SEO for WordPress

My presentation for wordcamp on SEO SEO Powerpoint Presentation

The text:

SEO is complex!

(click here for the fishbone diagram)

Its like baking a cake:

Complex way:

(picture of maths equation for baking a cake)

The easy way:

  1. Take 4oz (about 100g) of butter, caster sugar, self raising flour and 2 eggs
  2. Sieve the flour before adding to the mixture.
  3. Whisk the butter and sugar together until the mixture is light and creamy,
  4. Then beat the eggs together and
  5. Add to the butter
  6. And sugar mixture gradually with a little bit of the flour.
  7. Fold in what remains of the flour
  8. Then divide the mixture equally between two cake tins of about 6 inch diameter,
  9. Then bake in the oven for about 20-25 minutes at a temperature of about 190?

The 7 easy steps to Wordpress SEO happiness!

  1. Use wordpress! And get the necessary plugins.
  2. What have you got, that others want?
  3. Who do you want on your site?
  4. Structure your content so its easy for engines…
  5. Get analytics, see where you are going.
  6. Work consistently for at least 6 months.
  7. Socialise and get links into your site.

Step 1. Wordpress and Plugins.

   * All in One SEO Pack Automatically optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization). Optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization). Download now! Support | Version Hi Version 1.4.6.13 Updated 2008-7-17 Downloads 471,402 (the best place to start)
   * Paginated Comments Paginated Comments is a WordPress Plugin ** developed with seo in mind ** that gives you the ability to break your comments into a number of s … Version 1.0.2 | Updated 2008-5-12 |Downloads 658 (if you get loads of comments)
   * WP-PageNavi 2.31 : Pagination on index and archive pages. Instead of of one huge page, break it up with this plugin. Google typically only indexes the 1st 100KB of html, so break up your pages
   * WWW redirect : make sure the engine only see one version of your site i.e. http://www.mysite.com (and not the http://mysite.com
   * Permalinks (wordpress core) Make Your content human friendly. Use this in permalink: /%category%/%postname%-%post_id%.html (use a unique identifier so you can be picked up by Google news)
   * Optimal Title Mirrors the function of wp_title() exactly, but moves the position of the ’separator’ to after the title rather than before.
   * Categorisation of content. Don’t mark the same post under more than a single category if possible, so you don’t get too much duplicate content.
   * Robots.txt Tell the engines where you want them to go
   * Internal page redirections Manage error pages, or redirect search engines from old posts to new ones

Step 2. What’s on offer?

   * Is your content useful or entertaining?
   * Do you love writing it?
   * Have you got a niche you are prominent in?
   * Would you read your content?
   * Will you keep going even if no one visits?

Step 3. Who do you want here?

   * Is your site a PR device
   * Do you want to make money from it?
   * Is it just an ego thing?

Picture your reader and write for that person!

   * A blog is a conversation, so write like you are directly speaking with that person. Visualise him or her.
   * Remember, add in the words they would use to find you.

Step 4. Structure for Engines

Think like a librarian…

   * Books need labelling correctly
   * The correct title
   * Other categorisation information
         o Duplication is annoying
         o Put the books in the right sections

Step 5. Google analytics Get Google analytics and Google webmaster console

   * Look out for these key performance indexes:
   * Absolute unique visitors per month
   * Returning Visitors / Visitor loyalty
   * Time spent on site per user
   * Pages viewed per user
   * Number of keywords your site has been accessed by
   * Which are your big traffic phrases
   * Proportion of traffic from:
         o Engines (40-60%)
         o Direct (20%)
         o Referred from other sites (25%)

Step 6

It’s going to take time…

So I hope you love it.

Step 7. Get links

   * Search engines love links.
   * Rule of thumb: If the site is human managed and relevant, then its ok. (its why general directories are worthless to you)
   * They look for signals that show is site is important = good relevant links
   * Get commenting and contributing on relevant sites in your subject neighbourhood.
     Do the occasional link exchange
     Be remarkable, so people WANT to link to you.
     Put ‘signposts’ up on relevant sites (links pages)

Further Reading

   * SEO for wordpress– the complete guide!
   * www.seomoz.com Superb SEO education site
   * Google Ranking factors 200+ SEO variables
   * SEOdigger.com What keywords a site ranks for
   * Google webmaster central blog
   * Google keyword finder
   * www.sepguy.com (my personal blog)