SEO with WordPress

SEO with WordPress
Lachlan MacPherson
sennza | http://www.sennza.com.au/ | Twitter: @sennza

Why use SEO?
Your chance to put your best foot forward
rethink | redesign | results

We need to understand the purpose of a search engine
Google wants to provide you with the best results possible for any given term or phrase

Evolution:
Key Advances in Google Search
Backrub[September 1997]This search engine, which had run on Stanford’s servers for almost two years, is renamed Google. Its breakthrough innovation: ranking searches based on the number and quality of incoming links.
New Algorithm[August 2001]The search algorithm is completely revamped to incorporate additional ranking criteria more easily.
Local Connectivity Analysis[February 2003]Google’s first patent is granted for this feature, which gives more weight to links from authoritative sites.
Fritz[Summer 2003]This initiative allows Google to update its index constantly, instead of in big batches.
Personalized Results[June 2005]Users can choose to let Google mine their own search behaviour to provide individualized results.
Bigdaddy[December 2005]Engine update allows for more-comprehensive Web crawling.
Universal Search[May 2007]Building on Image Search, Google News, and Book Search, the new Universal Search allows users to get links to any medium on the same results page.
Real-Time Search[December 2009]Displays results from Twitter and blogs as they are published.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1

Google is constantly changing
Google updates it’s algorithm on average once every day.
Some changes are big, some are small.
“Skate where the puck is going, not where it's been”
- Wayne Gretzky

Case in Point
A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web
New York Times
Published 26/11/10
Being bad to your customers is bad for business
Official Google Blog
Published 1/12/10
http://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/A-Bully-Finds-a-Pulpit-on-the-nytimes-2438712120.html?x=0&.v=1
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your-customers-is-bad-for.html

Why WordPress?
?

Web Design vs SEO
Google Instant Preview

SEO with WordPress
“If you do everything on WordPress you’re pretty much automatically covered as far as SEO”
Matt Cutts, Head of the Webspam Team at Google.
(PubCon 2007)

Advantages of a WordPress Website:
Search-friendly URLs -- that are spider-friendly and tend to be indexed and ranked better in search engines than the complex, dynamic-looking URLs that are typical of content management systems
Tag Clouds -- which provide keyword-rich text link navigation, which link to...
Tag Pages -- which contain excerpts of posts/pages that are related (by the fact they have the same tag in common)
RSS feeds -- which help with link building and garner you visibility in the feed/blog search engines like Feedster and Google Blog Search
Content-rich, search-friendly HTML -- thanks in part to the presentation layer (usually) being cleanly separated from the content layer, along with semantic mark-up, which gives the search engines good clues as to what copy is important and what is not
Visitor participation -- through comments, trackbacks, and pingbacks.
Post-dating of content -- to automatically "go live" on a scheduled date
Ease of maintenance -- with no, or minimal, HTML skills required
Extensibility -- through plugins (it's pretty easy to write your own) and direct hacks to the open source PHP codebase.
http://www.stephanspencer.com/search-engines/your-website-powered-by-wordpress

URL Structure

Ranking in under 5 mins?
+

Take Aways?
Useful Pluginsto extend your SEO with WordPress:
Sitemap XML Generator http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
Redirection http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/
Disqushttp://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/disqus-comment-system/
Twitter Tools http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/
All in One SEO http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
Slide 11 of 13

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SEO with WordPress

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