Easy WordPress updates to make your blog/podcast better

March 17, 2010

Here’s a few easy updates you can use that will improve the feel and search engine ratings of your blog or podcast.

Make sure you’re posting under your name. Many people leave the default which is to display “admin” for every post. Go to Users > Your Profile. From the drop down next to Display name publicly as, select your name. Click Save.
Make sure your posts and pages use real words in the URL address. By default WordPress uses random numbers to identify your post. So your url may look like this: http://www.mycoolblog.com/?p=219. This is not great on several counts; its hard to read, ugly, and doesn’t tell the search engines anything. Instead we want a real name so the URL looks like: http://www.mycoolblog.com/fashion-for-dudes. To make this change, go to Settings > Permalinks. Under Common Settings, choose Custom Structure and enter /%postname% in the text box. Click Save Changes. Now if you navigate to one of your posts, you’ll see under the title is a text box for Permalink. You can now edit that to be whatever you want.
Use categories. Categories are an easy way to draw people in and encourage them to read and/or listen to what you have to say. Having all your posts as Uncategorized doesn’t do anything to help you. If you get in to it, use Post Tags as well. You can then use the Tag Cloud widget as a cool visualization for what you write/talk about most.

So in short, start thinking about how to make your blog or podcast more interactive. Allow people to easily find something that interests them. Draw people (and search engines!) in with keywords.

Happy people hunting,

Chris