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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This is the first of the WordPress SEO Tutorials series.

By default, WordPress gives you this dynamic URL for your post: “http://yourdomain.com/?p=SOME-ID-NUMBER”. The best SEO permalink structure is to have your post appears with ‘category’ and the ‘post title’ in the URL.

This looks something like this: “http://yourdomain.com/category/post-title”

Why is this the best SEO permalink structure compares to the other structures?

To simply put, this permalink structure allows you to have ‘more’ keyword loaded into the URL of your post. Since the category that you’ve placed your post under usually related to the post title (which hopefully is keyword-loaded itself), you will have the extra SEO benefit if other people use that permalink structure to link your post.

How to Change the Default Permalinks to ‘Category/Post-Title’ Permalinks

In order to change the default permalink structure, you need to go to “OPTIONS -> Permalinks” in your admin panel and paste this code into the BOX after “Custom Structure:”

/%category%/%postname%/

Next, click the “Update Permalink Structure >>” button; if WordPress does NOT automatically update the permalink structure to for you–don’t worry–just do the following:

-If you don’t have a .htaccess file in your root directory (public_html/.htaccess) already, just ‘create a new file’ and name it .htaccess and place it in “public_html” directory or whatever directory you have your WordPress blog installed (e.g. public_html/blog/.htaccess, which is equivalent to yourdomain.com/blog/.htaccess).

-Then, copy and paste the code WordPress gives you after clicking on the “Update Permalink Structure >>” button into your .htaccess file. *Note: You need to click on the some option (e.g. ‘Edit’) of your .htaccess file to open up a window to paste your permalink code in the file.

The code is same as following if you are using WordPress 2.0 or higher:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

Just copy and paste that ‘mod-rewrite’ code into your .htaccess file, save it, and you are DONE!

Now, your old AND new post will automatically carry the category the post is assigned to, plus the title name of that post:

http://yourdomain.com/blog/category/post-title

*Note: That’s the default ‘Post-Slug’ structure after the updated permalink, but if you want to change the name of the ‘post-title’ in the post’s URL, just go to ‘Post-Slug’ (located on the right-hand side of the “Write” page) and input/change to what name you want.

Also, be sure to check out my post on “3 WordPress Plugins to Safely Change Your Permalink Structure” if you’re going to change to your blog’s old permalinks to a new permalink structure.

O.K. Now, that concludes my first WordPress SEO tutorial on permalink structure. If you have any question, just post a comment below…

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In the course of these Wordpress SEO tutorials, I’ll also mention various plugins that I use to power my blogs. I’ll probably ‘intensely’ post numerous posts per days on the subject, as I’d really like you all to start optimizing your blog right away. So–below is a list of topics that I’ll be covered, specifically for a WordPress powered blog:

1. Permalink: the best way to use it for the best SEO effect.
2. Home Page Title: need a ‘little’ template digging and/or plugin. Don’t worry; it’s going to be step-by-step remember =P.
3. Post Titles: some tips on how to ‘SEO’ them.
4. Duplicate Content Filters: if you posted in numerous categories, you need to filter ’some’ to reduce the duplicate effect.
5. Titles & Descriptions for Category/Archive/404/Tag Pages: need plugin(s) to do this.

*Note: I’ll add more to this list as time goes and will probably hyper-link them too, for easy navigation (just like a Table of Content .

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