In these back-to-back sessions, you’ll learn the steps to take to help your site do better in search results. Session One will be an overview of SEO tactics to optimize WordPress for search. In Session Two, we’ll focus on optimizing your content, including keyword research, web copy and images.

1. How to do better in
Part 1: Optimizing Your WordPress Site
Part 2: Optimizing Your Web Content for Search

2. The best platform for SEO

3. Google’s Matt Cutts agrees

4. The foundation of on-page SEO
photo: Pond5
 Poll your client base for terms
 List multiple ways to say the same thing
 Use the Google Adwords keyword tool
 Check out Google Suggests & Google Insights
more about this later …

5. Use keywords in the naming
structure of Web site
 Keyword-rich domain name
 People use your business name or your
domain name as the anchor text of a link

6. 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”

7. Use keywords in the naming
structure of web site
 Keyword-rich domain name
 People use your business name or your
domain name as the anchor text of a link
 Adjust Permalink settings to add
keywords to site urls

8. Permalink settings
/%category% /%postname%/

9. Customize the permalink for each
individual page/post

10. If it's good for site visitors,
Google likes it!
Best practice navigation aids
 html sitemap
 search box
 breadcrumb trail

11. WordPress SEO by Yoast
A 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

12. What is a meta title and meta
description?
 HTML code that search engines read
 Shows in search engines results
 Accurately summarize page content
 Important elements in search engines’
algorithm and for searchers
 Should contain your keywords

13. Titles and Meta Descriptions
Title
Meta Description

14. Writing your titles and metas
Enter a 70 character custom Title
Enter a 155 character custom description

16. 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

17. 301 redirects with Yoast

18. 301 redirects via .htaccess
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
redirect 301 /oldurl.htm http://newurl.com/newpage

19. Changing the Permalink Structure
on an Established Site
 for default post id ?p=123 WordPress will
automatically forward to the new structure
 for date or numeric permalink structure you’ll
need to redirect your old permalinks to your
new ones at the top of the .htaccess file
 yoast.com/wp-content/permalink-helper.php
 learnwp.ca/wordpress-dashboard/changing-permalinks

20. Don't block search engines!!!
Settings -> Privacy ->
Allow search engines to index this site .

21. Q & Eh?
image used by permission susybee.com

22. How to do better in
Part 1: Optimizing Your WordPress Site
Part 2: Optimizing Your Web Content for Search

23. The foundation of on-page SEO
photo: Pond5
 Poll your client base for terms
 List multiple ways to say the same thing
 Use the Google Adwords keyword tool
 Check out Google Suggests & Google Insights

24. Using Google's keyword tool

25. Google Suggests; Google Insights
Google Suggests:
Begin typing some of your keyword terms in
search - Google will suggest endings for
your terms
Google Insights: For patterns
http://www.google.com/insights/search/

26. 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

27. How to write for site visitors
People 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

28. How to write for search engines
Use your keywords - naturally:
No keyword stuffing
o meta tags o H2 & H3
o page titles (H1) o images
o body text o anchor text
 Check your Theme's headings
 Check with Yoast's Page Analysis feature

29. Using categories and tags
interlinking:
You’re probably already linking to other posts on your site
but have you considered linking to a tag or category?
titles & descriptions for tags & categories:
Using the SEO by Yoast WordPress plugin you can
optimize your taxonomy and archive pages.
Cleaning up Tags & Categories with Yoast's new tool
http://yoast.com/optimizing-tags/ - Term Optimizer

30. Optimizing images for search
These textural clues tell
Search Engines
what images are about
 Use descriptive keyword rich image file names
(i.e. “my-keyword.jpg”)
 Optimize the Title and Alt Tag of each image.
 When appropriate, use captions to describe your
image

32. Optimizing images for search
- page speed
 Keep image file size as small as possible
 Don’t scale images
 Use background images that repeat

33. Going off page...
Link Building
 Number of inbound back links
 How reputable is the link
 Relevance of link
 Anchor text

34. Attract traffic
 Create great content
 Commenting
 Social media
 Guest blogging

35. Google Tools
 Google Webmaster Tools
 Google Analytics
 Google+

36. Q & Eh?
image used by permission susybee.com

37. Thank You WordCamp Toronto
Dawn Comber, digitaldialogues.ca
Ruth Maude, dandelionwebdesign.com
WordPress Workshops: LearnWP.ca