get found: raise your visibility through organic search (part 1)

Get Found: Raise Your Visibility through Organic Search

The Ultimate Series on WordPress SEO - Part 1

September 23rd, 2015

#wpeseo

Make sure to stay engaged...

Use the “Questions” panethroughout the webinar

Have questions about WP Engine?Call 877-973-6446 or chat with a rep at wpengine.com

Two seasoned SEOs covering 6 great topics!

David VogelpohlVP Web Strategy, WP Engine

❖ Optimizing themes

❖ Mobile SEO

❖ Permalinks & URLs

Michael DavidAuthor, “WordPress SearchEngine Optimization”(Packt Publishing)

❖ Meta Titles & Descriptions

❖ Categories, Tags, Archive pages, site structure

❖ Yoast plugin tuneup & Open Graph

What you’ll learn from David V’s segment

How to audit themes, optimize for mobile, and create search engine

friendly URLs

@davidvmc

Picking out a pre-made theme

Go premium, reputable, & active

@davidvmc

HTML Smoke Test

@davidvmc

validator.w3.org

H Tag Smoke TestView Source

Control + F

One H1 per Page

H tags in order

wpeng.in/multih1

H1 H2 H3 H2 H3 H4

H1 H7 H5 H2

Why is mobile SEO important?Overall Mobile Usage is 60%!

@davidvmc

Three governing rules for mobile SEO

@davidvmc

Responsive not subdomains

Usability is key

Speed = rankings

Test mobile friendliness with Google

@davidvmc

What is an SEO friendly URL?

URL that expresses context using natural language and hierarchical

structure

@davidvmc

pets.com/cats/heart-worms

pets.com/?pid=3122

Why are friendly URLs important to SERPs?

Keywords in URL affect algo

Highlighted keywords affect CTR

Context usability

@davidvmc

Setting up your permalink structure

Post name is safest

Optimize on per post level

Setting up your permalink structure

Category pros:

Hierarchical contentEasier page naming

Clear Analytics

301 redirects if changing!

Category cons:

Category pages matter

Longer URL pathAlphabetically chosen

wordpress.org/plugins/wp-category-permalink/

What you’ll learn from MD’s segment

● Enlightened look at Meta Titles & Descriptions

● Expert look at Categories & Tags & Archive pages & site architecture

● Yoast plugin tuneup & Open Graph

Michael David @tastyplacement

Title Tags/Meta Tags

Goals:● Yes, use keywords

● But also sell your product and brand, create interest, and draw the click



Only 50-54 characters display, the rest get cut

off

When Everyone Else is Writing Long TTs...Your Compact, Organized TT

Stands Out!



Elegance Works

● You still want to draw the click on SERPS

● You can set a "tone" for your brand



Another lesson:

Avoid the pivot!



Do more than mindlessly repeat

your site name

Don't "write" titles & metas, "craft" them




"Crafting" Example


Use Snippet Optimizer to craft cool title tags

http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html


Expert Site Architecture

Matt Cutts, 2012: “We’ve done a good job of ignoring boilerplate, site wide links.”


Expert Site Architecture: Categories/Tags/Archive/Links

“When a site doesn't link to itself in the content, it's not natural and that's a spam

signal”

-Mike King



Your on-site goal for site architecture should be to: ●leverage contextual links--in content●Minimize “link clutter” in footers & sidebars

●Better for search●Better for users



Your site architecture, your internal linking patterns, are a signal to Google what is

important on your site.



Date Archives

●Non-contextual●99% of the time, it's wrong



Blog Categories

●For users, won't help with search●Don't stuff with keywords●Keep it taut



Definitions:

Indexing is getting a page in google's indexNoindex is a robots tag we can apply in head to keep page out of the indexFollow is a robots tag we can apply in head to say "but follow links on this page"

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, FOLLOW">



Do we want google to index category pages? ...tag pages?...date-based archives?

● Are they really content?● Wordpress is simply going to repeat your content here=Duplicate



Do we want google to index category pages?

If you choose to index Category Pages:● No spam● Display excerpts, not full posts● Make custom Category Page text



Custom category pages:

-Your premium template

-”WP Custom Category Pages Plugin”



Cat. Descriptions are built in.

Yoast adds title & Meta

box...


Expert Yoast Approaches & OG

“WordPress SEO by Yoast”

-Leading all-around plugin for WordPress-Mature-Stable



“WordPress SEO by Yoast”

Does opengraphTethers Categories Tags Archives



Open Graph (ogp.me) is a metadata standard for social sharing

Open Graph "tags" elements on your website, like a meta description to feed those

elements into social



Open Graph (ogp.me) is a metadata standard for social sharing

Image

Description

site_nameMichael David @tastyplacement


Yoast: “noindex” Categories & Tags



Yoast: “noindex” Author & Date Archives


Post webinar questions in GTW

Have questions on WPE?Call 877-973-6446 or chat with a rep at wpengine.com

Questions for speakers: [email protected]

@davidvmc

Q&A

Next

Get Found: Raise your Visibility through Organic Search

The Ultimate Series on WordPress SEO - Part 2

Wednesday, September 30th, 12 pm EDT/ 11 am CDT/ 9 am EDT

Tell friends and colleagues: http://wpeng.in/getfound/

Next Up...

❖ Speed ❖ HTACCESS Hacks❖ Security ❖ Reducing your Google

Index❖ SSL ❖ Rank Checking Software

get found: raise your visibility through organic search (part 1)

Marketing