Jon Hershaw of Raven Internet Marketing Tools and WP Engine's David Vogelpohl share numerous tips and tricks for boosting SEO.

1. August 24th, 2016
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2. Ask Questions as We Go
Please use the “Questions”
pane throughout the webinar
Slides and recording will be made available shortly after
the webinar
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3. What you’ll learn:
❖ Plugins for on-page SEO optimization
❖ Hacks for: using structured data, optimizing
images, responsive sites, and affiliate marketing
❖ How to monitor for issues and optimization
opportunities
❖ Why page speed matters and how to improve
❖ Tips to preserve SEO value during redesigns and
site migrations
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4. Introducing the Experts
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Jon Henshaw
Co-founder & President
Raven Internet Marketing Tools
@RavenJon
@RavenTools
❖ Used to be a psychotherapist
❖ Won state championship in water polo
❖ Was hit by a car and survived
❖ Lived in the dark ages before the Internet
David Vogelpohl
VP Web Strategy
WP Engine
@davidvmc
@wpengine
❖ First WordPress post was about Panama
invading Europe & it was true
❖ Grew up a few miles from where Matt
Mullenweg grew up
❖ Can make a custom URL shortener with
WordPress in <15 minutes

5. Bonding in Times Square
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6. On-Page SEO for WordPress Sites
Speed and coding optimizations that can help you rank above your competition
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Jon Henshaw
@RavenJon

7. Yoast SEO Plugin
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● Titles
● META Descriptions
● Open Graph
● XML Sitemaps

8. Themes
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The fully search
engine optimized
pre-fab theme is
a unicorn

9. Themes
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The only way to guarantee a fully optimized
site is to create the theme yourself*
*or to hack up a pre-fab theme and skip the theme updates

10. Themes
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I personally use
and recommend
Zurb Foundation
raven.link/foundation

11. Themes
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FoundationPress
WordPress Starter
Theme
raven.link/fpress

12. Coding
SEO Coding Tips
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13. Semantic HTML
Use semantic HTML
elements to
communicate context
to search engines
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14. Semantic HTML
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Ad
Navigation

15. CSS & Speed
Make less calls by
including CSS in
the HEAD area
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16. JS & Speed
Put ALL of your
JavaScript at the
end of the page
except for GTM
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17. Code Insert Plugin
Easiest way to insert CSS and JS without altering templates
Header Footer plugin
raven.link/headfoot
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18. Structured Data
Add Schema.org
structured data using
JSON-LD to explicitly
communicate meaning to
search engines and
enhance search results.
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19. Structured Data
I recommend
1. Content Type (Article, BlogPost)
2. Breadcrumbs
Schema.org JSON-LD Tools and Plugins
raven.link/schema
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20. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
AMP strips out all of the unnecessary
code and delivers content almost
instantly to mobile devices
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21. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
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Normal AMP

22. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
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Google SERP Google Hosted

23. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
WordPress plugin by Automattic
does all of the heavy lifting
raven.link/amp
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24. Image Optimization
Optimizing images can greatly
increase the speed of a site
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25. Image Optimization
Compress images using
ImageOptim for Mac or
a Windows equivalent
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26. Image Optimization
EWWW Image
Optimizer plugin for
WordPress automatically
compresses your images
raven.link/imgoptwp
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27. Use SRCSET to display alternate images that are
optimized for different screens and devices
Image Optimization
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28. Image Optimization
Each image in the SRCSET can have a
screen width and/or resolution specified
<img src="/img/screens.png" srcset="/img/screens.png 360w
1x, /img/screens2x.png 360w 2x" alt="Site Auditor">
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29. You can also display completely different images
for a better UX on different screen sizes
Image Optimization
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30. Image Optimization
SRCSET Responsive Images for WordPress plugin
raven.link/srcsetwp
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31. Monitoring
No matter what you do, there will be things you’ve
missed and parts of your site that will break
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32. Monitoring
Use Google Search Console (aka Webmaster Tools) to
monitor for page and indexing errors
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33. Monitoring
Use a site auditing tool to find the problems and
automatically monitor for new ones
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● Broken Links
● Broken Images
● Missing Attributes
● Non-optimized Titles and META
● Speed Issues
● 20+ other checks

34. Monitoring
raven.link/siteaudit
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Site Auditor

35. 11 Must-Follow SEO Migration Tips
How to not mess up SEO when changing a website
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David Vogelpohl
@davidvmc

36. 1. Know when you need an SEO migration plan
Deploying sub domains
New domain names
Changing sitemaps
Changing servers
CMS Migrations
Changing hosts

37. 2. Set your DNS “time-to-live” to ~0

38. 3. Have a rollback plan

39. 4. Hide the version of the site you don’t want Google to see
Password protect
No-index
Robots.txt

40. 5. Unhide new site when it’s time to launch.. seriously

41. 6. Do a full SEO review of the new site
Make sure your new site has
had a full SEO review

42. 7. Migrate meta titles/descriptions & alt tags
Everyone wants to make their old site better,
but the old site is the one that ranks!

43. 8. Changing your URL structure, don’t.
“Unless you don’t have to
change your URL structure”
- Sane People

44. 9. If you have to change, try to use a wildcard 301
#wpewebinar @davidmc

45. If you can’t use wildcards, get ready for pain
“The most annoying job on the Internet”

46. 10. Page-by-page redirect mapping
Page Audit Google Sheet wpeng.in/301audit
Meta Title
(Page
Name)
Meta
Description
H1 URL
Top
Traffic
Source
Pageviews
(last 30 days)
Kill Page
Keep
Page
Redirect
Page to:
Redirect
H1
Redirect
Title
Redirect
Description
Sample: Old
Product
Page
About our
old product.
Old
Product
/old-product Internal 10,000 x
/new-product-
name
Sample:
Home Page
This is the
home page.
Home
Page
/ Google 100,000 x

47. 11. What pages even matter to redirect?
#wpewebinar @davidmc
Top landing pages from Google Organic
wpeng.in/organic-landing-pages
Top landing pages from all sources
wpeng.in/all-landing-pages

48. 1. Know when you need a plan
2. Set your DNS “time-to-live” to ~0
3. Have a rollback plan
4. Hide staging / old versions of sites
5. Unhide new site to launch
6. Do a full SEO review of the new site
7. Migrate meta titles/descriptions & alt tag
8. Changing your URL structure, don’t.
9. If you have to change, try to use a wildcard 301
10. Page-by-page redirect mapping
11. What pages even matter to redirect?
11 Must-Follow SEO Migration Tips
#wpewebinar @davidmc

49. Q&A
Use the “Questions” pane
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