First, be sure to grab one of the Wordpress SEO plugins like All-in-one SEO Pack or Platinum SEO Pack. Platinum SEO Pack is pretty much the same as the All-in-One, but it has a few extra features. Install it. You only need one, but not both.

Then you need to go back to every post on your blog edit it. While editing the posts, look at the bottom of the page for the new fields that the plugin created. Fill out the title, description, and keywords fields.

The title should contain keywords related to that post, but it should look attractive.

Don't make the title something like this:

"keyword, keyword, keyword"

Instead, make it look like this:

"Keyword Phrase Here - Another Related Keyword Phrase"

The description should be a couple of sentences that describe the content of the page. Include your keywords once, but ONLY once, and ONLY if they make sense in your description. The description is usually the description the search engines use for your page when it appears in the search results, so make it good.

Include maybe 5 or 6 keyword phrases related to the page content in the keyword field. Separate them with commas.

After you've gone through every single post on the blog and added these three fields, you need to get backlinks to your blog.

You can get backlinks by using social bookmarking sites like Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com to bookmark the blog, writing articles and submitting them to article directories like EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com, and putting a link to the blog in your signature on forums that are related to the niche of your site for starters.

There are a few fundamental SEO techniques as well as some great plugins that will help your Wordpress SEO. I created a short Wordpress SEO report and if you are interested you can PM me and I'll be happy to provide a copy.

The must have plugins IMO for SEO with Wordpress are All in One SEO and Google XML Sitemaps. But like the poster above said the keywords you focus on are very important overall. Good luck and please post URL to the site when you are done with it.

Dont forget to Change the permalink to be Search Engine Friendly, something like %post_name%.

Here is something from wordpress . org

Permalink Types
There are three basic types of WordPress permalinks:

Default: "Ugly"
The default looks like

http : // example . com /?p=N]Example Web Page
where N is the Post ID number. It works on all server environments, but it doesn't look as nice as some of the other options.

mod_rewrite: "Pretty Permalinks"
Using mod_rewrite or lighttpd you can produce much nicer permalinks (see Pretty Permalinks). There are many different formats, but the most common, and most versatile looks like

http : // example . com/category/post-name/
-> (I personally use http : // example. com/post-name/ or http : // example . com/post-id/post-name most of the time )

Choosing your permalink structure
In the Settings → Permalinks panel (Options → Permalinks before WordPress 2.5), you can choose one of the "common" structures or enter your own in the "Custom structure" field using the structure tags.

Use this code in your custom structure for:
http : // example . com/category/post-name/ -->/%category%/%postname%/
http : // example . com/post-name/ -->/%postname%/
http : // example . com/post-id/post-name -->/%post_id%/%postname%/

Sorry it looks a bit ugly. They dont allow me to post links yet.

@pallavii
I appreciate your intentions to help. But its been explained clearly by "me" above. I am not sure whats your purpose of re explaining everything.

These are some great tips here.

Wordpress is really good for SEO in my opinion, and it's not hard at all.

Getting the sitemap plugin is a good idea, and the platinum seo plugin. (Like others have mentioned)

As for permalinks, I prefer %postname% or %category%/%postname%.

You should also try to get your keywords in the title of the posts, as it has A LOT to say in the search engines.

Then, submit your RSS feeds to as many aggregators you can, as this is some of the easiest backlinks you can get. (I usually submit both comment and post feeds, and you can submit category feeds etc. as well. This is most useful for blogs though, not so much for static websites I would think)

Also, if your categories are the same as your target keywords, that's a good thing. (Only do this if it "fits" though)

Doing all of this (Really simple actually), I was able to rank my DJ website euphoricvibes.com pretty good for the keywords: tracklists house, progressive tracklist 2009,tech house tracklist,progressive tracklist,tech house track list

And I did this with NO OTHER backlinking (Except for my sig =P)

I seriously didn't do any keyword research or anything really. It just got mad rankings with what I mentioned above. Even with so few posts and pages, as well as it haven't been updated in a loooong time.

Just try out the keywords in google and see for yourself. I was pretty shocked myself.

It might have to do with the CSS as well, not too sure about that.

Also I use the "Include pages" plugin, that adds pages to your rss feed.

And if you need rss feed aggregators to submit to, check out my blog.

Good luck!
- Preben

Don't forget the site's structure. Good internal linking can give you a very high SEO boost. Sorry I can't tell you exactly here since it's a long story.

It's not a theory. I've seen the result myself. I implement it over and over again, and it still give me good result.

Hi!

If you already have a digg account what you will have to do is submit the URL of the blog page that you want to promote. You need to paste it into the provided field. After that you will be given the chance to choose the category of your submission.

Hope that helps

Sorry guys - quick newbie question - are the wordpress seo plugins you mention free or paid?

go download the google seo ebook written by google. they tell you what they want to see.

here is the search result link. it should be the 1st Listed Result
seo ebook google - Google Search