SEO fundamentals for WordPress, as presented by SALT.agency at WordPress North East (January 2021). Produced by Dan Taylor, Head of R&D.

1. Introduction To Actionable
SEO Fundamentals For
WordPress

2. Agenda
How Search Works
A brief overview of
how Google, and
search engines in
general, work - and
how we can build
websites and web
presences for them.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO
fundamentals:
× Architecture
× Internal Linking
× JavaScript &
Content
Discovery
× Plugins
× Core Web Vitals
User Acquisition/Lead
Generation
How do we attract
visitors, get noticed,
and get leads/sales?
× Content
× Usability
× Experience
Forecasting

3. Dan Taylor.
Head of R&D @ SALT.agency
@taylordanrw

4. How Search Works
An introduction to how
Google works.

5. Offpage Technical Onpage
Technical - How well search engines can crawl and process your “content”, how well your website is
structured, site speed…
Onpage - Your written content, media, and presentation. How much value it offers users...
Offpage - Brand mentions, links, citations…
*Content - Content can be commercial web pages, blog posts, PDFs… Anything that is crawlable and indexable by search engines. We
typically refer to content however as the information (text/media) on a page.

6. Technical
User
Experience
Marketing &
PR Activities
Technical - How well search engines can crawl and process your “content”, how well your website is
structured and how your site speed impacts user experience
Content - The value of your document (webpage) in terms of value proposition
Marketing & PR - Real businesses do some form of marketing, and in turn this generates links,
brand mentions… Noise.
User Experience - How fast a page loads, does it shift around as things load, is there a lag when a
user interacts with page elements
Content

7. How Search Works
CRAWL INDEX RANK
RENDER

8. Crawl & Render
“Before the query”
Crawling the web via Googlebot (the bot), to identify new and updated HTML
documents. These are then rendered (taking into account JS and CSS of the
page). Google uses CRUX and RUM data to understand user experience from
how the page loads.
We can impact this through technical SEO practices; delivery of content, the
speed of delivery, how JavaScript is rendered, website architecture, internal
linking structures. There is a cross over here into user experience with site
speed and Google’s Web Vitals user metrics.

9. Index
The index at Google is broken up into millions of groups - these are known as
shards (by Google). Thousands of shards make up the web index.
The 2009 Caffeine update introduced a new indexing system allowing a more
streamlined process, but an increase in storage capacity (more shards).
In the Index, crawled HTML documents are analysed for their value and scored
against a plethora of factors weighted against multiple queries. They’re scored,
and stored. It processes billions of pages a day.
It is possible for a web page to be crawled, but then not to be indexed.
Through optimisations, we can influence the scoring and weighting process.

10. Rank
When Google gets a query:
● Query understanding and expansion
● Retrieval and scoring
● Post-retrieval adjustments
Query understanding is Google’s ability to understanding the meaning and
intent behind specific words used as part of the query string.
Retrieval and scoring is when Google retrieves all the documents from the
relevant shards that match (pre-evaluated) and computes a score based on
query+page, and then lists the top N pages by score (it ranks them).

11. Technical SEO
Practical elements of
technical SEO that you can
use.

12. Some WordPress SEO Myths/Common Questions
× There’s no such thing as a perfect for SEO out-of-the-box theme,
unless you’ve worked with your developer and competent SEOs to
build for SEO up.
× Page builders like Divi, Avada, etc -- they’re not great for SEO, but
context matters - all you need to be is a better value proposition and
brand than your competitors.
× Plugins can help you with functionality and improving your SEO, but
there aren’t any that will do your SEO for you.
On the plus side, as WordPress has such a huge community and developer
base, it’s probably the easiest and best platform to work with whether
you’re a small cottage business, or a global conglomerate.
12

13. Architecture & Design
× Website architectures and URL structures can vary.
× Subfolder depth doesn’t matter, just make it logical for users &
reporting
× Keywords in URLs - past the domain - don’t matter to Google
× Think of your website like a filing cabinet, and use logical
structures
× Make sure all important content is visible on page load
× Users come to pages for different reasons, so build the design
and content to match a reverse needs hierarchy (next slide)
× Bear in mind mobile users & usability when it comes to aesthetics
13

14. Bottom section,
tertiary scroll phase
Less important information to the
core concepts but can be useful
information for existing
consumers/heavily involved
potential consumers.
3
Mid-section,
secondary scroll phase
Cover subtopics and
related/relevant questions that
aren’t the core questions, but still
meaningful/commonly associated.
This is a good place to be more
detailed and show risk/reward and
pain/solution content.
2
Top of page/initial
scroll
Directly answer questions and
satisfy search intents for the
core/larger search volume queries
that the page is targeting.
1

15. Architecture & Design
× Not all content has to be a page or a blog
× Users can feel more comfortable if pages have other labels on
them, e.g. support
× You can separate content types into different site sections
based on intents, rather than making one big master page
× Draw diagrams of your website
× Think about users, and user pain points and not keywords.
Keywords should come as secondary to knowing your product
and your user
× Build this into the site design and architecture

16. Support. Subdomain Optimization
“Answer ALL the questions!”

17. Place your screenshot here
Make sure all
important links and
information are visible
on mobile.
Make sure it’s usable
on mobile.
angren.net
Google crawls your
website as though it’s
on a mobile device.

18. Internal Linking
× Before your content can rank, it needs links. Google finds your
posts and pages best when they’re linked to from somewhere
on the web.
× Internal links also connect your content and give Google an
idea of the structure of your website. They can establish a
hierarchy on your site, allowing you to give the most
important pages and posts more link value than other, less
valuable, pages.
× When making internal links, you should think about the user,
and if the link adds value. Also it’s important to vary the text
you use to link to other pages to avoid excessive
repetitiveness.

19. Internal Linking
There are a number of plugins available for WordPress that
automate internal linking. Avoid these like the plague. They can
cause issues and do things from a robot perspective, not user
perspective.
I’d recommend reading this guide, and using a keyword tool to
find variants, and naturally link variants between content:
https://neilpatel.com/blog/commandments-of-internal-linking/
19

20. JavaScript
Depending on how your WordPress website has been
developed, and it’s functionalities, there will be
varying levels of dependency on JavaScript.
In short, Google is getting better at rendering
JavaScript (with the rendering process), but you
should still...
20

21. JavaScript
× Ensure all important links (e.g. main navigation and
pagination) can be found in the plain HTML
× Ensure all of the webpages main body content is visible on
page load and in the plain HTML
× Avoid loading unnecessary or excessive JavaScript files on
pages
× Ask your developers to make use of elements such as
preconnect and dns-prefetch (were possible and
applicable)
× You can test your webpage and how it behaves without
JavaScript enabled by right clicking, selecting inspect, and
then CTRL + P, and disable JavaScript
21

22. Plugins
× Avoid excessive plugins for functionality, as loading multiple
plugin scripts can impact site speed.
× Always ensure plugins are kept up-to-date. If they have been
customized by your Dev, and are becoming outdated they
could be a security risk so it may be time to have that
functionality developed as native to the website.
× Be wary of abandoned plugins, they might not be compatible
or secure with your version of WordPress.

23. Plugins: Yoast & RankMath
Do:
Use these plugins for
easy management of
things like title tags,
meta descriptions,
redirects, indexing, XML
sitemap production etc
Don’t:
Pay attention to things
like the page traffic light
score, focus keywords,
cornerstone content…
They don’t mean a lot
and can lead you down
bad paths

24. Plugins: WP Smush
Big image files can can
impact your page load
speed, and losslessly
compressing them can
be a relatively quick and
easy fix (which isn’t
something you come
across a lot in SEO).
WP Smush, free and
premium, is a good
plugin that
automatically “smushes”
your uploaded images
and reduces file size.

25. Plugins: W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache, when
configured correctly,
can help improve your
page load performance
- even in conjunction
with a CDN such as
Cloudflare or Fastly.
How To:
https://www.wpbeginne
r.com/plugins/how-to-
install-and-setup-w3-
total-cache-for-
beginners/

26. Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are a new ranking factor concept, introduced in
May 2020 by Google - and will come into force in May 2021 as a
part of the Page Experience Update.
It’s very rare that Google gives us a year “heads up” that an
update is coming, and even more rare a “heads up” of what that
update will involve.
Data is available in Google Search Console, and can be made
available in Google Analytics at URL level via a plugin SALT have
developed.

27. Core Web Vitals
Configure CWV in GA: https://salt.agency/blog/web-vitals-
data-visualising-guide/

28. User Acquisition &
Lead Gen
Creating content to
generate demand.

29. Content + SEO
Let’s not focus on:
× Keyword density
× LSI keywords
× Semantic keywords
Because there is no magic keyword density %, LSI is a form of
information indexing from the 80s that Google doesn’t use - and if
your keywords aren’t semantic, then they’re not real words.

30. Content + SEO
When producing content, bear in mind two key things:
× The question the user is asking
× How you can answer it, and add value with your content
Producing content for the user can oftentimes mean not talking
about yourself.
A webpage can rank for a number of different queries, and you
may need different content types to satisfy all the user problems.

31. Content + SEO
× Think about the search phrases people would use to find your
products and services
× Think about the problems they may be having, that your
products and services would solve
× Think about the features, questions, and concerns that people
have when determining between your product/services, and
competitors
× Read the reviews of competitor products/services and find
out the issues competitor products have, and how you can
advertise that you don’t have these problems in your
messaging

32. Thank you!
🠗🠗 Further Reading Links & Deck 🠗🠗
dantaylor.online/wpne

33. Credits & Attributions
SLIDES TEMPLATE
This template has been used, and adapted,
under Creative Commons Attribution license.
More information:
http://www.slidescarnival.com/copyright-
and-legal-information
IMAGERY & REFERENCES
Imagery used in this presentation has been taken
from:
× Canva (premium account)
× Pixabay
× Unsplash
All statistics and sources credited, accurate at the
time of publication.
All credits, and licenses, accurate at the time of
publication.
33