No on the Internet knows if html extensions in WordPress are better for search engine optimization.  People just repeat what other people say with conviction, but they are not basing it on fact.  My personal experience has been my .html pages rank higher than my normal WordPress pages.  This could  for many reasons.  So I can not say 100% that .html WordPress pages rank higher or are better for SEO.

The theory is static pages like .html extensions are less easy to manipulate than dynamic pages.  Therefore, static pages might have a slight advantage with search engines.  However, this is in no way confirmed.  My .html pages could have ranked better as they are seen as one off pages and a little more unique then the rest of my site or as one off pages more page rank could have flowed to them based on my internal linking structure.

Further to truly make your page seem .html to SERPs you need to change a few more things I suspect than just change the extension. Therefore, I use html extensions on my WordPress blog for the look rather than SEO.

.html WordPress look

Another reason why you might want to add .html to your WordPress blog is people say it looks better.  It feels and looks static and some people view this subconsciously with a little more trust then a dynamic page.

However, some people like the cleaner trailing slash look of a normal url without any extensions.  I personally do not like .php or .asp at the end of sites.  For me they look and feel spammy so I often avoid them.

Changing your .html site to wordpress

Another reason why you perhaps want to use .html extensions on your WordPress permalink structure is, you had a static html site you want to convert to WordPress but do not want to change the url names.  This is another reason to make WordPress html extensions in terms of permalink structure, if you do not want to do a lot of 301 redirects.  I am pretty lazy.

Issues in WordPress .html

There are some basic permalink issues connected to having your WordPress blog ending in .html.

• If you change to .html then make sure you use a redirection plugin.
• There is a trailing slash issue
• There is a hierarchical category issue (Use a ‘top level category plugin’ to fix this)

All these problems of having an html extension wordpress site. I have detailed this in my  html-with-no-trailing-slash post. Also read my navigation-structure-wordpress-seo post for a greater understanding of SEO and wordpress and your permalink structure.

html extension WordPress permalink structure

html extension WordPress

I use: /%category%/%postname%.html

Some people prefer a flat structure /%postname%.html but for WordPress SEO a hierarchical structure is better as you have more keywords or at least synonyms in the url.  Consider LSI or latent semantic content concepts when choosing your categories.

html WordPress without a less optimal SEO structure

The truth is quality content is much better than playing around with your permalinks.  If you notice I do not have .html on this site.

However, I like to test things and play and I have been experimenting with an html extension for WordPress.  I have got good results.  I thought I would offer it as an idea if someone wants to test it.

I do not know if it was because users subconsciously preferred a site with .html at the end or search engines gave it a slight preference.  It might be pure coincidence and hence magical thinking that html WordPress is better SEO-ed. The bottom line is I like to check things for myself rather than recycle what others say with conviction.  Objectivity is the essence of intelligence. Let me know what you think about the idea of  html WordPress extensions and SEO.

My WordPress site was hacked and removed from Google

I was not up to date on one of my websites with the latest and greatest version of WordPress.  My site was hacked, it got a virus.  I did not even know this until I saw this site, which is pretty innocent, be removed from the Google index.

At first I thought it was something to do with a reorganization of my site structure, however, after a resubmission request did nothing, I dug deeper and discovered much to my amazement I was hacked.

Steps to correct a WordPress virus

1. Export all your posts to a xml file
2. Change your ftp password.
3. Delete your database and start a new database.
4. Delete all file except image files etc on your WordPress site directory.
5. Reinstall WordPress from zero, brand new, and use new passwords.
6. Import your posts from your xml file – Very important, make sure you look at every line of xml before you import it into WordPress. This includes the comments, as this is where the spammers put many virus or spam links you might not see on your normal blog.
7. Tweak it, such as make theme adjustments

Time to correct a WordPress site that is hacked

The whole process can be done in about an hour, if you know what you are doing. In my opinion it beats wondering if you found the virus etc.  A clean install is a sure way to get rid of a WordPress virus and it can all be done in under an hour.

How to improve the SEO of your WordPress site by improved navigation. Yes do not look at my SEO structure on most of my sites,  the cobbler wears the worst shoes so only now am I getting around to improve the navigation of some of my sites.

Here are some ways to improve your sites structure and navigation that will result in better SEO on your wordpresssite.

Machines and structure and SEO

Search engines are machine, they think in terms f hierarchies and order,  therefore, to improve the SEO of your site make it a logical and rich navigation structure.

Permalinks and categories

Note how in the photo below I changed the permalink structure to /%caegory%/%postname%?  this gives WordPress a hierarchical structure. 99% of the guys swinging out there have large sites and flat structures.  Even guys claiming to know SEO and WordPress.

Look at this one page summary of Internal linking structure and SEO.  Got it? It should be hierarchical, not flat.

Also note I use breadcrumbs to further take advantage of this hierarchical structure. WordPress can be turned a very friendly SEO CMS with with plugins for improved SEO and user experience.

Hierarchical categories bread crumbs friendly urls with categories and names

The next picture below shows how I use tags but not on the side bar.  Most important I use related posts.  Search engines are machines that think in terms of clusters and relationships.  If you want to SEO your WordPress navigation structure start thinking in terms of interlinking your related posts and grouping them together.

Tags and related posts for WordPress SEO

This last picture below shows a forward and back button for better user experience and indexing. Further do not forget a simple footer link for your own site.

Back foward footer link SEO wordpress

WordPress SEO structure and navigation

This is a fast post (the images are lame, I know)  and there are many things you can do, most of which I have not done on most of my sites, mind you.  However, if you are in a competitive sector and want to market your site or blog to the max, use some of the ideas illustrated above for WordPress SEO structure and navigation.

• In this article you will learn how to seo a WordPress blog from a: how to write an individual  post so it is seo-ed perspective.

The purpose of this post is not to talk about the technical aspects of how to seo a wordpress blog but more the writing of it so google can figure out what your post is about. I will not go into plugins or themes etc, simply how to seo a wordpress blog from a title and tag point of view.

When writing a wordpress post for seo – most important point

Think about what people will type in the google search box. What people type in should be your target keyword for the wordpress post.

How to seo a wordpress blog

What people type in  should be your title, or very close.

How to seo your title

The title is the most important thing when you want to know how to seo a wordpress blog. Consider the title as the keyword or very close.  You can try to make it a natural variation of the keyword people type in but I have found the closer I am to the actual words people type in the better.  Do not mess with the title.

How to seo your WordPress permalink

What should your permalink be? in this case mine is how-to-seo-a-wordpress-blog Why? It matches what people type into the google search box.

Tags – How to use tags in your blog to help search engines determine relevance

Tags are the web 2.0 version of keywords.  They again should match what people type into the google search box.  My tags for this post is -> How to seo a wordpress blog, seo, wordpress blog.

Categories and WordPress

Choose one or maybe two categories, do not choose more as duplicate content is a bad thing for google. Less is more.

h1, h2, h3 – How to use headers to help search engine optimization

Use one h1.  I set my title to my h1, as many themes do automatically, if not use only 1 h1 and a couple h2 and maybe h3s. Google likes variety. Do not use ten h2.    Be natural. No spammy, nor stuff keywords.  When you use headers -  h1, h2, h3 – there  should be some variation of your title/target tag phrase.  Look how I have varied how to seo a wordpress blog. Not to imaginative,  yes I know,  but it works. Also bold and italics does not hurt, that is you can use bold and itaics for your keyword like this -> how to seo a wordpress blog. But nothing too much.

How to optimize WP – content

Content is king.  But drop your target keyword (each post should have one and only one) into your wordpress post in every paragraph, a couple of times,  in a natural way. Note how in this wordpess post I mention “how to seo a wordpress blog”, several times, because  “how to seo a wordpress blog” is my target google search term. I actually over do it here in this post.  Your post should consider semantic latent context indexing.

WordPress – disoriented reader – writing for readers not SEO

Be clear ok? Like your are writing for the New York Post not an academic journal, no one reads those anyway.  Try to write in a clear, crips fashion to help people, not to impress or sell them.  Be humble, be clear. Do you like being sold?  I do not. So write in a natrual honest clear way.  Also  People do not read the web they scan webpages.  Think about it. Make it simple and easy for the reader to determine what is going on in your wordpress post.  Web surfers are disoriented when they land on a new page. Myself included, they will take 5 seconds then leave if they can not determine the point of your wordpress post.  Help them by keeping it simple and they will get more from your wordpress post. Seo how at the begining of this post I state my pupose, that is to explain how to seo a wordpress blog.

Long pages – for writing that is not just headlines

If you are more a classical writer – great.  Make a long article a wordpress page not a wordpress post.  Make it in your sytle natural with less considertion about SEO. Then write some short highly seo wordpress posts about the page and link to it.  This is how to seo a wordpress blog.

Promote your wordpress post

You spent so much time to write the darn thing, now market it. Ok? Take the time to go to your favorate social media sites and market it.  This is an important part of how to seo a wordpress blog.

How is your blog ranked?

Umm. Its not.  I wrote a post on how to seo a wordpress blog, but how do I rank in google?  I do not. Why? This is a new site, no links, it will take time and patience to build this up. But I have other sites that gets tons of traffic, and one that easily get over 1/4 million page views a month. So I know what I am talking about with regards to how to seo a wordpress blog.

Questions about how to seo a WP site

Leave a comment for how to seo a wordpress blog and I will answer them.

Here is the truth. Headspace 2 is more complicated and powerful. However, it is marginally more powerful and greatly more complicated than the WordPress All-in-One-Seo plugin. So it is really a cost benefit choice.  For me the marginal benefit and great time I could spend getting up to speed on the wordpress headspace 2 plugin or working around some of the issues now, I could be exporing other ways to SEO my wordpress blogs.

Further at this juncture headspace 2 has some conflict problems with other plugins. All-in-one-SEO plugin not as many.

Further, WordPress is pretty good SEO ed out of the box. Only a few twicks are needed. More importance is the fundementals of SEO.

Therefore, All-in-One-SEO is better because of the ease of use. I am staying with this until I see a huge difference in those using Headspace 2 plugin for WordPress that can not be explained by link growth.