WordCamp Detroit 2012 Resources

First, if you found your way here, thanks for attending my session at WordCamp Detroit 2012!  If you’d like to talk SEO, need help with something or just want to drop a line, feel free to reach me through the social links above, or on my contact page. Also, thank you for not laughing at the fact my fly was down the whole time (I’m writing this beforehand; just planning ahead). Below, you’ll find some excellent resources and further reading to expand on what I presented.First, you can find the original presentation at Getting Found: Optimizing Your WordPress Site For Search.

Bonus Reading:

WordPress SEO: The Definitive Guide to Higher Rankings for WordPress Sites – This was updated just 3 days before the Detroit presentation and EXTREMELY in-depth. Seriously, if you were interested enough to attend my session, read this.

SEO Copywriting Made Simple – Excellent write up from the folks at Copyblogger on writing compelling copy while also driving organic traffic.

Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide – Get it straight from the horse’s mouth; learn the best practices of SEO. Or, check out SEOmoz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO.

Learn SEO section of SEOmoz’s resource section. Honestly, they put together quality stuff. Any one of those is a great read.

Next, I’ll provide an outline of the presentation, along with all links to the plugins I showed.

Value of SEO

• Technically free
• Extremely qualified leads
• Completely trackable
• You don’t need a huge budget to find success

Redirects

• 301 Redirects – Permanent; direct all relevance to the new location
• 302 Redirects – Temporary; do not direct any relevance, anywhere
• Redirecting Pages
  • If you are moving an entire site to WordPress, run a crawl of your current site for a full list of pages. Personal preference is Xenu’s Link Sleuth
  • Map out old URLs to new URLs in a spreadsheet
  • Download a redirect plugin such as Simple 301 Redirects or Redirection

Keyword Research

• Look for keywords that are high in traffic, low in competition, relevant to your offering
• Tools
  • Google AdWords Keyword Tool
  • Google Trends
  • Bing Ads Intelligence
  • SEOmoz

On-page Optimization

• MUST HAVE: WordPress SEO by Yoast
• Title tags
  • Grabs attention, draws clicks
  • 70 characters max
  • Primary keywords included as near to the front as possible
  • If you have a strong brand, include it at the end
• Description tags
  • 156 characters max
  • Include keywords so your description is shown and keywords are bolded in SERPs
  • Should be a mini sales pitch
  • Doesn’t directly improve rankings but helps CTR, which in turn can help rankings
  • Should answer these questions for a searcher: How are you relevant for my search? What can you do for me? What should I do?
• URL Structure
  • Should be relatively short, use a good structure (user friendly), contain keywords
  • Go to Settings > Permalinks and select “Post Name”
• Headings
  • Organize content with headings and subheadings, similar to an outline
  • Only use one <h1> per page
• Copy
  • WRITE WITH THE USER IN MIND, NOT A SEARCH ENGINE
  • Include occurrences of keyword and longtail keywords but try not to get caught up in keyword density
  • Continuously provide quality, fresh, unique content
• Images
  • Always write ALT tags
  • Include keyword in both ALT tag and filename
  • Use SEO Friendly Images

Sitemaps

• XML Sitemaps
  • Intended solely for search engines
  • They are essentially a full list of all the URLs on your site you want indexed
  • WordPress SEO by Yoast handles this as well
• HTML Sitemaps
  • Beneficial for both users and engines, typically linked to in the footer
  • Provide users with a full hierarchy of pages, while also bringing “deep” pages up to be just 2 clicks from the homepage, which is an SEO benefit
  • Simple Sitemap works well for this

Google & Bing Webmaster Tools

• Free and extremely valuable
• Once your site is verified in both Google and Bing
  • Submit your XML sitemap
  • Set your preferred domain (www. vs. non-www.)
  • Make it a habit to check back for crawl errors and HTML improvements
• Again, WordPress SEO by Yoast makes this easy

What NOT To Do

• Focus on rankings
• Ignore analytics
• Ronco Rotisserie (“Set it and forget it”)
• Try to “game” search engines
• Ignore the user
• Look for “quick wins”