WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems and powers millions of websites all over the web. Some people mistakenly take WordPress as the answer to their SEO problems, but the fact is that WordPress is a tool that make it easy for anyone to publish and share their voice with everyone around the world. This presentation showcases my experience working with WordPress and how I've achieve results by carefully planning and understanding the SEO process.

1. WordPress as a Tool,
SEO as a Strategy
Jackson Lo, Independent Consultant
@jackson_lo | +JacksonLo | jackson@steerup.com

2. Hello my name is…
• Jackson Lo
• Born and raised in Ottawa, ON.
• Carleton U grad; BA Commerce, Information Systems.
• Won $5K in Wes Nicol Business Comp.
• 5+ years of helping websites get better organic
visibility in search engines.
• 60+ hours a week working on SEO projects and
studying search engines.
• Worked with national brands like the Smithsonian,
Royal LePage, MathWorks, Papa John’s and the
Government of Canada.
• Love to learn new things, photography, hiking and
travels.

3. WordPress is Popular, No Doubt.
http://www.google.ca/trends/

4. Even against it’s rivals…
20052003 2001

5. A lot of comparison searches

6. ‘WordPress SEO’ has gained popularity too

7. He knows it well
Yup. That’s
me.

8. WordPress is user-friendly
Install any plugin
you want easily.
Manage all your
content without the
need of a developer.
Change the content
in your sidebar with
click and drag.

9. Don’t expect plugins will make miracles happen

10. WordPress vs. SEO
Website
Branding & Design
Content Management System
Beautiful Themes
Plugins and Add-ons
Performance, Visibility and Reach
On-Page Optimization
Content Marketing & Strategy
Relationship / Link Building
Social Media Marketing
And obviously, you need a website in order to do
SEO on it. WordPress is a great solution.

11. How WordPress makes it easy to do SEO
Along the right hand side,
this is what you’ll find after
you’ve installed the plugin.
It’s all there for you!!
http://jacksonlo.com/all-in-one-seo-pack-wordpress-seo-plugin-review/

12. How WordPress makes it easy to do SEO
This is all you need for each page of your website. Yoast makes it easier for anyone
to go in and change the Title Tag and Meta Description of each page.
See it before
it goes live.
See it before it
goes live.

13. Allowing us to focus on what’s important
Inbound
Marketing
Online
Videos
SEO
Social
Media
Blogging
Email
Marketing
Content
Creation
Word of
Mouth
Web
Analytics

14. Why is SEO important?
http://connect.relevance.com/a-tale-of-two-studies-establishing-google-bing-click_through-rates
Let’s get
here!

15. Anatomy of a search result page
Organic results
Paid results

16. Anatomy of a search result page
Organic
Results
Paid Results
Local / Map
Results

17. Stages of an SEO Engagement
Audit &
Research
Planning &
Strategy
Execution
(Ongoing SEO)

18. SEO is not a Race

19. Results take time
Started making
changes.
Organic traffic
doubled.

20. Who (where) are you targeting?

21. Who (where) are you targeting?
http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-CA-monthly-201209-201309-bar
89.98% of searches
are conducted in
Google in Canada.

22. Are your customers on mobile?
http://online-behavior.com/analytics/mobile-search

23. A Ton of Responsive Themes
Sort by ‘Sales’ and
see which ones are
most popular.
http://themeforest.net/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&order_by=sales&term=responsive&page=1

24. Understanding Search Demand
Highly
Searched
Highly
Relevant
Reasonable
Competition
These are the terms
you want to target.

25. Use the Google Keyword Planner
https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Home

26. Keywords vs. Entities

27. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
http://schema.org/

28. Is there a plugin?
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/schemaorg

29. Or use Raven’s
http://schema-creator.org/

30. SEO-Friendliness?
Accessible
Crawlable link structure
Proper keyword usage
Canonical content
Great user experience
Quick load time
Helping our search engines
Making the web a better place.

31. Ensure your site is accessible
Homepage
Category Pages
Subcategory Pages
Detail Pages

32. Flash and SEO still don’t mix
Come on!
Crawl my
content!
I can’t see it.
So no.

33. Write unique and valuable content
http://oliveharveycollegelibraryguides.pbworks.com/f/1337012180/plagiarism.gif

34. Write content that will last forever

35. Avoid thin content

36. Airbnb: Neighbourhood Guides
https://www.airbnb.ca/locations

37. MOZ: SEO Cheat Sheet
http://moz.com/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet-2013-edition

38. Grow your readership
http://www.theorganicstartupbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/tree_growing_from_soil_in_3_stages.jpg

39. Avoid sketchy link schemes
• Building links on sites that are irrelevant to
your business
• Outreach emails that says “I’ll link to you if
you link to me”
• Hiring someone to do link building with no
knowledge of what they’re actually doing

40. Instead, focus on relationship building
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/seo-guide-to-outreach

41. Build relationships with other publishers
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f1/44/0c/f1440cc343fbba8dd5f2f389afc4cdd5.jpg

42. Define your metrics
• Organic traffic (visits, visitors and pageviews)
• Keyword rankings (i.e. 80% between page 1-2)
• New leads (phone calls, quote form)
• Subscribers and fans (newsletter, Facebook)
• Online sales and transactions (eCommerce)
• Cost savings (compared to other channels)

43. Build your custom reports & dashboard
https://www.google.com/analytics/gallery/#landing/start/

44. Contribute to the industry

45. WordPress + SEO
• Yoast is all you need
• Focus on content
• Authorship is becoming a
hot topic
• Be creative and innovative
• Relationship building
https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/

46. Thank You!
Presenter: Jackson Lo
Email: jackson@steerup.com
Twitter: @jackson_lo
Google+: +JacksonLo