Optimizing Your Blog Title
Picking the right name is one of the most important SEO decisions to be made for your blog. In addition, the HTML markup coding in most WordPress themes is done incorrectly. On this post, John H. Gohde will be discussing some very important tips for optimizing your blog title.
Keep Blog Titles Short
In most cases, your blog title should be as short as possible. This is especially true, if you are planning on tacking your blog title onto the end of your post titles. It should be unique, catchy, and avoid the use of commonly used keywords. Using a popular keyword like SEO will only cause your blog to be drowned out in the SERPs. Remember that your blog tile in WordPress will automatically be used as anchor text for your home page, in most cases.
Optimizing Your Blog Title is a feature that is not provided by the All in One SEO plugin.
<H1> Points Out The Most Important Topic
Opinions very, but your blog title is really only important on your home page. On your posts, in most WordPress themes, the blog title only tends to drown out your post title in the SERPs. Your <H1> tag is supposed to point out the most important topic which always should be the post title. Amazingly, most of the WordPress themes being used on blogs have the HTML markup coding implemented incorrectly.
To search engine optimize your blog title you will have to manually edit your theme’s Header (header.php) template in the Design – Theme Editor option of WordPress. In most themes the coding line that you will need to modify will appear at the bottom of the Header template and look something like the following.
<span id="blogtitle">
<h1><a href="<?php echo get_settings(’home’); ?>"><?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?></a></h1>
<div id="sitedesc"><?php bloginfo(‘description’); ?></div>
<?php } ?>
</span>
</div>
Once you have found the correct line, you should then change it to look like the following.
<span id="blogtitle">
<?php if (is_front_page()) { ?>
<br>
<h1><a href="<?php echo get_settings(’home’); ?>"><?php bloginfo(‘name’);
?></a></h1>
<div id="sitedesc"><?php bloginfo(‘description’); ?></div>
<?php } else { ?>
<br>
<h3><a href="<?php echo get_settings(’home’); ?>"><?php bloginfo(‘name’);
?></a></h3>
<div id="sitedesc"><?php bloginfo(‘description’); ?></div>
<?php } ?>
</span>
</div>
Use of is_front_page() is more generic than the out of date is_home() WordPress conditional.
Posts Should Stress The Post Title
While far from perfect, this SEO technique places the stress where it should be: On your post titles rather than on the blog title. While this method is advocated by a number of SEOs, it is not perfect. What is wrong with this approach is that the first header tag used in your document is <h3> rather than <h1>. Nevertheless, it manages to place emphasis on your blog title.
The Perfect Setup
<a href="">
<a href="">
John H. Gohde advises you to setup your theme this way. This approach is absolutely perfect. For your blog posts and pages, the first header tag in the document is now <h1> and is only used once. If you want to emphasis your blog title, then tack it on the end of your post title (with an SEO plugin). To place emphasis on sections headings within your document use the <h2> tag. Sub-sections should be emphasized with <h3>.
John has just shown you how to SEO optimized your blog title. But, using <H3>tags rather the original <H1> could easily mess up the visual layout display of your blog. Please read the following posts before trying to implement the above instructions.
