7 actions you can take right now to optimize your...
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WordPress Insider -‐ Maximize Your Online Visibility -‐ Attract More Visitors -‐ Increase Your Revenue 1
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7 Actions You Can Take RIGHT NOW to Optimize Your WordPress Website
The WordPress Insider Guide To Maximizing Your Online Visibility, Attracting More Clients And
Creating The Income You Need By: Michelle Castillo Disclaimer: WordPress® and its related trademarks are registered trademarks of the WordPress Foundation. Michelle Castillo and Spot On Digital Marketing are not affiliated with or sponsored by Automattic, Inc. or the WordPress Foundation. Copyright © 2016 by Spot On Digital All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, without the written permission of the author.
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Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3
Improving Search Engine Rankings .............................................................................................. 4
Technique #1 Use Keywords in the URL's of Your Pages ......................................................................... 4
How to Choose a Custom URL Structure for Your Permalinks ............................................................. 4 What is the Most Effective Permalink Structure for SEO ..................................................................... 5 Editing the Slug ..................................................................................................................................... 5 Important Considerations Before Changing your Website's Permalink Structure ............................... 6
Technique #2 Increase Website Loading Time Using W3 Total Cache Plugin .......................................... 6
Measuring your Website Load Speed .................................................................................................. 6 Installing the W3 Total Cache Plugin .................................................................................................... 7 Configuring the W3 Total Cache Plugin ................................................................................................ 7
Technique #3 Use and Optimize Your Images ........................................................................................ 8
Preparing an Image, Before Adding it to Your Website ....................................................................... 9 What to Do After Adding Images to Your Website .............................................................................. 9
Technique #4 Improve Your Coverage in Google Index ........................................................................ 10
How to Create A Website's XML Site Map ......................................................................................... 10 How to Submit Your Website's XML Site Map Using Google Webmaster Tools ................................ 10
Getting Clicks on Your Search Engine Links ................................................................................ 11
Technique# 5 Take Control of How Your Website Looks in Search Results ........................................... 11
Grabbing Attention and Encouraging Action ............................................................................. 13
Technique #6 -‐ Make Your Site Mobile Friendly .................................................................................. 13
Mobile Responsive Themes ................................................................................................................ 13 Using WPtouch Pro ............................................................................................................................ 14 Test Your Website on Different Mobile Devices ................................................................................ 14
Technique #7 Make Your Home Page About Your Visitors -‐ Not You .................................................... 15
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 15
Appendix A -‐ Keyword Research ................................................................................................ 16
How to Perform Keyword Research ................................................................................................... 16
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Introduction The main goal for most business owners, when they setup a WordPress website, is to:
Ø Attract more visitors.
Ø Grow their business.
Ø Increase their revenue. Unfortunately, most WordPress guides and tutorials focus on the technical aspect of installing WordPress on a website, and neglect to mention the important details, which help make the difference between a website that simply exists, to a website that's designed to help website owners achieve their goals. If you want to:
Ø Increase your online business exposure.
Ø Bring in more clients.
Ø Generate the income you need. Then this guide is for you! When a potential client is looking for the services or products your online business offers, three things will need to happen before they turn into a client.
Ø First they need to find your website in the search engine results. This requires your website to score high in search engine results and rankings, for the keyword they are entering at their favorite search engine.
Ø Next, they must choose to click on the search results that show your website. To get search engine users to click on your website from the results (aka snippets) that are shown, your search engine listing must be enticing enough to make them click.
Ø Finally, when a visitor decides to click on your website, and then makes the decision to take an action, they begin to become a valuable client to you. I order for that to happen your website must look professional and have content that's valuable enough to convince them that your website has what they are looking for.
In this guide you will find 7 professional strategies and techniques, which we use every day to optimize our clients' websites. This helps our clients to achieve peak performance, in the 3 steps we've describe above.
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Improving Search Engine Rankings When it comes to your online business success, ranking high in the results of search engines is vital. After all, how else are people going to find your website if they can’t see a result linking to it? When you want a webpage to rank high in the search results for a certain keyword, it's your job to convince the search engines that your webpage is about that keyword. The search engines use various algorithms to analyze the content of web pages, and figure out what they are about. The actual content of the webpage is one very important factor. Using the following techniques will ensure that are all parameters of your webpage have been optimized to convince search engines that the webpage is about this keyword you want to rank for.
Technique #1 Use Keywords in the URL's of Your Pages
In WordPress, the URL of all your pages is controlled by permalinks. Permalinks are the individual URLs of every page on your website. These include:
Ø All website pages.
Ø Posts you make.
Ø Categories you add.
Ø Page tags, etc.
How to Choose a Custom URL Structure for Your Permalinks By default WordPress uses URLs that look like: http://mywebsite.com/?p=N Here the "N" represents the post or page ID number. This default structure should never be used. It's not readable by visitors and by using it you're missing a significant opportunity to further optimize your webpage for specific keywords, which will benefit your website in search engines. WordPress gives you the ability to create your own custom URL structure for your website's permalinks. Creating this structure can be found in your WordPress admin area under Settings > Permalinks. A typical custom URL structure includes a slug.
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What is the Most Effective Permalink Structure for SEO There are an infinite number of combinations to chose from, when it comes to permalinks. We recommend that you use the simple "post name" option. Using cofigurations which include date details, such as month, year or day, is only recommended for websites which are news centric. On these sites the post's dates are significant to the content of the posts. Newspaper websites are a good example of this structure. When you want to use a category name in your permalink, do so only if your domain name and category name are short and descriptive. Be aware though; if your slug is long and you have the category in the URL as well, this creates a long URL, which is harder for people to share and won’t provide much benefit with search engines. Editing the Slug Once the permalink structure has been defined, WordPress will automatically use the title of each post or page to create the page URL. A page titled "The Best Plumber in Vancouver" will automatically have a URL that looks like this: http://mywebsite.com/the-‐best-‐plumber-‐in-‐vanouver The permalink structure of your pages is shown under the title of the page, and can be edited by clicking the "edit button." The editing option is useful in cases where the title is too long, and includes words that have no impact on search engines results. For the example, you may want to change the slug to: best-‐plumber-‐vancouver Your slug should be no longer than 5 words, with 3 being preferable if possible. If your slug is longer than that, Google's algorithm program will typically give those words less value or importance, and not give you much credit toward your ranking.
A slug is a number of words that you use, which helps describe what your post or page is about. Slugs are a URL friendly version of the title of your post, which is automatically generated by WordPress, but more importantly a slug may also be anything you choose to create and use. Slugs are used along with permalinks, because they help to describe the content of your page by putting it in your URL.
Example post permalink:
http://wordpress.org/development/2006/06/wordpress-‐203/
The slug being used for the post is "wordpress-‐203".
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Important Considerations Before Changing your Website's Permalink Structure It's important to be careful, when changing the permalink structure of your WordPress website, as this will impact the URL of all individual pages on your website. If your website has been around for a long period of time, there are probably many back links from other websites, which link to the pages you're considering changing. Changing the permalinks structure, without taking any other action, may create broken links which could have a negative impact on your website rankings. If you decide to change the structure, make sure that you do redirects from your old structure to your new structure.
Technique #2 Increase Website Loading Time Using W3 Total Cache Plugin
A few years ago Google announced, that a website load speed is one of the parameters (also called signals), which is now taken into consideration by their search ranking algorithms. When you ensure your website loads as fast as possible, it may help you improve your website's ranking. In addition, a faster loading website improves the visitor's experience, which improves the likelihood of that visitor converting into a valued client for your business. For WordPress users, this process is simplified by using the W3 Total Cache Plugin. Our experience shows that when installed and configured correctly, this plugin can double the load speed of most WordPress website pages. Measuring your Website Load Speed Before using this plugin, you should evaluate the current load speed of your website. This helps you measure the improvement you see, once the plugin has been installed. Below is a list of free tools we compiled, which will help you measure the load speed of your website and its pages:
Ø Pingdom Website Speed Test Easy to use and gives you a straight forward result.
Ø Google's PageSpeed Insights Google's own tool, which provides results for both desktop and mobile devices. Be aware though, you may find some of the results very confusing. We suggest you use it, only as a tool, to compare the before and after performance of your website.
Ø YSlow This is a free tool from Yahoo which suggests different ways to improve the speed of your website.
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Installing the W3 Total Cache Plugin To start using this plugin, log into your website’s admin area and locate the Plugins > Add New Screen. In the search box enter W3 Total Cache and then click on the Search Plugins button. In page results locate the W3 Total Cache plugin, and click on Install Now. Important Note: Before you install W3 Total Cache, make sure there are no other caching plugins installed or activated. If you do not uninstall other caching plugins, W3 Total Cache may experience issues when you attempt to activate it. Once your installation is complete, a new item titled Performance will be added to your WordPress admin sidebar. Configuring the W3 Total Cache Plugin W3 Total Cache is a powerful addition, designed for WordPress websites. Part of its power comes from the wide variety of options to customize within the plugin itself. Although there are several options available, we recommend you use only the options described below. If you are a beginner, or someone who is not experienced with plugins, stick with the basic options we provide. In our experience the basic options will double the load speed of most WordPress websites. You can access the settings for W3 Total Cache, by clicking on the “Performance” menu item on the sidebar menu. The first option you see, on the general settings page, contains settings for the Page Cache. These settings are responsible for creating the static cache pages, which will prevent pages from having to load dynamically from your server every time they are accessed. Make sure you have the Enable page cache box checked, and then be sure to save your settings. This is all you need to do to edit your page cache settings. The next option to modify is the Browser Cache option. This option sets a time limit on the files which are cached. This is a handy tool for files, like a logo, which doesn't change often. It allows these files to be cached for an extended period of time. This means your pages will load faster, which is what visitors to your website want. The same is
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true for other files on your website, such as other images, CSS files, JavaScript files, and other static files you use. Simply click on the Enable checkbox and save your settings. When this is completed, go back to your sidebar menu and select the Browser Cache option. You will now be able to edit other options in your cache settings. You should enable all the options, as seen in the image here. Make your selections and then save them. Once completed, the rest of the settings on the bottom of the page will take care of themselves. That's it! You're all set. Now go back and measure the website load speed again to see the difference.
Technique #3 Use and Optimize Your Images
Did you know that images are used in image search and in regular organic search? When a search engine indexes a webpage, it's trying to understand what the page is about and looks for keywords which are located in various parts of the page, including the images embedded in the page. In order to give your website an extra boost, you'll have to optimize your images. Optimizing your images is achieved in a number of ways and we’ll cover some of the best ways to optimize images in section below. Search engines are not able to see images or read them. Because of this you need to perform certain actions, which results in search engines understanding what each image is about. You'll provide important information, which they'll use when describing your website.
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Preparing an Image, Before Adding it to Your Website The Image File Name
Make sure your image file name describes what the image is about and included important keywords. Make sure the name is not too long. Usually 3 to 4 words is the standard and more than enough. When naming the image, use dashes to replaces spaces between the words. For example, an image which was originally named IMG00027.jpg, would be renamed to wedding-‐photographer-‐vancouver.jpg
The File Size of Images
Search algorithms for images normally rank big images higher in search engines results. The down side to this is that the size of your image impacts the speed with which the page loads. Never use an image which is bigger than 1000 pixels wide or larger than 100KB in size. Make sure to resize your images before you upload them to your website.
What to Do After Adding Images to Your Website ALT Text Another way to tell search engines what an image is about is by using the ALT text tag. Alt Text tags were originally used to provide alternative text for the reader, in place of the image. An example is when someone is using a text only browser or a visually impaired person is using a screen reader. Search engines now use ALT text tags as a way to figure out what an image is about. This is similar to readable text on the page. Image Title Attribute
Although the image title attribute is not known to be a ranking factor in SEO, we recommended that you use the title attribute. You may use the same text used in the alt attribute, or simply describe what happens when somebody clicks on the image. WordPress Provides an Easy Way to Add the Alt Text to Images Image properties can be accessed when editing any page or post by clicking the image and then clicking the small picture icon that shows up.
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Technique #4 Improve Your Coverage in Google Index
Is your website connected to Google Webmaster Tools? If you are not using Google Webmaster Tools, I suggest you do so as soon as possible. Google Sitemaps is an easy way to improve your coverage in Google's index, and ensures Google’s robots will find all your website's pages. If your website is new, submitting the XML sitemap will trigger the first indexing of your site, and get the ball rolling faster than it would if you did not use it. How to Create A Website's XML Site Map
Creating a sitemap is easy when your website uses WordPress. There are few plugins, which will create an XML sitemap. We recommend that you use the WordPress SEO plugin. It generates the website's XML sitemap and automatically updates it when changes occur. This ensures your XML sitemap is constantly updated to include the most recent changes, including new pages you add or new blog posts. When using the WordPress SEO plugin, all you have to do to is to make sure that the "Check this box to enable XML sitemap functionality" is check. How to Submit Your Website's XML Site Map Using Google Webmaster Tools You start by logging into your Google Webmaster Tools account. Then select your website name. You'll find the Sitemaps screen on the right sidebar under "Crawl." Click on the Add/Test Sitemap button and enter the sitemap's file name. When you use the Wordpress SEO plugin, your sitemap will always be named: sitemap_index.xml Click on "Submit Sitemap" and you're finished. We recommend you check your account in few days to ensure Google has indexed your website, and that no issues where found.
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Getting Clicks on Your Search Engine Links When people enter words or phrases into a search engine, which are relevant to your website, your website is not the first thing they see. What they are shown is a snippet of your website page, which the search engine feels best matches the search terms they entered. On the right is an example of one such snippet. Think about snippets as being advertisements for your website. Your main goal is to grab the person's attention immediately so they'll click on your website link and visit your website, so they experience what your business offers them and see the value of the information on your website. The good news is that you have the ability to control how your website and snippets appear in search engine results. Next we'll discuss how you can make this happen.
Technique# 5 Take Control of How Your Website Looks in Search Results
In order to ensure that search engines show what you want in their results, you'll need to use the title and description Meta tags for each page or post on your website. Meta Tags are part of a webpage's syntax, which provides additional information about your page, without it being displayed on your page. Originally, Meta tags were created as a way to provide search engines with concise information about a website. Meta tags such as title, keywords and description used to play an important role in how search engines ranked a website. Unfortunately, they were abused by many on the internet, and their importance for ranking in search engines has now declined. Google search engine ranking algorithms have ignored Meta tags for a number of years now. The title and description Meta tags remain important, because they are the main mechanism for search engines to create the snippet for each webpage. An accurate description of a website informs prospective visitors about the relevancy of the content on the page, and allows visitors to decide whether or not to click on the website link. If you don’t
Tip: If you want to know what your snippet looks like live on Google, type site:yoursitename.com into the Google search box, changing the URL following the colon to your exact URL of your website. Once you’ve completed the search you’ll see what Google is showing people when they find your website.
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create an informative snippet and leave the Meta information blank, search engines will create a snippet for you, and choose the text, which they feel, is relevant from what they see on your web page. This mean you'll lose control of what the search engine snippet describes. As discussed earlier, we recommend that you use the WordPress SEO plugin. Once you install this plugin, you'll be shown an interface, which will allow you to edit the title and Meta tags of each webpage. A unique feature of this plugin is that it allows you to see what your webpage’s snippet will look like in Google’s search results. If you don’t like what you see, the plugin helps you edit your snippet until you feel it’s just right. You will find the WordPress SEO interface at the bottom of the page or on the post editing screen. Important! -‐ If your website's home page is dynamically created, as many WordPress websites are, you'll need to define the Meta tag for your home page, inside the WordPress SEO interface. You'll need to select WordPress SEO from your menu, choose the Titles & Metas option, and then click on Home.
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Grabbing Attention and Encouraging Action Once you have attracted visitors to your website, you need to do everything you can to keep them there as long as possible. Not only does additional time on your website give people the information they need, to make a decision about doing business with you, longer website times are noticed by search engines. When someone arrives at your website and leaves quickly, it will send a signal to search engines that your website was not actually relevant to the search query. When this happens too often, it may lead to decreased rankings over time.
Technique #6 -‐ Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
The importance of traffic from mobile devices is higher than ever before. Ignoring consumers who visit your website using mobile devices, such as smart phones or tablets is no longer an option. If you're not convinced, consider the statistic below:
Ø Global mobile traffic now accounts for 15% of all
Internet traffic.
Ø 48% of users say that when they arrive on a
business site that is not setup for mobile, they feel it's an indication that the business does
not care about mobile users. (Source: MarginMedia)
Ø 62% of companies who design their websites for mobile see increased sales.
(Source: Econsultancy)
Mobile Responsive Themes Responsive web designs will adapt to the screen's dimensions and capabilities of the device being used. They'll ensure that a website appears correctly on any type of device that's being used, no matter what the screen size may be. You will save a lot of money when you use a responsive website design, since it enables you to maintain a single website, instead of multiple versions with each needing to be updated individually. Google looks favorably upon websites that use responsive designs, because they are seen as being able to serve a larger number of visitors. Having a mobile version of your website is ideal in Google’s
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eyes, and you'll likely rank higher than a website who is not mobile ready. A responsive website design is the best option for your visitors, and for your website’s search engine rankings. The easiest way to get a mobile responsive theme, is to install one on your website that is already mobile responsive. The next question is where can you get this type of theme?
Ø Recent WordPress default themes, such as Twenty Thirteen and Twenty Fourteen are mobile
responsive designs. These will come with your WordPress installation.
Ø There are a number of premium themes, which offer a mobile responsive design. You can
purchase these themes from StudioPress, WooThemes or any number of premium theme
providers online. A simple search will yield numerous results.
Ø If you already a have theme you really like and do not want to change, you can hire a developer who will add the mobile responsive behavior to your existing theme.
Using WPtouch Pro WPtouch is a premium plugin, which automatically enables a simple and elegant mobile theme, for mobile visitors who visit your WordPress website. The administration panel allows you to customize different aspects of its appearance, and will deliver a fast, user-‐friendly and stylish version of your website to mobile visitors, without modifying any code, or affecting your regular desktop theme. The theme includes the ability for visitors to switch between the mobile WordPress theme, and your website's regular theme. WPtouch Pro pricing starts at $49 (one-‐time fee). A free version is available with limited features. Test Your Website on Different Mobile Devices The only thing worse than not having a mobile friendly website, is having a mobile version of your website which does not work properly. It's important to ensure that the appearance and behavior of your site works on as many devices as possible. One tool which you'll find handy is "StudioPress" mobile responsive testing tool. You can find it here: http://www.studiopress.com/responsive/ This tool provides an easy way to test how your website's design looks on different devices, including mobile phones, tablets, and different web browsers.
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Technique #7 Make Your Home Page About Your Visitors -‐ Not You
Your homepage is undoubtedly one of the most important pages on your website. It's the virtual front door of your business. There is a lot to be said about, what makes for the best home page design and content. We'd like to highlight one very important aspect of it, which is way too often over looked. When a first time visitor lands on your website, odds are they are searching for the answer to a specific question, about something that's going on in their lives right now. They went searching, on Google or another website, where a link pointed that visitor to your website. They clicked because they thought your website might have the answer they're looking for. Remember -‐ a good homepage resonates with a target audience. Ask yourself these questions:
Ø What problem(s) do your visitors need to solve when they visit you website?
Ø What question will my visitors have?
…and make sure to have the information your visitors need, right there on your home page. For example, if you are a chiropractor you would choose the most common problems you now your visitors would need to solve. Then you'd make sure they were highlighted on your home page. You need to understand, that a person with a back pain is looking for pain relief, and is not likely to be interested in your education, when they're looking at your website. They want to know about your expertise in relieving their pain.
When a visitor to your website sees that you have a solution to the exact problem they have, they are much more likely to stay on your website, and take the first action that eventually will make them your client.
Conclusion Owning a website is not easy, and there’s always something new to learn. We hope the information presented above will give you valuable ideas for improving your website, and its rankings in top search engines like Google.
If you ever have questions or feedback feel free to email me at michelle@wpinsider.org
Thank you for reading our information, and we wish you the best of luck with your WordPress website.
To your success!
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Appendix A - Keyword Research Understanding what keywords are and how to do keyword research, is an essential part of optimizing your website. The reason is simple! Understanding keywords, which are being used by potential visitors, helps you to know what words to use on your website. Potential visitors will use these words to search for your products or services. Keyword research is a process of finding actual search terms used by people, who are looking for your services or products. Keyword research will provide you with answers to the following questions:
Ø How many people are searching for your services or products?
Ø What language do people use when they search for your services?
Ø What is the competition doing, and what do I need to do to rank high on search result for a particular keyword?
When you know what people search for, you are able to:
Ø Create content that answers your visitor's questions.
Ø Optimize your website pages so they rank high. Then, when a potential visitor searches the web for the services or products you offer, they find your website.
How to Perform Keyword Research To gain access to this useful information, you'll need to use the research tools currently available in today's market. Google Keyword Planner Tool -‐ This tool has recently replaced the Google Keyword Tool. It is an excellent start for doing keyword research. Market Samurai -‐ This software provides a set of tool, which will streamline critical search engine marketing tasks. It includes a very powerful keyword research tool. TrafficTravis -‐ Another popular software that's available, which provides a set of search engine marketing tools. Note: Both Market Samurai and TrafficTravis use data which is provided by Google. It's important to have a Google AdWords account, in order to use the keyword research functionality they provide. If you would like to learn more about Keyword Research, I suggest you read the following article: http://www.seobook.com/learn-‐seo/keyword-‐research-‐strategies.php
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