Introduction to SEO and SEO for WordPress
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A presentation on SEO, WordPress and SEO Tools from the Melbourne WordPress Meetup, October 2013. Presented by Chris Burgess, Peter Mead and Michael Jones.
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Introduction to SEO and SEO for WordPress
- 1. Introduc)on to SEO and SEO for WordPress Chris Burgess, Peter Mead and Michael Jones
- 2. A li7le about us… Chris is Chief Informa9on Officer for a non profit in Melbourne and is ac9vely involved in tech user groups including co-‐managing the Melbourne SEO Meetup with Michael Jones. In his spare 9me he also enjoys working on a variety of web projects and manages a few of his own websites. Peter Mead is a WordPress and SEO consultant, with a focus on strategy. Working with small business clients to deliver personalized WordPress websites and specialized SEO services, he feels quality is a determining factor for las9ng success on the web. He has also established a regular WordPress meetup in Bendigo. Michael works at Razorfish as SEO Manager, Suncorp Insurance Head of Onsite / Technical SEO. Michael has 12 years of search engine marke9ng experience, worked with many large organisa9ons in Australia (both in-‐house and agency side), in a broad range of industries including: shopping, classifieds and service websites. Michael specialises in SEO but also has experience in SEM, Analy9cs, Social, Local, Reputa9on management and Email Marke9ng. Peter Mead PeterMeadIT.com Chris Burgess ChrisBurgess.com.au Michael Jones HolidayPoint.com.au
- 4. Agenda • (Part 1) Introduc)on to SEO – Chris Burgess – SEO basics and why SEO is important – Areas to focus on to help you get found in the major search engines – Onsite and offsite SEO – The importance of keyword research • (Part 2) SEO and WordPress – Peter Mead – SEO and WordPress – WordPress’ SEO capabili9es out of the box – Recommended plugins – Themes and frameworks • (Part 3) SEO Tools – Michael Jones – Common issues and fixes – Tools and services – Examples of some do's and don'ts – Where to from here? • (Part 4) SEO Q&A Panel and Ques)ons
- 5. Part 1 -‐ Introduc)on to SEO
- 6. Image source: h[p://www.yourthoughtpartner.com/blog Is this how you feel about SEO?
- 7. SEO basics and why SEO is important
- 8. Everybody wants to get found Source: h[p://moz.com/blog/smwc-‐and-‐other-‐essen9al-‐seo-‐jargon …but not everyone can get to #1 spot on search engines That’s why you need SEO. At least not at the top! J
- 9. What does SEO stand for? Search Engine Op)miza)on
- 10. Defini)on of SEO Source: h[p://moz.com/blog/smwc-‐and-‐other-‐essen9al-‐seo-‐jargon “The process of increasing the number of visitors to a website by achieving high rank in the search results of a search engine. The higher a website ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that users will visit the site. It is common prac9ce for Internet users to not click past the first few pages of search results, therefore high rank in SERPs is essen)al for obtaining traffic for a site. SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be indexed and favorably ranked by the search engine.” -‐ Moz
- 11. Search Engines – Librarians of the Internet Think of search engines like the librarians of the Internet. Their systems collect informa)on about every page on the web so they can help users find exactly what they’re looking for. Surce:h[p://searchengineland.com/guide/what-‐is-‐seo
- 12. Search engines use a program called an algorithm (think of it like a secret recipe) to determine what pages to suggest for a search query by a user. Surce:h[p://searchengineland.com/guide/what-‐is-‐seo Source: h[p://moz.com/blog/smwc-‐and-‐other-‐essen9al-‐seo-‐jargon Image Source: h[p://www.longtermfix.com/ How do they do it?
- 13. Algorithms are constantly being updated which means that rankings are constantly changing. These algorithm changes have code names. You may have heard some of the more popular ones Penguin, Panda and Hummingbird. Surce:h[p://searchengineland.com/guide/what-‐is-‐seo Source: h[p://moz.com/blog/smwc-‐and-‐other-‐essen9al-‐seo-‐jargon Image Source: h[p://www.longtermfix.com/ and h[p://www.markcijo.com/ Upda)ng the algorithm
- 14. Surce:h[p://searchengineland.com/guide/what-‐is-‐seo Source: h[p://moz.com/blog/smwc-‐and-‐other-‐essen9al-‐seo-‐jargon Why should I care? If you own a website, understanding the key ingredients search engines are looking for in their secret recipe (ranking factors) and making it easy for search engines to find them on your site helps to improve your chances of being displayed higher up in the search engine results page (SERP). This process is known as search engine op9misa9on (SEO).
- 15. Why SEO is important Higher SERP More visitors + customers to your site Greater exposure and opportunity for conversions (leads, sales, revenue etc.) $$$
- 16. Geeng Found
- 17. Ge]ng Found • Just being online doesn’t guarantee being found • Lots of people have great websites, causes, products and services, but they don’t get much traffic • You might be in a compe99ve industry
- 19. Onsite • Op9mise your pages content • Titles, headings, images, text, meta descrip9ons • Keywords and content strategy • XML sitemaps • Canonical link to determine the “original” page (we’ll cover this bit later) • Robots.txt (we’ll cover this bit later) • Configura9on
- 20. Offsite • Should be done aier on site op9misa9on • Links (context, anchor text) – Inbound links = The Holy Grail • Quality of links • Bad links can hurt your site • Social media, web 2.0 proper9es etc. • Bookmarking, StumbleUpon, Digg, Squidoo etc. • Examples of good links: mainstream news site or blog, natural • Example of bad links: spammy, unnatural
- 21. Example of bad links
- 22. How can you get links? • Link building/earning – create high quality and unique content – Blogs – Social media – Podcasts – Video – eBooks – eNewsle[ers – Infographics – Whitepapers • The buzzword is “inbound marke9ng”
- 23. Keyword Research
- 24. What do you want to be found for?
- 25. Keyword Research • Knowing your audience • What they search for • What keywords to focus on • Compe9tor analysis • Look for words that have high search volume and low compe99on, they will be easier to rank for Good “Moving house on a budget” Bad “Broke and need to get out?” Good “Bookkeeping 9ps for small business” Bad “Ge>ng your books in order”
- 26. Keyword Research • Many tools and methods available • Looking for keywords with: – high traffic value – low compe99on – make great 9tles – make great content • Check out h[p://tools.seobook.com/keyword-‐tools/seobook/
- 27. Google Keyword Planner (formerly AdWords Keyword Tool) h[p://adwords.google.com/keywordplanner
- 28. Recap • SEO basics and why SEO is important • Areas to focus on to help you get found in the major search engines • Onsite and offsite SEO • The importance of keyword research
- 30. Part 2 -‐ SEO and WordPress
- 31. SEO and WordPress is a match made in heaven
- 32. What works for me… • Quality -‐ PLAF – People – Link – Ar9cles – Found • Cri9cal factors -‐ SAT – Site speed – Ar9cles / Content – Time on site / Bounce rate • WordPress helps make these processes easy for users
- 33. WordPress’ SEO capabili)es out of the box
- 34. WordPress’ SEO capabili)es out of the box • Strong community • Well supported • It’s a clean, easy to use CMS • Titles, Headings and Content • Professional publishing plarorm (built with SEO in mind) • Search friendly URLs (permalinks) • Google can index default WordPress quite easily • Ability to easily extend (via Plugins)
- 36. Yoast h[p://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/ h[p://yoast.com/wordpress-‐seo-‐premium-‐release/
- 37. Yoast: Overview of features • Developed by pro’s (Joost) for pro’s and beginners alike • Very easy to use Features: • Op)mize your WordPress site with just one plugin • The most complete SEO plugin for WordPress available • Content analysis func)onality -‐ write be[er content with the built-‐in content analysis and easily op9mize your sites 9tles and descrip9ons with the snippet preview • Automa)cally generate XML Sitemaps • And many more technical improvements to your site that you don’t even have to look at. Source: h[p://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
- 38. Yoast: Titles and meta tags • Set templates for 9tles and meta descrip9ons for all types of pages globally • The WordPress SEO meta box to op9mize your post 9tle and meta descrip9on • The snippet preview shows what it would look like in Google, this helps us crai for higher click-‐through’s Source: h[p://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
- 39. Yoast: this is what it looks like…
- 41. Yoast: Advanced
- 44. All In One SEO Pack • Free version and also pro version for $39USD + $49 every 12 months h[p://semperplugins.com
- 45. Broken Link Checker • Checks your blog for broken links and missing images and no9fies you on the dashboard if any are found. • Free plugin h[p://w-‐shadow.com/blog/2007/08/05/broken-‐link-‐checker-‐for-‐wordpress/
- 46. Google XML Sitemaps • This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to be[er index your blog. h[p://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-‐plugins/google-‐xml-‐sitemaps-‐generator/
- 47. Google XML Sitemap for Images • This plugin will generate a XML Image Sitemap for your WordPress blog. Open the seengs page to create your image sitemap. • Free plugin h[p://wordpress.org/plugins/google-‐image-‐sitemap/
- 48. Head Cleanup • Remove extraneous head tags from WordPress • Free plugin h[p://wordpress.org/plugins/header-‐cleanup/
- 49. NGFB Open Graph+ Pro • Adds HTML header tags for be[er Google Search results and Social Sharing posts. An essen9al plugin for every WordPress website! • Free plugin and pro version for $29USD h[p://surniaulula.com/extend/plugins/nextgen-‐facebook/
- 50. WP Minify • This plugin uses the Minify engine to combine and compress JS and CSS files to improve page load 9me. • Free plugin h[p://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-‐minify/
- 52. Themes and Theme Frameworks • Pagelines h[p://www.pagelines.com/ • WooThemes h[p://www.woothemes.com/ • Genesis h[p://my.studiopress.com/themes/genesis/ • Thesis h[p://diythemes.com/
- 53. Recap • SEO and WordPress – match made in heaven • WordPress’ SEO capabili9es out of the box • Recommended plugins • Themes and frameworks
- 55. Part 3 – SEO Tools, )ps and recommenda)ons
- 56. Common issues and fixes
- 57. Headings <h1>’s and <h2>’s not used as well as they could
- 58. Robots.txt • Robots.txt is used by Google and other search engines to know which pages the spiders should index. • Can edit robots.txt manually or with a plugin. • Can control each page or post if desired. • Indexing your search pages Disallow: /*?s=
- 59. Excluding content • Exclude category, tag, archive, author tags to suit • You can do this manually or through an SEO plugin
- 60. Canonicalisa)on • Google introduced canonical link to dis9nguish the “original” page from deriva9ve pages in your site, to avoid "duplicate content!" • Set in the seengs of your WordPress site • Set it on a page level for each page if needed
- 61. XML Sitemaps • XML sitemaps are used by GWT (Google Webmaster tools) • Plugins (such as WordPress SEO etc.) let you create and control details of said XML sitemaps. • Tells Google what is important.
- 62. .htaccess Configura)on 1. Set character formaeng 2. Enabling compression of txt based assets using DELFATE 3. Enable caching of image based assets 4. Enable caching of txt based assets 5. Enabling last modified headers 6. Fixing Etag issues Most of this on the right can be copied straight into the htaccess =============================== AddDefaultCharset UTF-‐8 <ifModule mod_deflate.c> <filesMatch ".(css|js|txt|x?html?|php)$”> SetOutputFilter DEFLATE </filesMatch> </ifModule> <FilesMatch ".(gif|png|jpg|jpeg|js|swf|bmp|ico)$”> ExpiresAc9ve On ExpiresDefault "access plus 2 years” Header set Cache-‐Control "public, no-‐transform” </FilesMatch> <FilesMatch ".(js|css)$”> ExpiresAc9ve On ExpiresDefault "access plus 2 months” Header set Cache-‐Control "public, no-‐transform” </FilesMatch> <IfModule mod_headers.c> <FilesMatch ".(js|css|xml|gz|gif|png|jpg|jpeg|swf|bmp|ico)$”> Header append Vary Accept-‐Encoding Header set Last-‐Modified "Thu, 27 Jun 2011 12:00:00 GMT” </FilesMatch> </IfModule> <ifModule mod_headers.c> Header unset ETag </ifModule> FileETag None ===============================
- 63. Tools
- 66. Open Site Explorer h[p://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ "
- 70. SEO x-‐ray h[p://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-‐for-‐firefox.html
- 71. Rich snippet tes)ng tool h[p://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
- 72. PageRank Recovery tool h[p://www.virante.org/seo-‐tools/pagerank-‐recovery-‐tool
- 73. Duplicate Content Tool h[p://www.virante.org/seo-‐tools/duplicate-‐content
- 74. Header check tool h[p://www.webconfs.com/h[p-‐header-‐check.php
- 75. Examples of some Do’s and Don’ts
- 76. Do’s and Dont’s ü Do focus on quality ü Do focus on building your authority ü Provide content people actually want ü Be careful of bad SEO (due diligence) ✕ Don’t look for tricks ✕ Don’t look for shortcuts ✕ Don’t rely on old informa9on (search changes fast) ✕ If something feels spammy, it probably is – don’t use it
- 77. Checking your progress • Google Analy9cs (key metrics Visits, PageViews, Return vs New, Time on site, Bounce, Entry and Exit pages) • Seeng up goals in Analy9cs (opt-‐in, form, purchase etc.) h[p://www.google.com/analy9cs/ • Google Webmaster Tools h[ps://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en • Advanced Web Ranking h[p://www.advancedwebranking.com/ • Raven Tools h[p://raventools.com/ • Moz h[p://moz.com/
- 78. Where to from here?
- 79. Where to from here? • Check out some of these resources for more informa9on • Google’s official Webmaster Guides • h[p://moz.com/beginners-‐guide-‐to-‐seo • h[p://searchengineland.com/guide/what-‐is-‐seo • Come along to Melbourne SEO Meetups h[p://www.meetup.com/Melbourne-‐SEO/ • Thanks to David Iwanow for some of the images and 9ps J
- 80. Recap • Common issues and fixes • Tools • Examples of some do’s and don’ts • Where to go for more info
- 81. Part 4 -‐ SEO Q&A Panel and Ques)ons Peter Mead PeterMeadIT.com Chris Burgess ChrisBurgess.com.au Michael Jones HolidayPoint.com.au Thanks and stay in touch!