• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. On-Page Optimization
        4. How to optimize a wordpress blog

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        How to optimize a wordpress blog

        On-Page Optimization
        6
        13
        3453
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • EricVallee34
          EricVallee34 last edited by

          I’m helping a client optimize a word press blog, and I’m not that familiar with Wordpress.  The site is www.athleticfoodie.com.

          At first I was treating it like a normal website, where the categories would be optimized like pages on a website.  However, I now realize that categories don’t have any content on them, so I can’t really optimize anything other than the names.

          Are the following things the best way to handle on-page optimization for a blog?

          • Optimizing the homepage & domain: Find ways to incorporate the most important keywords into the elements on the main frame of the site: Navigation menu, Widgets, Category names, Alt Images.
          • Optimizing the categories: For the posts within the categories (i.e., photos), work to make sure the category keywords are worked into the post titles (but not too much to seem spammy)
          • Optimizing specific posts. Work keywords into the text and images.

          Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • mattotoole
            mattotoole @kwoolf last edited by

            Kevin and Eric,

            Performance issues aside, I prefer the simplest URL structure:

            http://sitename/postname

            Unless you really need advanced categorization, siloing, etc., bringing your content up one level and having shorter URLs is always better, IMO.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • EricVallee34
              EricVallee34 @kwoolf last edited by

              Great info, Kevin.  I appreciate the quick feedback.

              Eric

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • kwoolf
                kwoolf last edited by

                Hi Eric,

                I would recommend the Yoast WordPress plugin available at http://yoast.com/wordpress/. This plugin covers pretty much all the SEO issues you'll encounter in WordPress, plus there is a handy tool that will analyze important text fields in your posts to see if your articles are optimized for the keywords you're looking to rank for. This plugin won't put heading tags in the template, but I think it's worth a look.

                Another consideration for WordPress is your permalink URL structure. As of WordPress 3.1.2, there is a definite performance issue when starting the permalink structure with either the category, tag, author, or postname fields. You can read more under "Structure Tags" at http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks. I'm not sure how this affects SEO, so it'd be great to get some feedback on ranking results using different WordPress URL structures.

                EricVallee34 mattotoole 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • EricVallee34
                  EricVallee34 @EricVallee34 last edited by

                  Thank you!

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • AdamThompson
                    AdamThompson @EricVallee34 last edited by

                    When adding or editing categories in WordPress, there is a field called "description" (not meta description) with the label "The description is not prominent by default; however, some themes may show it." Your developer can modify your theme so the description text is displayed on the category page.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • EricVallee34
                      EricVallee34 @sferrino last edited by

                      Great info.  I will look into these more deeply.  Thank you!

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • EricVallee34
                        EricVallee34 @AdamThompson last edited by

                        Hi Adam,

                        Could you elaborate on what you mean by "modifying your theme to display your category description as visible text on the page"?  I don't understand what this means.

                        Also, thanks for the heads up on the Title Tag Plug In

                        Eric

                        AdamThompson EricVallee34 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • sferrino
                          sferrino last edited by

                          The few things I would point out, which aren't so much WordPress issues, but are how this WordPress installation is configured, are:

                          1. No description tag, that is in the 'Settings -> General' page
                          2. Well over 100 links on the home page, mostly because of the 'Blog Archive', are people actually clicking on those items?
                          3. No good H1 tag, the one that was created by the theme "Athletic Foodie" has been commented out and the current (second) one is, "How about a 2,000-year-old Salad? Kale!!", a poor descriptor of the page.
                          4. Dangling links, some of the images are linked to themselves, that is set on the post or page they are created on.
                          5. The page names 'slugs' don't usually match their titles, ex, Fiber: health benefits for athletes...., would be: 'fiber-health-benefits-athletes', etc.
                          6. From a user standpoint, way too much text, the full posts could be reduced by using excerpts and linking to a separate page, increasing load time, and most likely page views. Would you scroll all the way to the bottom? What if it was half or a quarter this size?
                          7. The 2 main items "Recipes" & "Videos" go offsite? And they are follow links! What the!

                          Cheers.

                          EricVallee34 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • MarieHaynes
                            MarieHaynes @EricVallee34 last edited by

                            I don't utilize categories much so I may not be the best one to answer this.  The All in One SEO plugin allows you to change how your category titles are displayed, i.e. %category_title%.

                            You can change category title by changing the name of the category.  But I'm thinking you want to have the category displayed as "Green Widgets" on your sidebar, but have the title something like, "Buy Green Widgets here.  Free Shipping!".

                            I'd be interested in hearing more about this if others have ideas.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • AdamThompson
                              AdamThompson last edited by

                              Eric,

                              If you are optimizing category pages, I recommend modifying your theme to display your category description as visible text on the page. This will allow you to have some optimized text on each category page. I believe there is a title tags plugin that will allow you to change the title tags of your category pages individually, also.

                              EricVallee34 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                              • EricVallee34
                                EricVallee34 @MarieHaynes last edited by

                                Hi Dunamis,

                                Does the plug in allow you to make the Title Tag different than the category name?

                                Eric

                                MarieHaynes 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • MarieHaynes
                                  MarieHaynes last edited by

                                  I have some sites that are static and others that are WP blogs and there isn't much difference between how I optimize them.  I use the all in one SEO plugin for my WP sites which allows me to set the title and meta keywords.  I don't pay much attention to tags.  In the video below, Matt Cutts explains that tags don't really help much in regards to SEO.

                                  watch?v=bYPX_ZmhLqg

                                  EricVallee34 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                  • 1 / 1
                                  • First post
                                    Last post

                                  Browse Questions

                                  Explore more categories

                                  • Moz Tools

                                    Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                                  • SEO Tactics

                                    Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                                  • Community

                                    Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                                  • Digital Marketing

                                    Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                                  • Research & Trends

                                    Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                                  • Support

                                    Connect on product support and feature requests.

                                  • See all categories

                                  Related Questions

                                  • AslanBarselinov

                                    Correct robots.txt for WordPress

                                    Hi. So I recently launched a website on WordPress (1 main page and 5 internal pages). The main page got indexed right off the bat, while other pages seem to be blocked by robots.txt. Would you please look at my robots file and tell me what‘s wrong? I wanted to block the contact page, plugin elements, users’ comments (I got a discussion space on every page of my website) and website search section (to prevent duplicate pages from appearing in google search results). Looks like one of the lines is blocking every page after ”/“ from indexing, even though everything seems right. Thank you so much. FzSQkqB.jpg

                                    On-Page Optimization | | AslanBarselinov
                                    1
                                  • Jason-Rogers

                                    Does blogging with a wysiwyg negatively affect SEO (vs. hand coding)?

                                    Many bloggers use a wysiwyg editor to write posts. Are there any drawbacks to wysiwyg vs plain text? When I write blogs I prefer to hand code my text to be sure everything is optimized. My feeling is that wysiwyg leads to code bloat and generally fewer optimization opportunities. I have no real evidence. Is there any reason not to use the wysiwyg editor?

                                    On-Page Optimization | | Jason-Rogers
                                    0
                                  • cinzia09

                                    How many keywords should I optimize a page for?

                                    Hi, There is a lot of debate going on on whether to use a single keyword per page or multiple keywords per page. What I know for sure is that it is not advisable to repeat the same exact keyword in different pages. I need to optimize product pages, categories and pages for an online store and still do not know if it is better to: 1-work with one main keyword per page plus latent semantic keywords, 2-to optimize a page for multiple different keywords (2 to 4 keywords) which are strongly related to the main topic or to the product sold in a particular product page 3- use single keyword for each page (and no more than one keyword per page). Some seo gurus argue this is the best way to get higher ranking for that particular page in the serps. My personal opinion would be 1 or 2, but I would like to hear what you suggest and think about it. Any suggestion or opinion is welcome and appreciated. Thanks in advance

                                    On-Page Optimization | | cinzia09
                                    0
                                  • PorshaAndrea

                                    When writing content for a website what is the optimal copy length?

                                    My site is currently in the mist of a redesign and I’d like us to compile some recommendations on the length of copy for a page to rank well but can't seem to find any up to date articles on this.Does anyone have any suggestions, comments, or feedback?Thank you.

                                    On-Page Optimization | | PorshaAndrea
                                    0
                                  • toxicpls

                                    Post url not matching with post title ( wordpress)

                                    I have this site called searchoflife.com on which I have noticed the post urls are not matching with the post title. For Example:Post Title - A Dialogue With NaturePost URL - http://searchoflife.com/dialogue-nature-2013-09-12 Words like 'A' and 'with' are not present in the post URL. This has been the trend since a few days. After investigating I found out that it was due to my plugin SEO ultimate which is actually creating post slugs automatically for the post urls. So my question is whether it is advisable to use post slugs instead of the full post url. Does it affect the SERPS for my site?

                                    On-Page Optimization | | toxicpls
                                    0
                                  • matti_wilson

                                    SEO Optimizing in UMBRACO

                                    Hi there, I am planning to use UMBRACO to manage my existing website, so my question to Seomozzers out there is what should I be aware of, how safe is it to have UMBRACO in terms of SEO. By using this software, would it be possible to get a positive or negative impact on my keyword rankings? Thanks!

                                    On-Page Optimization | | matti_wilson
                                    0
                                  • Jon-C

                                    Wordpress & trailing slash on domain name

                                    Hi recently changed my site so it is based on Wordpress, got my preferred domain set in Google webmaster as www.domian.co.uk but since moving to wordpress my domain is now having a slash put on the end of it like www.domain.co.uk/ Most of the links going to my homepage do not have the slash on the end so am I right in thinking I should get rid of the slash from my site so I have one consistent url? If so any ideas how to banish the slash? Cannot seem to do it through the Wordpress general settings (despite preferred domain being set as www.domain.co.uk !) Thanks T

                                    On-Page Optimization | | Jon-C
                                    0
                                  • scanlin

                                    Best SEO structure for blog

                                    What is the best SEO page/link structure for a blog with, say 100 posts that grows at a rate of 4 per month? Each post is 500+ words with charts/graphics; they're not simple one paragraph postings. Rather than use a CMS I have a hand crafted HTML/CSS blog (for tighter integration with the parent site, some dynamic data effects, and in general to have total control). I have a sidebar with headlines from all prior posts, and my blog home page is a 1 line summary of each article. I feel that after 100 articles the sidebar and home page have too many links on them. What is the optimal way to split them up? They are all covering the same niche topic that my site is about. I thought of making the side bar and home page only have the most recent 25 postings, and then create an archive directory for older posts. But categorizing by time doesn't really help someone looking for a specific topic. I could tag each entry with 2-3 keywords and then make the sidebar a sorted list of tags. Clicking on a tag would then show an intermediate index of all articles that have that tag, and then you could click on an article title to read the whole article. Or is there some other strategy that is optimal for SEO and the indexing robots? Is it bad to have a blog that is too heirarchical (where articles are 3 levels down from the root domain) or too flat (if there are 100s of entries)? Thanks for any thoughts or pointers.

                                    On-Page Optimization | | scanlin
                                    0

                                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                                  Start my free trial
                                  Products
                                  • Moz Pro
                                  • Moz Local
                                  • Moz API
                                  • Moz Data
                                  • STAT
                                  • Product Updates
                                  Moz Solutions
                                  • SMB Solutions
                                  • Agency Solutions
                                  • Enterprise Solutions
                                  • Digital Marketers
                                  Free SEO Tools
                                  • Domain Authority Checker
                                  • Link Explorer
                                  • Keyword Explorer
                                  • Competitive Research
                                  • Brand Authority Checker
                                  • Local Citation Checker
                                  • MozBar Extension
                                  • MozCast
                                  Resources
                                  • Blog
                                  • SEO Learning Center
                                  • Help Hub
                                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                                  • How-to Guides
                                  • Moz Academy
                                  • API Docs
                                  About Moz
                                  • About
                                  • Team
                                  • Careers
                                  • Contact
                                  Why Moz
                                  • Case Studies
                                  • Testimonials
                                  Get Involved
                                  • Become an Affiliate
                                  • MozCon
                                  • Webinars
                                  • Practical Marketer Series
                                  • MozPod
                                  Connect with us

                                  Contact the Help team

                                  Join our newsletter
                                  Moz logo
                                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                                  • Accessibility
                                  • Terms of Use
                                  • Privacy

                                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.