seo tips for wordpress
DESCRIPTION
Presentation from Winwar Media on SEO Tips for WordPress, first presented on 15th January 2014 at The Manchester WordPress User Group Download Our Plugins! http://winwar.co.uk/ Follow us on twitter! http://twitter.com/winwaruk Like Us on Facebook! http://facebook.com/winwarukTRANSCRIPT
@rhyswynne - @winwaruk
SEO Tips For WordPress
Rhys Wynne
@rhyswynne - @winwaruk
About Me
• Rhys Wynne (@rhyswynne)
• Lead Developer at FireCask (@Firecask)
• Making WordPress Plugins for 4 Years – Winwar Media (@winwaruk)
• SEO for 7 Years
• Swears a fair bit (sorry!)
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First Public Speaking I’ve Ever Done*
@rhyswynne - @winwaruk
@rhyswynne - @winwaruk
What Google Says…
“Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately
describe your content.”
(source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en)
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What I think…..
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Why?• My site –
http://www.retrogarden.co.uk/
• 180 posts, written by me or editorially approved guests.
• No link building, only links naturally obtained.
• Banned from Google Adsense for “low quality”.
Who is Google to decide what is good/poor quality content?
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Early Takeaways
• Listen to Google, but question them.
• Content helps SEO by improving number of phrases you can reasonably rank for.
• Often, regular content beats irregular “quality” content (good source - http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/12/02/how-to-grow-your-blog-to-100000-visits-a-month-in-18-months/ - popups, sorry )
• Never ever say “Create Good Quality Content to Improve SEO”.
• Never ever ever say “Content Is King”!
@rhyswynne - @winwaruk
The Best Thing You Can Do To Improve the SEO of Your WordPress
Site
Install Yoast WordPress SEO
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If You Have Multiple Users…
Prevents authors from redirecting/canonicalising their posts to other Locations.
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If You Have One User…
Yoast SEO > Titles & Metas > Other
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Focus Keyword…• Every post/page should have a
focus keyword, which is the keyword you want that page to rank for.
• Plugin analyses page and lets you know where that keyword is located.
• Also suggests keywords to rank for (highest up the list gets more searches).
• More info - http://yoast.com/focus-keyword/.
@rhyswynne - @winwaruk
General On Page SEO Tips• Write content first as you normally do, and then add keywords in such a way
so it still reads correctly.
• Use your Title attribute for a keyword rich description. Include “| [Site Name]” at end for branding.
• Include in the Meta Description your unique selling point to encourage clickthroughs.
• Internal Link where Relevant
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Page Analysis Tab
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• Create a 200 x 200 pixel logo for the site.
• Add Image URL to Yoast WordPress SEO > Social > Facebook > Front Page Image URL & Default Image URL.
• Add a Description to Front page Description too.
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Google+
• Create Google+ Page for your site/business at https://plus.google.com/pages/create
• Add your site URL to your Google+ About Page
• Add your Google+ Page URL to Yoast WordPress SEO > Social > Google+ and “Don’t Show” Author for Homepage.
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Site Speed• Site speed good for User Experience, but also has an SEO ranking element.
• Use a CDN (or the very least Jetpack Photon) for Media File Hosting.
• Caching plugins– WP Super Cache (Simple):
http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/ – W3 Total Cache (Advanced):
http://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/
• Use Google Libraries - http://wordpress.org/plugins/use-google-libraries/ - pulls jQuery etc. from Google CDN.
• Test your Site speed using Google Pagespeed Tools - https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/.
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Theme Development Tips
• Most “SEO Friendly” thing you can do to your theme is make it 100% compatible with WordPress SEO.
• Keep database calls to a minimum.
• Make bloginfo('name') the H1 on home page, and the_title() the H1 on pages/posts.
• SEO Doctor for Firefox - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/seo-doctor/ - good for giving an overall audit.
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Questions?
Thank You