SEO Tip: Quotes in WordPress Titles

Here's a search engine optimization tip for WordPress bloggers...

Please avoid typing quotation marks in the titles of your posts.

Otherwise, those quotation marks may form part of the URL or address of your particular post. Instead of having regular-filename.html you'll end up with regular-WCfilenameWC.html

What's WC? That's just a shortcut for "weird characters" or some seemingly random string of letters and numbers. That usually happens when your use smart double quotes or apostrophes (single quotes).

Now if you really would like to use the title "It's A Boy!" instead of "It Is A Boy!" then you can always edit the post-slug of your WordPress post and change the title to either it-is-a-boy or its-a-boy, and that will affect only the URL or address of your particular post.

That helps you publish only "clean" and search engine-friendly URLs, which helps the search engine robots easily find your pages. In addition, it also makes it easier for others to link to your articles because you have a regular-looking site address.

On a sidenote... should you include www in your Blogspot address?

For example, if your Blogger or Blogspot address looks like manuelviloria.blogspot.com you can also reach it by typing www.manuelviloria.blogspot.com in your browsers. In other words, you'll find the exact same content whether or not your include the "www" at the start of your Blogspot address.

When you create a post and provide a link to your Blogspot entry, should you still include the "www"?

If you go to Google and search for site:manuelviloria.blogspot.com you'll find that there are a few pages indexed. If you search for site:www.manuelviloria.blogspot.com, you'll find nothing.

In the interest, therefore, of consistency (and to also avoid the dupe or duplicate penalty) it would be better to link to your Blogspot address without the "www" at the start.

Then again, if you've been promoting your Blogspot site with the "www" and if your friends have been linking to the www'd address, and if a search at Google using the site: command shows that the indexed pages contain the "www" at the start, then you know which one to promote, right?

Happy search engine optimization, folks! Afterall, what's the point of writing online if your words can't even be found, right?

[ First posted on 01/03/2007 by Manuel Viloria ]