This document provides an overview of the absolute basics of WordPress SEO. It discusses installing WordPress at the root domain, choosing the www or non-www version, using SEO-friendly permalinks, selecting themes like Genesis that have good SEO capabilities, and plugins like Yoast SEO. It also covers optimizing content, titles, meta descriptions and disabling duplicate pages and archives.

1. DESIGNBigger
WordPress SEO, The Absolute Basics
Christopher Smith | August 21, 2013

2. This Will Be High Level
(902 feet high to be exact)

3. Three Four Things
To Worry About
Base Installation
Themes
Plugins
Content

4. Start At The Beginning
If WordPress is running your entire site, install at the
root of the domain. If your host doesn’t allow this, find
a new one!
Good: http://www.mysite.com/
Bad: http://www.mysite.com/wordpress/

5. To WWW Or Not WWW?
On a new site, it doesn’t really matter.
If you have an existing site, find out which one
is more authoritative using Open Site Explorer,
and stick with that.
We don’t want this
if we can help it.

6. Permalinks
Preferred:
/%postname%/
/%category%/%postname%/
Example:
http://www.mysite.com/heres-a-post/
http://www.mysite.com/awesome-stuff/heres-a-post/

7. Permalinks (continued)
Tags And Categories
This will help prevent redirect issues, should
you accidentally name a page and category
with the same.

8. Reading
Check this box while you’re building the site,
but don’t forget to uncheck it when you launch!

9. Themes
I prefer the StudioPress Genesis Framework. It has
good built-in SEO capabilities, and plays nicely with
the major SEO plugins.
Also good:
Thesis
Headway
Theme Hybrid
Building your own from scratch? Use the Web
Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet.

10. Plugins
There are several good ones out there:
All In One SEO
SEOPressor
Yoast’s WordPress SEO
HeadSpace
If you like what you’ve got now, consider
sticking with it and becoming an expert with it.
Any plugin can be improved upon!

11. WordPress SEO
I prefer the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin.
1. It has a ton of built-in functionality:
sitemaps, OpenGraph, Authorship markup,
page analysis, etc.
2. There are plugins to extend it for Video SEO,
Local SEO, News SEO, and WooCommerce SEO.
3. Quick updates and bug fixes.

12. WordPress SEO
Posts Titles and Meta

13. WordPress SEO
Pages Titles and Meta

14. WordPress SEO
Categories and Tags Titles and Meta
Leaving this unchecked
can cause duplicate
content issues!

15. WordPress SEO
Author Titles and Meta
If you have a single-author blog, DISABLE the
author archives.

16. WordPress SEO
Date Archive Titles and Meta
Disable date-based archives; it’s a huge
duplicate content issue!

17. Content
Each post or page is should have a central
theme or idea.
If you can’t sum it up in one sentence, it might
be better off as multiple posts or pages.
Use tools like UberSuggest or the AdWords
Keyword Tool for topical inspiration.

18. Content
Use the Yoast built-in tools to assist in search
optimization once you’ve got a draft of your
content.
(demo)

19. Even More Confused?
Go back to the basics!
Here are some excellent sources to learn SEO
from:
Google SEO Starter Guide (pdf)
Moz’s Beginner’s Guide To SEO
Yoast’s WordPress SEO - The Definitive Guide

20. Tools
Yoast’s WordPress SEO
Open Site Explorer
UberSuggest
AdWords Keyword Tool

21. Questions?
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