In this session you’ll learn the steps to take to help your site do better in search results. We'll give you an overview of the WordPress SEO Yoast Plugin as we discuss SEO tactics to optimize your web content for search.
5. The foundation of on-page SEO
photo: Pond5
List multiple ways to say the same thing
Poll your client base for keyword terms
Ask friends & family
Use the Google Adwords keyword tool
Check out Google Suggests & Google Trends
6. Use keywords in the naming
structure of web site
Adjust Permalink settings to add
keywords to the urls of your site
http://yourdomain.com/keyword-keyword
-> Settings -> Permalinks and choose
Post name or Custom Structure
9. Meta title & descriptions in SEO
What are they?
HTML code that search engines read
Clickable link in search engines results
Accurately summarize page content
Important elements in search engines’
algorithm and for searchers
Should contain your keywords
11. WordPress SEO by Yoast
A powerful WordPress plugin
Plugin incorporates best practices
Wide variety of functions in one plugin
Titles and meta descriptions
Breadcrumb Trail
Permalink clean up
xml sitemaps
Edit your robots.txt and .htaccess
Clean up head section
Author rel
Easy to migrate from All In One SEO
12. Writing your titles and metas
Enter a 70 character custom Title
Enter a 155 character custom description
13. Getting ready to write web copy
You're writing for two audiences
For the way people read on the web
For search engines
Humans trump
search engines!
photo: Pond5
14. How to write for site visitors
People read differently on the web SO ...
Call-to-action button
Main message above the fold
Use H2 & H3
Short sentences & paragraphs
Bulleted lists
Anchor text
Inform and entertain
15. Reserve H1 for Page & Post titles
Use H2, H3, H4 in Content
16. How to write for search engines
Write to your readers using your keywords -
naturally: No keyword stuffing
o meta tags o H2 & H3
o page titles (H1) o images
o body text o anchor text
Check your Theme's headings
Check with Yoast's Page Analysis feature
17. Anchor text
Anchor text is the visible, clickable text
in a hyperlink
Search engines give weight to the
keywords used in link so don’t use “click
here”
18. Optimizing images for search
These textural clues
tell Search Engines
what images are about
Use descriptive keyword rich image file names
(i.e. “my-keyword.jpg”)
Optimize the Title and Alt Attributes of each image
[SEO Friendly Images plugin]
When appropriate, use captions to describe your
image
19.
20. Optimizing images for search
- page speed
Keep image file size as small as possible
Don’t scale images
Use background images that repeat
21. Rel=Author
links an article's byline to an author's website profile page
displays author photos in search results
links the search result byline to the author's Google Plus
profile
displays the number of circles the author is in on Google Plus
adds a more by this author link to the search result
tells Google that this is a reputable link
22. xml sitemap
tells search engines which pages to crawl
links to all urls for a site
metadata about each url – when it was last
updated, how often it usually changes, & how
important it is relative to other URLs
Yoast plugin will automatically update the xml
sitemap when you publish a new post
submit to Google through webmaster tools
23. Changing the Permalinks on Established Site
Read our blog post!
Default post id ?p=123 no redirect needed
Day and Name your redirect should be
RedirectMatch 301 ^/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/([0-9]{2})/(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/
$4
Month and Name your redirect should be
RedirectMatch 301 ^/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/$3
Numeric your redirect should be
RedirectMatch 301 ^/archives/(d+)$ http://yourdomain.com/?p=$1
Postname and you want to switch to /%category%/%postname
%/ use the Permalinks to Category/Permalinks plugin
24. 301 redirects via .htaccess
Paste permalink change code at top above WordPress code
redirect 301 /oldurl.htm http://newurl.com/newpage
25. Don't block search engines!!!
Settings -> Privacy ->
Allow search engines to index this site .
26. Going off page...
Link Building
It’s not just about the numbers
How reputable is the link?
How relevant?
Anchor text