A presentation on SEO, WordPress and SEO Tools from the Melbourne WordPress Meetup, October 2013. Presented by Chris Burgess, Peter Mead and Michael Jones.
Officer for a non profit in Melbourne and is ac9vely involved in tech user groups including co-‐managing the Melbourne SEO Meetup with Michael Jones. In his spare 9me he also enjoys working on a variety of web projects and manages a few of his own websites. Peter Mead is a WordPress and SEO consultant, with a focus on strategy. Working with small business clients to deliver personalized WordPress websites and specialized SEO services, he feels quality is a determining factor for las9ng success on the web. He has also established a regular WordPress meetup in Bendigo. Michael works at Razorfish as SEO Manager, Suncorp Insurance Head of Onsite / Technical SEO. Michael has 12 years of search engine marke9ng experience, worked with many large organisa9ons in Australia (both in-‐house and agency side), in a broad range of industries including: shopping, classifieds and service websites. Michael specialises in SEO but also has experience in SEM, Analy9cs, Social, Local, Reputa9on management and Email Marke9ng. Peter Mead PeterMeadIT.com Chris Burgess ChrisBurgess.com.au Michael Jones HolidayPoint.com.au
Burgess – SEO basics and why SEO is important – Areas to focus on to help you get found in the major search engines – Onsite and offsite SEO – The importance of keyword research • (Part 2) SEO and WordPress – Peter Mead – SEO and WordPress – WordPress’ SEO capabili9es out of the box – Recommended plugins – Themes and frameworks • (Part 3) SEO Tools – Michael Jones – Common issues and fixes – Tools and services – Examples of some do's and don'ts – Where to from here? • (Part 4) SEO Q&A Panel and Ques)ons
increasing the number of visitors to a website by achieving high rank in the search results of a search engine. The higher a website ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that users will visit the site. It is common prac9ce for Internet users to not click past the first few pages of search results, therefore high rank in SERPs is essen)al for obtaining traffic for a site. SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be indexed and favorably ranked by the search engine.” -‐ Moz
search engines like the librarians of the Internet. Their systems collect informa)on about every page on the web so they can help users find exactly what they’re looking for. Surce:h[p://searchengineland.com/guide/what-‐is-‐seo
of it like a secret recipe) to determine what pages to suggest for a search query by a user. Surce:h[p://searchengineland.com/guide/what-‐is-‐seo Source: h[p://moz.com/blog/smwc-‐and-‐other-‐essen9al-‐seo-‐jargon Image Source: h[p://www.longtermfix.com/ How do they do it?
are constantly changing. These algorithm changes have code names. You may have heard some of the more popular ones Penguin, Panda and Hummingbird. Surce:h[p://searchengineland.com/guide/what-‐is-‐seo Source: h[p://moz.com/blog/smwc-‐and-‐other-‐essen9al-‐seo-‐jargon Image Source: h[p://www.longtermfix.com/ and h[p://www.markcijo.com/ Upda)ng the algorithm
If you own a website, understanding the key ingredients search engines are looking for in their secret recipe (ranking factors) and making it easy for search engines to find them on your site helps to improve your chances of being displayed higher up in the search engine results page (SERP). This process is known as search engine op9misa9on (SEO).
headings, images, text, meta descrip9ons • Keywords and content strategy • XML sitemaps • Canonical link to determine the “original” page (we’ll cover this bit later) • Robots.txt (we’ll cover this bit later) • Configura9on
• Links (context, anchor text) – Inbound links = The Holy Grail • Quality of links • Bad links can hurt your site • Social media, web 2.0 proper9es etc. • Bookmarking, StumbleUpon, Digg, Squidoo etc. • Examples of good links: mainstream news site or blog, natural • Example of bad links: spammy, unnatural
create high quality and unique content – Blogs – Social media – Podcasts – Video – eBooks – eNewsle[ers – Infographics – Whitepapers • The buzzword is “inbound marke9ng”
they search for • What keywords to focus on • Compe9tor analysis • Look for words that have high search volume and low compe99on, they will be easier to rank for Good “Moving house on a budget” Bad “Broke and need to get out?” Good “Bookkeeping 9ps for small business” Bad “Ge>ng your books in order”
• Looking for keywords with: – high traffic value – low compe99on – make great 9tles – make great content • Check out h[p://tools.seobook.com/keyword-‐tools/seobook/
– People – Link – Ar9cles – Found • Cri9cal factors -‐ SAT – Site speed – Ar9cles / Content – Time on site / Bounce rate • WordPress helps make these processes easy for users
community • Well supported • It’s a clean, easy to use CMS • Titles, Headings and Content • Professional publishing plarorm (built with SEO in mind) • Search friendly URLs (permalinks) • Google can index default WordPress quite easily • Ability to easily extend (via Plugins)
for pro’s and beginners alike • Very easy to use Features: • Op)mize your WordPress site with just one plugin • The most complete SEO plugin for WordPress available • Content analysis func)onality -‐ write be[er content with the built-‐in content analysis and easily op9mize your sites 9tles and descrip9ons with the snippet preview • Automa)cally generate XML Sitemaps • And many more technical improvements to your site that you don’t even have to look at. Source: h[p://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
9tles and meta descrip9ons for all types of pages globally • The WordPress SEO meta box to op9mize your post 9tle and meta descrip9on • The snippet preview shows what it would look like in Google, this helps us crai for higher click-‐through’s Source: h[p://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
links and missing images and no9fies you on the dashboard if any are found. • Free plugin h[p://w-‐shadow.com/blog/2007/08/05/broken-‐link-‐checker-‐for-‐wordpress/
special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to be[er index your blog. h[p://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-‐plugins/google-‐xml-‐sitemaps-‐generator/
generate a XML Image Sitemap for your WordPress blog. Open the seengs page to create your image sitemap. • Free plugin h[p://wordpress.org/plugins/google-‐image-‐sitemap/
for be[er Google Search results and Social Sharing posts. An essen9al plugin for every WordPress website! • Free plugin and pro version for $29USD h[p://surniaulula.com/extend/plugins/nextgen-‐facebook/
search engines to know which pages the spiders should index. • Can edit robots.txt manually or with a plugin. • Can control each page or post if desired. • Indexing your search pages Disallow: /*?s=
“original” page from deriva9ve pages in your site, to avoid "duplicate content!" • Set in the seengs of your WordPress site • Set it on a page level for each page if needed
(Google Webmaster tools) • Plugins (such as WordPress SEO etc.) let you create and control details of said XML sitemaps. • Tells Google what is important.
compression of txt based assets using DELFATE 3. Enable caching of image based assets 4. Enable caching of txt based assets 5. Enabling last modified headers 6. Fixing Etag issues Most of this on the right can be copied straight into the htaccess =============================== AddDefaultCharset UTF-‐8 <ifModule mod_deflate.c> <filesMatch "\.(css|js|txt|x?html?|php)$”> SetOutputFilter DEFLATE </filesMatch> </ifModule> <FilesMatch "\.(gif|png|jpg|jpeg|js|swf|bmp|ico)$”> ExpiresAc9ve On ExpiresDefault "access plus 2 years” Header set Cache-‐Control "public, no-‐transform” </FilesMatch> <FilesMatch "\.(js|css)$”> ExpiresAc9ve On ExpiresDefault "access plus 2 months” Header set Cache-‐Control "public, no-‐transform” </FilesMatch> <IfModule mod_headers.c> <FilesMatch "\.(js|css|xml|gz|gif|png|jpg|jpeg|swf|bmp|ico)$”> Header append Vary Accept-‐Encoding Header set Last-‐Modified "Thu, 27 Jun 2011 12:00:00 GMT” </FilesMatch> </IfModule> <ifModule mod_headers.c> Header unset ETag </ifModule> FileETag None ===============================
focus on building your authority ü Provide content people actually want ü Be careful of bad SEO (due diligence) ✕ Don’t look for tricks ✕ Don’t look for shortcuts ✕ Don’t rely on old informa9on (search changes fast) ✕ If something feels spammy, it probably is – don’t use it
PageViews, Return vs New, Time on site, Bounce, Entry and Exit pages) • Seeng up goals in Analy9cs (opt-‐in, form, purchase etc.) h[p://www.google.com/analy9cs/ • Google Webmaster Tools h[ps://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en • Advanced Web Ranking h[p://www.advancedwebranking.com/ • Raven Tools h[p://raventools.com/ • Moz h[p://moz.com/
these resources for more informa9on • Google’s official Webmaster Guides • h[p://moz.com/beginners-‐guide-‐to-‐seo • h[p://searchengineland.com/guide/what-‐is-‐seo • Come along to Melbourne SEO Meetups h[p://www.meetup.com/Melbourne-‐SEO/ • Thanks to David Iwanow for some of the images and 9ps J
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