Standing room only blog SEO session at BlogHer 2016 - essential WordPress optimization tricks Stephan Spencer

1. LINDSAY
VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN
SPENCER
@sspencer
SEO: Get Your Content
Discovered in Search

2. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Stephan Spencer
SEO expert/author/speaker
www.stephanspencer.com
Twitter: @sspencer

3. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Lindsay Valdez
SEO Manager at SheKnows Media:
SheKnows.com
StyleCaster.com
BlogHer.com
HelloFlo.com
Twitter: @lindeccav

4. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
SEO: So simple even a child can do it!
Bio slide
My daughter, blogger
& SEO. $5-30/day
passive income.
Started when she
was 14.

5. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
THE PROCESS
• Pick the “right” keywords
• Make your pages ”sing”
• Increase your authority
• Track & measure

6. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer

7. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
PICK THE “RIGHT”
KEYWORDS
• Brainstorming with Soovle
• Keyword research with the Google
AdWords Keyword Planner and Moz
Keyword Explorer
• Competitive intelligence with SEMrush or
SearchMetrics

8. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Soovle

9. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Google Keyword Planner

10. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Moz Keyword Explorer

11. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
SEMrush

12. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
MAKE YOUR PAGES “SING”
• Relevance vs. Importance
• Title tags
• Body copy
• Meta descriptions (not a rankings signal)
• Keyword prominence (NOT keyword density)
• Freshness
• Content clusters
• Google Answer Box

13. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
REFRESH
CONTENT
Refreshing old articles that
performed well in the past,
should be a part of your
overall SEO strategy. Make
sure you’re aware of what
topics and posts perform the
best for your website.
• Avoid updating the article
date unless you have
actually made changes to
the article
• Refresh your content every
few months or as you start
to see traffic decrease

14. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
ADDING
EVERGREEN
OPPORTUNITY
One proven content strategy is to look for
evergreen opportunity from trending
headlines.
Article examples from the following
headlines:
1. Tips for dealing with depression
2. How to help anxiety
3. Celebs who’ve launched beauty lines
4. Dealing with OCD
5. How to help someone dealing with
addiction
6. How to take a selfie
Then link them together for a longer,
more valuable user experience!!

15. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
C O N T E N T C L U S T E R S
Usually a mix of text articles,
videos, images, and
inforgraphs, each on the
same topic, but with different
angles.
W H AT I S T H E
B E N E F I T ?
The potential to increase user
engagement: If you can get a
user into the site with the
interest on the cluster topics,
and then interlink these
content pieces together,
there is the opportunity to
increase both pages per
session as well as time on
site.

16. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
G O O G L E A N S W E R B O X
Google began to surface the
answer box in 2013.
H O W D O W E G E T I N ?
• Content should address the
answer of who, what, where,
when and how & the higher on
the page, the better
• Google extracts answers from
sites ranking on the first page
• The majority of content that
gets used in Google Answer
Box has 1-1,000 words
#0

17. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
INCREASE YOUR AUTHORITY
• Analyze links using Majestic.com, Moz
Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs.com,
LinkResearchTools.com
• Know your numbers (Page Authority,
Domain Authority, Citation Flow, Trust
Flow, etc.)
• Triage your links with Link Detox
• Be ”remarkable”

18. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Majestic

19. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Open Site Explorer

20. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Ahrefs

21. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Link Research Tools

22. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Link Detox

23. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
TRACK & MEASURE
• Rankings with RankRanger or AuthorityLabs
• Crawlability with Screaming Frog (<500 URLs=free)
• What Googlebot is up to (Search Console)
• Page speed (PageSpeed Insights)
• Mobile-friendliness (Google mobile friendly test)

24. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
RankRanger

25. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
RankRanger

26. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
RankRanger

27. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
RankRanger

28. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
RankRanger

29. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
RankRanger

30. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
RankRanger

31. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
RankRanger

32. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Authority Labs

33. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Authority Labs

34. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
SearchMetrics

35. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Screaming Frog

36. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Google Search Console

37. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Chrome Developer Tools (Check load times)

38. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Google PageSpeed Insights

39. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Google Mobile-Friendly Test

40. T E C H & T O O L S
SEO: get your content discovered in search
LINDSAY VALDEZ
@lindeccaV
STEPHAN SPENCER
@sspencer
Chrome Developer Tools (Emulate devices)