Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most important thing for every blog to be successful. Although referral traffic helps a blog in stand in the blogosphere organic traffic determines the blog’s success. Every blogger (including me) works on SEO and to get major share of organic traffic. Wordpress blogs also requires some optimization to get maximum share from search engines.
Meta Description: Meta description is the first area crawled by the search engines and I recommend you to use a long description to your blog stuffed with keywords not more the 160 words. These were buzz like Meta keywords were no longer considered in SEO but there is no official announcement on that so go ahead and stuff every possible keyword for your blog in Meta description.
Proper URL Structure: I have written a detailed post on Understanding The structure of Permalinks Make Them SEO Friendly, it helps you to determine the importance of permalinks.
Sitemap Generator: Create Sitemap and allow search engines to crawl the sitemap maximizes the exposure of your blog. I suggest you to use Google XML Sitemap Generator help you in creating the XML sitemaps and ping them to the search engines.
Keywords: Although Keywords were very important to drive traffic but using short keywords like “wordpress” “blogging” SEO” doesn’t make sense and help you in driving traffic instead I suggest you to use long keywords like “wordpress SEO blogging to get traffic” will help you rank top in SERP results.
Robots.txt: Configuring the robots.txt is the most important thing and common mistake done by most of the bloggers. Configuring the blog according to search engines won’t complete your work, at the same time you have to allow access and restrict them at particular locations from crawling. I recommend to you to use a custom robots.txt for your blog. You check out the robots.txt sample at http://www.techcats.net/robots.txt
Let us know about more SEO tips and customizations that will enhance the blogging traffic. 
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Rightly said.. for me I focus on permalinks and then sitemaps.. they are more important. Robots are usually set by default and the keywords + meta desc comes in to play while writing content. Definitely must have seo tips there.. nice guide!
Bangaloreloka´s last blog ..Worst Prison Jail in World? Carandiru Prison Brazil Prison
Thnks and glad that u like this post..
All-in-one-SEO plugin and Robots-Meta plugin by Yoast are two very important Wordpress plugins for SEO beginners!
Debjit´s last blog ..Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx to have social integration and boot recovery
Images also need ALT and Title attributes too. Pain in the butt to enter manually every time, but the SEO Friendly Images plugin does the work for you.
Tony´s last blog ..Yet Another SEO Plugins for WordPress List
yeah using SEO plugin for images works better to get some good traffic from image search..
Does entering content in All in One SEO plugin for each post , produce any considerable SEO effect?. I have not filled the SEO title and keyword for most of the posts.
Ramkumar´s last blog ..Yahoo search 2009
there will be huge impact bro.. you have ignored the most important thing.. Keywords and meta description were must for every post..
Oh. I will fill them all now. Arnd 130+ posts are left empty
Seems that u have lots of work to do now.. even i have left the meta keywords for thesis initially and later entered all the keywords…
hi bro can you write details post on this, i have also some issue with it, please give full details on how to use All in One SEO plugin in proper way how to configure it and how many keywords we have to use in it.
MostlyBlog´s last blog ..Nexus One Price for International Users
Will sure make a detailed post in configuring teh plugins.. have scheduled some useful and meaningful posts which would enhance a bloggers day..
All-in-one-SEO plugin takes tags or categories as meta keywords, you can configure the plugin to use categories or tags as meta-categories.
Debjit´s last blog ..Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx to have social integration and boot recovery
i still don’t have the robot.txt, thanks for mentioning it, i will set it up soon.
Uttoran Sen´s last blog ..2010 Plans – Big Dreams
Robots.txt is the most important thing one will always ignore.. better you create it asap..
These are the de facto of SEO
Blog robot.txt by default uses feed as sitemap, and for meta description tag 200(i hope you update) is the character limit.
Shekhar Sahu´s last blog ..Indyarocks Rocking SMS Unlimited
I think that is in case of blogger, which i m not so sure about..
The parameter is how many char a search engine shows in snippet.
Shekhar Sahu´s last blog ..SEO of Images
200 is decided by SEs so they put snippet of 2oo char.
Shekhar Sahu´s last blog ..SEO of Images | Making Images SEO Friendly Lead To #1 Ranking
Nice guide …but it would be better if you writing about how to optimize your keywords and Meta description… thanks!
Thanh Nguyen´s last blog ..What is mean "MMO"?
have scheduled some posts on SEO, so stay tuned to get more from TechCats
I would love to read them
Sushant´s last blog ..40+ Beautiful New Year 2010 Wallpapers
Hope u love these tips and implement them in ur blog..
will soon make a post on the usage of keywords and meta description soon..
Good list. I once wrote a similar post, nice to see a similar one, but yours include the Robots.txt too. Feel free to check mine too, I have one more point, Image optimisation included too. And Harsh also put in some points to it. I hope you will like it.
Basic On-page SEO Best Practices for new Wordpress Blogs.
Thanks for the link… This is useful…
I think i need to optimize my robots.txt for better SERP.
Dana @ Blogging Update´s last blog ..Blog in New Year 2010
I was taking all the above 5 points seriously except my robots.txt file was missing the one line Google ad bot statement…rest all is going good.
Still thanks for the info since it will be of great help to newbie bloggers..:)
Even I have ignored this……….. Infact i am very ignorant bout this meta tags and keywords setup in seo plugins…………
Raj it would be better if you write a post on configuring the SEO plugin…..
Sandesh Mascarenhas´s last blog ..Fire Fox addon to block site which are inappropriate for children
For sure will compile a post soon on configuring SEO plugins..
I expected more from you friend, these are some of the beginning points for SEO, agree that they are important but I expected something really unique.
provamsi @ India365´s last blog ..India 365 Promo Full Version Is Online
Robots.txt is really important, it controls the entire search engine.Everybody know these things but still forgets. Good tips
Yes, its really a huge achievement to me
and nice post but you forgot about MetaKeywords even Google left it but others do care it
Kranthi Kiran @ w3devil´s last blog ..Yet another Google Pagerank Update
although Google Stopped caring them Meta keywords will always have its own importance…
Nice customizations Rajesh… glad to know that I did all these..
All In One SEO Pack manages most of the SEO for my blog. Love it!
S.Pradeep Kumar´s last blog ..The Gaming Revolution – 2009 and 2010
ALL in one seo is the best plugin to have inbox..
Nice and detailed post, proper URL Structure is very important and if it is correctly done then Search Ranking can be good.
Sahil Kotak´s last blog ..Comment Contest Winners Of the Month: December 2009
Yeah my biggest mistake when I started blogging was ignoring Seo
Sushant´s last blog ..40+ Beautiful New Year 2010 Wallpapers
Hope u do recognize the importance of SEO and do follow them at ur blog..
Rajesh you covered some nice points here .. More over few points :
Use only Category per post
Take a note of dofollow/nofollow/doindex and noindex
Harsh Agrawal´s last blog ..Integrating Facebook Friend Connect with Thesis Wordpress Theme
These Tips from u would always be helpful for the fellow bloggers..
Yesh harsha, its a good tip.
Anish K.S´s last blog ..Vaccinate your USB Using Panda USB Vaccine
Thats a nice point Harsh, even the WP has no specific suggestions about this. I missed that in [edited]my article. You pointed it out there too.
I’m not sure of this nofollow/dofollow ones as recently my blog was indexed by Google from a nofollow link at Mashable([edited] we wrote about it on our blog). But this “doindex/noindex” is in the buzz these days. Hope to learn more about it. Anyways, Rajesh the buzz is still on.
It seems to be well stuffed spam comment.. I do appreciate a link which is related to the niche of post and 2 or links is more or less one should avoid in commenting..
I just needed to show people what happened that’s all man, anyway no problem that you edited that part, all i needed to say was, the old concept of dofollow/nofollow is changing in the eyes of the search bot algos.
i really don’t have an issue to allow one link related to the topic but even the aksimet caught it as spam .. i have edited and approved to tell u guys that it is also not a good practice to to leave links in the comments
Oh Rajesh Kanuri, If I used imaga from other hosting, so It affected to my SEO???
Thanh Nguyen´s last blog ..What is mean "MMO"?
it wont effect SEO until and unless u use correct alt text for the images..
Simple SEO for WP Blogs are
1, All in SEO
2, Google XML Sitemap Generator
and Use Google Analytics, web Master Tools. Submit RSS feeds to Directories, Bookmark URL at delecious, Mister Wong etc, Submit Some posts in Digg, Stumble Upon etc.
Anish K.S´s last blog ..Vaccinate your USB Using Panda USB Vaccine
These are the best basic SEO plugins and helps in making things better..
Good tips, thanks for sharing.
Marko´s last blog ..HeGeeks is Powered by Thesis Theme
I forgot to configure the robots.txt file, I will do that now, thanx for the post
Akash Malik´s last blog ..Starting Your First Blog
i came to your blog from the google and i found very interesting that you have covered all the points of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION FOR WORDPRESS BLOG.
thanks for posting.
That is good tips for me and many other bloggers. However, if you are using Thesis theme, there are many other things that you can tweak within post area like tag, title, meta….then to have the best SEO results for the whole blog, you should do it through every single posts
Tinh@eblogtip.com´s last blog ..FireFox 2010 Calendar [Downloads]
I want to add one. Use of h1,h2 tags. It really needs to be used properly so that search engines can identify what is more important than other areas of your post.
And another one is Seo evolved much. Bloggers should use no follow method also wherever need with care.
Pascal´s last blog ..4 Tips to Remove Default Options in Thesis Theme?
yeah using h1 and h2 tags were considered to be the best safe practice in robots views as these tags will have more importance in SEO
keyword and content is king…but still thanks for ur informative post…
Leah Dizon´s last blog ..Leah Dizon Picture #2
no doubt that Content is king but one has to remember that SEO is the queen. . .
lol…you are right…i know seo is important to help us rank higher in SE…but i only do meta tag and keep get backlink…what atcually is the robot.txt?
Robot.txt is a file which gives access permissions to search engines so that they can access a certain part to display in their search results or they cannot.
frds…..do u have any idea about blogger blog seo
laxman´s last blog ..iEducatio blogger template
Most of them works same and stands valid for Blogger blogs too…