How to Configure Your WordPress Blog’s Title Tag for the Maximum SEO Benefits
This is the 2nd of the WordPress SEO Tutorials series.
If you don’t know it yet, your web page’s TITLE is one of the MOST important SEO factor in ranking high in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Check it out: go to a major search engine and type in search engine optimization (with/without quotations). What do you see in the 1st page of the SERPs? Most of the top results have search engine optimization near the very beginning of their titles, and these titles have the keyword phrase search engine optimization BOLD-TYPED!
*Notice the bold-types of the descriptions too? I’ll talk about this later but for now let’s get back to how to configure your WordPress blog’s title tag.
By default, most WordPress themes have your blog’s name BEFORE your post/categories/etc. title:
Your Blog Name » Blog Archives » Blog-Post-Title
This, of course, is NOT favorable if you want to have the extra edge over your competition in the SEO war. Anyway, here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how you can configure the title of your post/category/etc. to this (without any plugin):
Blog-Post-Title » Your Blog Name
*Note: The phrase “Blog Archives” has been deleted.
How to Move Your “Blog-Post-Title” before the “Blog Name”
In order to do this, you need to open up the “header.php” file in your WordPress theme folder. You need a ‘php’ file editor to do this; if not, DON’T WORRY–just do the following:
-First, change the “header.php” file extension to “header.txt“.
-Next, open the “header.txt” file and ‘find’ for the following code that begins with the < title> tag:
< title>< ?php bloginfo('name'); ?>< ?php wp_title(); ?>< /title>
*Note: < ?php bloginfo('name'); ?> is your Blog Name, and < ?php wp_title(); ?> is your Blog-Post-Title. Also, you only need these two “< ?php>” codes: just delete the rest of the other codes or texts (e.g. “Blog Archives”).
Now, all you have to do is moved the < ?php wp_title(); ?> before the < ?php bloginfo('name'); ?>:
BEFORE:
< title>< ?php bloginfo('name'); ?>< ?php wp_title(); ?>< /title>
AFTER:
< title>< ?php wp_title(); ?>< ?php bloginfo('name'); ?>< /title>
That’s it you’re DONE! The last step is to save the file as a “php” extension, “header.php” (without the quotations), and upload it to your site’s theme folder and watch the transformation of your Wordpress Blog-Post-Title goes before your Blog Name:
Blog-Post-Title » Your Blog Name
O.K. That’s it for my tutorial on the configuring your blog name and title WITHOUT using any plugin. My next post will list a SERIES of SEO-related WordPress plugins, plus some optional ‘tweak’ for the best SEO results for the title tag 
.
O.K. Then, until the next WordPress SEO tutorial…
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[...] of the page title instead of having it appear first.” This achieves the same result as my 2nd WordPress SEO tutorial on how to move your blog title before your blog name without any [...]
i think that,s great.
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I am a newbie in SEO and this certainly is a great help. Thanks for the tips.
Reply to this comment »Thanks, I was looking for this. It is easy explained and now it works just sooo fine!! Although one thing I had to change: it doesn’t work just by copying your “after”. Copy this one and it will work:
There was something wrong with your spaces.
Greetings!
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