I posted this over at SEORefugee, but it was suggested that I add it here as well, so here it is.
A lot of people seem to be starting WordPress blogs (as newbies) lately, so I thought I would share a tip here. A newly installed wp blog uses the same title across all pages (ew). It also does not come with a meta description tag (which is ok, but if you want it, then you need to make sure you make them unique). Here's what ya do...
In your theme's directory, open header.php.
Replace current title with:
'; bloginfo('name'); wp_title(); echo''; } else { echo''; the_title(); echo ' | '; bloginfo('name'); echo ' '; } ?>
Under that, add:
" />
The first part will put the blog name on the home page (in the title), and use the post title and blog name as the title on the post pages.
The second part will put the blog name and description (found in the Options / General section in the Tagline field) on the home page (for the meta description), and put the post title as the description on the post pages.
Note: Sorry about the bad code formatting. If you can't grab the code from here, just head on over the SEORefugee post (linked above) to get it.
About the Author: Donna Fontenot
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If you’d be so inclined, you’re a trusted enough source that many people (one I know personally) would love to see you put together a few part series on blogging for n00bs.
My first blog is about 97% done and ready for primetime – just a couple more minor tweaks.
My next step would be learning about any special steps one might follow to get as blog noticed (things that might be different from the usual SEO tactics done for a static html site, for example). If you have any wisdom you’d care to share, I’d love to listen.
Side note – maybe it’s because of the code placed in this post (I think it’s the single, long line of code), but the template for this post is very skewed.
Thanks a ton!
Yeah, I don’t know how to deal with that long line of code. But that’s definitely what’s making it wonky. I’ll see what I can come up with as a newbie blogging series.
I think there are lots of “Johnny-come-lately’s” who were also slow to embrace the blog as a viable tool for link building, brand awareness, revenue generation, etc. So I would bet much of it is probably old hat to you, but it’s like a fresh new textbook for me, spine crackling as I open it up.
Thanks again.
Hey DD! WordPress newbie here 🙂 Thanks for the info… it works beautifully!
Might also want to add this to prevent duplicate content
\n”;
} else {
echo “\n”;
}
?>
that didn’t work, read it about it here:
http://www.coverfire.com/archives/2006/03/26/blogs-and-search-engines-and-wordpress/