Since the release of v2.5 many things have changed for WordPress users. While SEO still has some basic rules, optimizing a WordPress blog is getting easier as new plugins are added and upgraded. The most important change in WordPress v2.5 (and above) is the new improved dashboard. As with all change this revision triggered much controversy, pros, cons and confusion. Those users familiar with the previous versions of WordPress found it hard to adapt to the new interface, and many beginners found the navigation less intuitive than they expected.

As any SEO professional would tell you, be forewarned that despite the ?social media traffic? generated through bookmarking sites and social networks like digg, StumbleUpon, mixx, Second Brain and so on, search engine optimization is still important. Poorly optimized sites don’t do well in social networking, for obvious reasons you’ll discover on subsequent pages. The success equation is simple: poor SEO = wasted traffic = poor conversions (lost sales).

This short eBook will reveal the most important SEO aspects for WordPress blogs (and for any other blog or website in general).

Hosting
WordPress is the best content management system for blogs and it can also make a decent CMS for standard websites. However, there are some ?minor details? any WordPress user needs to understand before reading further.

There are basically two blog solutions offered by WordPress: a CMS software script to download free and use on your own domain, or a free WordPress account where you can signup to create a free blog. However this would be a WordPress hosted blog, which has less flexibility than a professional hosted blog. This is more difficult to optimize for the search engines and according to WordPress TOS, Automattic (WordPress parent company) can terminate your account at any time.

Blogs on wordpress.com will be hosted on subdomains of wordpress.com; subdomains created automatically from your user dashboard. These are ideal to ?get your feet wet? if you are new to blogging, but are not suited for professional bloggers.

Download pdf The SEO Book for WordPress 2.5 Blogs