This presentation will be done via WordPress instead of PowerPoint. Basically because I was too lazy to want to upload a PP somewhere online. So I build it here instead. (I registered the domain Yesterday and build this fairly fast)

About Me

Configuring WordPress with SEO in Mind

Cutting through the SEO plugin Haze

Themes Make or Break SEO on WP

Content for Search not for Readers

Build Links to Your WordPress Site

You can get all the content of this presentation here…

www.wcmseo.com

Content and Links.

Out of the two, you can get first page rankings using links alone, you can not do the same with content. Some in the industry claim this proves that links are more important than content. I’ll let you decide since we are short in time and that debate usualaly takes hours. I will say that YOU NEED TO HAVE LINKS.

Blog Rolls

Blog Rolls are basically out-bound links from your site to other sites. The idea here is to get your site listed on as many Blog Rolls as you can. Now one things to be aware of, this can be considered “reciprocal linking” and in today’s environment this can cause you problems. the best practice here is to get your site listed on many more “Blog Rolls” than you have sites listed in yours.

No-Follow .vs Follow links

There is a large debate about this in the SEO industry. Many site owners are very diligent about using these and others are very proud to boast that they dont. It’s your call.

Using No-Follow on your site comments will help to prevent comment spammers and marketors from doing drive-by commenting. they are only doing this to gete a link to their site, this wont help them when you use the default no-follow setting of wordPress. Its a waste of their time.

There are actually search engines dedicated to finding no-follow blogs just for these marketers to use for link building. If you use a one of the popular Do-Follow WP Plugins, it is fairly easy to identify the site.

Advantages include the appearance of a busy blog due to all the comments and some viable community members will not participate if they don’t get any link value from their activity

This Site

This site is one of many possible out of the box  ways to build links to a site. Using this blog as my presentation will most likely prompt some of the attendees to link to the site instead of a PowerPoint. At some time this site may build some weight due to links and I can then link to other sites of mine to pass the link Jiuce.

Now that that is out of the way, readers wont find you using search engines if you don’t write for them as well. Lets take a look at some content issues related to how you apply content to your WordPress site.

Pages .vs Posts

Big difference is the ability to categorize and tag posts. This can pass internal relevancy to these posts, an advantage Pages don’t have. Comments can make a difference.

Excerpts

Writing excerpts for post and pages is a simple way to focus relevancy to internal pages and posts without the potential of duplicate content issues. Your theme must support publishing excerpts.

Keywords and Targeting

Ok .. kinda obvious, but people still don’t think about it. Determine your primary topic and the phrase you want to use to represent that topic. Make sure you are consistent in your usage and phrasing.

Use the phrase in the following locations…

• Slug
• Title
• Headings
• First paragraph
• Last paragraph
• Outbound links
• Image “Alt” text
• Meta Description Tag
• Meta Keyword Tag

Use top level keywords in your primary navigation to pass relevancy to internal pages.

Content Basics

• 300-500 words per page or post
• Target no more than 2 phrases per page (should be related)
• Write in focused paragraphs
• Do not dilute the page with too much content

I wont say this is the definitave list, but if you use these you have most of the bases covered and will have the tools to keep your site fairly optimized.

• All in One SEO Pack
• Do Follow
• Extended Comment Options
• Google XML Sitemaps
• No Duplicate Content
• Robots Meta
• SEO Tag Cloud Widget
  

We will walk though the basic settings and usage of these at the live session.

Lets take a look at a few settings that may impact your site optimization …

• General Settings: Title and Tagline
• Writing: Update Services: Make sure you dont remove
• Reading Settings: # of posts to show: I use 5
• Discussion Settings: Defaults: Good, Autoclose Comments : 30 days
• Privacy Settings: Let the engines see the site
• Permalink Structure: Custom Structure:  /%postname% .html

This may seem basic common sense, but you wouldnt believe the number of issues I have seen due to someone trying something different with one of these settings.