Essential Plugins to Help SEO Your Blog
Mar 24th, 2007 by msdanielle
These are three plugins that you should definitely be using if you’re trying to SEO your blog. When I first started my blog, I read an article from Darren Rowse of Problogger.net called Search Engine Optimization for Blogs, which I would recommend to all of you. It outlines the basics of SEO and how to get your blog to rank higher in search engines results.
Why should you care? Because if you’re trying to optimize your own site, you should know that most people only look at the first few pages of search results, so it’s important to be at the top. Follow Darren’s tips first to get the basics down. Then, install these three plugins:
#1 Optimal Title
The Optimal Title plugin is very important for SEOing your blog. When you post a blog in WordPress, it automatically lists your domain name first, then your post title. Optimal Title switches the two so that your post title appears first, and your domain name appears last. Here’s my example below for my post “Quick Tips for Busy Bloggers.”
It requires a little bit of code manipulation, but it’s real simple. The benefit of having the post title first is it makes for more meaningful search results since your keywords are at the front of the string. You can get the Optimal Title plugin here.
#2 Crawl Page Generator
Crawl Page Generator does exactly what the name implies — it generates a crawl page for your blog! This helps the make it easier for the search engines to read the blueprint of your site. The author of the plugin has taken down his site, or it’s not working, so I’ve posted the file here: Crawl Page Generator for WordPress
Don’t forget to create an empty HTML file called crawlpage.html in your top folder, so the generator has a file to write to. I set my permissions (CHMOD) to 777.
#3 Google Sitemaps
This plugin creates an XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap for your blog, which helps your blog get indexed in Google. Sitemaps basically tell the search engines which pages are OK to crawl, and give a short meta description for each one. Make it easier for Google to index your site! 
You can get the Google Sitemaps plugin here.
Google Sitemaps also requires you to create two blank XML files called sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz. I set the permissions on these to 777 as well. Sitemaps and crawl page are similar, but you should definitely install both to cover all your bases.
Bonus: Permalinks
Here’s an added bonus tip for SEOing your blog - fix your default Permalinks! Creating a good permalink structure is definitely essential for SEO. A permalink is the name of the URL assigned to each post you create. The default structure of a permalink looks like this: www.msdanielle.com/?p=47
?p=47 is the default structure, where 47 is the ID of the post. This doesn’t tell the Google bots anything about the post — it’s just ugly. I went into my wp-admin Options, then clicked on Permalinks, and entered this custom structure: /%postname%/
Now the title of my article “Quick Tips for Busy Bloggers” looks not-so-ugly, like this:
If your blog is new, I strongly recommend you install these plugins, and fix your permalinks…like, now… If your blog is older and you’re not using these plugins yet, now would be a great time to do so!
Update: Jon Lee reminded me to let you guys know if you’re changing your existing Permalink structure, to check out the Permalink Migration Plugin so your old permalinks will still work. Thanks, Jon!
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Gary Lee sent me here - good coverage!
I’ve been pitching these theories for a while.. my post that’s pretty much like this is now wayyyy far back in the past.
CHeers!
thanks! yea this is mainly for new bloggers, like some of my friends that might be reading this. see you around!
great post . . . i especially like the red oval indicating what i’m suppose to look at . . those are photoshop skills rockin the screen!
I haven’t seen crawl page generator! Also, if you’re changing an existing permalink structure, you may want to try Permalinks Migration Plugin so your old permalinks still work.
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I reckon switching the titles round is the best single thing on this list, I havent used Optimal title, its a simple edit of header.php to change this yourself if you wanted to.
Googling your post titles after this change is good fun
Nice post! I needed two of the plugins that you mentioned about!
Thanks for the plugins … i needed a few of those !
Darin
I’m using most of those plugins listed… they’re great!
Thanks to another great upload. Followed all the Guidelines. Good Job Danielle
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Good tips. I’ve started hosting a blog carnival on my TravelMinx.com site and it’s amazing how many submissions come with permalinks that have article ID numbers. I guess a lot of bloggers just don’t realize.
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