WordPress SEO

Jonathan BjörkskogCo-founder, Head of SEO & web tactics at Genero

WordPress since 2010

SEO since 2009

Had 147 WordPress sites in my worst domain-addiction period

Founded 2009

Strategy, Design, Development, Internet Marketing

~25 employees, 1,3 m turnover, owned by employees.

This Workshop

The Setup

1. Good Guy Google2. SEO what?3. The 4 elements of SEO4. Site structure for SEO5. SEO plugins6. Questions & practical work

What do you want to do?

What do you think of when you hear “SEO”

Good Guy Google

Never let you buy first positions

Google actually worksPre Google (1990’s)

● SE looked at how many times a keyword were used.

● You could buy first positions● You could spam keywords to get

first positions

→ Search results totally sucked

With Google

● Google looked at relevance and links (Page Rank Algorithm)

→ Google’s search results did not suck as much

Google ranking factors today1. Relevance (Content, links)2. Trust / Power (links)3. Brand (Brand signals, links)4. Personal (User behaviour, history)5. Other factors might or might not be: CTR, time on site,

bounce rate, conversion rate, interaction, user-relations, social, etc

Search something in GoogleWith Google you do not actually search through internet.

You search through their index.

As well as 53 233 other people this second.

The order of the search result is based on relevance and trust (gained through links)

7 domain links, 0 url links

320 domain links, 0 url links

7 domain links,0 url links

5350 domain links,4683 url links

3 domain links,3 url links

The 4 elements of SEO

Keyword research & mapping

Competition

Available resources

Opportunities

Do not make it hard for Google

Make proper site structure

Make everything possible

Plugins

Tech

What do Google see?

Content structure

Plugins

Content

Power & Trust

Get as much benefits as possible

Offpage

Opportunities

Find topics for your site: Google Keyword Planner, Keywordtool.io, Übersuggest.

Choose keywords that you think will convert visitors into business.

Start tracking positions:SEMRush, wincher.com, rankly.io, etc

Choose keywords that you have a realistic possibility to rank on.

Look up competition in Majestic SEO or Ahrefs

1. 2. 3.

CompetitionDo a Google search for the keywords.

Are there only big players? Are there “bad” sites?

Check competitors site’s strength in Majestic or Ahrefs (or Moz).

What are your available resources? (Budget or manpower)

Keyword choosing strategyA. Broad, competitive, high

volume keywordsB. Long tail keywords with less

searches and less competition

A: “Running shoes” or B: “Yellow Adidas barefoot running shoes”

Make a url mapping documentThis means that you list all keywords. Then you list all page types and pages, in levels.

This may also be referred to as “site structure” or “sitemap”

Example doc:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MRVlEx_QJF4RaYmMj6R9LHpMq7NFuLov8C6b7eevaQA/edit#gid=544333043

Trust / Power -flow through siteReferred to as “internal links”. In 90 % of cases your front page will be the strongest page.

1. We assume that front page have 100 “power”.2. We have 25 internal links on front page.3. Pages linked from the front page will then get 4 in “power” (100/25).

(Link placement on page affects the flow, but we ignore that here) 4. Same principle goes for all other pages on your site.

→ Best linked to pages becomes “strongest” and have the best chance to rank.→ Pages in navigation will get strong.→ Links from pages with same topic are more valuable.→ Anchor text pass topic to receiving page.

Plan structure for topic hubs

For more competitive keywords you will need a lot of related content.

Group similar content together with a clear hierarchy.

All “subcontent” should automatically link back to “main content”.

Pages/subpages or category/post

App developmentiOS app development

ios app development for dummiesios app development toolsios app development trainingios app development language

Android app developmentAndroid app development toolsAndroid app development training

etc...

Examples:

Technical WordPress SEO

General settings ✓ Right country-domain or generic

domain/language.✓ Permalink structure setting using %

postname%✓ Allow Google-indexing.✓ Show excerpt instead of full content on

categories & blog.✓ Do not noindex taxonomies, instead make

them unique.✓ Get fast hosting.✓ Noindex filter-parameter-urls or use #✓ Think about Canonical if you need the

same content published on several places.

Basics for a well-optimized theme1. Allows content on categories. H1 and text (and picture).2. No one-page bs.

→ If you are into that, make it the right way with real urls and content in source.3. All important content visible in source (Keep the angular and ajax fancy things on

top of the content, not instead of it)4. Use proper markup (only one H1, with post/page title in it, alt-tags are printed for

pictures, widget-titles not as h2 or h3, etc)5. Use real urls for content (not popover, not #-urls)6. Use breadcrumbs (For example Yoast)

Unique content on taxonomiesA lot of themes does not let you add any content or pictures to taxonomy-pages.

It is easy to fix though:

<h1><?php wp_title(); ?></h1> <div>

<?php echo category_description(); ?></div>

Make taxonomies even more richExamples:

✓ Enable category-pictures✓ Print extra fields with extra info✓ Edit post summaries manually

Domain structure and languagesFor finnish content: site.fi = Greatsite.com/fi/ = Greatfi.site.com = OKsite.fi/sv/ = Not so good (Finnish content will rank well in Google.fi, but swedish content will have a hard time ranking in Google.se with this setup)

For languages in subfolder: WPML or Polylang.For languages on multiple domains: WPML, Polylang or multisite

Linking languages together● Link languages together page to page if possible.● Use hreflang meta to tell Google that this post is available on another language

too.<link rel="alternate" hreflang="nl" href="http://nl.example.com/" />

● Use hreflang meta to tell Google the language of this post● At least WPML and Polylang takes care of this.

Plugins1. SEO-plugin for the essentials, meta & sitemaps (Yoast, all-in-one, etc)2. Redirection plugin (We want to get rid of duplicate content)3. Related content-plugin (internal linking)4. Images for categories (taxonomy-images)5. Cache plugin for a fast site.6. Plugin for custom post types & custom fields.7. Yoast analytics (for easy ecommerce tracking)8. WPML / Polylang / Woocommerce when needed

Set up Yoast SEO1. Set content you cannot make unique as noindex, follow. (author archives, media

attachment pages, format archives, date-based archives, tags). 2. Make default titles for everything you want to index:

Buy %%term_title%% running shoes online %%sep%% %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%3. Enable the sitemaps for the content that is unique. Disable the rest.

Example setup

Yoast SEO box

Use Yoast SEO box1. The keyword does not affect anything, it is just a base for all checkup (and can be

changed to test the content against several keywords)2. Keyword MUST be in title

(main heading is generating title if you do not fill it in = OK). Make the title click-friendly. You have about 54 characters to use.

3. Make a description in proper length including the keyword. (Not important for SEO, but for CTR)

4. Save draft for box to be updated.5. The box is actually most a tool for teaching yourself.

Yoast page analysis

Single content structure1. Main keyword in title and heading2. Picture on site, main keyword in alt-tag3. Main keyword in url4. Main keyword somewhere in content & sub-heading.5. Make the content rich. Is this the best content online for this keyword?6. Text-content long enough

This goes for all types of content on your site

Get rid of 404Redirection plugin

Anyone can do all of this

If 50 sites are perfect, which will rank?

The one that is most trusted

Let’s go off page

Getting external links● First have the best possible page & site for a keyword. ● Then, get strong, branded links to your site’s all important pages.

Link Acquisition Techniques● Being a brand● PR● Being a resource in your niche● Link baits (create stuff that go viral)● Asking for links (from company partners,

relatives, subcontractors, etc)● Blog cooperation● Exchanging links● Guest blogging● Advertorials● Buying old domains● Buying links● Link networks

← Good praxis if you ask Google

← Still quite okay if you ask Google

← Things that work, but are against Google guidelines

← Things that sometimes work, but are against Google guidelines

Tools that we looked atGoogle keyword planner (Google’s own tool for finding keywords)

Keywordtool.io (Gives you a list of all Google suggested keyphrases for a keyword)

Ubersuggest.org (Gives you a list of all Google suggested keyphrases for a keyword)

SEMRush (Tracking positions in Google from a neutral location/profile)

Majestic SEO (Check link data for websites)

Ahrefs (Check link data for websites)

Thank you!Follow: https://twitter.com/JonathanBJ

Get help with marketing: http://genero.fi/ http://generodigital.se/

Contact:

Jonathan BjörkskogFounding partner

Head of SEO & Web tactics+358 (0)50 539 4288jonathan@genero.fi