SEO

As many of you will know, I love WordPress. I use it on most of my affiliate sites which make me thousands of dollars per month and I also use it on my blogs, such as this one. I’m certainly not alone when it comes to utilising this CMS though — tens of millions of sites online are powered by the software.

For all the great things there are to be said about WordPress, though, out-of-the-box SEO certainly isn’t one of its strong points. As I use the software so much and make a lot of my income thanks to search engine traffic, I have come to learn what works best in terms of optimising your WordPress setup.

A few years ago, SEO was far more robotic than it is today. In fact, if you wanted to rank for some of the top keyphrases, you didn’t have to care much about being social in your niche or even standing out as an authority. You could simply buy directory links, sponsor blog posts, and even have WordPress themes developed which included a link to your site in the footer.

These days however, things are very different. The top results for most keyphrases are either a Wikipedia page, a site that is very focused around community, or a clear leader in an industry. There are exceptions, but links tend to go to social sites (even Wikipedia has social aspects) by the people who use them.