Beginner's SEO for WordPress - WordCamp Raleigh 2018

WordPress SEO
Presented by: @tonyzeoli | Founder: @dswks
https://tonyzeoli.com • https://digitalstrategyworks.com
WordCamp Raleigh 2018
A Beginner’s Guide

WordPress SEO: A Beginner’s GuideBy Tony Zeoli | WordCamp Raleigh 2018
@tonyzeoli
• Founder
Digital Strategy Works
@dswks
• WordPress Coach | Trainer
TonyZeoli.com
@tonyzeoli
• Digital Strategy Coach
Mountain BizWorks
@mtnbizworks
• Started with WordPress in 2005.
• Focus is on WordPress, Social Media,
SEO, Digital Strategy, Content
Marketing, Email Newsletter Marketing,
E-commerce, Analytics, and Content
Management.
• B.S. Digital Communications and Media
from NYU

Section 1

What is a search
engine?

• With Google, Bing, etc., you are optimizing your own website or blog to
be found in search. You publish content and Google crawls your site to
index your site’s pages and posts, as well as media content to return in
search results.
• For “other” niche search engines, you input data into those search
engines, so people using those tools can return, for example, all homes
for sale in a specific locale (Trulia), all hotels in a 20 mile radius of
Raleigh (hotels.com), all flights leaving from Raleigh at 2 pm today
(Kayak), all restaurants in downtown Raleigh (Yelp), all lawyers in
Raleigh (FindLaw), and all businesses in Raleigh (business.com)
• While Google may return intended results, niche search portals provide
extended information through UGC (user generated content).
Process

Google

Bing

DuckDuckGo

Yahoo!

AOL

ASK

LYCOS

EXCITE

BAIDU

YANDEX

Relevanssi

Other Types
• business.com
• LinkedIn
• FindLaw
• LexisNexis
• Trulia / Zillow (Real
Estate)
• Craigs List
• Yelp / FourSquare
• Apple / Google Maps
• Kayak / Expedia
• hotels.com
• autos.com

Objective
• Search Engines goal is to return the most valuable information in
the search query to the person performing the search with
information that should be:
• Timely
• Relevant
• Informative
• Fast
• Accessible
• Secure

Search Engine Usage

Search Engine
Optimization

7 Reason Why SEO
7 Reasons Why Your Business Should Invest in SEO, Olenski, Steve; Mar 26, 2014 forbes.com,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2014/03/26/7-reasons-why-your-business-should-invest-in-seo/
• It still works
• It’s not going to stop working anytime soon
• It’s cost effective against other forms of Internet marketing
• Search engines are grabbing more market share
• Mobile and Local Search Optimization
• Not having a healthy content profile is damaging
• Your competitors are doing it.

Traditional Marketing
• Passive
• Subliminal
• Expensive to Replicate
• Highly Competitive

Examples

Online Advertising
• Passive
• Subliminal
• Expensive per 1K Impressions or CTR (click-through rates)
• Complex to create, build, and manage across multiple social networks
• Control where appear
• Track click through rates and conversions

Examples
Ad Banners
Social Media
SEM

Search Engine Results Page
(SERP)

Competitive Keyword
Results!

Benefits
• Active - user is looking for an answer to a question
• One cost of on site optimization vs. design,
production, ad budgets, distribution, control, etc.
• Text-based marketing makes it easier create and
manage
• Free tools help defray costs
• Can do yourself with education and elbow grease!

Organic Traffic
…the process of getting traffic from the “free,”
“organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on
search engines.
http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo

Why Google?
http://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-marketing/search-engine-statistics/
Who has the biggest search engine market share worldwide?
According to Net Market Share the global marketing share percentage, in terms of the use of Search
Engines heavily favored Google throughout 2017 - averaging a net share of 74.54%. This again reinforces
the fact that Google is the market leader, however, it also highlights that the "Others" such as Yahoo, Bing
and Baidu etc still hold a large audience and it would be silly to simply ignore them (averaging between 5-
10% market share).

% Paid vs Organic
https://sparktoro.com/blog/seo-opportunity-growing-shrinking/
• Organic search volume had declined somewhat with
Google’s new AdWords positioning and other changes
to SERP pages
• Still gets 20x clicks over PPC

How do search engines
work?
http://www.bitrebels.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/how-google-works-explanation-infographic.jpg

SERP

Visual Guide to GSR
Types
https://www.link-assistant.com/news/serp-guide.html

Page Rank

PageRank Checker

PageRank is dead!
• Google removed PageRank from their toolbar feeds
in April 2016.
• PageRank spurned the link buying economy.
• Introduced “nofollow” so SEOs could have a way to
not pass link authority.
• You can no longer check your PageRank, however
you may see older page rank checkers render a
score.

Alternative Metrics
Tools
• MOZ - https://moz.com
• SEM RUSH - https://semrush.com
• SCREAMING FROG -
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
• MAJESTIC - https://majestic.com/
• SEO Power Suite from http://link-assistant.com

MOZ Page Authority
(PA)
https://moz.com/learn/seo/page-authority

MOZ Domain Authority
(DA)
https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority

Google Analytics Dashboard
for WordPress

Google Search Console: Links
To Your Site

Google Search Console:
Search Analytics

Section 2

WordPress SEO
• Intention is to build page and domain authority resulting in page
rank through the implementation, optimization, and management
of:
• keyword/phrase optimization
• back links
• robots.txt & nofollow
• page speed optimization
• mobile responsive design
• SSL (secure socket layer encryption)

Getting Started
1.Set up a Google Analytics account:
https://google.com/analytics
2.Set up a Google Search Console account:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
3.Install All in One SEO Pack for WordPress SEO via
Plugins admin or download from WordPress.org
Plugin page: https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-
seo-pack/

Find UA tracking
number

Add UA tracking
number
https://semperplugins.com/documentation/setting-up-google-analytics/

Verify
• Register domain name with Google Search Console
• Click “Verify”
• Select “Google Analytics.” If you have GA set up
already with your UA code in AIOSEO, then you
should be able to verify instantly.
• Alternatively, use Google Meta to verify.

Google Meta
Copy value between “” marks

Alternative Verification
Paste value between “” marks in GWT field, then save.
Same for Bing and Pinterest

Remove Google js

XML Sitemap
• AIOSEO has a built in XML sitemap generator
• A sitemap is a list of all URLs you want Google and other
search engines to crawl. It makes it more efficient for Google to
find, crawl, and index your site.
• Authenticates your site and let’s Google know you exist.
• Generates sitemap with a click. Then, find your sitemap at
http:// or https://mydomain.com/sitemap.xml
• Set Sitemap Indexes to 1000. Google paginates sitemaps to
help parse them into digestible chunks.

Sitemap View

Add Sitemap to Search
Console

Bing Webmaster Tools
Note: To verify, Bing may require upload of html file to top level directory

Other Webmaster Tools
• WordPress.com Help:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/
• Pinterest:
https://semperplugins.com/documentation/pintere
st-site-verification/
• Baidu:
http://zhanzhang.baidu.com/?castk=LTE%3D (in
Chinese)
• Yandex: https://webmaster.yandex.com/

News Sitemap

Video Sitemap
Available in All in One SEO Pack Pro

Image Sitemap
Coming Soon in All in One SEO Pack

Get free SSL Encryption

Ways to get free SSL
• Google views SSL encryption as a minor ranking signal.
• Some hosts are now providing free SSL. WP Engine is one of them.
• LetsEncrypt.org
• Transfer DNS to cloudflare.com and site will be automatically SSL
enabled. Need to install WordPress Cloudflare plugin.
• Extended Validation (EV) SSL is not free. Visit VeriSign, Comodo, or
other providers. Adds company name next to the green lock icon in
the browser URL bar:
• In Google Webmaster Tools you want to add both http and https
URLs and Sitemaps, so if someone types in either, your site is tracked
with both methods.

Set WordPress
Permalinks

Edit Post Permalink

Page Speed
Optimization
• Google Page Speed Insights
• YSlow
• GT Metrix

GPSI Report

Page Speed
Optimization• Optimize server response time by tuning Apache or leveraging NGINX
on the server.
• Cache your site pages and media either with Amazon Cloudfront and a
caching plugin (Total Cache or Super Cache) or your hosts caching
service. WP Engine comes with object caching and you can upgrade for
media caching.
• Compress all images using WP Smush, EWWW Image Optimizer
• Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (remove whitespace)
• Above the Fold Optimization
• Fix Render Blocking javascript issues
• Leverage Browser cache expiry

Above The Fold
Optimization

Autoptimize

Warning
• Don’t implement Autoptimize or Above The Fold
Optimization on a LIVE site.
• Work in staging, optimize, check in a browser
testing tool, then launch when all is well.

On Page SEO
• Deep, rich, relevant, contextual content (1,000 to 2,000 words)
• Concise keyword optimization:
• Title
• Post Content
• Media (Images, Video, PDF, MP3…)
• Permalink
• Category
• Tags
• Breadcrumbs

If you do nothing…
• Google will pull your H1 Title as the primary title.
• Google will pull the first few lines of your page
content as the description
• This is obviously not optimized for search, which is
why you would use an SEO plugin like All in One
SEO Pack or others to construct optimized titles
and descriptions for post/page content.

Robots.txt

http://searchengineland.com/infographic-nofollow-tag-172157
• The nofollow tag is a
way publishers can
tell search engines
not to count some of
their links to other
pages as “votes” in
favor of that content.
Why would publishers
need to block such
votes? Doing so can
help them avoid
problems with search
engines believing they
are selling influence
or are somehow
involved in schemes
deemed as
unacceptable SEO
practices.
Nofollow

Accelerated Mobile Pages
(AMP)

WordPress AMP Plugin

schema.org
• For Local SEO
• Supported by All in One SEO Pack
• Hours of Operation, Reviews, Show Times,
Playlists, etc…
• Google will not publish star reviews against your
home page - will only publish them on an inside
landing page.

Backlinks
• Publish “Skyscraper” Content (Lists, ex: 186 plugins that do this…)
• Become a Source For Reporters and Bloggers (HARO)
• Build Links From Outdated Resources
• Stop Guessing. Use Content Formats PROVEN To Generate Links and Social Shares
• Want High Quality Backlinks? Publish Ultimate Guides
• Use Branded Strategies and Techniques
• Authority Resource Pages
• Bonus Strategy #1: Turn Brand Mentions Into Quality Backlinks
• Bonus Strategy #2: Send “Feeler” Emails
https://backlinko.com/high-quality-backlinks#skyscrapercontent

Google Answer Box
https://moz.com/blog/how-to-appear-in-googles-answer-boxes-whiteboard-friday

Breadcrumbs
• In 2015,
Google
replaced the
URL in mobile
search with
breadcrumbs.

Why Breadcrumbs?

How to Implement
Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumb Trail

Add to Theme
<?php if ( function_exists( 'breadcrumb_trail' ) ) breadcrumb_trail(); ?>
• Add Breadcrumb code to theme template
• Style w/ CSS

Redirection
https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/

Image SEO
• Resize and compress images before upload or
plugin can resize and compress
• WP Smush
• EWWW Image Optimizer
• Imagify

Image SEO in
WordPress

Change your
Filenames!• Always rename your
image file:
• From: 00001.jpg
• ford-focus-4cyl-
2018.jpg
• If you need to rename
image files AFTER
upload, then use Media
File Renamer
• Rename title can also
rename file name.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/media-file-renamer/

WP Review

All in One SEO Pack
Demonstration

Questions?

Tony Zeoli
az@digitalstrategyworks.com
https://digitalstrategyworks.com
Slides: https://slideshare.net/tonyzeoli

Beginner's SEO for WordPress - WordCamp Raleigh 2018

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