WordPress
Optimisation
40 tips, in 40 minutes, and then
some questions!

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Online marketeer

Yoast.com

Section #1: Speed!

01 Tip Section #1: Speed
Install WP Super Cache
With GZIP enabled!

02 Tip Section #1: Speed
Move .htaccess directives to your
server config (if possible)
And disable .htaccess parsing.

03 Tip Section #1: Speed
Combine CSS files into one
big CSS file
Same goes for JavaScript,
which should be loaded in the footer.

04 Tip Section #1: Speed
Use CSS sprites
Ask your developer if you don’t know
what this is.

05 Tip Section #1: Speed
Add a PHP opcode cache
Pick one, all are better than having none.

06 Tip Section #1: Speed
Kill some plugins...
And try to replace them for similar ones.
Some plugins are god awful.

07 Tip Section #1: Speed
Still slow? Switch to better hosting.
WestHost rocks, go to
http://www.westhost.com/blog-yoast.html
(yes that’s an affiliate link)

Section #2: SEO

08 Tip Section #2: SEO
Set Pretty Permalinks
Why do people still forget this?

09 Tip Section #2: SEO
Switch Blog name and Post Title
The format should be:
post title - blog name

10 Tip Section #2: SEO
Give Robots directions
Noindex wp-admin, login and register pages etc.

11 Tip Section #2: SEO
Write better titles
Use HeadSpace2, or even All in one SEO.

12 Tip Section #2: SEO
Write good meta descriptions
If you don’t, do NOT auto generate them.

13 Tip Section #2: SEO
Create proper pagination
Using wp-pagenavi by Lester Chan, f/i.

14 Tip Section #2: SEO
Disable paged comments
They suck.

15 Tip Section #2: SEO
Read & Implement everything in my
WordPress SEO guide
http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/

Section #3: Maintenance

16 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Backup your database
every few hours
Use Lester Chans WP-DBManager plugin

17 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Optimize your database every day
Using the same WP-DBManager plugin

18 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Backup your files every day
Use WordPress Backup:
www.blogtrafficexchange.com/wordpress-backup

19 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Check your queries
Use the Debug Queries plugin to check for
plugins gone mad
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/debug-queries/

20 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Run Akismet
Kill those spam comments.

21 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Check the referrers for comments
http://tools.davidnaylor.co.uk/

22 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Remove those nonsense widgets
Technorati rank? Wel.... OK
Blog value: nonsense.

23 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Track your uptime
Use Pingdom, or another tool,
but be the first to know when your blog is down.

24 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Check 404’s
Use the 404 notifier:
wordpress.org/extend/plugins/404-notifier/
and fix them using Redirection

25 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Remove unneccesary meta info
// Remove Really simple discovery link
remove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link');
// Remove Windows Live Writer link
remove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link');
// Remove the version number
remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');

Section #4: Social

26 Tip Section #4: Social
Allow & encourage people to
submit
your content
Use Sociable, damn it :)

27 Tip Section #4: Social
Doing newsletters?
Add a refer a friend button on the
thank you page!

28 Tip Section #4: Social
Or... Use my Comment Redirect
plugin, and add the
refer a friend there!

29 Tip Section #4: Social
Use WP Greet Box,
even useful on “normal” sites.

30 Tip Section #4: Social
Make sure your comments
are gravatar enabled.

31 Tip Section #4: Social
Do the Twitter thing.
It’s an absurd traffic driver.

Section #5: Analytics

32 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Use Google Analytics
(and my plugin for it)

33 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Use RSS link tagger
rebelic.nl/rsslinktagger

34 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Track traffic coming from Twitter:
yoast.com/twitter-analytics/

35 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Install canonical URL’s so your
Analytics doesn’t
interfere with your SEO

36 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Use comment redirect to track first
time commenters

37 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Track comments as a goal!
Use an onclick javascript with a minor delay.

38 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Track RSS subscribers
the same way

39 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Start optimizing:
which traffic leads to
more subscribers?
And yes that means forgetting about Digg.

40 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Use my blog metrics plugin
Improve yourself each month!

41 Tip Section #6: Shameless plug
Bonus tip #41:
Can’t fix it? Don’t have the time to?
Hire me & my team to do it for you:
joost@orangevalley.nl
+31 6 24 555 808