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SEO for WordPressA quick overview…

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WordPress Overview

• SEO for WordPress is no different than typical SEO for any other CMS – keyword research, link building, etc.

• WordPress can be designed to look NOTHING like a blog, although the vast majority of WordPress blogs all have a similar look and feel – a sidebar with a blogroll and other media, then posts in the middle & a header and footer.

• Many clients likely use WP for their blogs, and some may even use them for microsites or even their corporate site

• The main advantages of WP as a platform:– Free & Open Sourced – Easy & cheap to implement– Over 10,000 Free Plug-Ins designed to add just about any functionality you

can dream of– Extremely easy to use – easy for anyone to add a blog post, update

content, etc.– Millions of themes so that very little design work is necessary to make your

blog or website look how you want it to– Users are also familiar with this layout too, so it’s user friendly– It IS SEO friendly, and even e-commerce friendly to an extent– Mobile friendly with many plug-ins to generate mobile friendly site– Social Media friendly with smooth integration to Facebook, Twitter, etc.

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SEO Tips for WordPress

• Choose the right theme

• Use keyword research to define your categories & post titles

• Setup Permalinks (keyword rich URLs)

• Speed up load times

• Optimize internal linking

• Add plugins to help control SEO elements

• Add keyword rich static & dynamic content

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Choose the Right Theme

• For most clients, this decision has already been made without your input, and the theme they based their blog off of is probably very customized anyway.

• What to look for in a theme – same as traditional SEO– No JavaScript or Flash Navigation– Minimal Flash in general, or at least room for plenty of HTML content– Something that will load quickly– Something that matches the corporate site’s identify and image

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Define your Categories Wisely

• Category Pages organize your content – use keyword research to define your category pages - these category pages often rank well given the amount of rich & relevant content, and having strong categories will help guide content creation as well.

• You can also setup Category Descriptions which are static content describing the Category at the top of the page…

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Setup Permalinks (URL Structure)

• The default URL structure for WP is to give each post a number and have the URL structure for posts be www.domain.com/?p=123

• You can define these to be anything you want. If you did your keyword research for categories, then a structure of www.domain.com/category/postname should have plenty of keywords

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Use keywords in your post titles

• SEO friendly copywriting for blog posts is identical to SEO friendly copywriting for Press Releases:

– Use Keywords in the Post Title– Use Keywords in first 1-2 sentences– Write naturally but include keywords where possible– Use internal linking to appropriate product pages– Free of grammar & spelling mistakes, although it can be more casual than

a press release– Ideally between 300-800 words, broken into easy to read and short

paragraphs– Images & infographics should be relevant and contain relevant alt text and

file names

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Speed it up!

• There are plenty of plug-ins and tricks to speed-up WordPress – WP isn’t necessarily a slow platform, but it can be quickly & easily optimized to load quicker

– WP Minify – combines and compresses JS and CSS files– WP Super Cache – caches WP’s PHP files and stores them in a static HTML

file without needing to execute any PHP commands– Reduce external HTTP calls – any plugin, widget or ad that calls to external site

should be evaluated – any images or media hosted on external sites should be hosted internally where possible

– Compress Images– Remove unnecessary plug-ins– Use “More” tag to cut-off long or media-rich posts– Use a tool like Y-Slow or Google’s Page Speed plugin to find other reasons

why you may be loading slow – chances are, there’s an plug-in for that.

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Optimize Internal Linking

• Possibly WordPress’s greatest SEO Strength– Top Posts Plugin – displays “top” posts in sidebar for extra internal link juice– Contextual Related Posts – automatically adds links to related posts at bottom

of each post– Linked/Link to Post – automatically adds internal links within your post defined

by keywords – more internal links to products, other posts, etc.– Category & Tag pages – basically link directories to posts sorted by relevance &

theme– Yoast Breadcrumbs – inserts breadcrumb navigation – Header & Footer Links– Sidebar Links– Very Easy to add links

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SEO Plugins

• All in One SEO Pack Plugin– Allows you to EASILY over-write Page Title (usually = Post title), Meta

Description, Meta Keywords and more for posts & homepage

• Redirection Plugin– Allows you to easily setup 301 redirects

• XML Sitemaps Plugin– Automatically generates, updates & sends XML sitempas to major engines

• SEO Pagination – Helps deeper pages get indexed by replacing Previous/Next links with

individual links to each page:

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Add Static & Dynamic Content

• Static Content:– Add a static welcome message in the sidebar

with SEO friendly copy to greet visitors & add keyword density, since the post contents are always changing

– Add static text in your footer with keywords you are optimizing for as well.

• Dynamic Content:– Find plug-ins that pull in relevant content by

keyword so there is always fresh content for spiders to see

– Examples:• Twitter Feeds

• Alltop Feeds

• RSS Feeds

• Facebook Page Feeds

• Other Aggregators & Feeds

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Questions?