optimizing your wordpress site & web content for search - wordcamp 2012 buffalo

Search Engine OptimizationFor your WordPress website

How to do better in

The best platform for SEO

Google’s Matt Cutts agrees

If it's good for site visitors, Google likes it!

List multiple ways to say the same thing Poll your client base for keyword terms Ask friends & family Use the Google Adwords keyword tool Check out Google Suggests & Google Trends

The foundation of on-page SEO

photo: Pond5

Use keywords in the naming structure of web site

Adjust Permalink settings to add keywords to the urls of your site

http://yourdomain.com/keyword-keyword -> Settings -> Permalinks and choose

Post name or Custom Structure

/%postname%/

Permalink settings

/%category%

Customize the permalink for each individual page/post

Meta title & descriptions in SEO

What are they? HTML code that search engines read Clickable link in search engines results Accurately summarize page content Important elements in search engines’

algorithm and for searchers Should contain your keywords

Titles and Meta Descriptions

Title

Meta Description

WordPress SEO by YoastA powerful WordPress plugin

Plugin incorporates best practices Wide variety of functions in one plugin

Titles and meta descriptions Breadcrumb Trail Permalink clean up xml sitemaps Edit your robots.txt and .htaccess Clean up head section Author rel

Easy to migrate from All In One SEO

Writing your titles and metas

Enter a 70 character custom Title

Enter a 155 character custom description

Getting ready to write web copy

You're writing for two audiences For the way people read on the web For search engines

Humans trump search engines!

photo: Pond5

How to write for site visitorsPeople read differently on the web SO ...

Call-to-action button Main message above the fold Use H2 & H3 Short sentences & paragraphs Bulleted lists Anchor text Inform and entertain

Use H2, H3, H4 in ContentReserve H1 for Page & Post titles

How to write for search enginesWrite to your readers using your keywords -

naturally: No keyword stuffing

Check your Theme's headings Check with Yoast's Page Analysis feature

o meta tagso page titles (H1)o body text

o H2 & H3o images o anchor text

Anchor text

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink

Search engines give weight to the keywords used in link so don’t use “click here”

Optimizing images for search

Use descriptive keyword rich image file names (i.e. “my-keyword.jpg”)

Optimize the Title and Alt Attributes of each image [SEO Friendly Images plugin]

When appropriate, use captions to describe your image

These textural clues tell Search Engines

what images are about

Optimizing images for search- page speed

Keep image file size as small as possible Don’t scale images Use background images that repeat

Rel=Author

links an article's byline to an author's website profile page displays author photos in search results links the search result byline to the author's Google Plus

profile displays the number of circles the author is in on Google Plus adds a more by this author link to the search result tells Google that this is a reputable link

xml sitemap

tells search engines which pages to crawl links to all urls for a site metadata about each url – when it was last

updated, how often it usually changes, & how important it is relative to other URLs

Yoast plugin will automatically update the xml sitemap when you publish a new post

submit to Google through webmaster tools

Changing the Permalinks on Established SiteRead our blog post!

Default post id ?p=123 no redirect needed Day and Name your redirect should be

RedirectMatch 301 ^/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/([0-9]{2})/(.*)$

http://yourdomain.com/$4 Month and Name your redirect should be

RedirectMatch 301 ^/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/$3

Numeric your redirect should be RedirectMatch 301 ^/archives/(\d+)$ http://yourdomain.com/?p=$1

Postname and you want to switch to /%category%/%postname%/ use the Permalinks to Category/Permalinks plugin

redirect 301 /oldurl.htm http://newurl.com/newpage

301 redirects via .htaccess

Paste permalink change code at top above WordPress code

Settings -> Privacy ->

Allow search engines to index this site.

Don't block search engines!!!

Going off page...

Link Building It’s not just about the numbers

How reputable is the link? How relevant?

Anchor text

Attract traffic instead Create great content Guest blog Comment Engage in

social media

Q & Eh?Q & Eh?

image used by permission susybee.com

Thank You WordCamp Buffalo

Ruth Maude & Dawn ComberLearnWP.ca Follow us on Twitter: @2LearnWP