Affiliate Gathering 2011

1. Mastering Wordpress; SEO, Functionality & Security Conference Sponsor

3. Who are Soula and Who Am I? Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More Soula are a digital marketing company who work with a large range of clients, to bring ROI driven results covering a wide range of niches and industries. Soula build, design and market websites and we work with a range of different platforms including Wordpress which I am speaking about today but also including CS Cart, Magento, Cactus, Expression Engine, Moveable Type, Hosted Solutions (i.e. Blogger) and many more. I am Director of Search Marketing at Soula and work with a team to do SEO, a little PPC, social media and in depth analytics, I have worked in search for over 6 years now. I spoke last year on some general SEO points and produce the white papers that are published on MoreNiche.

6. Wordpress Basics: Setup Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More If you have cPanel and Fantastico setup is easy, just choose Wordpress from the list in the Fantastico panel then choose install. You will have to follow a few steps but it’s mostly self explanatory. As a security precaution make sure you set the admin user to something unique (not just “admin”) and the password to something strong, here’s a password generator 1 if you need it. If you’re not using Fantastico then it’s a little harder but all you need to do is follow the Wordpress Codex 5 minute install page 2. It’s simple and as long as you have the access you need you really will be up and running in 5-10 minutes. Always keep a note on your computer or in a notebook of your details, you don’t want to lose them and get locked out of your own Wordpress install.

7. Wordpress & SEO Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More Wordpress has some great SEO features right out of the bag, it has a reliable content hierarchy and does a lot for you with filling in data for tags and titles but it’s easy to make it much, much better. URLs & Permalink Setup Permalinks are the URLs Wordpress automatically gives to pages and posts, it’s important to ensure you set these up as early as possible. I would never recommend changing the permalinks structure of a blog any older than 3 months. Inside Wordpress you may see URLs also referred to as a “slug” this is simply the ending part of the URL that defines the pages, post or category

10. Wordpress SEO: Slugs & More URL Advice Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More You have finished the main Permalink setup but there are a few things you need to know about general URL setup. By default Wordpress tends to be on the http:// not http://www. level, to change this visit settings -> General and change these two fields (at the same time!) Don’t worry if it logs you out and you have to log back in again. I also recommend you download and install this plugin to strip stop words out of post titles. You can find instructions on how to install plugins in the next section. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-slugs/

11. Installing Plugins & Themes Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More Knowing how to install plugins and themes is critical to using Wordpress, most of you will already know but its very easy for those who don't. Open up your FTP and navigate to the wp-content subfolder. You can see there are specific folders for plugins and themes. When you download plugins and themes they are usually in a ZIP file, you’ll need to remove the contents into somewhere accessible with your FTP. Usually its a folder but sometimes with plugins its just a PHP file.

15. Wordpress SEO: Plugins Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More There are many, many plugins claiming to be the best SEO plugin but only one all round SEO plugin I recommend and that’s Yoast’s Wordpress SEO Plugin. If you haven't already done so register with the webmaster tools services in preparation. Google 3 | Bing 4 | Yahoo 5 I have prepared a download for you so you don’t have to do 99% of the settings. I don’t have time to cover them all in this presentation but I have written up explanations in the next few slides which you can download for future reference. Make sure you keep the plugin up-to-date for new features! http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/ http://www.soula.com/sem/2011/seetings.zip

17. Wordpress SEO: Yoast SEO Plugin Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More Here’s the first part of the general settings, the only change you need to make is to enable the meta keywords box if you want to use it. Meta keywords is no longer a ranking factor in major search engines but still useful other indexing services, so I recommend continuing to use it at least to a smaller capacity. The next section just requires you to paste the meta tag verification codes from the various engines.

18. Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More Enable the sitemap and choose the options as I have here for the maximum effect. There are more advanced sitemap plugins if you want to expand sitemap functionality but 9 times out of 10 the integrated one in Yoast SEO is fine. I usually exclude post tags from indexing and from the sitemap, later it is likely we will make these no index anyway so they shouldn’t be included in the sitemap

21. Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More Wordpress naturally creates a lot of duplicate content with its author, category, date and tag achieves. We will use this plugin to block the achieve we don’t need, in my opinion category is best for SEO so I block all others but you can choose whichever you like just be sure to leave at least one achieve unticked. If you imported you will also notice I have put no index options on admin and login pages, as well as cleaned up several head settings for security reasons. I will expand on this later. I also nofollow comment links, its not a major SEO benefit but it can help stop so many spam comments coming in. Wordpress SEO: Yoast Index Settings

22. Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More There are two important settings here The first is the strip category base setting, this will make category archive links look like www.myblog.com/widgets / instead of www.myblog.com/category/widgets/ , it’s neater and better for SEO. The second setting is useful just to tidy URLs up and create less canonical errors, make sure enforce a trailing slash is on so that the system will make URLs end with a / instead of being blank. The internal link settings cover breadcrumbs but require more in depth knowledge of theme editing. I strongly recommend you implement them if you can, they are great for SEO and usability but do require theme modification. Wordpress SEO: Yoast Permalink Settings

23. Wordpress SEO: Images Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More Image SEO is usually overlooked in Wordpress but a small simple plugin can help automate it. Please note that Wordpress gives you the ability to do all this manually when you upload an image, 9/10 I recommend doing it manually but use this plugin if you don’t have much time or are not as bothered. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-image/ The override tickboxes basically set what has the priority, Wordpress or the plugin. If they are ticked your alt and titles will always be in the plugin format I usually set the plugin to these settings.

24. Wordpress SEO: Internal Links Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More Utilising internal linking on any site is very important but the database driven setup of Wordpress allows us to automate it to a certain degree. Grab the internal link plugin and install it like any other, this one is not a folder just a lonely PHP file. Once it’s active go to the Dashboard and expand the “Posts” entry then look for the Keywords entry. This screen will allow you to set global rules for the site but you can set post specific rules when editing any post or page. We have modded this plugin hence it being a Soula download, please credit SEOROI.com with the original creation of this plugin. The mod allows you to place a special style on any auto link using class=“intlink” http://www.soula.com/sem/2011/internal-link.zip

25. Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More Wordpress SEO: Internal Links Here’s an example of how I would us the internal link plugin. On the left I have specified 2 different keywords along with different tenses of them, separate versions with a pipe bar | which is Shift+on your keyboard. I have also auto linked the product name I am reviewing with my affiliate link, that way people have more chance of clicking through. The middle column shows where the links are going and the far left column how many times per post the link will be auto-inserted.

27. Wordpress SEO: Internal Links & Menus Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More You should always highlight your most important pages/posts with your navigation, in Wordpress this is easiest to do using custom Menus. You can find Menus under the appearance tab of Wordpress, and you can specify a keyword rich Label and Title for each entry, label is the anchor for the link and title is the a title Attribute that appears on hover. Creating a menu is easy, just add pages and categories from your Wordpress content into a list on the menu and drag it to rearrange. Remember to make labels and titles keyword rich but easy to understand. You can also “nestle” menu items into groups by dragging them slightly to the side.

28. Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More A newer theme will have a menu similar to this in the Menu section of the Appearance tab. This dropdown allows you to place the Menu you just created into the main parents of you theme. Simply select it from the drop box and press apply! Obviously things in primary navigations are more visible than things you place in the footer. As an affiliate your most important product reviews should be high in your menu with strong relevant keywords linking them.

29. Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More On an older theme (or to add a menu to the sidebar of a new theme) you will need to go to Appearance > Widgets and add a custom menu widget to your sidebar to get the menu you created. It’s very simple, just drag the “Custom Menu” widget box into the side bar you desire and choose the menu you created from the drop box. You can add as many menus as you like and easily reorder them by dragging them around inside the sidebar. You can update these anytime you like it, make sure you always promote you best pages like this to help SEO and conversions.

30. Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More You can also automate this menu process with categories and posts instead of manually designed menus. I recommend you keep you menus manually controlled but this plugin is great if you already have loads of nicely organised categories and posts and want to save yourself a little time. Use this plugin by creating widgets just like you would do with static menus. It has some nice little options like thumbnails and comment count but you’ll need to know Wordpress a little more before playing with these settings. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/category-posts/

31. Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More People coming to your site researching a product will often want to read more and more information where they can, if you article ends without fulfilling their need for information you need to give them something extra to read. This is where a good related posts plugin comes in, it can easily site at the bottom and/or the sidebar of your blog and give people somewhere relevant to go once they have finished with you article or post. This improves SEO linking and visitor interaction so be sure not to skip this step. My favourite is YARPP which is linked below, it has its own easy to use widget and adds itself quite easily to the bottom of all the posts on your site. Be sure to read and follow the plugin installation instructions. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ yet-another-related-posts-plugin/ More Internal Links: Related Posts

32. Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More

33. Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More

38. Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More Keeping your installation secure is important, let’s go through a few simple tips. Stay Updated! The most important thing you can do to stay safe is be running the latest versions of Wordpress and the plugins, check your installation for updates at least once a week. It’s very easy to update and 99% of the time can be done automatically so no excuses! To check if you have updates simply check the “updates” menu at the bottom of the Wordpress Dashboard. Headers Wordpress included version information in the <head> you can remove this with the Yoast SEO Plugin I have already discussed. Leaving version information in makes it easier for hackers to ID out of date installs. Wordpress Security: Basics

39. Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More Protect Your FTP - CHMOD Be sure to set CHMOD to the lowest permissions possible, check back at some of the red slides for more information on this but generally aim for 644 or 755. By default this is often already done but you need to make sure you fix any changes you make while installing plugins etc. Index/Htaccess Ensure your /plugins/ and /themes/ folders have a blank index.php file in and be sure to put a proper htaccess up that protects your wp-config file and blocks index being displayed. Check my Htaccess guide for information 7 on how to do this. Make sure you don’t overwrite the Wordpress one though! Add extra content to it. Wordpress Security: FTP Tricks

40. Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More Backing up Wordpress is important in case you ever do have problems. I use this plugin that automatically takes backups, it’s very useful and easy to install. It backs up your theme, the uploaded images and any plugins you use. To back up your pages/posts anytime use the default Wordpress export function, on the Wordpress Dashboard use Tools > Export You can also backup the Wordpress install more comprehensively using PHP myAdmin if you know how to use this software. Wordpress Security: Backups http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-backup/

41. Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More Page load time is becoming an increasingly important SEO factor. Wordpress is naturally pretty fast but can easily be improved. Smush.it : This plugin will make images much smaller by stripping unneeded data from images and optimising compression and file types, it works automatically so make sure you install this on setup I have heard some arguments against stripping meta data from images but the truth is I have seen no proven arguments it harms SEO, especially the kind of data this strips and in many cases this API versions doesn’t do that anyway. Speeding Up Wordpress: Smushit! http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-smushit/

42. Conference Sponsor Mastering Wordpress: SEO, Security & More Another popular technique for reducing Wordpress load time is caching. Caching is essentially forcing a browser to store information so it doesn’t have to be constantly re-downloaded. Some elements need short term caching, some can have long term caching. The best Wordpress Cache in my opinion is W3 Total Cache, it has Minify and GZIP compression settings as well as basic caching but can take a while to set up. For those who don't know what they are doing you can find a comprehensive guide to setting W3 Total Cache up here 8 . If nothing else make sure you set up basic caching and GZIP compression. Speeding Up Wordpress: Caching http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins /w3-total-cache/