WordPress Plugins for SEO, Rank & Traffic..eventually.
If you’ve followed this blog long you know my preference for Wordpress as the platform of choice for blogging and site building especially for creative people showcasing their work. It’s not terribly difficult to use and its functionality can be expanded using plugins that are typically, similarly easy to use.
Not long after anyone puts their first site on their server they realize the real issue they must confront is getting anyone to take a look at what they’ve put up. The technical side of how search engines find and rate how relevant your content is is often more arcane than many people can deal with.
To address this the following is a short list of some plugins I’ve found particularly effective in improving your site’s visibility to search engines.
The following ARE NOT specifically relevant to web sites of artists, performers, film producers or other creative people. They’re just the basics of what’s necessary to begin to technically make any web site friendly to the search engines.
- All in One SEO Pack
- All in One Webmaster
- Google XML Sitemaps
- Karailiev’s sitemap
- WP tags to Technorati
The above automatically add code to your pages to help the various engines find and index your site as well as making ‘tags’ available on the post pages. Some require you to get some account IDs from the various search engine services to add to their config screens, but they include the links for where to get those.
A few more useful plugins that aren’t specifically relevant to SEO or search engines are:
- Smart 404 – When content cannot be found, Smart 404 will use the current URL to attempt to find matching content, and redirect to it automatically.
- Sociable – Automatically add links on your posts, pages and RSS feed to your favorite social bookmarking sites.
- Ultimate Google Analytics – Enable Google Analytics on your blog. Has options to also track external links, mailto links and links to downloads on your own site.
Most of the above can be added from within your Wordpress admin area or found on Wordpress.org. If you can’t find some try a Google search.
I hope you find this useful. This list is only a short list of some of my preferences. Please feel free to add any you’ve found effective in the comments.
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Does leaving “comments” on Art sites get traffic to my Art site?
Backlinks are a big contributor to how relevant search engines think your site is to specific search terms. If you have an art related blog, you post about your art or art in general, and other art sites have links back to your site it tells search engines your content is relevant. When your content is seen as relevant you are more likely to appear among the first listings of results a search engine returns for the relevant keywords it finds most prevalent on your posts.
Why would leaving “comments” help you with backlinks? Most comment forms have a field for your web site and when you submit your comment your name becomes a link back to your site. With this in mind, it’s good to comment for purely technical reasons as well as just being part of the conversation in your area of interest.
Pagerank is a term Google uses to qualify how relevant your site is. On a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the highest, page rank is determined by many factors including backlinks. Pagerank is not, by itself, an indicator of traffic though. Leaving meaningful comments on related blogs can build traffic to your site because others who read those blogs may follow the link to your site if they find your comments helpful or insightful.
Google also introduced a qualifying “no follow” attribute to the link tag and many comments include the “no follow” attribute. This means the search engine won’t consider that link as relevant to the site it links back to. This prevents large numbers of unrelated comments from skewing the results for a particular site.
Long story short, if you publish a site on a creative subject it’s a good idea to comment on other blogs and sites on the same or a related subject. It’s a good idea because joining the conversation is always a good thing. If the links don’t use the “no follow” attribute, you’ll get some backlink juice from the search engines and your links may show up earlier in searches. Even if those links use “no follow”, you’ll be more likely to increase traffic to your site if your comment is on point, helpful or you’ve added something to the conversation.
You’ll note charmfx.com uses the Disqus comment system. Disqus comments use the “no follow” attribute, but allow for readers to easily log in via other social sites where their comments may be visible to their friends. This also may bring traffic to your site based on the interest of friends.
Please add your comments and your own insights below.