WordPress SEO Success

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WordPress SEO Success Digital Marketing for Business 2015 Jake Aull | ZenFires Digital Marketing | SEO & Websites | Social Media & Branding 404.259.5550 | ZenFires.com | [email protected] | @jakeaull

Transcript of WordPress SEO Success

WordPress SEO Success

Digital Marketing for Business 2015

Jake Aull | ZenFires Digital Marketing | SEO & Websites | Social Media & Branding

404.259.5550 | ZenFires.com | [email protected] | @jakeaull

Search Engine Optimization for Your WordPress Website or Blog

Find the following presentation & others referenced here on www.slideshare.net/jakeaull

Jake Aull has written WordPress SEO Success for Pearson Prentice-Hall – their first book of its kind (http://bit.ly/1fxIQzu). He has also been GSU’s first Social Media Marketing and SEO course writer and instructor since 2010, directing students to create new social channels driving measurable traffic to major brands. He was a reviewer of, and wrote the instructor’s manual for, Pearson-Prentice Hall’s first social media marketing text book.

Contents I.  What is SEO?

II.  Do I really need SEO?

I.  15 WordPress SEO Success principles

III.  The Stages of SEO

IV.  WordPress, SEO tools & plugins

I.  Is WordPress better or worse for SEO?

II.  SEO plugins

V.  SEO & content

I.  Research & audits

II.  Keywords & strategy

III.  SEO strategy

VI.  SEO architecture

I.  Social media integration

II.  SEO checklist

VII.  Analytics

I.  JetPack & plugins

II.  Google Analytics

VIII.  Mobile & Local

I.  Mobile search engine submission

II.  Local channels

III.  Reviews ````````

I. What is SEO…

•  SEO (search engine optimization) is “making your business come up in Google” (& other search engines – organically)

•  What does that mean?

•  Consumers are looking for something - they need something

- a solution to a problem.

•  How do they attempt to solve it? With info - by going to Google - or Bing - or Yahoo.

•  They enter their search terms - their question - their problem.

Sample SERP (search engine results page)

II. Do I Really Need SEO?

Jake Aull | Zen Fires Digital Marketing | SEO & Websites | Social Media & Branding

404.259.5550 | ZenFires.com | [email protected] | @jakeaull

"   Goals? "   SEO "   Marketing/digital "   Content/social

"   Strategy "   Tactical

implementations "   Content channels

integrations

"   Analytics "   Proving goals results

II. Do I Really Need SEO? Driving Questions

"   Nature of WordPress site " Brochureware

" eCommerce

"   Blog/magazine

"   Forum/social site

"   Mobile "   **(Note: Plenty more website types in the book WordPress SEO Success)

Driving Questions

1)  Identify your objectives: Awareness? Sales leads?

2)  Do more for SEO via your digital footprint architecture

3)  SEO is complex enough – keep it simple.

4)  Search Engines like SMEs (“the little guy”).

5)  There are no guarantees in SEO, & #1 takes time.

6)  Social media & reputation management are critical.

7)  Start deep & progress broad (from niche long-tail keywords to short-tail).

8)  Content is king (but no duplication!).

9)  Traditional meta-tags don’t work.

10)  Write for readers not search engines.

11)  The search engines tell you everything you need to know (e.g., keyword research & support docs).

12)  SEO is independent, but must work with other channels also.

13)  Canonicalization is critical.

14)  WordPress evolves. So should you – update themes & plugins.

15)  You have the ability to make the search engines your friends – or enemies. This is within your control.

II. Do I Really Need SEO? 15 Success Principles

III. The Stages of SEO

Jake Aull | Zen Fires Digital Marketing | SEO & Websites | Social Media & Branding

404.259.5550 | ZenFires.com | [email protected] | @jakeaull

"   Strategy & Discovery "   Keyword Analysis & discovery "   Marketing strategic alignment "   SEO plan "   Keyword/copywriting plan

"   Implementation & Programming "   Coding keywords & tags " Robot.txt file "   Search engine integrations "   Analytics integrations & auto-reporting "   Geo-local integrations "   Google Images, video, etc.

III. The Stages of SEO

"   Off-site Activities "   Local directories set-up

"   Submission to social sites & social search engines

"   Articles & PR publishing

"   Obtaining links

"   Ongoing Maintainance "   SEO new content

"   Reviewing analytics

The Stages of SEO III.

Digital Marketing & SEO Objectives

Jake Aull | Zen Fires Digital Marketing | SEO & Websites | Social Media & Branding

404.259.5550 | ZenFires.com | [email protected] | @jakeaull

-  Page rank

-  Top/first page results goals

-  PPC and first-page real estate

-  Competitive

-  Suppress bad reviews

-  Local SEO

-  First-time search or new site

-  Social Media Optimization

SEO (& PPC) Objectives

IV. WordPress SEO Plugins

Jake Aull | Zen Fires Digital Marketing | SEO & Websites | Social Media & Branding

404.259.5550 | ZenFires.com | [email protected] | @jakeaull

-  Plugins

-  Updates

-  SEO-friendly templates

-  SEO-friendly integrations

Is WordPress Better or Worse for SEO?

1.  Objective? Are you experimenting or completing a site?

2.  Know the specific functionality you seek.

3.  Look at stars & reviews & quantity of those.

4.  Is the plugin new or old?

5.  How frequently has it been updated?

6.  Don’t add a plugin if you already can achieve that with an existing plugin.

7.  Is a plugin really necessary? (Could you do it easily manually?)

8.  Install plugins only one at a time, keep a log of what was installed when.

9.  QA the site after plugin installs.

IV. Choosing Plugins

-  Yoast WordPress SEO

-  All-in-One SEO

-  SEO Ultimate

-  SEO Pressor

IV. WordPress & SEO Plugins

-  Akismet

-  Pinterest

-  Simple 301 Redirects

-  JetPack

V. Keyword Research & SEO Strategy

Jake Aull | Zen Fires Digital Marketing | SEO & Websites | Social Media & Branding

404.259.5550 | ZenFires.com | [email protected] | @jakeaull

"   Technology: "   Google AdWords Keyword Research Tool (best data)

"   Bing Webmaster Tools

"   Other keyword/SEO research tools such as SEMrush (good spy data) and KeywordSpy (easy, but less accurate data)

"   Competitive analysis/keywords "   Competitors

"   Industry thought-leaders/bloggers

"   Comparable industry digital marketing leaders

"   Organic, PPC and social

Keyword Research Inputs

"   Your website historical analytics "   Past organic keywords "   Favorite pages of your site "   Blog categories/tags

"   Your past PPC performance "   (even if flawed)

"   Your social media top clicks/likes/shares

Keyword Research Inputs

Google Keyword Research _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

V. Content Strategy & SEO Process

Jake Aull | Zen Fires Digital Marketing | SEO & Websites | Social Media & Branding

404.259.5550 | ZenFires.com | [email protected] | @jakeaull

The importance of good Keyword drivers

•  Good copywriting is vital – and can be used in conjunction with good keywords! •  Copywriting can be built on primary keywords for a page/post. •  Find the junction of readability, SEO, copy hooks and website

usability

•  Link bait: •  Good writing intrigues readers

to read on and share your link

•  CTAs: •  You need good calls-to-action –

ensure your reader takes the next step and links to where you drive them!* *(for more see the aforementioned webinar)

"   Web page titles and relevant copy (semantic content) "   You can search for your blog phrase in search engine…

"   Web writing with keywords "   Writing for audience or writing for search engines? "   Tone and positiveness "   No stealth blogging

"   Clickstream and customer journey "   Why Blog?

"   “Blogging” for both search engines and purchase decisions "   Social media content and relevance†

†(for more on this, see my WordCamp Atlanta 2014 presentation on Social Media Uses for WordPress Sites)

Writing & Keywords

SEO Web Page Plan

Strategic content managers

•  The emphasis on content, and link, quality has helped drive the new generation of “content managers.”

•  Whether using social media, copywriting, video or SEO technology, content to meet digital marketing goals is the strategy.

•  And today, it’s a strategy more of quality than quantity – for Google and for social media engagement.

•  So today we want “link engagement;” backlinks from social engagement strategies, relevant content and referral sites – everything we’ve discussed here.† †(for more on this, see my WordCamp Atlanta 2014 presentation on Social Media Uses for WordPress Sites)

VI. SEO & Site Architecture

WordCamp Raleigh 2014

Jake Aull | ZenFires Digital Marketing | SEO & Websites | Social Media & Branding

404.259.5550 | ZenFires.com | [email protected] | @jakeaull

SEO  Sitemap  guide  for  20-­‐25pg  website   Home  

        |                                  

|       |   |   |   |   |   |  

main  naviga,on   Floor  Services   Success  Stories   Who  We  Serve   About  Acme  Floor   Floorwork  Photos   Contact   News  &  Blog  

|   |   |   |   |   |   |  

Hardwood   Floor  Case  Studies   Commercial  Floors   Hardwood Experts Hardwood Photos Direc,ons   Press  

|   |   |   |   |   |  

Home  Carpet   Tes,monials   Home  Flooring   Carpet Experts Carpet Images Decor  Blog  

|   |   |   |  

Office  Floors   Decor  Partners   Mission/vision Business Floors

(footer  menu):   Home  

-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐

-­‐-­‐   Legal?  

LEGEND:                                      

    Box  item    =  menu/sub  menu  item  

   

    Do.ed  box    =  possible,  future  menu  item?  

   

    Green  &/or  italic  text    =  Descripter  text  not  going  on  website  

   

   

Site architecture planning

•  Plan your website upfront for keyword-driven pages

•  The power of the Footer navigation

•  Linking throughout the site: •  It sounds cumbersome, but plan links through every

page and blog post of your site if possible. When you write up your sitemap, plan which pages you want to link to the next, and so on and so on.

•  Link planning doesn’t require a long list of links on your website’s pages! •  Target a primary link (maybe 2 or 3)

to show, and push web users continually through your site.

Site architecture planning

•  Blog/news: •  This can especially work for the

blog section of your site – you can continually link to/from those posts to distribute link juice.

•  Mobile sites •  Nav/architecture

•  Most important content (keyword-focused)

"   Link Building: "   Quality and relevance over quantity "   Press release/white paper placement "   Local SEO "   (Never buy links!!!

And note that too much, or bad, link building will hurt you! Be careful)

"   Brand-side SEO simplified "   Copywriters who know your industry best "   Keyword evaluation "   Monitoring "   Sharing/link building

Off-Site Links & Brand-Owned

"   Inbound web links (a.k.a. backlinks and referrals) are helpful. Here's why: "   They increase paths to the target – more ways and places

for visitors to find the site.

"   They create alternative entry paths for crawlers to specific web pages (even when the target site is not optimized for search engines).

"   Good ones do help search rankings.

Inbound & Social Links for SEO

"   Inbound links represent a solid, alternative (to in-site) web metric. They gauge the content value and referral traffic of a site in the online marketplace (especially valuable if there are issues with existing in-site SEO or analytics).

"   They also can be alternate drivers to lead-gen pages.

"   They get shared among web users and multiplicity of network effects occurs.

Inbound & Social Links for SEO

Relational Relevant Links

•  What Google looks for: •  Do the sites and links relate

to each other?

•  Are the directories relevant?

•  Vertical (industry nice) vs. locational relevance •  Local channels are very beneficial. •  Even if you are an eCommerce, if you have a location

I would still consider optimizing location-based profiles. Because Google loves Google+Local. And Bing loves Bing Local and Yahoo!Local.

•  And have you ever searched for any businesses or products, only to see Yelp and YP listings on first page of results? They’re there – use them if you can.

VII. Analytics

Jake Aull | Zen Fires Digital Marketing | SEO & Websites | Social Media & Branding

404.259.5550 | ZenFires.com | [email protected] | @jakeaull

"   Analytics: #1 = you win? "   Site Integrations & Submissions: "   Search engine submissions and verifications (Google, Bing, Yahoo!) "   Additional search engine tools implementations (e.g., Google

Webmaster tools, Google Analytics)

"   Analytics: "   KPI plan integration "   Keyword monitoring

set-up (e.g., Google Alerts, SocialMention)

"   Google analytics set-up " Website auto reports

set-up

Analytics Implementations

Sample SEO Analytics _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

SEO Lead-Gen Funnel Analytics

VIII. Mobile & Local

Jake Aull | Zen Fires Digital Marketing | SEO & Websites | Social Media & Branding

404.259.5550 | ZenFires.com | [email protected] | @jakeaull

Local SEO/directory search channel _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mobile SEO

•  Highly important

•  Over 50% of web use

•  Google wants to crawl a responsive site

•  Hurts you if you don’t have one

•  You can submit a mobile site for indexing in Google Webmaster Tools

Review

Jake Aull | Zen Fires Digital Marketing | SEO & Websites | Social Media & Branding

404.259.5550 | ZenFires.com | [email protected] | @jakeaull

Review I.  What is SEO?

II.  Do I really need SEO?

I.  15 WordPress SEO Success principles

III.  The Stages of SEO

IV.  WordPress, SEO tools & plugins

I.  Is WordPress better or worse for SEO?

II.  SEO plugins

V.  SEO & content

I.  Research & audits

II.  Keywords & strategy

III.  SEO strategy

VI.  SEO architecture

I.  Social media integration

II.  SEO checklist

VII.  Analytics

I.  JetPack & plugins

II.  Google Analytics

VIII.  Mobile & Local

I.  Mobile search engine submission

II.  Local channels

III.  Reviews ````````

Questions? Find this presentation & others referenced here on www.slideshare.net/jakeaull

Jake Aull, Principal of Zen Fires Digital Marketing since 2010, has 20 years marketing, branding and digital experience in Atlanta. He takes a strategic digital marketing and usability approach to web analysis and search marketing. He has a Masters of Science degree in Marketing from Georgia State University where he did a thesis research project on social media marketing.

Jake has written WordPress SEO Success for Pearson Prentice-Hall - their first book of its kind (http://bit.ly/1fxIQzu). He has also been GSU’s first Social Media Marketing and SEO course writer and instructor since 2010, directing students to create new social channels driving measurable traffic to major brands. He was a reviewer of, and wrote the instructor’s manual for, Pearson-Prentice Hall’s first social media marketing text book.

Thank You!

Jake Aull | Zen Fires Digital Marketing | SEO & Websites | Social Media & Branding

404.259.5550 | ZenFires.com | [email protected] | @jakeaull