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WordPress SEO – Some Simple Tips for better SEO

WordPress SEO – Some Simple Tips for better SEO

by | Oct 7, 2015 | Search Engine Optimisation

WordPress & SEO

I just learned of something WordPress SEO related which might be hampering your attempts to get good levels of traffic to your site if you are using WordPress. This is a great WordPress SEO tip.

One of the best things about WordPress is that you can add a category or two to your post. It turns out that listing your blog post under more than one category might be considered as duplicate content in Googles eyes and your site may be penalised.

I will be posting under only 1 category for a while to see if this helps with the site traffic / SEO on the site.

Any comments – please add them below to discuss the search tricks you use for WordPress SEO. I am trying this on this site, shanemcdonald.ie and hopefully, it will help my SEO efforts.

Also, if you are adding Tags to your site and you have tags which only have one or two posts this could cause issues also. Consider this, your site has 300 posts and you have a blog post with a recipe and a WordPress tag called ‘recipe’. If this tag has never been used on your site apart from this one time, then this tag remains with 1 post attached to it. This doesn’t really have any real impact on your site’s SEO. Perhaps a better approach might be to add this into a tag such as ‘Lifestyle’ or ‘Food’ which might have a higher post count.

If you are working on your WordPress sites SEO then you should also consider SEO plugins such as Yoast or the All in One SEO plugin. I have used both plugins but I can tell you that Yoast works a bit better for my 3 sites. Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress also connects to Google Search Console. As a result, your WordPress SEO can benefit from things like Google and Bing Authentication and also notifications about soft 404 errors and much more.

One final SEO tip for WordPress users is to install caching and speed optimisation plugins. Take a read of this blog post ‘How to setup WordPress caching and image optimisation your website‘.  I saw an improvement in Bounce Rate reduction and also organic SEO visits. Search Engine Optimisation is an ongoing thing for bloggers and website owners and WordPress has many features to take the pain out of this for you.

If you have any comments on website or WordPress SEO Tips please leave a comment below. 

April Fool’s Day Pranks,Pranks for April Fool’s Day, April 1st SEO

by | Mar 30, 2011 | Internet & Technology

Everyone who has a site wants loads of FREE Hits to their site. One of the biggest draws to any site I ever built was one with April Fools Day Pranks and Tricks. The site at shanemcdonald.com, which originally was an Alumni site and later became a jokes and fun site, had a page called April Fools Day Pranks. This was uploaded in 2006 and got reasonable traffic in that year. It was only in 2007 that I saw the traffic grow and it peaked in 2008.

In 2007 I got over 45,000 unique visits in 3 days and the hosting company (Host***** … I’m not going to name and shame them) shut the site down and would not let me retrieve the files. They shut it down just because it got too much traffic – needless to say, I moved away from them asap as they were rude and did not accept any explanation.

In 2008, April Fools Day, the site traffic peaked and I got 101,000 unique views in 3 days. Luckily the site stayed up. 2009-2010 the site had a security breach but it is back up this year and will be interesting to see what traffic it gets this year.

The link is here – April Fools Day Pranks – The site is not the great site it once was but it is still there as an old timer getting a few hundred page views a day.

These April Fools Day pranks are just fun and I don’t advocate the pranking of people who might not have a sense of humour or who might take it too seriously… April Fools Day has occurred for many decades, have fun but be sensible! The pranks contained on the link above are just humorous to read and I do believe number there are certain ones like #14 which are harmless.

M9 Motorway from Waterford to Dublin Completed and Open Today

by | Sep 9, 2010 | In The News

After many years of waiting, Waterford has a Motorway connection to Dublin. The final section of the M9 Motorway will open at 11am this morning between Danesfort and the South Carlow Section around Powerstown.  The completed M9 Motorway will strip 20 minutes off the journey time between Dublin and Waterford, bringing the driving time to under two hours.

Web Searches for M9

Over the past few days there has been a huge increase in the searches for M9 and related queries on my website. I have gone into Google Analytics and had a look at what people are searching for – obviously with the SERPs hitting my website & blog.

For a bit of light hearted humour, I have outlined the search results and also the one line responses for each search engine query … obviously people were looking for answers on the M9 opening, so here you are.

Search
Query
m9
motorway		 Yes, The M9 is completed today.
waterford
to dublin motorway		 Yes the M9 goes from Waterford to Dublin
opening
of the m9 motorway in september 2010		 The Opening of the M9 takes place today
at 11am
motorway
opening kilkenny carlow		 see above…
M9
TO OPEN 9TH SEPTEMBER?		 Yes, it will
M9
opening September		 Yes, 9th September at 11am
motorway
kilkenny carlow		 Kilkenny to Carlow journey time will be
reduced
m9
kclr		 The announcement of the opening of the
M9 was on KCLR
m9
motorway opening		 That’s today!
opening
of M9 motorway		 Takes place today at 11am – keep up !
m9
motorway opening date		 Once more that would be opening today
at 11am.

It will be interesting to see if the spike in website traffic will be the same as it was when the M9 Waterford to Danesfort section, or the New Waterford Bridge opened.

What it Means to be Listed again

What it Means to be Listed again

by | May 11, 2009 | Internet & Technology, Search Engine Optimisation

The Website is Listed on Google Again

Just a demonstration of where the traffic on the site was, compared to where it is today.

The image below is from Statcounter, the green line is PageViews and the Blue is Visitors.

Traffic Details for the past 30 days - view the most recent days, and traffic is up over 340%

Traffic Details for the past 30 days – view the most recent days, and traffic is up over 340%

I’m just glad this is finished with and I can start adding a bit more content ! Being listed on Google again means I am now seeing more traffic on the website. When you have a website and you see a traffic drop it is alarming and also a bit sad. You put your life and time into your website and if you are not listed on Google or get de-listed you feel you have lost everything.

I’m delighted to be listed again and it is onwards and upwards for Shane’s Website again.

 

 

This is an old post which was originally on my old shanemcdonald.org site and now resides here on shanemcdonald.ie