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One aspect of onsite SEO for blogs is to configure a desirable permalink structure.  Essentially, a permalink is a permanent reference url used for access once the post passes from the first page of your blog.  It is what others will use to link to the post and, perhaps more importantly, the link the search engines will use to identify your post, page or article.  Permalinks should be unique.

There has always been debate about whether, and the extent to which, keyword-rich urls contribute to a pages.  It is commonly believed that keywords in the permalink do indeed contribute to a page’s SERPs.

The structure of WordPress permalinks is dictated by a series of settings and parameters found under the Settings -> Permalinks section, within the administrator console. 

In order to fully optimise the permalink structure, aim to use your tagret keywords in the leftmost position of the url.  In order to do this you’d need a custom structure containing the single parameter /%postname%.  This creates a permalink based on the post title.  It is then up to you  to choose a unique, keyword-rich and compelling title for each of your posts.

Be aware that using just the /%postname% parameter compels you to create unique titles for every post on your blog in order to avoid collisions (where two articles might have the same permalink, clearly not a good situation).

Also, be aware that if your blog is established with numerous indexed pages then your should avoid altering your permalink structure without a full understanding of the consequences.  It will affect your backlinks, trackbacks and ultimately your SERPs.  Usually, optimising a blog’s permalink structure should be undertaken during the early stages of the blog’s development, and before  a substantial content base is developed.

There are several plug-ins available that allow auto-manipulation of post slugs and consequently permalinks.  These often remove “noise” words (such as “the”, “and” and alike) with the belief that increasing the overall keyword density of the permalink, and shifting the keywords leftward, will ultimately increase the link weight.  Although these plug-ins might offer some small SEO benefit, be extra cautious when using these on active blogs for the same reasons stated above.

Later iterations of WordPress offer the facilty to edit the permalink before publishing in a box just beneath the post title when writing it.  This way you can manually create a permalink for the post or manually crop noise words prior to publishing.

SEO activity can be divided in to two broad categories, namely, offsite SEO and onsite SEO. 

Onsite SEO refers to all the methods used in the design and presentation of your site in order to enhance its appeal to search engines and spiderability.  Onsite SEO includes tweaking hundreds of factors that can increase the quality of information search engines retrieve when visiting your site.  There are no magic formulae for these elements, but using them all appropriately can lead to significant gains in search engine rankings.  Onsite SEO factors include (but are not limited to):

• choice of text within HTML h# tags (for example, <h1> or <h3> tags).  Do not overuse h1 tags, one per page;
• choice of text within HTML title tags.  This should be unique for each page on your site;
• keyword density within HTML body tags.  Historically (and, perhaps, anecdotally), a density of 3% to 5% evenly distributed on pages of over 200 words was thought to be near optimal, although this is near impossible to assess objectively;
• strong relevant internal linking.  Breadcrumb style sub-navigation on pages can strengthen internal linking;
• choice of text within HTML META description tag.  This should be unique for each page on your site;
• watch out for broken links within your site;
• keywords in HTML <strong> tags;
• use an up-to-date XML sitemap;
• use an up-to-date HTML sitemap;
• place target keywords high up on the page;
• customize 404 pages to include links back to principal areas of your site’s navigation structure;
• use unique and relevant HTML ALT tags on all images;

These are several of the more important factors that influcence onsite SEO, many of which we shall return to in more depth in ensuing articles on this blog.

Offsite SEO refers to the methods employed to improve search engine rankings by maximizing the influence of factors outside your site’s home domain.  For example, building strong, relevant inbound links from other domains/sites.  The principal object of offsite SEO is quality link building.  Link building has evolved to become a full and separate discipline within SEO and we will return on more than one occasion to tackle the many aspects of link building in future articles on this blog.

Ordinarily, onsite SEO should be undertaken before proceeding to offsite SEO efforts and are usually quicker and easier to perform.  Offsite SEO efforts are usually divided in to mid- to long-term projects.