seo tips for wordpress

@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!)

@rhyswynne - @winwaruk

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)

@rhyswynne - @winwaruk

What I think…..

@rhyswynne - @winwaruk

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?

@rhyswynne - @winwaruk

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

@rhyswynne - @winwaruk

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

@rhyswynne - @winwaruk

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

@rhyswynne - @winwaruk

Page Analysis Tab

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Facebook

• 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.

@rhyswynne - @winwaruk

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.

@rhyswynne - @winwaruk

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/.

@rhyswynne - @winwaruk

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.

@rhyswynne - @winwaruk

Questions?

Thank You