Don’t Underestimate The Slug!
I bet you wonder what kind of slug I’m talking about, it is the WordPress slug. In case you still have no idea on what I’m talking about, then take a closer look at your WordPress editor inside your admin.
If you take a closer look at the image above you can see where the two arrows point within the editor. The arrow on the left show you the title of this post to make it more appealing and interesting for the reader -you!
The second arrow on the right is for search engine purposes.
This is especially important in niche marketing, when you are trying to rank well for a certain keyword. Inserting a keyword rich slug will help your post to rank better than using (the diluted version) of your posts title.
In this case the three words [don't underestimate the] in the title do nothing for SEO and are therefore worthless to have any chances of trying to rank this post for WordPress slug. Not that I’m trying anyway, otherwise the structure of this post would differ from what it is right now.
But many bloggers totally under utilize the WordPress slug and never even use it. They wonder what purpose it might serve and then forget all about it.
Don’t make the same mistake. Use the WordPress post slug efficiently whenever you can since it does help you with your search engine rankings. The more you know about SEO, the better and more valuable the slug will become for you.
No Responses to “Don’t Underestimate The Slug!”
This is a great tip that most people miss out on. I really funny, when I wrote Profitable Previous Posts in 2 Steps I was basically teaching people that they could go back and rework posts by leaving the slug alone and change the title – then add a 2-3 sentence synopsis to the top of the page for better SEO.
What I should’ve also mentioned was the fact that when you post you can make the post slug and the title different if you want for better SEO.
Great tip, thanks!
- John
Once again another very insightful post and another untapped goldmine built right inside the wordpress system that I have not been taking advantage of. You are really a savior for all of us bloggers Monika and thanks. How do you know so much? It’s like with all that seems has been discovered about wordpress you always find another great idea that majority of us don’t even know about. I will be sure to add this to my blog tips notepad. Take acre!
Femi
I read about this some time ago – and heard that Google consider a link with too many hypens in as spam.
@ John: thank you. That is exactly what I do on my niche blogs. I make the title reader friendly and use the slug for better SEO.
@ Femi: I guess I have an insatiable hunger to learn and everything I know I have taught myself while spending long days and nights on the Internet.
And yet still…there is so much I still don’t know.
But I do appreciate your compliment since I learned that I love teaching others. I guess blogging will in some ways provide me with a platform to do so.