Kelli S. Burns, Ph.D.

Many of us use the free services of WordPress to host a blog. How can you SEO your WordPress blog without registering your domain name?

1. The first step is to register with the webmaster tools provided by major search engines. From your WordPress dashboard, choose Tools then look at Webmaster Tools Verification. Click first on Google Webmaster Tools. (You may need to open another window, one for Google Tools and the other with your blog’s dashboard to make this easier.) Click the “add a site” button and then type the URL of your blog. After hitting enter, you will be at the Webmaster Central page. Choose the alternative method tab and then choose “add a meta tag to your site’s home page.” Copy that meta tag provided for you and then back on your Tools page of your blog dashboard, paste it next to “Google Webmaster Tools.” Save changes from your blog. Then go back to your Google Webmaster Tools page and click Verify. You can then go through a similar process to register your blog with Bing. You will want to choose option 2 (Copy and Paste a Tag in your Default Webpage). Copy the tag and post onto your blog Tools page. Save the changes and then go back to Bing Webmaster Central to verify. You can go back to Google Webmaster Tools with this link: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home or to the Bing Webmaster Tools with this link: https://ssl.bing.com/webmaster

2. Some themes have better SEO than others. The blog Ravidreams suggests Vigilance and Linen. Google “WordPress themes with good SEO” for other examples.

3. You should tag your posts with 5-10 relevant keywords. This WordPress support site explains tags vs. categories. Your posts will then appear in global tag listings like this one from WordPress. Here are some guidelines about global tag listings.