I’ve been setting up a lot of WordPress blogging sites over the past week or so. Some are for me, some are for clients, etc. But, in my goals to optimize them (boy is WordPress ever configurable!), I’ve noted that I need to change quite a few things to maximize the placement of these pages in the Search Engines.
So, here’s something you might find handy if you’re setting up a WordPress blog for yourself. Maybe you already have one and just didn’t know how to optimize this (You know who you are!) because you’re as Stupid as George Bush .
To do this you’ll have to update your header.php file – the simple way to do this is to navigate to the current theme folder on your web server (in the wp-content/themes/ area) and copy the header.php file on to your PC. There, make a backup of the file (in case you need to restore it later on), open it in a text editor or an html editor and locate the following tags:
<title>
</title>
Once you find that chunk, delete it and replace it with this snippet of html, instead:
<title>
<?php if(is_home()) { bloginfo(’title’); } else{ wp_title(”); echo ‘ » ‘; bloginfo(’name’); } ?>
</title>
Then, rather than your blog name or, heaven forbid, the word "Archive" appear first in the title — the title of your post actually appears first in the title. Then the search engines will believe that your page has more to do with that particular title, and get you more search engine traffic for the keywords which appear in your title.
Enjoy!
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14 comments ↓
This is great information for the beginner in WordPress!
Thanks!
Thanks for the info on WP title optimization! Even though reading or looking at code tends to make me break out in hives, I think I might give your tip a try.
Sweet, Daiv! Thanks, you rock! (I’m totally going to try it!)
Great info! Thank you so much!
I really appreciate this article! It was quite helpful, just what I was looking for! Thanks! Though, Im not as stupid as good ol’Bushy.
ooh ima go do that RIGHT. NOW! cheers! dreXeL
gah. it broke my site. had to put the original header.php file back.
maybe it just doesn’t work with the php that’s in my theme.
Broke two sites of mine.
Sounds like a winner. I currently use WP Head Space plugin with great success. I’ve also used WP plugin All In One SEO which is good also. My listing in Google appear as the Post Title.
I like using or writing plug-ins to extend my theme and WP. Makes an upgrade easier to deal with and I’m not hard-coding anything in the file that should be variable information. Code once, use many. The All In One SEO plug works well for page titles, when I remember to optimize
I’m a Texan, Bush was my governor and also my president and actually I like him alot. (doesn’t mean I always agree…just sayin)
Anyway – I’m sure I’m not optimized, but these tips look handy and I’ll give it a go
Thanks Daiv, useful as always
Carrie Wilkerson
The Barefoot Executive ™
http://TwitterBarefoot.com
There’s a great plugin for WordPress that let’s you optimize the title and description for your site and for each page. It also has options for index, follow, noindex, nofollow, etc. Platinum SEO Pack makes SEO for WordPress much easier.
@annie Thanks for the tip. I read this here and have switched to Platinum SEO more features for SEO
Your are Great. And so is your site! Awesome content. Good job guys! Interesting article, adding it to my favourites!
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