| By :
Mark Etinger
Whether you work for an internet marketing company or are simply trying to promote yourself, blogging is an extremely important component to any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign. Of all the blogging platforms, WordPress.org has proven itself a reliable and customizable way to easily create an SEO-friendly blog. Let's take a look at five ways you can improve your WordPress to facilitate effective search engine marketing: 1. Fix Your Meta Info. By default, WordPress meta titles are not optimized for search engines. Download the "All In One SEO Pack" WordPress plugin and customize your meta titles to include your online marketing keywords up front. 2. Check Your Headers. Although usually very well-designed, many WordPress themes include flawed header tags throughout their coding. Ideally, you want to have one h1 on your page -- the title of your blog. The entry titles should be the only h2s, not the sidebar headings, which is often the case. The sidebar headings typically are higher than they should be, and should be downgraded to h4s or h5s. 3. Customize Your URLs. Ever notice how Homes.com comes up first when you Google "homes"? That's because a website's search engine performance can benefit from a keyword-rich URL. Make sure to customize your post URLs so that they are not strictly numerical. For example, www.myblog.com/?p=1 will not enhance your online marketing efforts, while URLs like www.myblog.com/11/10/my-keyword-enriched-title-here will certainly have a positive effect on your campaign. 4. Boost Your Speed. Fast-loading pages are indexed more frequently, allowing the new content to reach search results pages very quickly. There are a number of WordPress plugins designed to shorten your load speed, including the popular "WP-Super Cache." 5. Optimize Your Images. Unlike some blogging platforms, WordPress actually makes it extremely easy to optimize your images for search engine marketing. Before you upload an image, make sure to rename the file to reflect one of your keywords or keyphrases. After you upload it, place this same word or phrase as the your image's alt tag, title, and description. Of course, improving your WordPress is only one step in creating a successful search engine marketing campaign. To best promote your business online, you'll have to combine these on page efforts with off page SEO and social networking. This includes building backlinks to your site from external pages, promoting your blog on classified networks and web directories, and creating profiles on popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter. If this sounds intimidating, you might have to hire a search engine agency to promote your company for you -- a popular tactic for many businesses.
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