Right SEO strategy for Wordpress

[aalcocer2003]

Hello all,

I am working on my SEO strategy for a WordPress site.

1. I am trying to cover all my keywords in:

1.a) Page title trying to have a length <70

1.b) Page url trying to have a length<115

My question is: should i try to focus all my keywords in both name and url page path? or only in the Page title as the SEOMOZ's guide suggest? I would go for a mix strategy with my keywords in both page title and url path name, but I do not know if the search engines PAY MORE ATTENTION TO THE PAGE TITLE, so mixing 1.a) and 1.b) would mean I am loosing keywords.

2. I am using the WordPress All in ONE SEO Plugin. Do you recommend me this or any other plugin?

This plugin has 3 input fields:

a) Title tag b) Description tag c) Keywords

My questions here are:

a) If these tags replace the standard settings of WP as described in point 1.a)

b) If the description and title tags are META TAGS that are not taken into account in terms of SEO but in terms of customer description of the contento of the page.

c) Where are the keywords listed inserted in the page? In H1, H2, H3 and H4 tags?

My feeling after reading the SEOMOZ guide is that this plugin is not providing any added value for SEO any more??'

Thank you very much,

Best regards,

Antonio Alcocer

[danatanseo]

Hi Antonio,

These are great questions because I am working on 3 WP sites right now too. I have heard that WordPress SEO by Yoast is a very good plugin for SEO, but am interested to know what others think in the comments here.

Personally, I don't think that there is anything wrong with having matching keywords in the URL and the page title. Yes, Google pays a lot of attention to page titles. As long as neither are stuffed, overly repetitive or you don't go crazy repeating those same keywords all over the page, I think having the URL and Page Title in synch is a very effective tactic.

Yes, the input fields on the plug-in you are using are meta tags. Consequently, populating the keywords field is something I wouldn't recommend. Google pays no attention to those keywords and they won't be visible on the page anywhere (i.e. they will not be populating any

,

type tags). The big difference between meta tags and <h>tags is that meta tags aren't visible on the page, <h>tags are. Technically, yes, your user can see the title tag in their browser tab, but technically I don't consider that to be "on the page" per se.

Curious to know what other have to say and whether or not they recommend Yoast.</h></h>

[DeanAndrews]

Hi Antonio

Re the plugin l recommend using is SEO Yoast - http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/which normally integrates nicely into most themes.

Personally I don't use meta keywords as I feel they have no benefit (well only to your competition)

[Joes_Ideas]

I actually prefer the "All in One SEO Pack" - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/, although Yoast does have a really good WordPress SEO guide: http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/.

[DeanAndrews]

Having used both, got to say SEO Yoast ability to directly edit robots & htaccess files, set breadcrumbs, RSS optimization and page analysis too. All that and a cleaner user interface that helps you to understand your actions wins it 'for me'

[aalcocer2003]

Thank you very much for the great help, still interested to know the opinion of other WP users in terms of which SEo plugin they would recommend, thanks a lot

Antonio

[ThompsonPaul]

Yoast's SEO Plugin wins hands down in my opinion as well.

There's nothing wrong with AllinOneSEO - it offers the basic ability to manually enter meta data for each page/post as necessary, and to create a default meta-data template for those pages you're not going to customize by hand.

Where Yoast's plugin shines is that it will actually help coach you through WHAT you should be entering in those different meta fields, and will help you do an essential analysis of every new piece of content you write in order help you improve it before it's even published. The visual presentation of what your SERP snippet will look like is also invaluable.

Many of these aspects are second-nature for experienced SEOs but provide helpful coaching for those not focusing on it full time. Even though I do SEO extensively, I still find having the tools/prompts right in front of me on every post to very beneficial.

In addition, Yoast's plugin includes several important additional SEO-friendly features (like breadcrumbs,etc) that otherwise require additional plugins. WordPress ALWAYS runs better the fewer plugins you have installed.

Paul

[danatanseo]

Great comments Paul. Thanks for providing the info on Yoast. I was curious about it too.

[MattAntonino]

Agree with the above.  Wordpress SEO is the winner for me.

[aalcocer2003]

Thank you very much for the great help and answers!

[aalcocer2003]

Hello Dana, thank you very much for the answers to all my questions in th Q&A.

Concerning the keyword strategy to target both Page/post name and url name, I still have the doubt if (Imagine I am considering 5 keywords for SEO.):

1. I should use as far as it is possible, the 5 keywords in the post/page title and the 5 same keywords in the url path,

OR

2. I should use these 5 keywords spread between title and url path? I mean maybe I use 3 keywords in the post/page name and 2 keywords in the url path, but as search engines gives more weight in SEO for post/page name, maybe I miss 2 of the keywords I used in the url path name

Thank you very much,

Antonio

[ThompsonPaul]

Antonio, five different keywords is too many to target effectively with one page.

If they are 5 significantly different terms, you need to seriously consider writing additional pages targeting some of the words separately.

If they are closely related terms (synonyms, stemmed words etc) then figure out which is truly the targeted term (the highest value/traffic/lowest competition) and make it the focus of the page. That's what would go in the meta-title and URL.

Then the others become secondary, supporting terms sprinkled through the text of the page in subheadings, alt text, and paragraph content.

Make sense?