optimizing content visibility (st. louis wordcamp)
DESCRIPTION
If you enter content in a WordPress site and no one can find it, does it make an impact? Find out how to increase the visibility of the content in your WordPress site.TRANSCRIPT
If content is entered into a WordPress site and no one finds it, does it make an impact?Optimizing content visibility
Teresa Lane @teresaalane
Image Credit: armedwithvisions.com
What’s Content Visibility?
1. Getting found – relevance, search engine rank, social media,
blogosphere, word of mouth
2. Getting clicked when you are found– relevance, search engine display (page title, meta
description, structured data, Google+)
3. Getting conversions when you’re clicked– relevance, usability, navigability, valuable content
We’re #1!
• Good places to be first:– On the Scene
– In Search Engine Rankings
– In the Hearts of Users
Image Credits: birthdayexpress.com, the1709blog.blogspot.com
Thinking First: Headlines
• EyeTrack III study showed “big, bold” headlines are:– viewed first– most viewed, even above
images• Clear, concise, focused• Start with the punchline
http://blog.crazyegg.com/2012/08/22/website-design-mistakes/http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/08/01/7-conversion-optimization-lessons-learned-from-eye-tracking/http://www.nngroup.com/articles/writing-style-for-print-vs-web/
• Information at the top of the page gets the most attention from users.
• Average user spends 69% of time looking at page’s left side.
• Important content: top of page, first in paragraph, first in sentence
Thinking First: Body Content
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/website-reading/http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/08/01/7-conversion-optimization-lessons-learned-from-eye-tracking/http://www.nngroup.com/articles/writing-style-for-print-vs-web/http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-little-do-users-read/
Visibility in Body Content
• Scannable– Subheadings– Short paragraphs:
3 sentences, 1 topic
http://myblogguest.com/blog/the-art-the-necessity-of-using-subheadings-myblogguest/http://rafaltomal.com/5-easy-tips-to-improve-every-blog-design/http://www.copyblogger.com/formatting-wordpress-posts/
• Give users next steps– No dead ends– Conversion or relevant content
Thinking First: Site Hierarchy
• Site hierarchy/structure often expressed primarily through navigation
• Reflect idea organization in site hierarchy
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/working-with-navigation-in-seohttp://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/site-navigation-for-seo/http://searchengineland.com/how-to-use-effective-navigation-labels-for-search-engine-optimization-76300http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-filing-cabinet-theory-of-site-architecture
Site Structure
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/internal-linkhttp://searchengineland.com/information-architecture-is-crucial-to-good-seo-14736
Home
Main Categories (likely the top-level navigation)
Internal Link
Content can link throughout the structure but lives in only one place to avoid duplicate content
Site Structure: URLs
• Keyword-focused page names are friendly for users and search engines
• Tailor your permalinks (change the default)– Post Name (/%postname%/) usually best practice
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-cheat-sheet-anatomy-of-a-urlhttp://searchenginewatch.com/article/2262638/5-Basic-Tips-to-Improve-WordPress-for-SEO-and-the-User-Experience
Topic Structure
http://http://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-vs-deep-hierarchy/
Home
Categories: “Big,” Top-Level Topics, Likely General
Link = Topical Relationship
Content on specific subtopics that gets down into the nitty gritty, interlinks to promote next steps
• What you want your site to be visible for• Queries that users type into search engines– Tap expressed interests– Deliver what users are looking for
• For inspiration:– Article topics– Updating existing content– Creating categories or sections of content– Targeting social media
• Remember: put keywords first!
Keywords
Image credit: bubblews.com
Keyword Research Sources
• http://www.google.com/insights/• http://www.google.com/trends/ • http://www.semrush.com/• Google search with ~keyword to see terms
Google considers synonyms (resulting SERP shows related words in bold)
• http://www.youtube.com/keyword_tool• Analytics, Webmaster Tools, keyword lists
The Optimized Page
Midwest College
_______ Midwestcollege _______.The university ____________________________ schoolin the Midwest.
Choosing a Midwestern College__________________________________ St. Louis, Missouri colleges. _________________.
Photo with Alt Tag:
Midwest college campus
Discover the Midwest college you're looking for at University of the Middle, a Midwestern school offering students the right education for today's world.
Midwest College| University of the Middle
http://www.middle.edu/prospective-students/midwest-college/URLTitle Tag
Meta Description
H1 Tag
Image Alt Tag
H2 Tag
Body Content
Author Authority
• Identify article or post’s author whenever possible
– Link to author profile on your site
http://searchengineland.com/secret-staying-relevant-authorship-184815https://plus.google.com/authorship
Author Authority
• Connect author identification with Google+ profile
• Optimize Google+ profile (good headshot photo, be in circles with influencers, be active, etc.)
– (rel=“author”) tag<a href="https://plus.google.com/Profile?rel=author">Google</a>
– link from Google+ profilehttp://searchengineland.com/secret-staying-relevant-authorship-184815https://plus.google.com/authorshiphttps://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2539557?hl=en
Duplicate Content
• Duplicate content can hinder findability, user comprehension and trust
• Can make search engines unable to distinguish the most relevant content, causing them not to display any of the site’s content in search results
• The essential rule: every URL must contain unique, valuable content.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-worldhttp://meetcontent.com/blog/duplicate-content-bad-web/
Sitemaps
HTML Sitemap XML Sitemap• Made for users to navigate• No more than ~100 URLs• Use global <a href> format
• Helps spiders find more pages• Uploaded to the root directory• Submitted to Webmaster Tools
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/siteindex http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html
http://www.sitemaps.org/http://www.seomoz.org/q/big-site-seo-to-maintain-html-sitemaps-or-scrap-them-in-the-era-of-xml
Other XML Sitemaps
• News http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=2527688
• Video http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=80472
http://wordpress.org/plugins/xml-sitemaps-for-videos/
• Mobile http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=8493
http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-mobile-sitemap/
• Images http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=178636
http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-image-sitemap/
• Tools for Building Sitemaps– Yoast SEO Plug-In– http://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/bing-sitemap-plugin-beta-f50bebf5– http://code.google.com/p/googlesitemapgenerator/– http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/– http://gsitecrawler.com/– http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
http://searchengineland.com/a-primer-on-how-to-get-the-most-out-of-sitemaps-152092http://www.seomoz.org/blog/do-sitemaps-effect-crawlers
More Than Words…
Video
Images
News
Information pulled from the web
Social Media
Images
• Search engines can’t “see” images when crawling a page.– Use descriptive, keyword-focused alt text (alt=“”) – Descriptive file names
• Alt tags for usability and ADA compliance
(e.g., screen readers)
Fill it in!
Video
• Drives user engagement• Social/community• Visibility in SERP • Titles, descriptions,
transcripts• Video page is a
“normal” page
Visibility across Devices
• Optimize for mobile– Let your site be wherever your users are
• Responsive design goes with the flow– Show essentially the same content to all users, no
matter where they’re looking
• Quick-loading site = good user experience• Lower bounce rates• Ranking factor, helps spiders to index more
content• Just a couple of the many ways
to prepare content for speed:– Optimize images– Enable compression
Page Speed
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/optimizing-page-speed-actionable-tips-for-seos-and-web-developershttp://www.mattcutts.com/blog/site-speed/
Leverage Monitoring
• Monitoring a site alerts you when something is wrong.
• Monitor internal search queries and organic search queries for new content ideas
http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/beating-the-panda-diagnosing-and-rescuing-a-clients-traffic/http://searchengineland.com/the-seo-guide-to-getting-started-with-google-webmaster-tools-150345http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-updated-guide-to-google-webmaster-toolshttp://searchengineland.com/deep-dive-into-bing-webmaster-tools-part-1-137778
Teresa Lane @teresaalane
Image Credit: armedwithvisions.com
Content must, ultimately, be great!