is the All In One SEO plugin but there are many others. One of the things with WordPress is the constant influx of new plugins so this might change in the future as it has in the past more than once.

The second easy change is…

Your images. Make sure when you add images you are using the alt tags and naming your images with keywords. Since the advent of uiniversal search Google is often showing images in the main results. Not likely to get a click on image12896.jpg but if your image was named keyword.jpg it would be more likely.

The header image is a prime example. Most themes call the header image header.jpg or header.gif or something similar. Why not rename it to one of your prime keywords?

**Caveat – You will need to change it in your css file too or it will disappear and you won’t have a header. Just search your css file for the name of your header and change it each time you find it.

The third easy change is….

Use the built in tagging structure in WordPress. Either display the tags with each post or use a tag cloud in your sidebar or footer. This creates new tag pages on your site and will often result in indented rankings for that topic in Google.

This gives you two listings for the same post inside the search engines.

Now I do like to use the Simple Tags plugin as it allows me more functionality than the native tagging inside WordPress. Again though plugin recommendations are always subject to change because of the fluid nature of their development. The key is that you use a plugin when it will improve the functionality and take the time to tag each of your posts.

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About the author – Mike Paetzold is known as an expert on using WordPress for your marketing solutions. For more tips check out his report “7 Tips To Make Your WordPress Blog Search Engine Friendly” or follow his blog at WordPress Made Easy.
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You may use and reprint this article as long as it is posted in it’s entirety and all links and the resource box are included. If you are an affiliate for the book you may substitute your affiliate link for mine.

Technorati Tags: alt tags, search engines. plugin, seo, simple tags, tag, tag cloud, WordPess

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Special guest post from Alex Syseof

Tags in WordPress play a huge role in great many aspects and directly influence your blog performance in such important areas as: Search Engine Optimization, Social Networks relevance and Reader Engagement.

And yet, many fail to realize full potential of WordPress tags and their proper implementation. In this article I would like to address that to some extent…

Tags for Search Engine Optimization

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about tags is – What Are They? Tags are keywords that describe your content, simple as that and yet in that description hides the importance of their proper usage. As keywords they become PART of your url and provide huge boost to Search Engine Relevance.

Using a tag cloud on the sidebar with Do Follow attributes sends search engines to links that include content that includes that tag (keyword) and gives them much needed content. Not only do you get better usage of the archived posts but also boost you rankings.

Interlinking of your posts for SEO using tags is extremely simple. As we all know internal links to relevant content counts by Search Engines not as highly as external links but still counts. Why not take advantage of it? After all – it is FREE SEO Boost!

I personally use “Simple Tags” plugin that uses tags to calculate relevance of the posts to each other and gives you options to display relevant posts under each article. Dynamically calculated SEO relevance that is completely HANDS OFF and on autopilot – Are You Using It?

Social Network Relevance

In this case I’m talking about the Technorati. I know… I know… you might say Technorati looses its power and influence but my personal results indicate that if you do it right – you get some traffic! Key here is getting it right!

First and most important step to this process is obviously to register and claim your blog on Technorati, which I will not cover. But second and yet JUST AS Important is to locate tags within Technorati networks that are most appropriate for YOUR blog. Create a list of those tags and make sure to use at least one of them in EACH post on your blog.

But in order for the Technorati to associate your blog post with one of the tags used – you have to tag that content in a specific format that they recognize. Quite time consuming if you ask me and since I love automating these types of tasks – I installed “Technorati Tags” plugin for WordPress. Just add one line of code to your theme and Voila! Your post is tagged for Technorati re-using your blogs internal tags!

Simple? I would say so and if used consistently it will bring you traffic from Technorati, I guarantee it as long as you picked the right tags and used them!

Reader Engagement

Dynamic and dated format of the blog content is its greatest benefit and at the same time its biggest failure! The older your content becomes – less relevant it becomes in the eyes of the Search Engines but what perhaps is even worse – is in the eyes of The Reader!

You are writing for the people. And while we would like to think that people come and see our blog from it’s front page – my stats shows that over 65% of new visitors land on one of the internal pages! Posts that you might have written in a hurry all of a sudden became the face of your blog and reader finds it irrelevant to his needs – he is looking for a way to click away and never come back!

You have only few options to engage them and hope to retain them by providing MORE relevant and recent content!

Option One: using the “Simple Tags” you present them with a list of tags relevant to the current post articles on your blog. In many cases this will draw them deeper into content.

Option Two: Using Most Recent (latest) articles on your blog’s sidebar. This might help you to present your latest content and engage the reader – provide a clickable link they are looking for and yet, retain them!

Option Three: Tag Cloud. Yep, this one is good not only for Search Engine Optimization but also for reader Engagement. People are getting used to the tags on blogs and realize that Tags are keywords! Clicking on keyword relevant to their search will provide them with access to more content they need! Mission Accomplished.

I hope this quick post helps you see some of the usage of the tools built into your blog and available elsewhere. 2 simple plugins you can install can help you greatly enhance your blog!

Alex Sysoef, is a blogger who shares his knowledge and experience on the pages of his WordPress Web 2.0 Guide blog, wrote this guest post. Visit for even more tips and strategies.

A thank you to Alex for supplying some great tips especially the two plugins that are now part of this blog for testing.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed both here and at Aiex’s blog.

Technorati Tags: alex syseof, search engine optimization, seo, simple tags, tag, tags, technorati, wordpress

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