WordCamp Milwaukee: Control What You Can Control in WordPress. On Page SEO FTW!
1. CONTROL WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL IN WORDPRESS.
ON PAGE SEO FTW!
(FOR THE WIN)
A Talk By:
Mike Zielonka of
Tuna Traffic
@mikezielonka
Sunday, June 9, 13
2. WHO AM I?
Mike Zielonka
Director of Web Strategy
at
Tuna Traffic
@mikezielonka
linkedin.com/in/mikezielonka
Sunday, June 9, 13
3. WHAT WILL WE COVER?
• Natural Keyword Rich Content
• Open Graph Tags
• Title Text
• SEO Friendly URLs
• Why the Meta Description still
matters
• Meta Keywords are useless but
can be useful
• Semantic Markup & Heading Tags
• Microdata, Microformats, RDFa &
Rich Snippets
• Google+ Authorship
• Canonical URL
• Anchor text & Title Text for Links
• Alt Text, Title Text & File Naming
• How to use Nofollow and Noindex
• XML Sitemaps
• Why comments are gold
• Social Authority
Sunday, June 9, 13
4. Content was the PAST. Context is the PRESENT.
Sunday, June 9, 13
9. NATURAL KEYWORD RICH CONTENT
• There is no equation for how often your keyword
and its variations should be used.
• There is a point in Google’s Bell Curve where your
SEO will be hurt by over optimization.
• Follow the guideline of using a variant of your
keyword 1-3 times a paragraph.
Sunday, June 9, 13
10. SEO FRIENDLY URLS
• Set your permalinks to: /%category%/%postname%
• Other variants will work depending on how much
content you have or will have.
• Strip the category base from category URLS using
WordPress SEO.
Sunday, June 9, 13
11. How to set your Premalinks to be SEO Friendly.
Sunday, June 9, 13
12. SEMANTIC MARKUP & HEADING TAGS
• Use your target keyword phrase in your <title> and <h1> but
use variations.
• WordPress SEO makes it easy to customize both separately.
• <H1> is your page title and <title> is set under SEO Title in
the WordPress SEO settings.
• Use <hgroup> tag to create Semantic Headings when using
multiple heading tags.
• Use your Heading Tags to make your content easy to read
for Search Engines and visitors.
Sunday, June 9, 13
13. WHY THE META DESCRIPTION STILL
MATTERS
• The Meta Description does NOT impact your SERP
(Search Engine Ranking Position).
• The Meta Description DOES impact a users decision on
what link a user decides to click on and used for other
things like Open Graph Tags.
• Use %%excerpt%% to auto generate a meta description
in the Titles & Metas settings in WordPress SEO.
• Use this as a safe guard for when you forget to write
one.
Sunday, June 9, 13
14. How to have WordPress SEO auto generated Meta Descriptions.
Sunday, June 9, 13
15. OPEN GRAPH PROTOCOL
• Customizes what platforms such as: Facebook,
Google Plus, LinkedIn, etc use to determine
what to share with users on their network.
<head>
<title>The Rock (1996)</title>
<meta property="og:title" content="The Rock" />
<meta property="og:type" content="video.movie" />
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117500/" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/rock.jpg" />
</head>
Sunday, June 9, 13
16. How To Enable Open Graph in WordPress SEO
Sunday, June 9, 13
17. META KEYWORDS ARE USELESS BUT
CAN BE USEFUL
• Google & Bing do NOT use them so neither should
you...BUT...
• If you know your competitors are watching your
every move, you can use Meta Keywords to throw
them off...
• OR BETTER YET...Look at what keywords your
competitors “think” they are optimizing for.
Sunday, June 9, 13
18. MICRODATA, MICROFORMATS, RDFA &
RICH SNIPPETS
• This topic goes very deep because of competing
technologies.
• Microdata - HTML5 http://schema.org &
Preferred Method
• Microformat - Old format http://microformats.org
• RDFa - (Resource Description Framework – in –
attributes) W3C Recommendation
Sunday, June 9, 13
20. HOW TO ADD MICRODATA IN
WORDPRESS
• Use the Schema Creator by Raven Plugin.
• Add detailed data about events, places,
movies, music, & more.
Sunday, June 9, 13
21. Add Custom Microdata to your content using the Schema Creator by
Raven Plugin.
Sunday, June 9, 13
23. THE GOOGLE+ AUTHORSHIP SETUP
• On Google+ add your site as a site you contribute
too.
• In WP, go to your WordPress profile and paste in
your Google+ url.
• In WordPress SEO settings Under Titles & Metas set
the Google+ Author highlighting for your home
page.
Sunday, June 9, 13
24. CANONICAL URL
• Tells Search Engines which URL is the absolute correct URL
to use.
• Prevents you from having duplicate content.
• example: www.google.com, google.com or,
google.com/?foo...Canonical lets you define which one
is Google should consider the absolute url.
• Canonical URLs are set by WP core for post/pages and
WordPress SEO handles tags, categories, etc. WordPress
SEO allows you to set a different Canonical URL for a
specific post/page
Sunday, June 9, 13
25. ANCHOR TEXT & TITLE TEXT FOR LINKS
• Title text tells the search engine what the linked url
is about.
• Anchor text tells the search engine what the link is
about.
• Link Example:
• <a href=”http://google.com” title=”World’s Best
Search Engine”>the world’s best search
engine</a>
Sunday, June 9, 13
26. ALT TEXT, TITLE TEXT & FILE NAMING
• Name your files with spaces (or %20) or dashes.
• Underscores appear as onelongword to Search
Engines.
• Alt text describes an image.
• You can use title text on an image.
• IMG Example
• <img src=”http://google.com/logo.jpg” title=”Google
Logo” alt=”Google’s Red, & White, Blue Logo”>
Sunday, June 9, 13
27. HOW TO USE NOFOLLOW AND NOINDEX
• Nofollow prevents links from passing “link juice” to
the page they are linking to.
• Noindex prevents the Search Engine from indexing
content.
• Tips
• Nofollow & Noindex your goal tracking pages.
• Seriously consider no indexing your tag and/or
category pages to prevent duplicate content.
Sunday, June 9, 13
28. XML SITEMAPS
• Gives Search Engines a road map across your site.
This includes your content, how frequently it
changes, when it was last updated, and relative
priority for your site.
• You can create Sitemaps specifically for: video,
images, mobile, & news.
• Make sure you submit to Google via Google
Webmaster Tools
Sunday, June 9, 13
29. How to Create a Sitemap With WordPress SEO
Sunday, June 9, 13
30. WHY COMMENTS ARE STILL GOLD
• Commentators create content for you
• Some Third Party Comment Systems like Facebook
or Livefyre allow visitors to post their comments on
their social network
• Asking commentators to opt in to your email list still
works well for building your email lists
Sunday, June 9, 13
31. SOCIAL AUTHORITY
• Search Engines use Social Indicators to influence
users clicks and SERP
• Bing: Facebook Integration
• Google: G+ Integration
• Social Share Counts add credibility to your content
to Search Engines & visitors.
Sunday, June 9, 13
32. HOW TO ADD SOCIAL SHARING
• Use a Plugin that you can trust and loads your
social sharing buttons FAST. My top 3 are:
• Jetpack
• Digg Digg 2.0
• Share This
• Must Use Networks: Google Plus, FB, Twitter
Sunday, June 9, 13
33. THE WORDPRESS PLUGIN SETUP
• WordPress SEO by Yoast
• Jetpack, Digg Digg 2.0, or Share This
• Schema Creator by Raven
• SEO Friendly Images
• SEO Smart Links
• Redirection
• Google Analytics for WordPress
Sunday, June 9, 13
34. PREMIUM WORDPRESS PLUGINS
• SEO Smart Links – Premium Edition
• Video SEO for WordPress
• Local SEO for WordPress
Sunday, June 9, 13