No Bullshit SEO. This Stuff Works: The WordPress Edition
By Aaron Van Noy of Big Ten Web Design
INTRODUCTION
WHO IS THIS GUY?
‣ I’m Aaron Van Noy, owner of BigTenWebDesign.com HOW DID I GET STARTED WITH SEO?
‣ Intrigued by getting my first websites found online my freshman year, 1995-1996. I took “Hello
World” to a whole new level.
‣ Owned multiple top-ranking pinball websites back in early 2000.
‣ Worked for Medical Legal Art helping get their website found online.
‣ Transitioned into website design and SEO years later. WHAT AM I ASHAMED OF?
‣ I did metadata keyword stuffing before I knew what black hat SEO was back in early 2000s, but I never
did hidden text that matched the same color as the background color.
SEO IS DEAD (WELL, BLACK HAT IS)
Scam Artists hurt the industry
‣ Scam artists selling “snake oil” and often they don’t do anything that will benefit the website, almost always nothing measurable for the customer.
‣ Callers saying register your Google Business Page and when you ask them what company they are associated with they quickly hang up.
‣ Callers saying they work for Google/Bing (like it is the same company) ‣ People selling you multiple positive online reviews on Google and/or
Facebook reviews that will increase your rankings.
‣ Backlink Farms: Selling hundreds of “top quality” backlinks to your site for money.
‣ Scam artists trying to sell you multiple BlackHat SEO techniques that if they do implement them they will only be temporary, but in the long run will get your website penalized on Google SERP results.
‣ Who’s Emails inbox isn’t flooded?
WHAT I’LL BE TEACHING YOU IN THIS TRAINING SEMINAR
(and SEO)
ONPAGE SEO
ONPAGE SEO (PAGE 1)
WEBSITE BEST PRACTICES START BEFORE YOU UPLOAD IMAGES
‣ Image file naming practices:
‣ Be descriptive of what you see in the image. Originally I was trying to paint a picture for Google to understand what was in the image because back then Google didn’t have image recognition software. Little did I know it was helping out people with accessibility issues as well. It doesn’t have to be extremely long. Keep it short but long file names will not hurt either.
Close up of the eyes on a Tortoiseshell cat.jpg
New Medieval Madness pinball machine by Planetary Pinball.jpg
ONPAGE SEO (PAGE 2)
A MUST: YOAST SEO PLUGIN FOR WORDPRESS (OR ALL IN ONE SEO PACK)
‣ WordPress, maybe some day, will have all of the features built in without needing to use a
plugin to extend it’s functionality. But until then, you should use your favorite SEO plugin.
QUICK OVERVIEW OF YOAST —>
ONPAGE SEO (PAGE 3)
‣ Readability has become much more important recently. Be sure to break up your text content into readable titles and paragraphs using <h1>, <p>, <h2>, <p>, <h3>, <p> etc.
‣ Original text content is somewhat important. It’s even more important that it is not plagiarized.
‣ Don’t know the tangential content as well as another website? This is the web! Do not feel shy to link your page to other sites. In fact, you will outrank other sites often by doing exactly this. Even if it is a competitor’s website. I’m sure you’ve Googled something and found yellowpages.com is the number one choice by Google. It’s because they have 25+ links on that page that may answer that question for you. Not because that site is quality.
‣ Yoast Readability feature may not work with your page builder.
ONPAGE SEO (PAGE 4)
SOCIAL MEDIA
ONPAGE SEO (PAGE 5)
INDEXING OPTIONS
‣ A canonical tag (aka “rel canonical”) is a way of telling search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page. Using the canonical tag prevents problems caused by identical or “duplicate” content appearing on multiple URLs.
ONPAGE SEO (PAGE 6)
SOME ADDITIONAL OPTIONS ON THE PAID VERSION
ONPAGE SEO
FEATURES
ONPAGE SEO (PAGE 8)
COMPANY INFO
ONPAGE SEO (PAGE 9)
SOCIAL PROFILE LINKING
‣ This takes the guess work out of the rel=”author” tag (more on Rich Snippets, Schema & Microdata later)
ONPAGE SEO (PAGE 10)
XML SITEMAP
‣ You’ll need this URL for Google Webmaster Tools (I’ll go over that soon)
ONPAGE SEO (PAGE 11)
301 REDIRECTS
‣ Change a URL on your website for migration or just change the URL for other reasons and you then want to let Google (and other search engines) know that the page has moved. You can usually retain the same ranking for the original page doing it this way.
ONPAGE SEO (PAGE 12)
ACCESSIBILITY
‣ I recommend watching the lovely lady Andrea Skeries’s presentation about accessibility for WordPress. You can find it online at: http://btwd.io/accessibility
‣ Also make your youtube videos accessible with subtitles.
ONPAGE SEO (PAGE 13)
RICH SNIPPETS, SCHEMA & MICRODATA
‣ Manually ad Rich Snippets to your HTML code.
‣ http://schema.org/docs/schemas.html
‣ Google is recognizing more types of rich snippet including products, video, music info, restaurants, business organizations, people and authors. Yes, the rel=“author” is schema. Odds are you’ve already used it.
‣ Test your Schema with Google’s Structured Data testing tool: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/
‣ There is a WordPress Plugin called “Rich Snippets WordPress Plugin” of all things!
ONPAGE SEO (PAGE 14)
WORDPRESS SECURITY
‣ Add an SSL
‣ Get a Free SSL via Let’s Encrypt if your hosting environment has that options.
‣ Security Plugin of your choice
‣ WordFence
‣ Sucuri
‣ SiteLock (not an actual plugin) ‣ Etc.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT?
‣ Hacked sites show up in Google searches as “This website may be hacked” and if not fixed quickly enough may be banned from Google’s SERP.
‣ User trust will be lost (and I’m guessing Google’s as well)
ONPAGE SEO (PAGE 15)
UPTIME MONITORING
‣ Monitor your website’s uptime. If your site is down more than ~5% of the time, I would recommend migrating your website to a different hosting company.
‣ After all, Google doesn’t want to send traffic in your direction and not have it up and running. FREE UPTIME MONITORS
‣ https://www.godaddy.com/pro (has a free uptime monitor)
‣ https://uptimerobot.com (50 Monitors, Checked Every 5 Minutes, Totally Free!)
‣ https://www.pingdom.com/free
‣ https://managewp.com (NOT FREE, but has LOTS of things, now owned by GoDaddy)
ONPAGE SEO (PAGE 16)
LOADING SPEED
‣ Slow loading websites will lead to people “bouncing” off your site and going somewhere else. Statistics show that 25% of people will look for another website if the site hasn’t loaded in 4 seconds.
‣ Solutions are often reducing image sizes that are being shown to the end user and combining Javascript files into one download location vs. multiple sites.
FREE LOAD SPEED CHECKERS
‣ tools.Pingdom.com (industry standard)
‣ https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ (PageSpeed Insights by Google)
‣ https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com (not sure if this is Google or not actually. Whois says yes.) ‣ https://www.webpagetest.org (emulates load times on phones and more)
‣ https://www.dareboost.com/en/home (Worked, not sure how well)
STRESS TEST YOUR WEBSITE (MULTI USER EMULATION)
‣ LoadImpact.com (Industry standard)
‣ https://www.paessler.com/tools/webstress
OFFPAGE SEO
BUSINESS PAGES
OFFPAGE SEO (PAGE 1)
SIGN UP FOR FREE BUSINESS DIRECTORIES (ESPECIALLY RELATED TO SEARCH ENGINES)
Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) BING PLACES FOR BUSINESS
‣ Register your company, brand, etc on both Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) and Bing Places for Business pages.
‣ You can also sign up on other business directory pages. See a list here btwd.io/directories. Please note I do not think backlinks like these are nearly as important as they once were. I think this is a good way for some people to stumble upon your website.
OFFPAGE SEO (PAGE 2)
WHAT Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) PAGE DOES
‣ Show up under Google searches on maps for local results.
‣ Show up under Google Knowledge Panel
OFFPAGE SEO (PAGE 3)
Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) PAGE SETUP
OFFPAGE SEO (PAGE 4)
Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) PAGE SETUP
OFFPAGE SEO (PAGE 5)
Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) PAGE
‣ Name of Business ‣ Categories
‣ Address
‣ Business Hours
‣ Specialty Houses Closed ‣ Phone number
‣ Website Address
‣ Add photos (Location, People working, etc.)
OFFPAGE SEO (PAGE 6)
DISPLAY YOUR GOOGLE+ BADGE
‣ This was designed for the average user as an
easy way to link your business page to your website.
‣ http://btwd.io/badge
‣ You’ll notice the data- rel=“author” code in the
code that they create for you.
OFFPAGE SEO (PAGE 7)
DISPLAY YOUR GOOGLE+ BADGE
‣ I would use this version because the other is a space
hog in the footer area.
OFFPAGE SEO (PAGE 8)
Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) PAGES FOR COMPANIES THAT HAVE MULTIPLE LOCATIONS
‣ When you have a business with multiple locations you will still want to verify each and every location. Then have a dedicated page on the site for every location with link back to that specific Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) page. Be sure to have that dedicated location be the main domain on your Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) page.
‣ For example on the Davenport Laundromania Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) page you will see the URL of http://laundromania.com/davenport/
OFFPAGE SEO (PAGE 9)
BING PLACES FOR BUSINESS
‣ Setup is about the same as Google (Just like Bing’s PPC ads are the same as Google’s) minus some creative options.
WEBMASTER TOOLS
GOOGLE & BING (BUT MOSTLY GOOGLE)
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 1)
ADD YOUR WEBSITE TO GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 2)
ADD A SITEMAP IN GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS
XML SITEMAP FROM YOUR WEBSITE
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 3)
GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE OVERVIEW
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 4)
DATA HIGHLIGHTER
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 5)
SEARCH TRAFFIC
‣ Search Analytics
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 6)
SEARCH TRAFFIC
‣ Links to your site
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 7)
SEARCH TRAFFIC
‣ Internal links
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 8)
SEARCH TRAFFIC
‣ Manual Actions
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 9)
SEARCH TRAFFIC
‣ International Targeting (Language & Country)
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 10)
SEARCH TRAFFIC
‣ Mobile Usability is measuring button sizes, navigation, etc.
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 11)
GOOGLE INDEX
‣ Index Status chart. Higher is better here.
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 12)
GOOGLE INDEX
‣ Blocked Resources (lower is usually better Yet you may want to keep some folders blocked)
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 13)
GOOGLE INDEX
‣ Remove URLs. Don’t want content indexed; you can submit it for removal here.
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 14)
CRAWL
‣ Site Errors (The errors here look like it was from some kind of attack on the site, looking for a vulnerability)
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 15)
CRAWL
‣ Crawl Stats: Shows how much your site is crawled per day, Kilobytes downloaded per day, and time spent downloading page.
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 16)
CRAWL
‣ Fetch as Google: Ask Google to index a new page and get it online and searchable within minutes.
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 17)
CRAWL
‣ robots.txt tester: Block and allow pages to be accessed here.
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 18)
CRAWL
‣ Sitemaps: See how many pages are submitted vs. how many are indexed. (I’ve never found this to be accurate. This site has 213 pages indexed on Google.)
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 19)
CRAWL
‣ URL Parameters: Shows errors if you have any.
WEBMASTER TOOLS (PAGE 20)
SECURITY ISSUES
‣ Currently none. Also make sure notifications are turned on so Google can email you if any issues are found on/with your website.
Q & A?
THANK YOU FOR WATCHING
