SEO for Beginners

SEO

= Search Engine Optimisation

≢ Search Ranking

Stuff you can do to make your site as good as possible

Where you appear in results: the combined effects of SEO, link signals etc

or On-page vs Off-page SEO

Some notes about searchEVERYONE gets personalised search results

Location

History

Social signals

Google wants to produce the best & most relevant results, so BE relevant & be user-friendly

What contributes to SEO?

Speed

HTML

Theme

Plugins

Content

Content

Readability

Clarity

Metadata

Titles

Descriptions

Everything on your site!

Assessing your themeRead the description

Look at the demo

Reviews

ThemeCheck (plugin or website)

w3 validator

ThemeCheck.orgThesis 2.1

0

Genesis 2.1.2

56

LawyeriaQuark 1.3

100 96

Assesses security and code quality

validator.w3.orgThesis 2.1Genesis 2.1.2

passed

LawyeriaQuark 1.3

2 errors passed4 errors

Content

Quality

Research

Words

Engagement

Freshness

http://searchengineland.com/seotable

Content in WordPressTitle

Don’t be obtuse

Formatting

Use it!

Headings & subheadings

Lists

Blockquotes

Content in WP: images

When uploading/inserting images give them a decent title

Give them a descriptive Alt Text

Content in WP: linksAdd or Edit links using the 🔗 icon in the editor

First select link text, then click icon

Use relevant keywords

Title ≢ link text

Easily find URLs on your own site

MetadataTitle

URL (permalinks)

Description

Canonical URL

Robots

Keywords

SEO Plugins

WordPress SEO by Yoast

All in One SEO

probably several others

WordPress SEO by Yoast

FREE: wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

Features: yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/

SEO Guide: yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/

I ♥ Yoast

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Speed

image be Martin Heigan

What impacts site speed?Hosting

Number of files

CSS

JavaScript

images

Code quality

Number of plugins

Caching

Text

Caching

FASTER

image from http://www.wpbeginner.com/blueprint/w3-total-cache/

Caching plugins

WP Super Cache

Quick Cache / Zen Cache

Hyper Cache

W3 Total Cache

MinifyingReduces file sizes

Reduces number of files

Plugins

Autoptimize

W3 Total Cache

Better WordPress Minify

AssetsMinify

CDNs

Content Delivery Network

Comprehensive services: Cloudflare, MaxCDN

Easy image CDN: Photon in

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A quick note on mobile friendlygoogle.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

Guaranteed front page?All of this doesn’t guarantee you front page search results ☹

There are still the off-page factors to consider

Who links to you

What text they use to link with

Social shares

But it gives you a MUCH better chance

SUCCESSNOT GUARANTEED

Anything else I can do?

Webmaster Tools

Submit a sitemap

Monitor crawling problems

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Even more infomoz.com/learn/seo/on-page-factors

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SEO Table of Elementssearchengineland.com/seotable