The SEO with WordPress session by Thunder SEO's Gary Magnone at WordCamp San Diego 2012 takes a deep dive on what business owners, bloggers, and website owners need to know when it comes to increasing traffic to their WordPress sites. As a CMS, WordPress is already structured to facilitate the basics of SEO, so this session focuses more on the critical mechanical site options that influence search engine accessibility like plug-ins, permalinks, and internal linking. But on-site optimization only accounts for about a quarter of what it takes to rank in the search engines, so we'll also be looking closely at the importance of external links pointing to your site and giving away expert tips and tactics for leveraging keyword research, content development, and social outreach for attracting links to your site naturally that translate into higher rankings, more traffic, and ultimately more money for your business.

1. SEO with WordPress
Presented by Gary Magnone | March 24, 2012

2. First Off, Who Am I?
Name: Gary Magnone Twitter: @garyjmag
Title: Senior SEO Strategist LinkedIn: linkd.in/gmagnone
Company: Thunder SEO Read My Posts: Blog

3. The Inbound Ecosystem
Source: http://mz.cm/GHR1Lf

4. Why SEO?
Over 1 Billion Searches Per Day
7.2 Billion Daily Page Views
87.8 Billion Searches Per Month
66.4% Search Engine Market Share

5. What Does That Look Like?

6. OK, So How Does SEO Work?

7. Getting Set Up

8. Install Analytics & Webmaster Tools

9. Allow Search Engines Access

10. Permalinks
Avoid the default setting
http://www.domain.com/p=123

11. Display Partial Post Excerpts

12. On-Site
Optimization

13. Page-Level Optimization
Source: http://bit.ly/GM58My

14. URLs
Short Keyword-Rich
Descriptive Use Dashes
URL: http://www.yourringshop.com/engagement-rings

15. Page Titles
Not
Good Better
http://bit.ly/GHduWW

16. Meta Description
Do This!
Don’t Do This!

17. Meta Keywords

18. Heading Tags
<h1>Use to Describe the Content Below</h1>
<h2>Help Guide Users Through The Page</h2>
<h3>They Have Minimal Ranking Impact</h3>

19. On-Page Body Content
Include Do Not Internally
Keywords Over- Link to
Naturally & Optimize or Relevant
Use Keyword Pages on
Synonyms Stuff Your Site
Create Valuable, Useful Content
That DESERVES to Rank

20. Optimize Your Images
1. Use Keyword-
Rich Filenames
2. Include
Descriptive Alt
Text

21. Internal Linking
http://bit.ly/GT2oNK
http://bit.ly/GHduWW

22. Robots.txt
Disallow areas
of your site that
you don’t want
Google to crawl
Careful not to disallow the
wrong pages

23. 301 Redirects
Source: http://selnd.com/GPryOh
http://bit.ly/GOY3hM

24. Canonicalization
• www.yourringshop.com
• yourringshop.com
• www.yourringshop.com/index.php
• yourringshop.com/index.html
• www.yourringshop.com/default.ht
m
• yourringshop.com/
http://bit.ly/GPWiRQ

25. XML Sitemap
http://bit.ly/GJkorF

26. Site Speed
http://bit.ly/GP64oc
http://bit.ly/GRIrpl

27. Spam & Security
http://akismet.com

28. Schema.org Microdata
http://bit.ly/GHA7ev

29. Audience Analysis
&
Keyword Research

30. Social Listening & Demographic Data
http://bit.ly/GIQllB

31. Survey Your Customers

32. SEO Explorer
Anne Phillips, Marketing Manager, Flash Fitness
Anne is a 26 year old female with a marketing
communications degree from UC Davis who started at
Flash Fitness as an intern. Her major responsibilities
include: maintaining the company’s website, social
networks, and newsletter, managing local mail
campaigns, radio, tv, and off-site promotions,
coordinating marketing initiatives with sales staff
Enters the conversation during research/learning phase
and looks for beginner content or asks questions
Example keyphrases: learn seo, beginner seo, how to do
keyword research, how to choose a seo company

33. What keywords are they using?

34. Map the keywords to your content
http://bit.ly/GI3I5k

35. Page-Level Optimization
Source: http://bit.ly/GM58My

36. Content Strategy
Content Strategy

37. Set Goals for Your Content
Increased pageviews & time on site
Increased likes, tweets & social shares
Increased referrals to product pages

38. What topics are trending?

39. Of course there’s a tool…
http://bit.ly/GPNDJO

40. Vary Your Content Types
http://bit.ly/GQrNLC

41. Create a Plan

42. Facilitate Sharing
http://bit.ly/GQ1RP3

43. Building Links

44. The Anatomy of a Link
Type of Link Editorial/Reference, Reciprocal, Paid
Link Format Text or Image
Where Link
In-Content, Navigation, Footer, Ad Space
Appears
Age of Link Old or New
Anchor Text Hyperlinked Keywords
Where Link Comes
Authority of Linking Domain
From

45. This is NOT Link Building

46. So What Is Link Building?
Link
Content-
Attraction Providing
based
Help
strategies
Offline
Relationships Your Website Social
Strategies
Giving away
Community
tools &
Interaction
resources
Sponsorships
http://bit.ly/GJN8W9

47. It’s About Connecting With People

48. Find Your Link Prospects

49. Use Social Media
http://bit.ly/GJ0Eac

50. Prioritizing Outreach

51. Establish a Contact Process
Follow Blog Comment ReTweet @ Mention Email
Roberto Raymon
✔ ✔ ✔
David Zinyama
✔ ✔
Jon Pianki
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Kevin Garcia
✔
Christella Morris
✔ ✔
Shaun Hensher
✔ ✔
Cathy Dew
✔

52. Scaling Email Outreach
http://toutapp.com

53. Thank You!
Questions?
• @garyjmag
• gary@thunderseo.com
• thunderseo.com/blog
• http://slidesha.re/GVuRER