SEO for Beginners

SEO principles for beginner website owners and WordPress beginners.

Transcript

1. SEO for Beginners
2. SEO = Search Engine Optimisation ≢ Search Ranking Stuff you can do to make your site as good as possible Where you appear in results: the combined effects of SEO, link signals etc or On-page vs Off-page SEO
3. Some notes about search EVERYONE gets personalised search results Location History Social signals Google wants to produce the best & most relevant results, so BE relevant & be user-friendly
4. What contributes to SEO? Speed HTML Theme Plugins Content
 Content Readability Clarity Metadata Titles Descriptions Everything on your site!
5. Assessing your theme Read the description Look at the demo Reviews ThemeCheck (plugin or website) w3 validator
6. ThemeCheck.org Thesis 2.1 0 Genesis 2.1.2 56 Lawyeria Quark 1.3 100 96 Assesses security and code quality
7. validator.w3.org Thesis 2.1 Genesis 2.1.2 passed Lawyeria Quark 1.3 2 errors passed 4 errors
8. Content Quality Research Words Engagement Freshness http://searchengineland.com/seotable
9. Content in WordPress Title Don’t be obtuse Formatting Use it! Headings & subheadings Lists Blockquotes
10. Content in WP: images When uploading/ inserting images give them a decent title Give them a descriptive Alt Text
11. Content in WP: links Add or Edit links using the icon in the editor First select link text, then click icon Use relevant keywords Title ≢ link text Easily find URLs on your own site
12. Metadata Title URL (permalinks) Description Canonical URL Robots Keywords
13. SEO Plugins WordPress SEO by Yoast All in One SEO probably several others
14. WordPress SEO by Yoast FREE: wordpress.org/ plugins/wordpress-seo/ Features: yoast.com/ wordpress/plugins/seo/ SEO Guide: yoast.com/ articles/wordpress-seo/ I ♥ Yoast
15. Text Speed image be Martin Heigan
16. What impacts site speed? Hosting Number of files CSS JavaScript images Code quality Number of plugins Caching
17. Text Caching FASTER image from http://www.wpbeginner.com/ blueprint/w3-total-cache/
18. Caching plugins WP Super Cache Quick Cache / Zen Cache Hyper Cache W3 Total Cache
19. Minifying Reduces file sizes Reduces number of files Plugins Autoptimize W3 Total Cache Better WordPress Minify AssetsMinify
20. CDNs Content Delivery Network Comprehensive services: Cloudflare, MaxCDN Easy image CDN: Photon in
21. Text A quick note on mobile friendly google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
22. Guaranteed front page? All of this doesn’t guarantee you front page search results ☹ There are still the off-page factors to consider Who links to you What text they use to link with Social shares But it gives you a MUCH better chance SUCCESS NOT GUARANTEED
23. Anything else I can do? Webmaster Tools Submit a sitemap Monitor crawling problems
24. Text Even more info moz.com/learn/seo/on-page-factors
25. Text SEO Table of Elements searchengineland.com/seotable