SEO for BuddyPress has now been updated for BuddyPress 1.2.x and is packed full of exciting new features. Conventional business sense says that word of mouth is the best way to make your product or service known. This may be true but online it’s doubtful that people will ask their friends for a specific URL if they have no luck finding it through a search engine. Getting your BuddyPress community found by search engines is critical to your site’s success.

The WordPress plugin repository has some great SEO plugins but they aren’t made with BuddyPress in mind. Imagine how much better is it to be able to give specific tags to your members and groups directories, based on the specific user base you are serving. For example, if you’re using BuddyPress to build a site for musicians or educators or any kind of specific niche, this plugin enables you to do a better job of promoting your site’s unique qualities to search engines.

SEO for BuddyPress allows you to provide keywords and descriptions for each of your components. This plugin automatically checks the components in the database and offers you the SEO optimization for only the components and BP plugins you are using. For example, If you have deactivated ‘forum’, the plugin won’t display any forum SEO options. You will, however, be offered options for any extended components you are using. If you have a plugin to extend groups, ( ie: group_documents, event, etc …) you will also have the needed SEO options for the plugin you’re using.

SEO For BuddyPress Features:

This plugin features a massive array of options for promoting your site to search engines:

• Options to give directory pages unique titles, descriptions, keywords/tags
• Profile, Groups, and Main Blog and User blogs optimization
• Buddypress SEO configuration for extended components
• Extensive list of special tags available for both WP and WPMU
• Simple upgrade from previous version with “Update Database” button
• Easy uninstall button for complete removal from the options table

Upcoming Features:

I’ve been keeping up with Sven Lehnert, the developer of this plugin, and he is committed to improving it. He plans to add the following features in the next release:

• Nofollow control
• Image-title and alt-tag management
• Letter and word counter for the meta edit pages
• Add meta description in the post edit screen

In short, this plugin completely customizes the SEO for your BuddyPress site individually, based on which components you have activated and which plugins are extending your components. This provides an excellent dynamic foundation for future releases of the plugin, because it removes the burden of having to statically support every new BuddyPress plugin that comes out. As far as I know, this is the only BuddyPress-specific SEO plugin currently available. Help Sven test it out and send feedback in the BuddyPress forums or at the plugin’s home page.