I have written several articles about Best WordPress SEO but these have been from the point of view of the webmaster. I thought it might be interesting to look at it the other way and see what the search engines want to see. Best WordPress SEO will then be achieved by giving them what they want.

I will divide this into three sections on page factors, off page factors and other factors.

Other Factors

This has the lowest weighting of the three sections but needs to be considered first:

The search engines want to see:

• An older domain name as this is considered more authoritative.

• Fast Loading and constant availability.

• Traffic - If the site is getting traffic is must be useful.

What you should do for best WordPress SEO:

• If you could buy an aged domain, containing a relevant keyword, with a clean history this would be ideal but a new domain is not a major disadvantage.

• Get a good hosting package from a reputable supplier with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. For Best WordPress SEO it is also a good idea to install a caching plugin to serve a static copy of the pages and posts.

• Try and generate some traffic from sources other than the search engines.

Off Page Factors

This is the highest weighted of the three sections.

The search engines want to see:

• Links from other sites - All links count unless they are "no-follow".

• Links from authoritative sites - In Google terms the higher the page rank the better, links from.gov and.edu sites are also considered highly.

• Links from relevant sites - these are best but links from irrelevant sites still count.

• Links with relevant anchor text - where the anchor text matches the keyword of the page/post it links to.

• Links from sites with few other external links - a site only has so much authority to pass on and this is diluted if there are many links.

What you should do for best WordPress SEO:

• Get as many links as possible.

• Try to get links from authority sites in your niche.

• Don't use a keyword as the anchor text every time as this looks unnatural.

On Page Factors

Although this carries less weight than off page factors it is still vitally important. The better your on page SEO the fewer backlinks you will need for a given ranking.

The search engines want to see:

• A well structured site where all the pages are interlinked.

• Links to external relevant sites.

• Unique, regularly updated content.

• Readable content the relevancy of which is clear.

The search engines don't want to see:

• Any attempt to manipulate them.

• External links to disreputable sites.

• Duplicate Content.

• Broken Links.

• Error Messages.

What you should do for best WordPress SEO:

• Make sure that all pages and posts have the keyword in the URL and have links to other content on the site. Aim for all pages to be reachable from the home page in two clicks.

• Use a theme created with SEO in mind.

• Make sure all pages and posts contain links (you can install a plugin to help with this).

• Make sure your content is unique and do not duplicate it within the site.

• Don't hide your content in Flash or in graphics as the search engines can't read it.

• Make sure your pages and posts are built around a keyword and are properly optimised (another plugin will help with this).

• Regularly check external links - that they still work and the site is still an appropriate one to link to.

• If you have to change the URL of a page make sure you setup a permanent redirection.

Clearly there is a lot you need to get right to achieve Best WordPress SEO so it is advisable to use tools to help where possible.