Permalinks – Make Your Blog SEO Friendly
Welcome back!
Setting your permalinks correctly will help you rank better because they will contain relevant keywords based on the different page content that you create.
Click on “Permalinks” from within the “Settings” area.
Click on the “Custom” option and paste the following into the text box (double check for accuracy to ensure it matches with no extra spaces)
/%postname%/:
To include the category, you change it to:
/%category%/%postname%/.
Doing this will transform your URL’s into search engine friendly ones, and will also include the titles of each of your posts and pages, while instantly formatting them correctly.
For example, if you created a post with the title “Circus Clowns”, the URL to that post would look like this:
http://www.yourblog.com/circus-clowns.html
Important Note:
If you had already created posts, you will want to ensure that those who visit your older URL’s are instantly redirected to your new pages. You can use the free “Redirection Plugin” to ensure that people are not directed to nonexistent pages. You only need to do this if you have already published content on your blog.
Redirection Plugin: http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/
The next step is to ensure that your blog is included within search engines like Google, but also blog based communities such as Technorati.
In order to do this, click on the Privacy tab and click the link that indicates your blog will be visible to everyone, including search engines.
Click “Save Changes” to complete this step.
Let’s take a look at the options under the “Discussion” tab.
You will want to ensure that the first three options are enabled, so that other blogs are notified whenever you link to them, and that you are allowing pingbacks and trackbacks.
The best way to think about pingbacks is as remote comments:
1)Person A posts something on his blog.
2)Person B posts on her own blog, linking to Person A’s post. This automatically sends a pingback to Person A when both have pingback-enabled blogs.
3)Person A’s blog receives the pingback, then automatically goes to Person B’s post to confirm that the pingback did, in fact, originate there.
The pingback is generally displayed on Person A’s blog as simply a link to Person B’s post.
In this way, all editorial control over posts rests exclusively with the individual authors (unlike the trackback excerpt, which can be edited by the trackback recipient).
The automatic verification process introduces a level of authenticity, making it harder to fake a pingback.
Trackbacks are a way to notify blog systems that you’ve linked to them. If you link other WordPress blogs they’ll be notified automatically using pingbacks, so no other action necessary.
Whenever you begin to write a post in Wordpress, you will see the option to provide a trackback to another blog, in the event your post is related to another website.This is essential in marketing your blog.
