Beginner SEO for WordPress | Wordcamp Raleigh 2017

WordPress SEO

Presented by @tonyzeoli

Founder,@dswks

https://tonyzeoli.com

https://digitalstrategyworks.com

A Beginner’s Guide

WordCamp Raleigh 2017

https://tonyzeoli.com

WordPress SEO: A Beginner’s Guide

By Tony Zeoli | WordCamp Raleigh 2017

@tonyzeoli• Founder

Digital Strategy Works

@dswks

• Digital Strategy Coach

Mountain BizWorks

@mtnbizworks

• Co-organizer

WordPress Chapel Hill Meetup

@wordpresschill

• Focused on WordPress, Social

Media, SEO, Digital Strategy,

Content Marketing, Email Newsletter

Marketing, E-commerce, Analytics,

Content Management

• B.S. Digital Communications and

Media from NYU



Search Engine

Optimization



Organic Traffic

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the

process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,”

“editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines.

http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo



What is a search

engine?



example 1



example 2



example 3



example 4



example 5



example 6



example 7



example 8



example 9



example 10



Other Types

• business.com

• LinkedIn

• FindLaw

• LexisNexis

• Trulia / Zillow (Real

Estate)

• Craigs List

• Yelp / FourSquare

• Apple / Google Maps

• Kayak / Expedia

• hotels.com

• autos.com

http://hotels.com

http://autos.com



• With Google, Bing, etc., you are optimizing your own

website or blog to be found in search. You publish content

and Google crawls your site to index your site’s pages and

posts, as well as media content to return in search results.

• For “other” niche search engines, you input data into those

search engines, so people using those tools can return, for

example, all homes for sale in a specific locale (Trulia), all

hotels in a 20 mile radius of Raleigh (hotels.com), all flights

leaving from Raleigh at 2 pm today (Kayak), all restaurants

in downtown Raleigh (Yelp), all lawyers in Raleigh

(FindLaw), and all businesses in Raleigh (business.com)

• While Google may return intended results, niche search

portals provide extended information through UGC (user

generated content).

http://hotels.com

http://business.com



Search Engine Usage

• Overall, 6,586,013,574 search performed everyday

• In words, that’s six billion, five hundred and eighty

six million, thirteen thousand, five hundred and

seventy four!



Smart Insights

http://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-marketing/search-engine-statistics/

http://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-marketing/search-engine-statistics/



% Paid vs Organic

https://www.similarweb.com/corp/solution/ecommerce-industry/seo-ppc-marketing-report-2016/

https://www.similarweb.com/corp/solution/ecommerce-industry/seo-ppc-marketing-report-2016/



Why Google?

• 77.43% desktop

market share2

• 96.01% mobile

market share2

*March 2017

1. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/most-popular-websites-google-youtube-baidu/

2. https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4&qpcustomd=0

• The world’s most visited website1

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/most-popular-websites-google-youtube-baidu/

https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4&qpcustomd=0



How do search engines

work?

http://www.bitrebels.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/how-google-works-explanation-infographic.jpg

http://www.bitrebels.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/how-google-works-explanation-infographic.jpg



SERP



Search Result Types

https://www.link-assistant.com/news/serp-guide.html

https://www.link-assistant.com/news/serp-guide.html



Page Rank



PageRank Checker



PageRank is dead!

• Google removed PageRank from their toolbar feeds

in April 2016.

• PageRank spurned the link buying economy.

• Introduced “nofollow” so SEOs could have a way to

not pass link authority.

• You can no longer check your PageRank, however

you may see older page rank checkers render a

score.



Alternative Metrics

Tools• MOZ - https://moz.com

• SEM RUSH - https://semrush.com

• SCREAMING FROG -

https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

• MAJESTIC - https://majestic.com/

• SEO Power Suite from http://link-assistant.com

https://moz.com

https://semrush.com

https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

https://majestic.com/

http://link-assistant.com



MOZ Page Authority

(PA)

https://moz.com/learn/seo/page-authority

https://moz.com/learn/seo/page-authority



MOZ Domain Authority

(DA)

https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority

https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority





Google Analytics Dashboard

for WordPress



Google Search Console: Links

To Your Site



Google Search Console:

Search Analytics



WordPress SEO• Intention is to build page and domain authority resulting in page

rank through the implementation, optimization, and management

of:

• keyword/phrase optimization

• back links

• robots.txt & nofollow

• page speed optimization

• mobile responsive design

• SSL (secure socket layer encryption)



Getting Started

1.Set up a Google Analytics account:

https://google.com/analytics

2.Set up a Google Search Console account:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

3.Install All in One SEO Pack for WordPress SEO via

Plugins admin or download from WordPress.org

Plugin page: https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-

seo-pack/

https://google.com/analytics

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

http://WordPress.org

https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/



Find UA tracking

number



Add UA tracking

number

https://semperplugins.com/documentation/setting-up-google-analytics/

http://www.apple.com

https://semperplugins.com/documentation/setting-up-google-analytics/



Verify

• Register domain name with Google Search Console

• Click “Verify”

• Select “Google Analytics.” If you have GA set up

already with your UA code in AIOSEO, then you

should be able to verify instantly.

• Alternatively, use Google Meta to verify.



Google Meta

Copy value between “” marks



Alternative Verification

Paste value between “” marks in GWT field, then save.

Same for Bing and Pinterest



XML Sitemap• AIOSEO has a built in XML sitemap generator

• A sitemap is a list of all URLs you want Google and

other search engines to crawl. It makes it more

efficient for Google to find, crawl, and index your

site.

• Authenticates your site and let’s Google know you

exist.

• Generates sitemap with a click. Then, find your

sitemap at http:// or

https://mydomain.com/sitemap.xml

https://mydomain.com/sitemap.xml



Sitemap View



Add Sitemap to Search

Console



Bing Webmaster Tools

Note: To verify, Bing may require upload of html file to top level directory



Other Webmaster Tools• WordPress.com Help:

https://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/

• Pinterest:

https://semperplugins.com/documentation/pintere

st-site-verification/

• Baidu:

http://zhanzhang.baidu.com/?castk=LTE%3D (in

Chinese)

• Yandex: https://webmaster.yandex.com/

https://semperplugins.com/documentation/pinterest-site-verification/

http://zhanzhang.baidu.com/?castk=LTE%3D

https://webmaster.yandex.com/



News Sitemap



Video Sitemap

Available in All in One SEO Pack Pro



Image Sitemap

Coming Soon in All in One SEO Pack



Get free SSL Encryption



Ways to get free SSL• Google views SSL encryption as a minor ranking signal.

• Some hosts are now providing free SSL. WP Engine is one of them.

• LetsEncrypt.org

• Transfer DNS to cloudflare.com and site will be automatically SSL

enabled. Need to install WordPress Cloudflare plugin.

• Extended Validation (EV) SSL is not free. Visit VeriSign, Comodo, or

other providers. Adds company name next to the green lock icon in

the browser URL bar:

• In Google Webmaster Tools you want to add both http and https

URLs and Sitemaps, so if someone types in either, your site is tracked

with both methods.

http://LetsEncrypt.org

http://cloudflare.com

https://wordpress.org/plugins/cloudflare/



Set WordPress

Permalinks



Edit Post Permalink



Page Speed

Optimization

• Google Page Speed Insights

• YSlow

• GT Metrix



GPSI Report



Page Speed

Optimization• Optimize server response time by tuning Apache or leveraging NGINX

on the server.

• Cache your site pages and media either with Amazon Cloudfront and a

caching plugin (Total Cache or Super Cache) or your hosts caching

service. WP Engine comes with object caching and you can upgrade for

media caching.

• Compress all images using WP Smush, EWWW Image Optimizer

• Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (remove whitespace)

• Above the Fold Optimization

• Fix Render Blocking javascript issues

• Leverage Browser cache expiry



Above The Fold

Optimization



Autoptimize



Warning

• Don’t implement Autoptimize or Above The Fold

Optimization on a LIVE site.

• Work in staging, optimize, check in a browser

testing tool, then launch when all is well.



On Page SEO

• Deep, rich, relevant, contextual content (1,000 to 2,000 words)

• Concise keyword optimization:

• Title

• Post Content

• Media (Images, Video, PDF, MP3…)

• Permalink

• Category

• Tags



If you do nothing…

• Google will pull your H1 Title as the primary title.

• Google will pull the first few lines of your page

content as the description

• This is obviously not optimized for search, which is

why you would use an SEO plugin like All in One

SEO Pack or others to construct optimized titles

and descriptions for post/page content.



Robots.txt



http://searchengineland.com/infographic-nofollow-tag-172157

• The nofollow tag is a

way publishers can

tell search engines

not to count some of

their links to other

pages as “votes” in

favor of that content.

Why would publishers

need to block such

votes? Doing so can

help them avoid

problems with search

engines believing they

are selling influence

or are somehow

involved in schemes

deemed as

unacceptable SEO

practices.

Nofollow

http://searchengineland.com/infographic-nofollow-tag-172157



Accelerated Mobile Pages

(AMP)



WordPress AMP Plugin



AMP for WP



schema.org

• For Local SEO

• Supported by All in One SEO Pack

• Hours of Operation, Reviews, Show Times,

Playlists, etc…

• Google will not publish star reviews against your

home page - will only publish them on an inside

landing page.

http://schema.org



WP Review



All in One SEO Pack

Demonstration



Questions?