Do you want to make your WordPress Blog easier to navigate for your readers and subscribers, and make search engines rank your site higher?
Well, there are a few very simple free tasks you can do in the WordPress’s Administrative dashboard like improving the link name of a post, using categories, tags, and pages to better organize your posts, and making custom menus for your sidebar. These tasks require no plug-in installation special software, website account registration, or much technical skills to do.
All these tasks I mention on this article should be safe to do in WordPress without risking messing up your blog. If you don’t like the results of the tasks I talk about when you do it, you can very easily switch back to the previous state since you won’t be installing a new plug-in, accessing your database or FTP server, install theme or editing WordPress HTML and php code which can break your blog if you are not careful.
I’ll mostly talk about making simple changes to link names, and how to better organize your post for improve results for reader satisfaction and search engine optimization.
The first thing you should do is make sure your permalink setting is set to
“Day and name : Â johnsonyip.com/wordpress/2010/09/16/sample-post/” instead of “Default http://johnsonyip.com/wordpress/?p=123″ since “Day and name” tells the readers when the post was publish, and what the title of the post is, so users know how recent the post is and what it is about vs just the post number.
To change your permalink setting, Click on the settings heading in WordPress Administrative dashboard, and click on the Permalink subheading link.
When I search online with most search engines, I notice that website results with keywords which I search for in the link address for the website sometimes link higher, and the links keywords are bold, so there is a greater chance I click on the link in the search results.
Using categories, and tags for your posts will help users find post they are interested in faster. It is also possible to give your categories descriptions in the Categories section in the Posts section of WordPress control panel. In some themes, when a user hover his mouse over the link, there is a description for the category link.
I like to make pages for my most popular/important post on certain topics since it is easier for users to find links about a certain topic vs browsing through the category.
like johnsonyip.com/wordpress/wordpress which lists all my links to my wordpress posts. If you have the time it is best to write a short description for each link to tell the reader what the post you are linking to is about.
I can order and format my links anyway I want and type an explanation about what to expect by reading posts I link to in a certain page on my blog. Plus, page links are more easier to remember since they are single path links like Example.com/page instead of category links which are usually formatted like Example.com/category/page. If is is a subcategory to a main category, the link look something like Example.com/category/subcategory/ which is not as easy to remember compared to example.com/page . It is also harder for search engines to find your categories the deeper they go from blog posts I read, so it is best to not have many sub-paths like example.com/path1/path2/path3/.
Having well organize links in different pages can also act like HTML sitemaps for users and search engine crawlers to use to find your pages easier.Â
It is also worth it to make a main sitemap which lists all your pages on your blog, so people can look at one page and see what is on it like my Sitemap on johnsonyip.com/wordpress/website-map
It is basically a list of links to all the pages on my blog with a short description to tell the user what each page have as its content.
To make a page in WordPress, you click the Pages heading in WordPress Administrative dashboard, and click the Add New link. Be sure to give your page a descriptive title, but not make it overly long. 3 words or less is best.
Read my story on making How to Make WordPress 3.0 Custom Sidebar Navigation Menu , so users can find your links to pages or categories better in the sidebar.
Also, make sure In Settings , Writing, http://rpc.pingomatic.com/Â is in Update services since Pingomatic notify sites that your site is updated.
Lastly, make sure your Settings, Privacy is set to “I would like my site to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers” otherwise Search engines and archivers will ignore your website.
How to make your post faster to please readers and Search Engine Crawler bots.
If you feel your blog is slow, and you install a lot of plug-ins, you can deactivate some plug-ins in the plug-ins section of WordPress by clicking on the Plugins then plugin links and deactivating a few plug-ins which you do not need anymore. Having too many plug-ins can really slow down the load time of your blog.
Use the “More Button” (which is the button on the post editors with two squares and a dash line in the middle of the button) when posting very long posts with lots of images . This makes your blog post not as long in your homepage, and the user need to click your title link or the “Read more” link at the end of the post on the homepage to read your entire article. This can also decrease your bounce rate since when the user visit your homepage and then clicks your title link, so he visits two pages instead of just one.
In Settings, Reading in WordPress Administrative Dashboard set your maximum post to 4 or 5 posts and set feed to Summary if it is on Full. This can speed up your page load time.
Having a optimize blog for readers and search engine friendliness can improve both your credibility, and traffic since users are more likely to come back, and might recommend your blog to other people via their blogs or word of mouth which can give you back links and more direct traffic. This means you can reach more people.
However, it is best to also focus on having great content on a daily basis which is worth reading since people and search engine crawler will come to your site on a daily basis. Your blog can be an authority on a certain topic over time if your content is great for your blogs content.