This document provides 40 tips for optimizing a WordPress website in 5 sections: Speed, SEO, Maintenance, Social, and Analytics. It recommends installing caching and minification plugins, combining and offloading CSS/JavaScript, cleaning up sidebars, setting pretty permalinks, adding structured data with custom post types and taxonomies, backing up databases and files regularly, enabling sharing buttons, using analytics tools to track traffic sources and goals. It also promotes the author's WordPress SEO plugin for various tips. The tips are presented briefly and concisely to optimize a WordPress site for performance, search, and traffic in under 40 minutes.

1. WordPress
Optimisation
40 tips, in 40 minutes, and then
some questions!

2. Open Source Theology
Affiliate
WordPress Apple
Geek Marketer
CSS SEO Speaker Blogger
Online marketer

5. Section #1: Speed!

6. 01 Tip Section #1: Speed
Install W3 Total Cache
Preferrably with APC / Memcached for database caching

7. 02 Tip Section #1: Speed
Combine CSS files into one
big CSS file and then minify
Same goes for JavaScript,
most of which should be loaded in the footer.
(W3 Total Cache can help with that)

8. 03 Tip Section #1: Speed
Kill some plugins...
And try to replace them for custom code or similar ones.
Some plugins are god awful.

9. 04 Tip Section #1: Speed
Offload as much as you can
Images to a CDN
Javascript to a CDN or to Google:
http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/

10. 05 Tip Section #1: Speed
Use CSS sprites
have a look at
spriteme.org

11. 06 Tip Section #1: Speed
Clean up those sidebars.
Do you really need all those badges?
Even more important: do your visitors need them?

12. 07 Tip Section #1: Speed
Still slow? Switch to better hosting.
http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-hosting/

13. Section #2: SEO

14. 08 Tip Section #2: SEO
Set Pretty Permalinks
And yes remove post id, date and other nonsense.

15. 09 Tip Section #2: SEO
Cloak your f*ing affiliate links.

16. 10 Tip Section #2: SEO
Give Robots directions
Noindex wp-admin, login and register pages etc.
using the WordPress SEO plugin:
http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/

17. 11 Tip Section #2: SEO
Write better titles
Use WordPress SEO

18. 12 Tip Section #2: SEO
Write good meta descriptions
If you don’t, do NOT auto generate them. (Unless of
course you’ve got an awesome description template)

19. 13 Tip Section #2: SEO
Create proper pagination
Using wp-pagenavi by Lester Chan, f/i.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pagenavi/

20. 14 Tip Section #2: SEO
Disable paged comments
They suck.

21. 15 Tip Section #2: SEO
Add value:
Use custom taxonomies and
custom post types
Custom Post Type UI
Ultimate Post Type Manager
Ultimate Taxonomy Manager

22. Section #3: Maintenance

23. 16 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Backup your database
every few hours
Using f.i. Lester Chans WP-DBManager plugin
or any of the other plugins out there

24. 17 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Add this line to your wp-config:
define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true);
To auto repair your database when needed

25. 18 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Backup your files every day
Use WordPress Backup:
www.blogtrafficexchange.com/wordpress-backup

26. 19 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Check your queries
Use the Debug Queries plugin to check for
plugins gone mad
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/debug-queries/

27. 20 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Run Akismet
Kill those spam comments.

28. 21 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Check the referrers for comments
http://tools.davidnaylor.co.uk/

29. 22 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Make sure your scraper scripts
don’t get fed spam

30. 23 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Track your uptime
Use Pingdom, or another tool,
but be the first to know when your site is down.

31. 24 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Check 404’s
Use the 404 notifier:
wordpress.org/extend/plugins/404-notifier/
and fix them using Redirection

32. 25 Tip Section #3: Maintenance
Remove unneccesary meta info
// Remove Really simple discovery link
remove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link');
// Remove Windows Live Writer link
remove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link');
// Remove the version number
remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');
(or you could just use my WordPress SEO plugin)

33. Section #4: Social

34. 26 Tip Section #4: Social
Allow & encourage people to
share
your content
Use those Twitter Tweet &
Facebook Like buttons

35. 27 Tip Section #4: Social
Doing newsletters?
Add a refer a friend button on the
thank you page!

36. 28 Tip Section #4: Social
Or... Use my Comment Redirect
plugin, and add the
refer a friend there!

37. 29 Tip Section #4: Social
Make sure your comments
are gravatar enabled.

38. 30 Tip Section #4: Social
Buy me a beer later,
Grolsch, or Heineken :)
and yes I know it’s only just noon or so, who cares?

39. Section #5: Analytics

40. 32 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Use Google Analytics
and my plugin for it
(or if you wear a tinfoil hat or you’re German, use Clicky & my plugin)

41. 33 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Use an RSS footer
(do I need to mention my WordPress SEO plugin again? ;) )

42. 33 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Use RSS link tagging
it’s in my Google Analytics plugin or use
rebelic.nl/rsslinktagger
(getclicky will understand GA Campaign tagging too)

43. 34 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Track traffic coming from Twitter:
yoast.com/twitter-analytics/

44. 35 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Use hash tag based campaign tracking:
#utm_campaign etc.

45. 36 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Use comment redirect to track first
time commenters

46. 37 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Track comments as a goal!
Use an onclick javascript with a minor delay.

47. 38 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Track RSS subscribers
the same way

48. 39 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Start optimizing:
which traffic leads to
more subscribers /
proper click outs?
And yes that means forgetting about Digg.

49. 40 Tip Section #5: Analytics
Use my blog metrics plugin
Improve yourself each month!

50. Conference / Party in Amsterdam
10 speakers
15 attendees
http://seoroyale.com/
Speakers include:
Bob Rains
Marcus Tandler
Frank Watson
Dennis Goedegebuure (Direct of SEO @ eBay)

51. Feedback? Questions? Need help?
Email: joost@yoast.com
Twitter: @yoast
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