If you are trying to rank well with a category index page for a medium competitive keyphrase , you would normally use the keyphrase as the category name. But then, this would put all the keywords in the URL. For example:

The keyphrase “weight loss diets” used as category name would usually create the URL: http://www.learnaboutnutrition.com/category/weight-loss-diets/

You can shorten the URL and remove some of the keywords by simply creating a “category slug” for each category. This option is only available after you have added the category. Go to “Manage » Categories”, click on the “Edit” link beside the category name and then you will see the additional field “Category slug”. In the above example, I entered “diets” as category slug and the URL of this category page now is: http://www.learnaboutnutrition.com/category/diets/

That�s as far as the permalink structure is concerned. Next, we want to take a look at the links to your blog posts and the individual posts� headings. Well, there�s not much you can do about these. For the link, WordPress uses a post�s title as anchor text. For the H1 heading, the post�s title is used as well. So, let�s leave these two as they are and care about the next element:

The TITLE tag of a page. My favorite code for the title tag is currently the following:

The beauty of this code is that it uses the post slug to create the title of a single post�s page. So, if I want to make the content of the TITLE tag different from the H1 heading, I simply create a post slug which is different from the post�s title. Remember, the post slug is usually meant to be used instead of a post�s title in the permalink structure, but since I am now using only the post ID in the URL, I can use the post slug for a different purpose. The post slug can be added when writing / editing a post.

For example: say, I want to target the low competitive keyphrase “tanning bed installer needed” and write a blog post about it, then I would write a short article with a title like:

“How to find installers for tanning beds in your local area”

Remember, this will be used as H1 heading for the page. As post slug, I would use the keyphrase itself (”tanning bed installer needed”), so the TITLE of the page using the above PHP code would become:

Archive » tanning bed installer needed

What about the posts that don�t have a post slug specified? Well - for those, the post title will be used instead.

Applying these techniques will make 3 out of the 4 elements (link, title, heading, URL) more different from each other and your blog more search engine friendly. Only the anchor text in the link to a single post and its heading will be the same.