A recent WordPress blog integration for Lisbe Partners lead me to consider some Search Engine Optimization decisions that WordPress makes in it templates and here I share modifications.

1. Headings!

WordPress Default template lists Post Titles as <h2> in order to reserve <h1> for your Blog Title. At AWP we like to use <h1> for unique page content titles, so the first main text you see on the page is <h1>. We generally have great SEO ratings, so we are going to stick with that strategy.

The template files, archive.php, links.php, page.php, single.php and search.php can be changed directly. To affect the heading tags for posts, you will need to insert some conditional code in index.php (or post.php, since this file can be used on the single post, the post category list views, and some times the home page). In the following example <h4>’s are used as the list view headings.

<<?php echo (is_single() || is_home()) ? "h1" : "h4"; ?> class="title">
    <a id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>">
        <?php the_title(); ?>
    </a>
</<?php echo (is_single() || is_home()) ? "h1" : "h4"; ?>>

Insert this into the beginning of index.php. (Modified from geniosity musings)

2. Page Title

Another SEO measure we’ve implemented at AWP is ordering titles with specific content first in the browser title bar. For example, if we are several layers deep, the title goes “Page Title _ Sub-Section _ Section _ Website Name,” etc. For more of an explanation, see Web Designer Wall (go to #7).

For interior pages WordPress Default theme uses “Blog Title > Category > Post Name,” which is not Search Engine friendly. To improve this, I borrowed code from The Blueprint Theme which integrates the Google Blueprint framework into WordPress (which I also used in my blog template).

<title><?php wp_title(''); ?> <?php if ( !(is_404()) && (is_single()) or (is_page()) or (is_archive()) ) { ?> | <?php } ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

So, now we get “Post Name > Blog Title.” Happy SEO improving!