In previous posts I’ve covered various tools or “plugins” which help you optimize your WordPress SEO. This post provides a quick guide to settings that work well with all those mentioned plugins. It is also important to look at other parts of your blog structure such as permalinks and sitemaps.

With WordPress SEO Packs these are the settings I prefer when using All in One SEO Pack or Platinum SEO Pack. (some prefer it differently).

1. Home Title:  If my site domain and name is short I use “Name – Short Headline” otherwise I use the most descriptive name possible.
2. Description – Keep it short and simple but informative.
3. Keywords – Normally no more than 15.
4. Canonical Urls and Rewrite Urls on.
5. Post Title – %post_title%
6. Page Title - %page_title% (But make sure it makes sense).
7. With the rest I keep the default settings.
8. I also tags for meta keywords and auto generate descriptions for posts.
9. The rest I basically keep on default.

Permalinks :

For permalinks I tend to use /%category%/%postname%/ , but it will depend on the the content of your blog.

Images :

I always tag my posts and use SEO Friendly Images plugin just in case.

Speed :

Always try and cache your site and/or only use images when they actually add to your post.

SiteMap :

Very important to get and keep your site listed on all the major search engines. I use Google XML Sitemap Generator Plugin and Google Integration Toolkit to insure Google has my latest content.