Problem Number 2: Wordpress Default Settings
By SEOContest2008 - Posted on Sun Mar 2, 2008Not everything on a fresh install of Wordpress is exactly what I want to have in SEOContest2008. Some settings are not ideal and you might want to check out my list and copy what I do and probably help you out in your ranking too.
- Updated my Pinglist: Wordpress can ping several blog search engine. On every new blog post, it can ping these search engines and I decided to update the ping list.
- Valid XHTML: WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically. Why? Because I just want to.
My template is valid XHTML with tableless CSS design. Some SEO’s still think valid XHTML helps in ranking but it is really not the case. Invalid HTML code can still rank high and the valid XHTML code has been debunked already by many SEO professionals. So don’t ask me why I am adamant about doing this, you can figure it out just thinking about it well and investigating further. - Summary on Syndication Feeds: My RSS should not be the whole article. I don’t want automated splogs copying everything.
- Preferred Permalink: No real SEO explanation. Just a personal preference. I chose a custom permalink of this pattern: /%postname%.html
- Delete Default Blogroll: Matt Mullenweg is probably one of the coolest people in the blogging world with Wordpress but sorry, I have to delete the whole default blogroll.
- Delete Default Pages: The default about us page had to go.
- Update Akismet Plugin: Even if my WordPress is the latest, Akismet was not updated. I don’t want to be annoyed with spam so I make sure Akismet is running fine.
In the previous problem, I have fixed everything well so far except for the default domain to have the “www” because if I add it, the DNS changes have not propagated well yet and I can’t even see my own site myself! So I am working without the “www” first.
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