As you know, title tags are the most important on-page factor. They are given the most weight out of anything on the page as far as the search engines are concerned. So it is a huge weakness in WordPress (and most other blog platforms for that matter) that the post title is used as the title tag, usually with some other extraneous bits added on like the name of the blog. That is far from optimal SEO! Instead, you should be able to handcraft your own title tags independently of the post title -- interject synonyms, rearrange the word order, and so forth.

My SEO Title Tag plugin, which has been out since middle of last year, allows you to do just that. But wait, there's more...!

I am happy to tell you that I, along with some of my talented programmers here at Netconcepts, have made a major update to the plugin. Indeed, we have really made some magic, as you shall soon see!

I'm pleased to announce the SEO Title Tag WordPress plugin... Version 2.0 beta!

The plugin now allows you to mass edit title tags for all posts, static pages, category pages, tag pages, tag conjunction pages, archive by month pages, indeed any URL, all in one go.

It also now has a title tag input box on the Edit and Write forms for pages and posts, so no more having to use the custom field box.

It allows you to set a title tag for your 404 error pages and for internal search results pages too.

Not only can you now view all your title tags across all of your posts/pages at once. You can also revise your titles right there within that report! This mass editing functionality is available under the Manage > Title Tags tab in the WordPress admin.

Here's what the mass editing admin looks like:

Maybe I am tooting my own horn a bit too much here, but I think this plugin is the best thing to have ever happened to WordPress -- as far as SEO is concerned! :-D

The plugin also plays nicely with the plethora of meta tag plugins out there, such as Add Meta Tags and Another WordPress Meta Plugin. You can choose to use category descriptions as title tags on category pages, or you can choose not to. The latter is the preferred option if you are using a meta tag plugin, because most of those use the category's description field for the meta description tag on the category page. Don't worry though! You can still set custom titles for your category pages -- even if you are using the description field for your meta descriptions.

The plugin is WordPress 2.1 compatible. If upgrading from the previous version of SEO Title Tag, be sure to deactivate the old version before installing the new version. When you activate the new version, it will create some new database tables.

I welcome any and all feedback to that plugin and I hope it is of value to all you bloggers using WordPress.

I'd love to hear of any success stories using this plugin and the rankings and traffic benefits that ensue. Please report back and regale me with your stories of hockey stick graphs! :-)

Now go get the plugin! Enjoy!

As promised, I've posted my Powerpoint deck from the session I gave earlier today here at Search Engine Strategies San Jose.

I was thinking I might create an extended version of my presentation (like 30 minutes instead of 15 minutes) and make it available as a screencast video, if enough of you folks request it. Would you like me to do this?

Wouldn't it make sense to take your very best posts, regardless of posting date, and endow them with a maximum amount of link gain so they have the most opportunity to rank well in the search engines? 

Putting together a Top 10 Posts list for your home page will do exactly that, by strategically passing link gain from your blog's home page directly to these posts. 

The great thing about a Top 10 list is that you can be as arbitrary as you want in determining which posts get onto this list. It could be the ones that lead with your most important keywords. Or the ones that most effectively soft sell your products or services. Or simply the posts you personally like the most. Just be careful to choose "evergreen" posts that won't lose their appeal or value after a few days or weeks. 

I really like the way Darren Rowse has done his featured posts list on ProBlogger, where he's listed them in a box labeled "introduction: key articles". He's also sprinkled a couple more into his "tips and hints: toolbox" and "problogger news" boxes, along with links to category pages. The links are very enticing to users, and of course they are text links with great anchor text in them, so they are appealing to search engines too. Nice job, Darren!

If you're happy to leave it up to your readers to decide, then simply install a 'most popular posts' plugin such as the Popularity Contest plugin for WordPress. The plugin automatically compiles the list based on which posts get viewed the most. You can publish the list on the home page and whereever else you see fit.

If you read Marketing Profs, you may have seen my two-part article over the last couple of weeks Ten Tips to Help Your Blog Soar in the Search Engines. 

The tips involved...

1. Specific customizing of your title tags 
2. Ways to clean up your URL structure and aggregate link gain to a single definitive (canonical) URL (i.e. reduce duplicate page issues) 
3. Adding a tag cloud and tag pages to your blog and then optimizing those tag pages 
4. Offering text links to related posts
5. Adding a Top 10 Posts list to your home page with text links to those posts that you most want to pass link gain to 
6. Improving your anchor text on permalinks and on external links to other content of yours
7. Adding intro copy rich with keywords to the top of the page through the use of sticky posts 
8. Use of heading tags 
9. Use of bold or emphasis tags in the body copy of your blog posts 
10. (For blogs with multiple authors) Creating an author page for each contributor and linking to their site directly from your home page to pass them link gain using keyword rich anchor text. 

The complete article is around 3000 words and goes into much more detail. It includes suggested WordPress plugins to use and even sometimes specific PHP code to insert into your blog. 

If you are not a MarketingProfs premium subsciber you won't be able to read the article, so either sign up, or most of the information from the article is available on my blog optimization tag page.