wordpress seo basics

WordPress + SEOA story of unrequited love & Murder!

Tyron LoveJuly, 2016

SEO | 19th July 20162

Introduction:Howzit?


About Jellyfish

Jellyfish is a specialist digital agency that has successfully implemented engaging and performance focused marketing campaigns online since 1999.We are almost as old as Google!


JFUSBALTIMORE/NEW YORK

JFUKLONDON/REIGATE/BRIGHTON

JFAPIREP/TOKYO

JFSADURBAN

Established 1999

With 17 years experience

in digital marketing

300+ Staff based in six offices

Durban (SA), London (UK) Reigate (UK),

Brighton (UK), Baltimore (US) & Tokyo

We host industry leading events

Digital Journeys:

Digitaljourneys.jellyfish.co.za

Google Analytics Premium Authorised Reseller

Who we are


Selection of clients


What is SEO?

“Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web-page in a search engine's organic, un-paid search results.”

The greater the visibility of a website/web-page and the better it ranks for relevant keywords, the more likely it is to receive hits from users interested in its particular subject matter.


Why is SEO important

• 80% of all internet sessions begin or involve the users visiting a search engine. So enabling your

website to be more easily found through them has massive benefits

• In Africa Google receives approximately 93% of all search, with Yahoo (2.35%) and Bing (2.4%).

Globally these percentages change in Asia and Russia due to the large populations who use Baidu,

Yahoo or Yandex primarily

• Google records 40,000 searches per second, 2.4 million searches per minute and over 3.5 billion

searches per day

• 75% of users do not go past the first page of a search result

• Approximately 70% of users choose not to click on paid search results, opting for organic results

instead


Common SEO goals

• Increase traffic to website

• Grow visibility on SERPs

• Enhance rankings for relevant keywords

• Increase the volume of reporting keywords for a website

• Improve click-through rate from SERPs

• Reduce bounce rate

• Improve quality of traffic

• Expand upon brand exposure

• Increase leads and conversions via search

• Reach new markets or grow market share of a business

• What are your SEO goals?


SEO ranking factors

• Technical SEO• Content • Links• Building a shrine to Google sometimes works too

We’ll be diving into a bit of this later.

SEO| 19th July 201610

Unrequited Love


Google Loves WordPressFor years Google has loved up WordPress websites.


But, WordPress is a drunk + doesn’t love back!

• Default URL structure is poo

• Duplication, duplication, duplication, duplication, duplication,

duplication, duplication, duplication, duplication, duplication

• A lot of premium themes use too many bells & whistles (code bloat)

• WordPress’ various plugins allow for bad development practices

(visual builders)

• The various SEO plugins, if not set up correctly can have a negative

impact on rankings

Developing a WordPress website without SEO in mind from the

beginning will make future SEO efforts feel like…


SEO Foundation


What’s your businesses primary keyword?

What search term do you want your website to rank for when someone types it into Google’s search field?

• Keyword: beard oil• Gets on average 1000 estimated monthly searches


How’s your keyword performing?

Use Google Trends to get some insight into how your target keyword is performing.


Quick organic traffic estimation

Position 1: 1000 x 21 / 100 = 210Position 2: 1000 x 14 / 100 = 140Position 3: 1000 x 10 / 100 = 100


On-Site Optimisation


Using Yoast SEO Plugin

• Updates the .htaccess file

• Generates sitemaps

• Easy to learn

If not set up correctly the defaults:

• Cause duplication issues

• Can conflict with a themes SEO settings (duplicate titles etc.)

• Can mess up your .htaccess file

We need to understand on-site SEO fundamentals to use Yoast SEO plugin successfully.


Title, Description, H1 + URL slugs Ensure that your chosen primary keyword is included in your page title, description, H1 tag and URL.

If you are writing titles and descriptions for pages, then you should add your page’s keyword to the URL slug. Example: Page title: How to Grow a BeardURL slug: /how-to-grow-a-beard/


Basic Yoast SEO Plugin fiddling

• Remove meta keywords (turned off by default)• Noindex, follow - category pages if necessary• Noindex,follow - tag, archive and sub-pages (this is a must do)


Screenshots, yeah!


Image ALT attributes

An often overlooked, but very important aspect of SEO and usability:

• Ensure that all images have an ALT attribute (bit of text) that clearly explains what the image is.

<img url=“images/beard-oil-bottle.jpg” alt=“Beard oil” /> Poo!

<img url=“images/beard-oil-bottle.jpg” alt=“Bottle of beard oil” /> Unicorn poo!

• Why?


More on-site SEO bits & pieces…

• Internal linking is fun + will make people happy• Carefully choose your preferred domain variant

http://faceforestbeards.co.zahttp://www.faceforestbeards.co.zahttp://www.faceforestbeards.co.za/index.phphttps://faceforestbeards.co.zahttps://www.faceforestbeards.co.za

All of these domain variants are seen by Google as individual websites, resulting in 5 duplications of the same website… isn’t SEO fun?

Choose your preferred domain variant and 301 redirect the others to it.

http://faceforestbeards.co.za/

http://www.faceforestbeards.co.za/

http://www.faceforestbeards.co.za/index.php

https://faceforestbeards.co.za/

https://www.faceforestbeards.co.za/


Your best buddy, Google Search Console

Sign up for Google Search Console (aka webmaster tools)Add your sites to it so that it can monitor stuff for you, like:

• Manual penalties • Sitemap warnings• Page insights• Indexation insights• Preferred country indexation• Ranking pages• Ranking queries• And lots more!


Murder in the SERPs!


Beware of Black-Hat SEOA lot of the SEO I see being done in SA would be considered black-hat on a global level, including:

• DoFollow site-wide footer links• Paying for a DoFollow link• Building PBNs or buying PBN links• Parasite SEO (usually from Russia or China)• Keyword stuffing• Content spinning• Linking within your own network• Auto-submission software

In SA Google seems to not be paying much attention to our SERPs, so SEOs are getting away with manipulating Google… but for how long before the slaughter?

Client name | Project name | 00 Month 201228

Be gentle…

Questions?

Let’s chat: [email protected]

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