WordPress SEO for Beginners: WordCamp Raleigh 2019

SEO for Beginners
Presented by @tonyzeoli
WordCamp Raleigh 2019

SEO for Beginners | WordCamp Raleigh 2019
Introduction
• Founder, Digital Strategy Works
digitalstrategyworks.com
@dswks
• WordPress Coach | Trainer
TonyZeoli.com
@tonyzeoli
• WordPress for Small Business (FB Page and Group
https://facebook.com/wpsmallbiz
• WordPress since 2005
https://profiles.wordpress.org/tonyzeoli/
• Focus is on WordPress, Social Media, SEO, Digital
Strategy, Content Marketing, Email Newsletter Marketing,
E-commerce, Analytics, and Content Management.
• B.S. Digital Communications and Media from NYU
@tonyzeoli

Goals
• Acquire new SEO knowledge
• Grow your SEO skill level
• Learn 10+ SEO tools and techniques
• Speak to SEO in a more informed way
• Able to implement 5 actions to enhance/improve
your SEO

Areas of Focus
1. Understanding Search Engines
2. Search Engine Optimization
3. Measurement
4. Onsite, Back Links, Technical SEO
5. All in One SEO Pack Demonstration

Section 1
Understanding Search Engines

What is a search engine?

A Search Engine…
Returns the most valuable information in the search query with
information that is:
• Timely
• Relevant
• Informative
• Fast
• Accessible
• Secure

Google Bing
DuckDuckGo
Yahoo!
AOL ASK
LYCOS EXCITE YouTube

• All homes for sale in a
specific locale (Trulia)
• All hotels in a 20 mile radius
of Raleigh (hotels.com)
• All flights leaving from
Raleigh at 2 pm today
(Kayak)
• All restaurants in downtown
Raleigh (Yelp)
• All lawyers in Raleigh
(FindLaw)
• All businesses in Raleigh
(business.com)
• Map Apps (Waze, Google
Maps, Apple Maps)
• All employees who work for
Company X (LinkedIn)
• Videos (YouTube)
Niche Search Engines

BAIDUYANDEX
Russia & China

Search Plugin

How do search engines work?
http://www.bitrebels.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/how-google-works-explanation-infographic.jpg

• Optimize website or blog to be found in search and publish content
• Google crawls your site, indexes pages, posts, products, media, meta
data, schema markup
• Google looks for links within your site or high quality back links to your
site
• Google ranks your domain and page authority
• Google may return intended results, niche search portals provide
extended information through UGC (user generated content)
Ranking Process

Search Engine Market Share
http://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-marketing/search-engine-statistics/
Who has the biggest search engine market share worldwide?
According to Net Market Share the global marketing share percentage, in terms of the
use of Search Engines heavily favored Google throughout 2017 - averaging a net share
of 74.54%. This again reinforces the fact that Google is the market leader, however, it
also highlights that the "Others" such as Yahoo, Bing and Baidu etc still hold a large
audience and it would be silly to simply ignore them (averaging between 5-10% market
share).

Searches Per Day
2012
2018
https://ardorseo.com/blog/how-many-google-searches-per-day-2018/

SERP

Visual Guide to GSR Types
https://www.link-assistant.com/news/serp-guide.html

Exercise
• Restaurants
• News
• Film Listings
• How To
• Places
• Addresses
• Keywords
Review Various Types of Search Results

Section 2
Search Engine Optimization

Definition

Why SEO?
7 Reasons Why Your Business Should Invest in SEO, Olenski, Steve; Mar 26, 2014 forbes.com,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2014/03/26/7-reasons-why-your-business-should-invest-in-seo/
• It still works
• It’s not going to stop working anytime soon
• It’s cost effective against other forms of Internet marketing
• Search engines are grabbing more market share
• Mobile and Local Search Optimization
• Not having a healthy content profile is damaging
• Your competitors are doing it

Case Study:
Webster University
• Passive
• Subliminal
• Expensive to Replicate
• Highly Competitive
Traditional Marketing

Traditional Marketing

SEM & PPC
• Passive
• Subliminal
• Expensive per 1K Impressions or CTR (click-through rates)
• Complex to create, build, and manage across multiple social
networks and Search Engines
• Control where appear

Examples
Ad Banners
Social Media SEM

Search Engine Results Page
(SERP)

Competitive Keyword Results!

Organic Traffic
…the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or
“natural” search results on search engines.
http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo

Cost / Benefit
• Active - user is looking for an answer to a question
• One cost of on site optimization vs. design,
production, ad budgets, distribution, control, etc.
• Text-based marketing makes it easier create and
manage
• Free tools help defray costs
• Can do yourself with education and elbow grease!

% Paid vs Organic
https://sparktoro.com/blog/seo-opportunity-growing-shrinking/
• Organic search volume had declined somewhat with Google’s
new AdWords positioning and other changes to SERP pages
• Still gets 20x clicks over PPC

Section 3
Measurement

Page Rank

Page Rank Checker

Page Rank is dead!
• Google removed Page Rank from their toolbar
feeds in April 2016.
• Page Rank spurned the link buying economy.
• Introduced “nofollow” so SEOs could have a way to
not pass link authority.
• You can no longer check your Page Rank, however
you may see older page rank checkers render a
score.

Alternative Metrics Tools
• MOZ - https://moz.com
• SEM RUSH - https://semrush.com
• SCREAMING FROG -
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
• MAJESTIC - https://majestic.com/
• SEO Power Suite from http://link-assistant.com

MOZ Page Authority (PA)
https://moz.com/learn/seo/page-authority

MOZ Domain Authority
(DA)
https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority

Google Analytics Dashboard
for WordPress

Google Search Console

Google Analytics

Google Analytics
Search Console Integration

Section 4
Onsite and Technical SEO

Exercise
• Competitor Research
• Google results
• Ubersuggest
• Common Sense!
• 5 min
Identify keywords for your campaign

WordPress SEO
• keyword/phrase
optimization
• back links
• robots.txt & nofollow
• page speed optimization
• mobile responsive design
• SSL (secure socket layer
encryption)
Intention is to build page and domain authority
resulting in page rank through the implementation,
optimization, and management of:

On Page SEO
• Deep, rich, relevant, contextual content (1,000 to 2,000 words)
• Concise keyword optimization:
• Title
• Post Content
• Media (Images, Video, PDF, MP3…)
• Permalink
• Category
• Tags
• Breadcrumbs

If you do nothing…
• Google will pull your H1 Title as the primary title.
• Google will pull the first few lines of your page
content as the description
• This is obviously not optimized for search, which is
why you would use an SEO plugin like All in One
SEO Pack or others to construct optimized titles
and descriptions for post/page content.

Backlinks
• Publish “Skyscraper” Content (Lists, ex: 186 plugins that do this…)
• Become a Source For Reporters and Bloggers (HARO)
• Build Links From Outdated Resources
• Stop Guessing. Use Content Formats PROVEN To Generate Links and Social Shares
• Want High Quality Backlinks? Publish Ultimate Guides
• Use Branded Strategies and Techniques
• Authority Resource Pages
• Bonus Strategy #1: Turn Brand Mentions Into Quality Backlinks
• Bonus Strategy #2: Send “Feeler” Emails
https://backlinko.com/high-quality-backlinks#skyscrapercontent

Exercise
• Directories
• Blogs
• Partners
• Community
• Industry
Create a 5 site, organic backlink strategy (no PAID LINKS)

Robots.txt

http://searchengineland.com/infographic-nofollow-tag-172157
• The nofollow tag is a
way publishers can tell
search engines not to
count some of their
links to other pages as
“votes” in favor of that
content. Why would
publishers need to
block such votes?
Doing so can help
them avoid problems
with search engines
believing they are
selling influence or are
somehow involved in
schemes deemed as
unacceptable SEO
practices.
Nofollow

Getting Started
1.Set up Google Analytics account:
https://google.com/analytics
2.Set up Google Search Console account:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
3.Install All in One SEO Pack for WordPress SEO via
Plugins admin or download from WordPress.org
Plugin page: https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-
seo-pack/

Find UA tracking number

Add UA tracking number
https://semperplugins.com/documentation/setting-up-google-analytics/

Verify
• Register domain name with Google Search Console
• Click “Verify”
• Select “Google Analytics.” If you have GA set up
already with your UA code in AIOSEO, then you
should be able to verify instantly.
• Alternatively, use Google Meta to verify.

Google Meta
Copy value between “” marks

Alternative Verification
Paste value between “” marks in GWT field, then save.
Same for Bing and Pinterest

XML Sitemap
• AIOSEO has a built in XML sitemap generator
• A sitemap is a list of all URLs you want Google and other
search engines to crawl. It makes it more efficient for Google
to find, crawl, and index your site.
• Authenticates your site and let’s Google know you exist.
• Generates sitemap with a click. Then, find your sitemap at
http:// or https://mydomain.com/sitemap.xml
• Set Sitemap Indexes to 1000. Google paginates sitemaps to
help parse them into digestible chunks.

Sitemap View

Add Sitemap to Search
Console

Add variations
• HTTPS://mydomain.com
• HTTP://mydomain.com
• HTTPS://www.mydomain.com
• HTTP://www.mydomain.com
Add multiple site maps to cover the four different
variations of you domain.

URL Variations
• New Feature: Domains
• Will include all your URL
variations under the primary
domain.

Note: To verify, Bing may require upload of html file to top level directory
Bing Webmaster Tools

Other Webmaster Tools
• WordPress.com Help:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-
tools/
• Pinterest:
https://semperplugins.com/documentation/pintere
st-site-verification/
• Baidu:
http://zhanzhang.baidu.com/?castk=LTE%3D (in
Chinese)
• Yandex: https://webmaster.yandex.com/

News Sitemap

Available in All in One SEO Pack Pro
Video Sitemap

Image Sitemap
Coming Soon in All in One SEO Pack

Get free SSL Encryption

Ways to get free SSL
• Google views SSL encryption as a minor ranking signal.
• Some hosts are now providing free SSL. WP Engine is one of them.
• LetsEncrypt.org
• Transfer DNS to cloudflare.com and site will be automatically SSL
enabled. Need to install WordPress Cloudflare plugin.
• Extended Validation (EV) SSL is not free. Visit VeriSign, Comodo, or
other providers. Adds company name next to the green lock icon in the
browser URL bar:
• In Google Webmaster Tools you want to add both http and https URLs
and Sitemaps, so if someone types in either, your site is tracked with
both methods.

Set WordPress Permalinks

Edit Post Permalink

Page Speed Optimization
• Google Page Speed Insights
• YSlow
• GT Metrix

Google Page Speed Insights

Page Speed Optimization
• Optimize server response time by tuning Apache or leveraging NGINX on
the server.
• Cache your site pages and media either with Amazon Cloudfront and a
caching plugin (Total Cache or Super Cache) or your hosts caching service.
WP Engine comes with object caching and you can upgrade for media
caching.
• Compress all images using WP Smush, EWWW Image Optimizer
• Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (remove whitespace)
• Above the Fold Optimization
• Fix Render Blocking javascript issues
• Leverage Browser cache expiry

Start with…
• Reliable and fast WordPress managed host that uses
NGINX as their server software - not shared hosting with
Apache web sever.
• WP Engine, Flywheel, etc.
• Object Caching
• Serves cached pages in HTML to speed delivery
• CDN
• Serves images via CDN from closest local server

Need to know about
Caching & CDN
• You could use Total Cache or Super Cache with a
shared host, but at the end of the day, it will COST
you $$$ and time to set this up and manage it,
possibly connecting your site to Amazon Cloudfront
and Amazon S3, which is an additional cost. Might
be pennies, but it’s a PITA.
• Why do all this when you can get it out of the box
with a good hosting solution?

Remove Google js

https://wordpress.org/plugins/host-analyticsjs-local/
CAOS

Above The Fold
Optimization

Autoptimize

Main Admin Screen

Critical Path CSS

ASYNC

Asset CleanUp Page
Speed Booster

Admin View Asset CleanUp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATXACFtcyKs

Warning
• Don’t implement Autoptimize or Above The Fold
Optimization on a LIVE site
• Work in staging, optimize, check in a browser
testing tool, then launch when all is well

Accelerated Mobile Pages
(AMP)

WordPress AMP Plugin

schema.org
• For Local SEO (show times, open hours, flight data,
etc.)
• Supported by All in One SEO Pack
• Hours of Operation, Reviews, Show Times,
Playlists, etc…
• Google will not publish star reviews against your
home page - will only publish them on an inside
landing page

Google Answer Box
https://moz.com/blog/how-to-appear-in-googles-answer-boxes-whiteboard-friday

Breadcrumbs
• In 2015,
Google
replaced the
URL in mobile
search with
breadcrumbs.

Why Breadcrumbs?

How to Implement
Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumb Trail

Add to Theme
<?php if ( function_exists( 'breadcrumb_trail' ) ) breadcrumb_trail(); ?>
• Add Breadcrumb code to theme template
• Style w/ CSS

Redirection
https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/

Image SEO
• Resize and compress images before upload or
plugin can resize and compress
• WP Smush
• Imagify
• Short Pixel

Image SEO in WordPress

Change your Filenames!
• Always rename your
image file:
• From: 00001.jpg
• ford-focus-4cyl-
2018.jpg
• If you need to rename
image files AFTER
upload, then use Media
File Renamer
• Rename title can also
rename file name.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/media-file-renamer/

WP Review

All in One SEO Pack
Demonstration

Questions?

Slides
https://slideshare.net/tonyzeoli
Tony Zeoli
Coaching | Training
https://tonyzeoli.com
Agency
https://digitalstrategyworks.com
Links Contact
@tonyzeoli
/tonyzeoliwp
/in/tonyzeoli
828-412-0990
az@digitalstrategyworks.com
WordPress for Small Business
https://facebook.com/wpsmallbiz

WordPress SEO for Beginners: WordCamp Raleigh 2019

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