WordPress SEO & Optimisation Strategies

A4UExpo London, October 2008

Joost de Valk

Open Source

Apple

WordPress SEO

Geek

TheologyIBMS

BloggerSpeaker

Marketeer

Online marketeer

http://yoast.com

http://orangevalley.nl

Today’s agenda

1 WordPress & SEO2 Promoting Your Blog3 Getting more subscribers4 Conversation Optimization

And maybe, some bonus tips.

WordPress & SEO

Essential Plugins

HeadSpace2

http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/

- Titles- Meta Keywords and Descriptions- More Tags- And SO much more.

Template tip #1Your title should look like this:

<title><?php wp_title(‘’); ?></title>

Nothing more, nothing less. HeadSpace or any other SEO plugin will take care of the title.

Redirection

http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/

Use it for all your redirection needs.

YARPP

http://mitcho.com/code/yarpp/

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Related posts based on tags, categories,post content, etc.

SEO Friendly Images

http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/seo-friendly-images

Auto-magically optimise alt and title tags.

Clean Slugs

Sign up for my mailing list and get it!

Auto-magically optimise your post slugs.

RSS Footer

http://yoast.com/wordpress/rss-footer/

Take advantage of those scrapers!

Structure for SEO

Template tip #2Your blog title and subtitle should only be <h1> and <h2> on your front page! Everywhere else, and <h4> and <h5> is good enough.

To do that, do something like this in your header.php:

<?php if (is_home()) { ?>

<h1>Yoast</h1>

<?php } else { ?>

<h4><a href="/">Yoast</a></h4>

<?php } ?>

Template tip #3

Add a description to your categories:

<?php echo category_description(); ?>

Yoast Breadcrumbs

http://yoast.com/wordpress/breadcrumbs/

Let users and spiders find the way home!

Roy Huiskes - Internal Linking16.30 - Platinum 7

http://yoast.com/wordpress/robots-meta/

Robots Meta- Noindex, follow your archives, search pages, etc.- Authenticate with webmaster tools- Nofollow ancillary links- Etc. etc.

http://www.seoegghead.com/blog/seo/stop-seo-death-by-pagination-p118.htmlor http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-page-numbers/

PaginationBecause a search engine can’t skip pages.

More info on WP SEO?http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/

Promoting your blog

Because just praying won’t work

So Join In The Conversation

Go where your readers go.

If you bait...

Use the good stuff.

Do Guest Posts.

Competing is more important than....

So now you’ve got visitors

Let’s turn them into fans

Your Subscribe ButtonCan’t be BIG enough.

Offer e-mail too

Remind people. After each post.

Pick easy scores:- comment redirect

(http://yoast.com/wordpress/comment-redirect/)

- comment relish

Now we’ve got a conversation

Let’s keep it going!

Here’s 10 steps to improve the conversation on your blog

Step 1:Ask for comments.

Step 2: Thank people for commenting.

Step 3: get to know your readers.

Step 4: answer all questions, and respond to all feedback.

Step 5: Reward good remarks.

Step 6: keep people involved.

Step 7: don’t distract them.

Separate track- and pingbacks from comments:http://yoast.com/wordpress-theming-pushing-trackbacks-down/

Step 8:Fight spam, always.

Step 9: Keep It Stupid Simple (to comment)

Step 10:Measure, improve, and repeat

Use Blog Metrics:http://yoast.com/wordpress/blog-metrics/

Google AlertsTwitter Ego Searches

Are you a good Housekeeper?http://yoast.com/serious-blogging-questions/

3 bonus tips!

Prevent fruitless searching

Improve the WordPress search experience:http://yoast.com/wordpress-search/

Aim for speed

Optimize your template:http://yoast.com/speed-up-and-clean-up-your-wordpress/

check themes before installing

http://yoast.com/perfect-wordpress-theme/

Joost de Valkjoost@yoast.com

http://yoast.comhttp://www.orangevalley.nl

http://twitter.com/jdevalk

Sign up to my WP mailing list!http://yoast.com/mailing-list/