SEO Blogging software can be used in one of two ways. You can simply download a free plugin and upload it to your plugins folder in your hosted WordPress blog. Or you can buy a professional template. Semiologic Pro is probably the most well known solution of this type. This package has WordPress, a range of plugins (including seo) and a very adaptable template and range of themes all in one package.
If professional blogging is something you are aiming for, using Semiologic Pro will make many functions of your blogging far easier. People who use it, swear that the convenience is worth the cost, but at around $300, it is not an option for everyone.
Alternatively, downloading and activating the all in one seo word press plugin and the google sitemap generator may take a bit longer to initially manage your seo blogging software needs, but it’s your time, and you know what it’s worth compared to the outflow of cold cash. Neither are especially difficult to use or configure, its a fill in the boxes on the page affair. The site links you may need to get more information are listed on the pages in the back office. All pretty simple and well worth doing if you have something to put there.
SEO is a strategy and for most bloggers its probably not one they consider is worth the bother. Unless you take it seriously, and are actually aiming to rank for a well researched key phrase, then tagging is sufficient. Meta tags are only half of the seo strategy. Unless you work at getting inbound links as well, the seo you are doing is not a strategy but just a waste of time.
Tagging your blog posts will help you out with blog search engines but you should really also want to rank your blog pages in the ‘real’ search engines. For this article though, we are not pushing the whole strategy, but just letting you know the bit about how …
META TAGS ARE AN IMPORTANT PART OF YOUR WEB PAGE
Meta tags are something that you can never afford to overlook if you are seriously doing search engine optimization. Following are the three most common and the most important meta tags that are used in SEO. All seo blogging software will include these three tag areas.
Meta Page Title Tag
The text that you see in your browser’s window bar (at the top of internet explorer or firefox) is the most important thing that doesn’t appear to be on your page! You may not have realized it was even there at all. You can see your title right at the top of the page in the browser . This is the title that becomes the all-important clickable link in the listings on the major search engine pages.
Make sure these titles are getting rewritten and relate to your post titles which always come next, before anything else. You can have a few words in here from your blog title if you want to do some branding but don’t overstuff the title. It should be accurate and concise, and include your important key words.
If your post titles don’t contain your most precious phrases that you want to rank for then tweak them. The title tag is best if its an interesting, eye-catching headline with all the important keywords used once. Leave the post title as it is (for the people) but optimize this meta title. The title tag is supported by all search engines and is the first thing visible to search engine spiders as well as your human visitors.
Meta Description Tag
Once your pages rank in the search engines, it’s your description that makes a potential visitor want to click through, or not. So if your catchy headline didn’t fit the seo, it is the job of the meta description, that some people have mourned for dead and moved on from, that can decide your site’s fate.
If you don’t want to invest the time and write a description for every post at least let them be auto-generated. The preferred source for your post description is your post excerpt. Especially use this when you want to tweak your description. You can find this under the input box for the post, on the write page.
Most of the search engines support the meta description tag. Though it is somewhat less important than the Title Tag since a human visitor will not always be able to see it, the description is often included in the search listings beneath the title tag and hence should be a correct and keyword-rich description of everything the page stands for. Google normally uses a gist of the webpage content; it will only use the meta description tag when it is not able to find sufficient page content to create a page description.
Meta Keywords Tag
This tag is less useful again, however, you cannot do without this tag either. It should be used very carefully and with a lot of judgment. Include your main keywords here. Repeating them and/or using related keywords 4 or 5 times is ideal.
It is far more important to include your keywords in the page content, especially in the first paragraph, but defining them here may still have value for some search engines.
The all in one SEO Pack can generate keywords in three ways. It can use your categories (the original way of tagging posts in wordpress). It can use Ultimate Tag Warrior if you have been using this excellent word press plugins. Or, starting with WordPress 2.3, it can use it’s inbuilt tagging system.
Using your categories is optional (meaning you have to tell it to), the rest is auto-detected and, if a tag is there – it’s used, so be careful what you are tagging with! WP 2.3.x tags are now the preferred keyword source. If you have updated, the new tagging system can import in old Ultimate Tag Warrior Data.
With the all-in-one-seo blogging software, you can also have “noindex” and the like generated for archive, category and tag pages if you seem to have trouble with duplicate content (or can’t get your head around “noindex”, “nofollow” etc and where to put it). The semiologic pro template also allows you to change this.
I particularly liked the following quote from the all in one seo plugin page.
“That was about the 20% of effort needed by you to achieve 80% of results with on-page factors. Of course you also need incoming links, no plugin can do this for you in a safe manner”
On page seo is a lot of repetition. It may bore you stiff and you may feel inclined to toss in way more words just to have some variety, but remember it’s a strategy. It only works when you follow the plan.
HeadSpace
An alternative SEO blogging software option is HeadSpace. HeadSpace is another one of many powerful seo word press plugins to manage your meta-data and handle a wide range of SEO tasks. With head space you can also meta tag your posts. You can create meta titles and descriptions, change the theme or run disabled plugins on specific pages, and a whole lot more. This could be worth testing out against the all in one seo to see which you prefer.
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