Powerful S.E.O. using WordPress | Giorgos Kaftakis | Crete WordPress meetup 4 | WordPress Greek community

Transcript

1. Powerful SEO using Wordpress Georgios Kaftakis Twitter: @Kaftakis #wpmcrete www.qubis.gr
2. What is SEO?
3. What is Important? • Google has over 200 points for ranking improvement • “Keywords” are not important anymore • Google doesn't make use of meta keywords • SEO is more difficult • Meta tags that Google understands:  Title  Description  Robots, Googlebot  Google Meta Tags https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/79812?hl=en
4. Pay attention… • Title Tags • By default on older versions of WordPress, post titles would display as “Blog Name >> Post Title”. As your homepage is probably already ranking for your site name, you’re not helping yourself by putting your site name at the start of your title. You don’t need to rank for it more than once. • Meta Tags • When you search for a site in Google, you’ll see a snippet of content under the page link. To control this, you can customise your meta description tag for the page. • Permalinks • Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. The URL to each post should be permanent, and never change — hence permalink. Examples: • http://example.com/?p=N • http://example.com/2012/post-name/ • http://example.com/2012/12/30/post-name • Focus On a Keyphrase • It’s a good idea to try to optimize your site around a keyphrase that can send you search traffic. Examples: • Organic Cretan food • Rooms near the beach
5. More… • Turn on Pingbacks • One way to get more links to your site (which increase search engine rankings) is actually to link to other people. If you are regularly supporting a site, it’s very likely that they’re going to return the favour. Especially if they’re in the same industry. I recommend turning on the option in WordPress (if it’s not already enabled) which notifies other blogs when you have linked to them. • Interlink • Interlinking simply means that you link from your blog posts to other blog posts. • Use Alt Attributes Religiously • The text minimalist-marketing, which I have highlighted, is actually not written anywhere on the page like that. Instead, it is the alt attribute for one of my images. WordPress applies alt attributes to images automatically, but they are generated based on the file name.
6. Is Wordpress Optimized?
7. Is Wordpress Optimized? • By default free themes (i.e. Twenty-Twelve, Twenty- Thirteen,…) • Includes: • Post(s) and Page(s) Titles • Excerpts (Summaries) • Post Categories • Post Tags • Headings (H1 – H6) • Paragraphs • Bullets and Numbering • Post Date/Time • Post Author
8. Ηοw to start? • Technical Optimization • SSL Encryption  https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.gr/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html • Mobile responsive design  https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.gr/2015/04/rolling-out-mobile-friendly- update.html • Page Speed Optimization  https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.gr/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search- ranking.html  https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ • Hosting • Caching • Content Delivery Networks (CDN) • Optimizing images  Name, Compress Images • Redirection
9. Make your Wordpress SEO Friendly • Privacy Settings During Development • Permalink Settings – Search Engine Friendly URLs • Rename the Uncategorized Category • Customized Page Titles & Meta • Use Categories & Tags • Reduce 404 Errors • Autogenerated HTML & XML Sitemaps • Use Google Analytics • Review & Optimize Your Theme Code
10. Privacy Settings During Development • Settings >> Reading
11. Permalinks • Permalinks • Do not use strange characters • Change the default settings • Use hyphens (-) to separate words • Do not use spaces
12. Customized Page Titles & Meta • By default, WordPress will use your page or post title as the HTML page title tag. • There are a few plugins that can help you customize these tags, like the Yoast SEO plugin and the All in One SEO Pack plugin. • Yoast SEO:  Titles & Metas: o You can use Yoast Plugin variables to create a nice formatted Page Title for Taxonomies and Archives o Categories, Tags, Product Categories,… o I suggest to use unique Page Titles and Descriptions for all Categories and Archives. o Use Key-phrases for Titles and Descriptions o Noindex author and date based archives
13. Use Categories & Tags • Categories are meant for broad grouping of your posts. Think of these as general topics or the table of contents for your site. Categories are there to help identify what your blog is really about. It is to assist readers finding the right type of content on your site. Categories are hierarchical, so you can sub-categories. • Tags are meant to describe specific details of your posts. Think of these as your site’s index words. They are the micro-data that you can use to micro-categorize your content. Tags are not hierarchical.
14. Autogenerated HTML & XML Sitemaps • You can have your web pages and blog posts included in the search index much faster if you provide the crawlers or bots access to HTML and XML Sitemaps. • I suggest to use Yoast SEO Plugin for Autogenerated XML Sitemaps • Exclude from XML sitemaps any types of content that you are Noindexing (ie, tag pages, categories, etc) • Take your XML sitemap URL and submit it to Google (and Bing) Webmaster Tools • You can also use other Plugins such as Simple Sitemap plugin for HTML and Google XML Sitemaps plugin for XML Sitemaps.
15. Use Google Analytics • Learning more about your users is vital to run a successful online business website. You need an analytics solution that helps you gather data and provide insightful reports into user activity on your site. • Some Plugins  Google Analytics  Crazy Egg  KISSmetrics  Mixpanel  Piwik  Woopra  Google Analytics by Yoast
16. Yoast On-Page-SEO
17. Yoast SEO - Robots Meta
18. Open Graph share settings
19. Plugins • SEO Optimizing • Yoast SEO • All in One SEO Pack • Awesome SEO plugin • Caching Plugins • W3 Total Cache • WP Super Cache • WP Rocket • Image Optimizing • WP Smush • EWWW Image Optimizer • Other • Google XML Sitemaps • Google Analytics by Yoast • Google Pagespeed Insights for Wordpress
20. END Questions?