Ask the Blogger!

Question: We all know that WordPress isn’t really SE friendly because of the duplicate content it produces in other categories, monthly archive, etc… and many found ways to solve this problem. Just wanna ask your opinion. What is the “best” way to optimize a WP blog?

First off, let me comment on your first statement, as it’s important for me to clarify my position on this. You said…

We all know that WordPress isn’t really SE friendly because of the duplicate content it produces in other categories, monthly archive, etc…

I very much disagree with your assessment that Wordpress is search engine unfriendly because of duplicate content. I have seen zero proof to show me that that is true. It is simply not true, and concentrating your time worrying about it is a complete waste of time.

I should make this perfectly clear. Going to put this in bold and all caps because I want everyone to understand something very, very important.

GOOGLE WANTS HIGH-QUALITY, RELEVANT CONTENT, PERIOD. IF YOU SPEND TIME DOING ANYTHING BUT WRITING GOOD CONTENT, THEN YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO RANK WELL LONG-TERM.

Now, back to your original question, in case everyone forgot :) You asked…

What is the “best” way to optimize a WP blog?

I do recognize that there are small things you can do to optimize your blog for the search engines (and more importantly, your readers), perhaps, but again, those pale in comparison to writing good content. That being said, here are some optimization tips that I have heard of that you could do.

Write better headlines. It’s very simple. Write titles that have searched for keywords and phrases in them. Write them in a way that someone might search for them. See my title on this blog entry?

Make sure your title tag has your title (headline) first before your blog name. You’ll need to edit your blog template to make sure that is happening. This is VERY important.

Tag your posts. Blog search engines like Technorati use tags to organize blog content. You should too.