In this session you’ll learn the steps to take to help your site do better in search results. We'll give you an overview of the WordPress SEO Yoast Plugin as we discuss SEO tactics to optimize your web content for search.

1. How to do better in
Search Engine Optimization
For your WordPress website

2. The best platform for SEO

3. Google’s Matt Cutts agrees

4. If it's good for site visitors,
Google likes it!

5. The foundation of on-page SEO
photo: Pond5
 List multiple ways to say the same thing
 Poll your client base for keyword terms
 Ask friends & family
 Use the Google Adwords keyword tool
 Check out Google Suggests & Google Trends

6. Use keywords in the naming
structure of web site
 Adjust Permalink settings to add
keywords to the urls of your site
 http://yourdomain.com/keyword-keyword
 -> Settings -> Permalinks and choose
Post name or Custom Structure

7. Permalink settings
/%category% /%postname%/

8. Customize the permalink for each
individual page/post

9. Meta title & descriptions in SEO
What are they?
 HTML code that search engines read
 Clickable link in search engines results
 Accurately summarize page content
 Important elements in search engines’
algorithm and for searchers
 Should contain your keywords

10. Titles and Meta Descriptions
Title
Meta Description

11. WordPress SEO by Yoast
A powerful WordPress plugin
 Plugin incorporates best practices
 Wide variety of functions in one plugin
 Titles and meta descriptions
 Breadcrumb Trail
 Permalink clean up
 xml sitemaps
 Edit your robots.txt and .htaccess
 Clean up head section
 Author rel
 Easy to migrate from All In One SEO

12. Writing your titles and metas
Enter a 70 character custom Title
Enter a 155 character custom description

13. Getting ready to write web copy
You're writing for two audiences
 For the way people read on the web
 For search engines
Humans trump
search engines!
photo: Pond5

14. How to write for site visitors
People read differently on the web SO ...
 Call-to-action button
 Main message above the fold
 Use H2 & H3
 Short sentences & paragraphs
 Bulleted lists
 Anchor text
 Inform and entertain

15. Reserve H1 for Page & Post titles
Use H2, H3, H4 in Content

16. How to write for search engines
Write to your readers using your keywords -
naturally: No keyword stuffing
o meta tags o H2 & H3
o page titles (H1) o images
o body text o anchor text
 Check your Theme's headings
 Check with Yoast's Page Analysis feature

17. Anchor text
 Anchor text is the visible, clickable text
in a hyperlink
 Search engines give weight to the
keywords used in link so don’t use “click
here”

18. Optimizing images for search
These textural clues
tell Search Engines
what images are about
 Use descriptive keyword rich image file names
(i.e. “my-keyword.jpg”)
 Optimize the Title and Alt Attributes of each image
[SEO Friendly Images plugin]
 When appropriate, use captions to describe your
image

20. Optimizing images for search
- page speed
 Keep image file size as small as possible
 Don’t scale images
 Use background images that repeat

21. Rel=Author
 links an article's byline to an author's website profile page
 displays author photos in search results
 links the search result byline to the author's Google Plus
profile
 displays the number of circles the author is in on Google Plus
 adds a more by this author link to the search result
 tells Google that this is a reputable link

22. xml sitemap
 tells search engines which pages to crawl
 links to all urls for a site
 metadata about each url – when it was last
updated, how often it usually changes, & how
important it is relative to other URLs
 Yoast plugin will automatically update the xml
sitemap when you publish a new post
 submit to Google through webmaster tools

23. Changing the Permalinks on Established Site
Read our blog post!
 Default post id ?p=123 no redirect needed
 Day and Name your redirect should be
RedirectMatch 301 ^/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/([0-9]{2})/(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/
$4
 Month and Name your redirect should be
RedirectMatch 301 ^/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/$3
 Numeric your redirect should be
RedirectMatch 301 ^/archives/(d+)$ http://yourdomain.com/?p=$1
 Postname and you want to switch to /%category%/%postname
%/ use the Permalinks to Category/Permalinks plugin

24. 301 redirects via .htaccess
Paste permalink change code at top above WordPress code
redirect 301 /oldurl.htm http://newurl.com/newpage

25. Don't block search engines!!!
Settings -> Privacy ->
Allow search engines to index this site .

26. Going off page...
Link Building
 It’s not just about the numbers
 How reputable is the link?
 How relevant?
 Anchor text

27. Attract traffic instead
 Create great content
 Guest blog
 Comment
 Engage in
social media

28. Q & Eh?
image used by permission susybee.com

29. Thank You WordCamp Buffalo
Ruth Maude & Dawn Comber
LearnWP.ca Follow us on Twitter: @2LearnWP