Optimising Wordpress blog posts

We have added a plug-in to all our Wordpress sites which allows you to optimise each blog post. Good practice should still be exercised when writing your blog posts; identify keywords, build these into the headings and copy, optimum page lengths etc, however these are additional tools that we can use to optimise the posts.

General tab

Snippet preview

This shows you how the information about the post would display in a search engine results page (SERP). This information will change as you amend the title and meta description below.

Focus keyword

This allows you to select a keyword or phrase that you consider to be most relevant to the post. Ideally, this word or phrase should feature in the title of the article and also throughout the blog post.

Underneath the focus keyword box, there are five key indicators for the optimisation of the blog which you should look to tick off as many as possible. This shows you where the focus keyword features within the various headings and meta data.

SEO title

This is the equivalent of the title tag in T4 and allows you to set an alternative title to the blog post that will be displayed in search engine results pages (SERPs). Again, this should include your focus keyword/phrase and should be no longer than 70 characters. Best practice is to include the brand (University of Huddersfield) at the end of the SEO title.

Meta description

This is the short description that appears in the SERP. This should include the focus keyword and any other keywords you have identified relating to the blog post. You will note that the snippet preview changes when you update this information and you are limited to 140 characters.

Meta Keywords

In here, you should identify all keywords you have identified relating to the post including the focus keyword or phrase. Things to consider include important names within the blog, places, the university name, key issues that the blog refers to etc. You should aim for anywhere between 8-20 keywords and phrases.

Page analysis tab

This page lets you know how well you have optimised your blog post. Things that are not optimised are highlighted with a red exclamation box, things that are ok but could require further work are highlighted with an orange ‘ok’ box and things that are optimised are highlighted with a green tick box.

Advanced tab

There is no need to amend anything within the advanced tab.