Tips for getting your website listed on yahoo

Treat Yahoo as both a directory AND a search engine. Yahoo offers a number of different search results. Part of their search results come from an actual search engine, and some of their results come from human editors, called surfers.

Every Yahoo directory submission is viewed by a person. (Search engines use spiders and indexing software). Admission into the Yahoo directory is entirely at the discretion of the Yahoo surfer viewing your site. That's why the free submission lead time can often be 8-10 weeks, without using the Express Submit service.

Unlike search engine submissions that accept multiple pages from the same site, Yahoo surfers prefer to view your home page, and they will navigate your site from there.

With directories, the site owner selects the most appropriate directory categories for his/her site and writes descriptions that concisely and accurately describe the content of the site. Factors that affect directory placement are selecting the right category and writing a good description.

Always differentiate between the Yahoo search engine and the Yahoo directory whenever you speak to a search engine marketer. The strategies for getting listed in search engines are different from the strategies for getting listed in directories.

Fill out the Forms on Yahoo Exactly as Requested

We know this seems obvious, but some sites don't get listed because the submitters do not follow directions when filling out the forms. When Yahoo asks for a telephone number, give only one telephone number including the area code. When Yahoo asks for a 25-words-or-less description, don't try any fancy word stacking or keyword tricks. Stick to a concise, accurate description of your site's content. Yahoo surfers often change your site description after it's listed in their directory.

Although some fields are optional, try to fill in all of the fields in the form, especially the fields asking your company name, address, and telephone and fax numbers. Yahoo wants to know that you have a legitimate business that will be around in years to come.

Select the Categories (only 3) That You Want to be listed under Very Carefully

To select your categories, type in your selected keywords in a Yahoo query, and study the results. Your site does not belong where you believe your target audience is searching. Your site's actual content should accurately reflect the category or categories you wish to be listed under.

You will probably be listed under the same categories your competitors are listed under. Study your competitors' directory listing. See what their descriptions are, and then modify your site's description to show the Yahoo surfer that you definitely belong in the categories you selected.

If you are a U.S. company, under the category Regional/United States/ in Yahoo, all 50 states are listed. You should include your site in one of the regional categories, if applicable. Don't be surprised that most of your traffic from Yahoo is local. Many customers need to hear your voice or see your face to feel secure about hiring you or your company for a project.

Category listings are also at the discretion of a Yahoo surfer. You need to spend the time selecting your categories and studying your competitors so that you do not get listed under an "undesirable" category.

Have Unique Content and Point This Information Out in Your Submission

A web site is of no value to the Yahoo directory if the site contains the exact same information as other sites in the same categories. So to add value to the Yahoo directory, and to call attention to the unique aspects of your online business, make sure you have unique content on your site.

You can point out any unique content to the Yahoo surfer via your 25-word description or the extra comments field in the submission form.

Get a Virtual Domain Name

Yahoo tends to recognize virtual domains (http://www.yourcompany.com) over others. Why is this? Yahoo wants to have legitimate organizations and companies in their directory. They do not want a small start-up company that won't be around next year, thus resulting in a dead link to a URL in the directory. A virtual domain shows that you are serious about your business.

Try to Get Listed in One of Yahoo's Regional Directories First

At the bottom of Yahoo's home page are some of Yahoo's regional directories. If you are in one of the regional areas, you can often get your web site listed much faster in the regional directory than in Yahoo's main directory.

Commercial web sites must pay an annual fee of $299 (currently) to be listed in the Yahoo directory. Sometimes, a Yahoo surfer might discover a content-rich commercial site without you ever submitting.

"Design for Speed" (Quotation from a Yahoo Surfer)

Yahoo is looking for sites that download very quickly, preferably within 30 seconds on a dial-up modem.

Of course, exceptions do apply; such as if you are an online video game company and use Shockwave on your site. Then it is understandable that your web site might take longer to download.

Lastly, the rule "Content is King" applies to getting listed in Yahoo. If Yahoo editors don't feel your site looks or sounds like a legitimate business, they don't have to list your site. So make sure your web site is easy to read, easy to navigate, easy to find (on search engines), shows consistency in design and layout, and is quick to download. Above all, have unique content to add value to the Yahoo directory.

Why ? - SEM ( Search Engine Marketing )

What is SEM ?

Where SEM is an acronyms of Search Engine Marketing and which is the fastest, most powerful, highly-targeted, most dynamic, highly-measurable and most cost-effective marketing strategy that can give your business the power to reach potential customers anywhere in the world.

Search Engine Marketing or SEM is about making sure that your Web site appears on the top 20 of search results every time potential customers search for whatever products and/or services that you offer on any of the major Search Engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN.

So Search engine marketing is an alternative to traditional marketing such as commercials, brochures, and print advertising.

Types of SEM

There are two forms of search engine marketing today. They are:

1 - Natural search engine listings - such as those returned in numeric form on major search engines like Yahoo, Google and MSN.

2 - Paid search engine listings - such as those returned in sponsored areas of search results on these same engines and others that belong to their network.

What are natural search engine listings?

There are two kinds of search engine listings. Natural and Paid. Natural listings are the listings that are not paid for. They are determined by the search engines' algorithms for finding, sorting and ranking pages based on relevancy. Because natural listings are considered "more accurate" by searchers, getting in natural listings is typically preferable to getting in paid listings.

What Is Paid search engine listings?

Paid listings are usually labeled in a separate section such as "sponsored listings.Paid search engine are those returned based on auction type keyword bidding. These listings are displayed in sponsored areas of search results and are paid for on a per-click basis.

So search engine marketing is an essential part of business and should not be underestimated and Search engine marketing is responsible for millions of consumer transactions daily.
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High Search Engine Ranking Needs Concentrated Effort

With the advent of search engines, there have been users who have used ways and means to achieve high search engine rankings. In the beginning, these search engine techniques were fairly simple, such as stuffing hidden tags with keywords or using invisible text on pages. As the search engines caught on to these tactics, the techniques used to achieve high search engine ranking evolved into more sophisticated methodologies.

What is overlooked is the fact that the search engines have established ranking criteria based upon extensive study of their users. In most cases, the sites that do not have high search engine ranking are not giving the visitor what the search engine rule book has deemed important. Unless they have the awareness to know what search engine users want, how could a web designer or business owner expect to do better?

In short, put informative content on your pages. Your search engine techniques shouldn't center on taking an existing site and changing it as little as possible for the sole purpose of achieving high search engine rankings- rather it should center around making whatever changes are necessary to directly address the interests of your visitors. 'The Visitor is King.' - keep that in mind when working on your website, and the search engines are sure to reward you with high search engine rankings.

For high search engine ranking you also need to make sure that your website gets fully indexed. There are two main ways to ensure that your site is spider friendly and that the relevancy is added. The first is to place text links at the bottom of your homepage to your main internal pages. The second is to create a sitemap to all your internal pages and link to it from your homepage.

Remember, all major search engines give credit to sites that have quality links pointing to them. How many is enough depends on your industry and targeted phrases. The first place to seek links is with topic-specific directories. After that you may want to move into reciprocal link building. Some webmasters will simply link to any website that links back to them. But we advise you to link to relevant sites only

If your web designer is unable to show high rankings for your site, its time to change hands. Search engine optimization (SEO) specialists bring you effective solutions to give your site high search engine ranking. Find a specialist with a good track record and reap the results.

Learn How Improving Your Web Site Content Could Improve Your ROI

Web Content, content, content. What the Search Engines were originally designed for and over time web content has been somewhat put on the back burner of Website Marketing Importance.

Good Web Site Content could set your site apart from your competition online by providing the information that surfers find so valuable as well as search engines and putting together great copy that sells could convert visitors into buyers or subscribers.

Although web content is important, well-written web copy that demands attention, talks to the customer and gives a proper call to action can be very powerful in your website marketing campaigns.

Here is how you can make you web site content sell: First thing to consider is the headline, it should speak out loud grabbing the attention of the reader making them want to read on. Be creative and don't be afraid to be a little controversial.

Then you may want to start with a question or a statement that makes the reader start to think about the problem they are having which is the reason they are looking for the answer that can solve that problem.

Web Content, content, content. What the Search Engines were originally designed for and over time web content has been somewhat put on the back burner of Website Marketing Importance.

Good Web Site Content could set your site apart from your competition online by providing the information that surfers find so valuable as well as search engines and putting together great copy that sells could convert visitors into buyers or subscribers.

Although web content is important, well-written web copy that demands attention, talks to the customer and gives a proper call to action can be very powerful in your website marketing campaigns.

Here is how you can make you web site content sell: First thing to consider is the headline, it should speak out loud grabbing the attention of the reader making them want to read on. Be creative and don't be afraid to be a little controversial.

Then you may want to start with a question or a statement that makes the reader start to think about the problem they are having which is the reason they are looking for the answer that can solve that problem.

Next you may want to list some bullet points which list problem solving items to their problem. Try to avoid talking strictly about how great your item is, how wonderful your service is, this area will come later.

Note: Internet surfers can tell in seconds if your are advertising to them in your web site content, I think it is better to ease the reader to the call to action vs jumping in there face with another lame ad. Studies have shown that visitors will just click away if they feel that your are selling to them instead of trying to solve a problem for them.

The idea is that your web site content needs to create trust with the customer, make them invision using your product an or service and have them realize that they just can't live with out your product. If you show that you can help ease there pain and solve the problem they have they will be more likely to purchase from you.

Next you can tell them a little information about you and your products and or service.

This one may seem like it does not have much importance because customers should know what to do next but it is very important to include a call to action ( buy now!, call today!, click here, etc ) telling them what you want them to do next. This part is crucial.

There is more in-depth information about web site content writing but I think this will give you a good idea on what you may want to think about when putting together your web site content.

Internal Links – Are You Making the Most of Yours?

Are you yielding the highest possible return in search engines from optimizing your pages internal links? If not, then maybe it’s time for a link audit.

With so much time spent being myopic over link building and external links (development of one-way,reciprocal links or building your blog roll), people often forget that they have the most relevant authority site sitting right under their nose – their own pages.

Instead of looking past your own site, how could anything be more on-topic than the pages you have complete control over. If the pages are aged and already have page rank, then it’s just icing on the cake, this is the basis of link equity. By tweaking the structure of how your pages pass rank, you can essentially mold how search engines treat the content on those pages.

Did you know that than external links? probably not, because so many schools of thought want you to think otherwise or simply go against the grain.

In fact a new site set up properly, themed and topically structured to reach a targeted or specific series of keywords, has a much greater chance of dominating the top 10 than an older site by comparison (in reference to content, internal links, the code in the pages, the naming conventions of the folders and filenames).

So let’s get started with tidying up the On-Page SEO factors that you ultimately have control over before you even consider Off Page SEO strategy. But just in case it’s too late and your site is seasoned and stuck in a rut, you can still apply any of the 10 methods below to clean house a bit and lighten the load to make each page more relevant.

When starting over is not an option, there are a few things you could do to salvage an older site by performing a content and link audit.

1. Make all of your links absolute, remove secondary keywords that are NOT RELEVANT.

Replace /pagename.html with http://www.yoursite.com/pagename.html this way when the pages age, they pull each other up in the search engine result pages. In addition, if your content gets scraped (copied) then at least the are pointing links back to your pages (so you get the back link).

2. Cap all out-bound links (links leaving the page to no more than 10 per page) or create a new page to keep the focus laser-like.

Less outbound links mean that each page has more link juice to pass to it’s own keywords and less energy being transfused or hemorrhaging away from the page. This becomes more apparent when you start building external links, how quickly the pages rise in the SERPs (search engine result pages).

3. Optimize your anchor text (the text in the link). Make sure your main keyword/phrase is on the page (at least one time) as well as in the title.

Use each link wisely as this will augment your page in search engines, anchor text is essentially screaming “hey, this is what this page is all about” so if used wisely you can literally anchor the context of the page and cement 4 or 5 choice terms that you would like to predominantly show up for “exact match style” when people are conducting searches.

4. Don’t try to optimize a page for more than 3 terms / keywords.

If you want to aim high and rank for competitive terms and variations of competitive keywords, keep the information on topic. Once a page reaches 750 words is enough, then create another page if you must with another variation of the keyword (this is also a great way to get a double listing in search engines, using two pages that dovetail off the others keywords). This tactic is for creating a ranking blockbuster, it is not to say that you cannot exceed that, but the term optimization also applies to the page size, so keep it lean and mean.

5. Use contextual links in the content, the higher on the page the better as links higher in the page are known to carry more weight in search engines vs. footer links.

If you are using contextual links (links from one page to other pages in the site, instead of navigation to pass page rank and flow) then make sure that you are using the main keywords for the page that you are trying to rank with. For example say I had page (a) and the link (1 of the 10 on the optimized page) was pointing to page (b) then make sure the anchor text (the text in the link) from page (a) was using the keywords for page (b) that you are trying to rank for. That way when it ages, it becomes the perfect back link for page (b) while in the meantime it creates relevance for your entire site. By linking your pages this way, each page supports the next like a dynamo (with the ideal link / anchor text to boot).

6. Keep your pages lean 20k or less (optimization also means loading time), this includes images and code bloat.

If you have Adobe Photoshop, open your images and use shift+control+alt+S then resize your images using jpeg compression. The jpeg format was designed not to lose resolution visually, but you can drastically reduce loading time, which definitely impacts where you rank.

7. Optimize your in-line code. Keep all of your java script and other programming code off page (in their own respective files and hyper-linked to the page like a style sheet).

CSS (cascading style sheets) are ideal, since they separate the content from the images and essentially provide the search engines what they want with the least amount of clutter and fuss. But if you must go old school and use tables and java script, then at least keep the java script off the page in a .js file and the link to it (using the same line of code that you would use for a style sheet). Here is an excellent css based (flash / java script looking DHTML menus that look great and are extremely lean)

8. Hone the focus of the page – Make sure your main keyword appears at least 2-4 times on the page and once in the h1 and a slight variation in an H2 tag.

This assures the person that they have found what they are looking for and allows them to quickly find the information they were originally looking for. Remember with so many options, the back button is only one click away.

Now you could go into advanced SEO where you can actually build deep links to pages and then the keywords transcend that page and eventually you start seeing the homepage appear in search engines (which may or may not have the keywords on the page). Or you could simply have a themed site (with highly relevant information) and build external links to the page (even though the keywords are not present on the page) and still rank for those terms.

So, just because you see people stuffing titles and overusing keywords doesn’t mean that is the only way to rank higher in search engines, sometimes less is more. But for the sake of the audit, let’s stick with the basics and use the time tested method (once in the title, once in the description, a few times on the page and once in the h1/h2 tags).

9. Augment your pages through the buddy system – Have at least 5 of your strongest pages concentrating their collective internal link-juice towards your newest rock star page (the page you wish to elevate and send forth as your messenger in the SERPs).

Sounds simple enough, this alone can determine which page is returned for which keywords. Aside from this, this is a great tactic when you are launching a new page.

10. Clean out pages that are off topic, rewrite them for present-tense relevance or remove all but a few links, rewrite the titles (65 characters or less) and the descriptions (2 sentences tops using the keywords only one time each) then republish the page and wait for the spiders to re-index your content. From there you can start building links to gain more elevation in the SERPs.

If none of these options seem industrial strength enough then you can always opt for;

1) Deleting off topic pages and using a 301 redirect to the homepage or a page that has the most relevance (if those pages were indexed).

2) Purchasing a new domain name comprised prominently of your main keywords, then 301 your old site to the new one (allow up to 30 days for the rankings to recover) build links and when it comes back in full force it will be stronger than ever, granted you utilized the basic fundamentals above.

This option is a last resort, ideally you could just add a blog on a subdirectory (with impeccable code) get it listed in blog directories and start generating new content frequently to increase spider activity until it revives your whole site through all of the increased pinging and spidering activity.

Make sure you give the spiders something juicy to chew on, otherwise you can’t really expect a reward. Even combining a title and description audit and removing the verbose words can be enough to bump your page up 10-20 positions, from there you can focus on off-page SEO to accomplish the rest.

These tips are essentially for non-content management systems as most CMS systems already have themed architecture and internal linking built in to the structure (at least to the degree where you can personalize it with a few custom plug-ins).

I have always been under the impression that it is good to have a combination of static and dynamic pages, but that is just my personal preference (that way you can control the prominent pages/internal links and page rank flow easier when you start building link externally). If your content is all withing a content management system (like word press), each page gets the equal amount of link juice, which can be a plus or a minus depending on your ranking strategy.

This is why I mentioned briefly that in a nutshell by adding a blog to an older static site, sometimes that can be enough with a few tweaks to the pages to jump start the search engine ascension process, however each site is unique and has it’s own internal and external link threshold.

20 Practical SEO Tips to Super-Charge Your WordPress Blog!

We would like to introduce WordPress Expert John Lamansky, who we managed to extract from the lab just long enough for him to compose this brilliant WordPress Top 20 SEO Guide.

Got a WordPress blog that you’re eager to supercharge for optimal search engine performance? Read on! We’ll cover pinging, sitemaps, canonicalization, link juice, header tags, slugs, tags, timestamping, social media, permalinks, and a whole lot more!

WordPress SEO Tip #20 — Don’t Block the Search Engines!

First and foremost: make sure you’re not inadvertently telling the search engines to go away! Believe it or not, some WordPress installations block the search engine bots by default.

From your admin panel, go to Options > Privacy and make sure it’s set to “I would like my blog to be visible to everyone.”

Bonus Tip #1 – Are Comments Enabled?

Some WordPress users restrict comments to registered users, or disable them entirely. While this may be appropriate in some situations, in most cases comments are a very beneficial factor, and a defining mark, of a blog.

Comments engage your readers, help you get more “fresh content” SEO brownie points, and give search engines another reason to come back frequently.

Here’s how to fully enable comments:

1. Login to the WordPress administration center
2. Click “Options” on the menu bar
3. Is “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” checked? If so, consider unchecking it.
4. Click “Discussion” on the submenu bar
5. Make sure the following are checked: “Allow people to post comments on the article” and “Allow link notifications from other Weblogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)”

WordPress SEO Tip #19 — Does Your Blog Have a Topic?

Some of us would prefer to have a blog where we talk about anything that comes to mind: cars, movies, photosynthesis, dust mites, you name it.

In and of itself, such a blogging style isn’t wrong; however, you can leave search engines clueless as to what your blog’s about and thus for what search queries your blog should appear. And some of your readers might get annoyed in the process as well.

WordPress SEO Tip #18 — Ensure URL Canonicalization

If your blog posts are accessible from more than one URL, you could end up with:

• Search engines confused as to which URL to display in the SERPs.
• PageRank split between multiple pages.
• Duplicate content penalties.

Starting with version 2.3, WordPress takes care of this and makes sure your content is accessible from only one place. So if you use an older version, either upgrade to the latest version of WordPress, or install the Permalink Redirect plugin.

WordPress SEO Tip #17 — Check for Valid XHTML

Most code errors are minor, but the more serious ones can cause content misinterpretation by search engines, lower rankings, and rendering errors.

WordPress itself produces valid code, but errors can crop up from two other common sources:

• Poorly written plugins or themes
• User-created coding errors (in the blog posts themselves, or through theme customizations)

First check your site for errors. If an error is found, look at the surrounding content to determine the source of the error.

If a plugin is the culprit, fix it if you’re good at that sort of thing (the beauty of open source!), or send a quick email to the plugin developer and let him or her know.

WordPress SEO Tip #16 – Don’t Leech Link Juice!

One characteristic of WordPress blogs is the sidebar, which is typically present on every single page. Do you really need to be passing link juice from every single one of your pages to every single one of those links? If the answer is no, consider adding rel=”nofollow” to the less important ones.

WordPress SEO Tip #15 — Use Images in Your Posts

Not only do they increase visitor attention and retention, they give you an opportunity to use keyword-rich “alt” attributes, “title” attributes, and filenames. Plus it’ll give your blog visibility in image search engines.

WordPress SEO Tip #14 — Does Your Theme Use Header Tags Correctly?

• The blog title, or your main keyword should be in an

  tag.

• If your subtitle is keyword-rich, you can put it in an

  ; otherwise I recommend putting it in a non-header tag like

  .

• The post titles should go in

  tags.

• Sidebar section titles should be

  tag or non-header.

Unfortunately, some themes (including the WordPress Default Theme) put the sidebar section titles in

tags. Although this makes sense from a strict structural point of view, it also gives irrelevant sidebar headers (“Categories,” “Archives,” “Meta,” etc.) equal weight with your SEO-important post titles.

To sum it up: Use a theme that utilizes header-tags properly, or try fixing the theme you have.

WordPress SEO Tip #13 — Use Pinging

A ping is a “this site has new content” notification that invites bots to visit your blog.

WordPress pings one website called Ping-o-matic by default, which in turn pings others. You can also add additional services by going to Options > Writing in the admin panel. (For example, the pinging URL for Google Blog Search is http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2)

Another Bonus Tip: Once a post is published, WordPress issues pings whenever the post is edited. Try to cut down on after-publishing edits to avoid being considered a ping spammer.

WordPress SEO Tip #12 — Install the Google XML Sitemaps Generator Plugin

XML Sitemaps are search-engine-friendly directories of your blog’s posts and other pages intended to help search engines spider your site. Though pioneered by Google, they’re supported by Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com as well.

The Google XML Sitemaps Generator for WordPress makes creation of these sitemaps easy and automatic. It also lets the engines know when you post new content.

WordPress SEO Tip #11 — Avoid Sponsored Themes

There was a debate in the WordPress community not too long ago on the topic of sponsered themes. These themes include paid links (usually in the footer) than can suck PageRank and possibly result in a Google paid links penalty.

Stick with WordPress theme directories that don’t include sponsored themes, like the WordPress Theme Viewer.

Bonus Tip #2 — Write Right Post Titles

SEO isn’t everything: once you’re high in the SERPs, you need action words to prompt clickthroughs.

Put keywords in your title if at all possible, but not if it’ll compromise the click-trigger action title.

WordPress SEO Tip #10 — Use Traditional SEO Techniques

A WordPress blog is a website too, so the traditional SEO techniques still apply:

• Use important keywords in the title and throughout the post, but don’t overdo it.
• Bold your keywords when it makes sense.
• Develop links to your blog.

WordPress SEO Tip #9 — Use the Power of the Slug

Ever wondered what the “Post Slug” on the “Write” page was? It’s the text that goes in the URL when you have “Pretty Permalinks” enabled (see tip #2).

By default the slug is a “sanitized” version of the post title. However, if your title is overly long or keyword-sparse, you can change the slug through the Post Slug box.

Yet Another Bonus Tip: The SEO Slugs plugin can take out common words like “you,” “is,” etc. out of the slug for you automatically.

WordPress SEO Tip #8 — Use Timestamping to Stagger Fresh Content

Search engines and visitors love fresh blog content on a steady, regular basis. But for a lot of us, creativity comes irregularly: 10 post ideas one week, none the next.

Enter timestamping. When writing a post, click the plus sign next to “Post Timestamp.” Set a date and time, and the post will publish by itself whenever you specify.

Search engines will keep coming back, and visitors won’t be inundated with a ton of new posts all at once.

Hint: If you’ve timestamped a post, don’t click the Publish button, since that’ll publish your post immediately regardless of your timestamp. Instead, select “Published” under “Post Status” and click the Save button.

WordPress SEO Tip #7 — Use Tags for Free Keyword Boosts

WordPress 2.3 and above include a tags feature that lets you assign keywords to your blog posts. Once you start using them, then since each tag gets its own webpage, you’ll be generating a ton of your own themed, keyword-oriented internal backlink pages.

WordPress SEO Tip #6 — Integrate Social Media

Adding social media links/buttons like the ones above makes it easy for visitors to promote your quality content (hint, hint). Social media is a great way to build links naturally as well as drive targeted site traffic.

• Share This is a very popular “social media all-in-one” plugin.
• If you’re a FeedBurner user, you can use FeedFlare to add action links, including social media ones, to the bottom of your posts.

Lots of social media sites provide code you can use to generate buttons like those above. Grab your own code from:

• Digg
• Sphinn
• StumbleUpon
• Mixx
• Scoop

WordPress SEO Tip #5 — Implement Deep-Linking

Here are several great ways to implement deep-linking on your WordPress blog:

• Within your posts, link to other posts on your blog and use important keywords in the anchor text.
• Install the Similar Posts plugin, which inserts a list of related posts you’ve written to the bottom of each of your blog posts. This process will create aged deep links and increase visitor retention.
• Display your most popular posts in your sidebar using the Popularity Contest plugin. Gives your most popular posts tons of internal links, and helps your visitors find your best content.

WordPress SEO Tip #4 — Make Scrapers Work to Your Advantage

Most of us would probably be upset if someone used scraping (automated content stealing) to publish our laboriously-written posts as his or her own.

But with a little work, you can make the scrapers work for you, not against you.

Here’s how to do it, courtesy of EarnersBlog.com:

If you use Wordpress it’s very easy to take full advantage of these sites linking to you, all you need to do is create links back to your content within your feed.

What you’ll need for this:

• Cave Monkey’s Full Text Feed Plugin
• Solo Technologies Add Related Posts to your Feed Plugin

These plugins simply show your entire post in your feed & also add some related posts in your feed only (which will also increase the amount of people in your feed reading more than 1 post).
Now, everytime anyone scrapes your blog via your RSS feed & republishes it they’ll be deep linking to 5 or more of your existing posts. Bingo.

WordPress SEO Tip #3 — Install the All-in-One SEO Plugin

Like the name implies, this plugin covers a lot of the bases.

• Puts the blog name after the post title, giving your keyword-rich titles more prominence.
• Allows you to override title and meta tags on your homepage as well as your individual posts.
• Lets you add “noindex” to your category and/or tag pages to avoid duplicate content.
• And more.

A must-have for serious WordPress SEO.

WordPress SEO Tip #2 — Use “Pretty Permalinks”

Sure, you may already use Pretty Permalinks, but are you using the best possible permalink structure?

For those of who don’t use Pretty Permalinks, it’s a must-do for WordPress SEO. Permalinks, in essence, are the URLs of your WordPress blog posts. “Pretty Permalinks” put slugs (which should contain keywords — see tip #9) in your URLs instead of the default numbers.

To enable or change them, first login, then go to Options > Permalinks.

The two options you do not want are “Default” and “Numeric.” Here are my suggestions for picking a “pretty” permalink structure:

• Date and Name Based: The problem with this is that your posts are several extra directories deep, which can decrease relevence in some search engines. However, such a permalink structure can nevertheless be desireable if your blog is news-oriented or date-sensitive.
• Post Name Only: If your blog covers one topic that has no subtopics (which, though possible, is unlikely), select “Custom” and type /%postname%/
• Category Based: If your blog covers multiple topics, implement category-based URLs. (You have to look into the Codex to find information on category-based URLs, so many WordPress users probably don’t realize that this option exists!) To implement it, select “Custom” and type /%category%/%postname%/

WordPress SEO Tip #1 — WordPress Secret: Use Category-Based Permalinks for SEO Siloing

Here’s the big finale. Problem is, this tip is so important (and lengthy) that it really merits its own post.

Here’s a teaser: it entails implementing the powerful siloing technique on your WordPress blog through a combination of plugins, settings, and strategies.

Conclusion

Okay, so it was actually more like 23+ tips instead of 20. I certainly hope you gleaned a useful strategy or two in your quest for WordPress search engine optimization. If you enjoyed this post, please social it, email it, link it, or leave a comment!

Stay tuned for the “mega-tip” later this week! If your eager to try these techniques out, download our free WordPress SEO Theme, Small Business SEO.

John Lamansky is an up-and-coming web developer who has building websites for 7 years and has been working with WordPress for almost 3 of its 5 years of existence. He is experienced with XHTML, CSS, PHP, WordPress, and much more, and looks forward to providing WordPress tips, services, and resources to the blogging community.