WordPress SEO & Optimisation

WordPress SEO & Optimisation Strategies A4UExpo London, October 2008

Joost de Valk

Open Source Theology IBMS Apple Geek Marketeer WordPress SEO Speaker Blogger Online marketeer

http://yoast.com

http://orangevalley.nl

Today’s agenda 1 WordPress & SEO 2 Promoting Your Blog 3 Getting more subscribers 4 Conversation Optimization And maybe, some bonus tips.

WordPress & SEO

Essential Plugins

HeadSpace2 - Titles - Meta Keywords and Descriptions - More Tags - And SO much more. http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/

Template tip #1 Your title should look like this: <title><?php wp_title(‘’); ?></title> Nothing more, nothing less. HeadSpace or any other SEO plugin will take care of the title.

Redirection Use it for all your redirection needs. http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/

YARPP Yet Another Related Posts Plugin Related posts based on tags, categories, post content, etc. http://mitcho.com/code/yarpp/

SEO Friendly Images Auto-magically optimise alt and title tags. http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/seo-friendly-images

Clean Slugs Auto-magically optimise your post slugs. Sign up for my mailing list and get it!

RSS Footer Take advantage of those scrapers! http://yoast.com/wordpress/rss-footer/

Structure for SEO

Template tip #2 Your blog title and subtitle should only be <h1> and <h2> on your front page! Everywhere else, and <h4> and <h5> is good enough. To do that, do something like this in your header.php: <?php if (is_home()) { ?> <h1>Yoast</h1> <?php } else { ?> <h4><a href=quot;/quot;>Yoast</a></h4> <?php } ?>

Template tip #3 Add a description to your categories: <?php echo category_description(); ?>

Yoast Breadcrumbs Let users and spiders find the way home! Roy Huiskes - Internal Linking 16.30 - Platinum 7 http://yoast.com/wordpress/breadcrumbs/

Robots Meta - Noindex, follow your archives, search pages, etc. - Authenticate with webmaster tools - Nofollow ancillary links - Etc. etc. http://yoast.com/wordpress/robots-meta/

Pagination Because a search engine can’t skip pages. http://www.seoegghead.com/blog/seo/stop-seo-death-by-pagination-p118.html or http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-page-numbers/

More info on WP SEO? http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/

Promoting your blog

Because just praying won’t work

So Join In The Conversation

Go where your readers go.

If you bait...

Use the good stuff.

Do Guest Posts.

Competing is more important than....

So now you’ve got visitors

Let’s turn them into fans

Your Subscribe Button Can’t be BIG enough.

Offer e-mail too

Remind people. After each post.

Pick easy scores: - comment redirect (http://yoast.com/wordpress/comment-redirect/) - comment relish

Now we’ve got a conversation

Let’s keep it going!

Here’s 10 steps to improve the conversation on your blog

Step 1: Ask for comments.

Step 2: Thank people for commenting.

Step 3: get to know your readers.

Step 4: answer all questions, and respond to all feedback.

Step 5: Reward good remarks.

Step 6: keep people involved.

Step 7: don’t distract them. Separate track- and pingbacks from comments: http://yoast.com/wordpress-theming-pushing-trackbacks-down/

Step 8: Fight spam, always.

Step 9: Keep It Stupid Simple (to comment)

Step 10: Measure, improve, and repeat Use Blog Metrics: http://yoast.com/wordpress/blog-metrics/ Google Alerts Twitter Ego Searches

Are you a good Housekeeper? http://yoast.com/serious-blogging-questions/

3 bonus tips!

Prevent fruitless searching Improve the WordPress search experience: http://yoast.com/wordpress-search/

Aim for speed Optimize your template: http://yoast.com/speed-up-and-clean-up-your-wordpress/

check themes before installing http://yoast.com/perfect-wordpress-theme/

Sign up to my WP mailing list! http://yoast.com/mailing-list/ Joost de Valk joost@yoast.com http://yoast.com http://www.orangevalley.nl http://twitter.com/jdevalk

http://yoast.com	18195
http://wordpress.tv	2917
http://www.sochouette.com	657
http://tomuse.com	579
http://www.ittechnology.us	484
http://www.cogniview.com	359
http://www.web-ideas.de	238
http://techreuters.com	228
http://www.guerrilla.co.il	226
http://www.alabala.org	184
http://selfmademinds.com	149
http://www.seopazari.com	131
http://owlethome.wordpress.com	119
http://femeo.bayt.dev:8989	100
http://frankkoebsch.wordpress.com	98
http://wp-start.nl	92
http://servis.key2future.pl	89
http://congty.dichvuseo.com	88
http://dichvuseo.gov-vn.com	84
http://wpblogger.com	84
http://www.blogtechnika.com	83
http://www.conseilsmarketing.fr	79
http://www.serps.cn	78
http://blog.brasseo.net	75
http://www.kd.inten.pl	75
http://webfuturekursus.wordpress.com	72
http://blog.nazab.com	70
http://localhost	68
http://nathanieltubb.ca	68
http://muiomuio.net	65
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	59
http://slametpurwanto.com	59
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	56
http://study5.co	50
http://www.slideshare.net	50
http://www.geekandtech.net	47
http://downloadwordpress.blogspot.com	47
http://static.slideshare.net	46
http://www.dreamcss.com	45
http://panasolutions.com	42
http://femeo.bayt.dev	40
http://www.leakmaster.com	39
http://www.downloadwordpress.blogspot.com	37
http://hellsingge.wordpress.com	37
http://www.protuts.net	36
http://gestao.apikiprojeto.com	36
http://blog.guerrilla.co.il	33
http://www.7yan.com.cn	32
http://wowbagger.de	28
http://www.yachtlifefor.me	27
http://www.theinternetmarketeer.nl	27

WordPress SEO & Optimisation

by Joost de Valk on Oct 15, 2008

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