DESIGNB!""#rWordPress SEO, The Absolute Basics

Christopher Smith | August 21, 2013

This Will Be High Level

(902 feet high to be exact)

Three Four Things To Worry About

Base InstallationThemesPluginsContent

Start At The BeginningIf WordPress is running your entire site, install at the root of the domain. If your host doesn’t allow this, find a new one!

Good: http://www.mysite.com/

Bad: http://www.mysite.com/wordpress/

To WWW Or Not WWW?On a new site, it doesn’t really matter.

If you have an existing site, find out which one is more authoritative using Open Site Explorer, and stick with that.

We don’t want this if we can help it.

PermalinksPreferred:

/%postname%//%category%/%postname%/

Example:http://www.mysite.com/heres-a-post/

http://www.mysite.com/awesome-stuff/heres-a-post/

Permalinks (continued)Tags And Categories

This will help prevent redirect issues, should you accidentally name a page and category with the same.

ReadingCheck this box while you’re building the site, but don’t forget to uncheck it when you launch!

ThemesI prefer the StudioPress Genesis Framework. It has good built-in SEO capabilities, and plays nicely with the major SEO plugins.

Also good:ThesisHeadwayTheme Hybrid

Building your own from scratch? Use the Web Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet.

PluginsThere are several good ones out there:

All In One SEOSEOPressorYoast’s WordPress SEOHeadSpace

If you like what you’ve got now, consider sticking with it and becoming an expert with it. Any plugin can be improved upon!

WordPress SEOI prefer the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin.

1. It has a ton of built-in functionality: sitemaps, OpenGraph, Authorship markup, page analysis, etc.

2. There are plugins to extend it for Video SEO, Local SEO, News SEO, and WooCommerce SEO.

3. Quick updates and bug fixes.

WordPress SEOPosts Titles and Meta

WordPress SEOPages Titles and Meta

WordPress SEOCategories and Tags Titles and Meta

Leaving this unchecked can cause duplicate content issues!

WordPress SEOAuthor Titles and Meta

If you have a single-author blog, DISABLE the author archives.

WordPress SEODate Archive Titles and Meta

Disable date-based archives; it’s a huge duplicate content issue!

ContentEach post or page is should have a central theme or idea.

If you can’t sum it up in one sentence, it might be better off as multiple posts or pages.

Use tools like UberSuggest or the AdWords Keyword Tool for topical inspiration.

ContentUse the Yoast built-in tools to assist in search optimization once you’ve got a draft of your content.

(demo)

Even More Confused?Go back to the basics!

Here are some excellent sources to learn SEO from:

Google SEO Starter Guide (pdf)Moz’s Beginner’s Guide To SEOYoast’s WordPress SEO - The Definitive Guide

ToolsYoast’s WordPress SEOOpen Site ExplorerUberSuggestAdWords Keyword Tool

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