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