How to SEO the Crap Out of WordPress

• andy

  said

  A couple weeks ago I attended WordCamp Nashville and saw an excellent presentation on SEO from Jon Henshaw (@RavenJon) of Raven Tools. It really impressed me because he used a common sense approach to SEO instead of the typical “Yoast” things you usually hear. The core concepts were not about cross linking, repetitive keyword usage or any other “tricks” to get people to your site. He spoke about the foundations of making a good website and I walked away with a higher opinion of SEO experts.

  The key points he touched on included:

  1. Information Architecture

  - Content structure should reflect the purpose of the site and take into consideration CTAs (Call to Actions)
  - Navigation and overall URL naming convention should be keyword centirc.
  - Categories, use them sparingly and deliberately.
  - Tags, avoid them unless you have a good use case for them.
  - Include trust signals on your site like Privacy Policy, Terms of Use and About Us pages.

  2. User Experience

  - Branding matters.
  - Layout affects UX and SEO. A good layout can reduce bounce rate, increase time on site, establish trust, make the page load faster.
  - Mobile layout matters.

  3. Code

  - Use HTML5, allow the semantic elements to communicate meaning and purpose to search engines.
  - Invisible Power, don’t forget META, Open Graph and Authorship data. (this is where you use Yoast )
  - Schema.org (micro data), structured data can improve rankings and how those rankings are displayed.

  4. Performance

  - Speed is a ranking factor and makes users happy.
  - If you don’t use it… DON’T USE IT. Prune the HTML, CSS and JavaScript to your core requirements.
  - Use GZIP compression.
  - Use a good hosting provider. Cheap and shared hosting can experience serious performance problems.
  - Use a CDN for assets.
  - Use caching for speed.

  5. Plugins

  - Plugins should be used sparingly and carefully.
  - Yoast’s WordPress SEO Plugin (he recommends it, after you’ve done the other things listed above first)
  - Gravity Forms (I will also recommend the incredible Ninja Forms from James Laws, http://ninjaforms.com )
  - Schema Creator (http://schema-creator.org/)

  We’ve added our notes in (parentheses) above. I think that some excellent points were made, especially with regard to the topics of caching, having a good host, GZIP compression and minimizing plugin usage. It’s easy to overlook the simple things that make a big difference. These are excellent tips so I wanted to share them with you. To view the slides from this presentation, go here: http://media.raventools.com/presentations/wordcamp-seo/assets/player/KeynoteDHTMLPlayer.html

  If you want to know more about the services provide by Jon Henshaw of Raven Tools, check them out here: http://raventools.com/

• malekovitch

  said

  Great topic @andy. I read all the presentation in the link you shared.
  Very usefull.

• Gunn4r

  said

  What do you feel constitutes a “Good” hosting provider?

• andy

  said

  @Gunn4r I believe he was saying to avoid free hosting, shared hosting and as always, GoDaddy.

• tracylove

  said

  I have several sites with Visual Composer installed. I love VC, but it seems to conflict with Yoast SEO. Yoast reports that keywords aren’t in headers,or body no images on pages, etc. My fear is that VC doesn’t good for SEO. I see many others asking about this issue in different places, but nobody ever seems to get a complete answer.

  I want to know if there is some good reason VC conflicts with Yoast, and is VC good for SEO? If so, how can I check my errors if I can’t use Yoast with VC?

• andy

  said

  I don’t know anything about VC and Yoast SEO conflicts. I’ve never seen one but it sounds like a conversation to have with WPBakery, the creator of VC. They are going to be the only ones that can answer something like this as my knowledge of the plugin is only as complete as it needs to be in relation to making the theme’s custom shortcodes integrate and styling the ones included with VC.

• blu42

  said

  Thanks for this andy!

  The only point mentioned that I’m new to is GZIP compression. After googling it a bit, it seems like there are a few ways to enable GZIP compression – how do I decide which method to use?

  http://softstribe.com/wordpress/enable-gzip-compression-in-wordpress
  http://www.mstoic.com/enable-gzip-compression-wordpress/

• jeffw

  said

  GZIP compression can often be enabled as an option in your server control panel. Ask your web host if you need advice about that.

  If you need help with generic WordPress issues – i.e. issues which are not related to whatever theme you happen to be using – please go to the WordPress support forum for your support. → http://wordpress.org/support/

• eddiejanzer

  said

  I think Yoast and VC do not really conflict but Yoast only pulls from the editor, ignores shorcodes. I use Advance Custom Fields and the same issue comes up. Yoast does not read all the content on the page, only the default editor.

• gvbstudios

  said

  Can you expand upon the points regarding using categories and tags sparingly? I’m building my podcast network’s site with Vellum, and I’m using tags and categories to display the correct episodes archive on each of our “show pages”. I couldn’t think of a simpler way to achieve it, but if it’s a bad idea, I’d like to brainstorm another option before committing.

• jeffw

  said

  You mean you want to know the reasons why Jon Henshaw advised that you use categories “sparingly and deliberately” and avoid using tags “unless you have a good use case for them”? That advice I think is clear enough, but if you want to know the reasons for that advice I think you will need to ask Jon Henshaw himself because we at Parallelus are not SEO experts. Just search the internet for “john henshaw seo” and you should be able to find him (or try @RavenJon on twitter).

• machine1376

  said

  Great info Andy!
  I just wanted to add for the audience here to etch number 3 into your brains! Categories and tags are the old hat (black) of doing things. Keyword stuffing into things like tags, categories, descriptions etc. are what made Google bring the hammer down. Metadata is also something you need to be careful of in regards to keywords. STAY AWAY FROM METADATA KEYWORDS. Keep it relevant and in it’s proper category (through schema), Once Google crawls your site, that Panda will eat up your yummy content like fresh bamboo and will reward you for sticking to the rules by offering relevancy.
  Schema’s microdata and metadata snippets are also a life saver for hyperlocal SEO as well (local area businesses).

• numberone

  said

  Nice post. I agree with most of it. I’m not sure about pruning CSS & JS since that can change with an update. It’s also difficult to find which code you are utilizing throughout the site.