This was a presentation I gave at a joint meeting of the Fox Valley Drupal User Group and Fox Valley Computing Professionals Meetups. This was one of five talks given that night. The focus of the event was SEO, what options, tools and plugins are available for Drupal, Joomla and WordPress for better SEO.

2. Who Am I?
Mike Hale
WordPress & .Net Developer
President
Commencia
Founder
@TwibitzApp
My Blog
MikeHale.me
Twitter
@MikeHale
Google+
+MikeHale
Contributing Developer:

3. What I'll Cover
● WordPress Built-in SEO
● Theme & Framework SEO
● Free SEO Plugins
● Premium SEO Plugins
● Performance & Page Speed

4. What I Won't Cover
● SEO Basics
● General SEO Tips & Tricks
I will not make you this guy!
Assuming you know SEO best practices.
This is how to apply them in WordPress.

5. WordPress Built-in SEO
● Page Structure
● Permalinks
● Canonical URLs
● Internal Links

6. What Does Matt Cutts Say?
Matt Cutts - Google
Head of Webspam team
“WordPress takes care of 80-90%
of the mechanics of SEO.”
WordCamp SF 2009 (Still true today!)

7. Page Structure
● Post Title in <h1> tags
● Uses Title as HTML title by default
● Includes image alt & title tags

8. Permalinks
Use postname or category/postname
Edit url "slug" and include keywords

9. Canonical Links
General Settings:
These are different pages:
http://www.mikehale.me/5-podcast-mistakes
http://mikehale.me/5-podcast-mistakes
http://www.mikehale.me/5-podcast-mistakes/
http://www.mikehale.me/5-PODcast-Mistakes/
http://www.mikehale.me/5-podcast-mistakes/2
WordPress adds rel=canonical automatically
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mikehale.me/5-podcast-mistakes/" />

10. Internal Links
WordPress makes it easy to add internal links.

11. Theme & Framework SEO
● HTML Title & Meta Description
● Responsive Design
● Framework SEO Options
● Schema.org Microdata
Samples are from a theme built on the Genesis Framework.

12. HTML Title & Meta Description
WordPress uses Post Title as HTML Title
HTML Title & Meta Description used ifor SERP

13. Responsive Design
Serves the same HTML for one URL and uses
CSS media queries to determine how the
content is rendered on the client side.
This is Google's recommended configuration.

14. Framework SEO Options
Genesis Framework lets you:
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Set nofollow/noindex/noarchive per post/page.
Set a custom canonical page URL
Homepage HTML Title & Description
Add Google+ Authorship URL
Apply noindex/noarchive to Categories and Archives
(Tag, Author, Date, Search)
● Apply noarchive, noodp, noydir to site
● Add Breadcrumb navigation to your site

15. Schema.org Microdata
Lets you to enhance your site’s SEO and SERP results
through proper classification of the most important and
defining elements on your pages.

16. Free SEO Plugins
●
Google XML Sitemaps
● 301 Redirects
● WordPress SEO by Yoast

17. Google XML Sitemaps
● Creates sitemap.xml file
● Notifies Google & Bing of updates
● Set Frequency & Priority by type
● Specify excluded posts/categories

18. Simple 301 Redirects
A 301 (permanent) redirects to the new page, and points
the page to a new URL with minimal impact on search
rankings.
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Change to Permalinks structure
Migrate to a new domain
Edit post "slug"
"Expired" content

19. WordPress SEO by Yoast
● 7.8 MILLION Downloads
● Does everything Framework does & more
● Includes XML Sitemap
● Social Sharing & Open Graph Integration
● Edit robots.txt and .htaccess files
● A lot more!

21. WordPress SEO by Yoast - Page Analysis

22. Scribe Content Marketing
(Premium Plugin)
● Keyword Research
● Content Optimization
● Social Media Connections
● WordPress Plugin
● Web Version
● Scribe for MS Word
● Supports multiple Frameworks & SEO Plugins

26. Performance & Page Speed
● W3 Total Cache Plugin
● Content Delivery Network
● WP Smush.it Image Optimizer Plugin
● Use WordPress Managed Hosting!
(Formerly ZippyKid)

27. Links
General:
Genesis Framework
Building Smartphone-Optimized Websites
Schema.org
WordPress Optimization Tips for Performance & Speed
Plugins:
Google XML Sitemaps Plugin
Simple 301 Redirects
WordPress SEO by Yoast
Scribe Content Marketing Software
W3 Total Cache
WP Smush.it
Managed WordPress Hosting:
Synthesis
WP Engine
Pressable

28. Questions?