Category Archives: Wordpress Tips
6 quick reasons WordPress SEO is NOT about Plugins
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OK, WordPress SEO is assisted by Plugins, but if you are expecting them to do the job for you, think again.
SEO plugins are easy to find and they do some great work, for example, All-in-One SEO Pack, Google XML Site Maps, and SEO Ultimate all add to the inherently SEO-friendly nature of WordPress. However, there is more to SEO than just plugins.
Here are some easy basics that you should always keep in mind for your blog posts and SEO Strategy.
1. Good Content and Keywords.
I know, we’ve all heard it before, right? That’s because it’s true. Good content is the basis for good SEO. You want backlinks? Write something worth linking to.
You want Google to take your page seriously? Make sure you are speaking the language it considers serious for the search results you want, i.e. keywords and phrases.
This topic has been beaten into the ground on blogs everywhere, so I’ll leave it at that.
2. Fresh Content.
Search engines love fresh content. This means you need to keep writing. Sometimes life just gets in the way, but you have to keep getting back in the habit. There is a saying I love “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is right now.” If you have some downtime and don’t write for a while, don’t worry about it or give up, just get back on the horse and start writing again.
3. Keep track of what people are reading; on your blog and elsewhere.
Set up analytics both on your blog and with the search engines. It is essential to set up Google Webmaster tools and Google Analytics. Once you see what people are reading you have a sense of why the came to your blog; cater to these people, they are your audience. This doesn’t mean you never branch out, but definitely play to your strengths.
On your blog, be sure and check your WordPress stats for the same information. In this case, there are some plugins that are handy for expanding on that information, the key is to actually use the information they give, and that is up to you to do.
What are people reading elsewhere? That leads to…
4. Do the search that you want to rank in.
Do you want on the first page for “Holistic Life Coach”? Then do a search on that phrase and see what comes up, read some of the articles and pay attention to which articles are getting real comments. I think it is generally a good idea to set up Google Alerts for your search terms. Google alerts will send an email to you with what it finds out on the web according to the setting you give it.
5. Bookmark your WordPress Posts
You’ll want to bookmark your posts on services like Digg, Delicious, Hi5 and StumbleUpon. There are semi-automated services like OnlyWire to assist in the efffort, but you will still have to follow-up on many of the services. Some people complain about it being slow, but I haven’t really had that experience.
6. Be Social! (But not spammy!)
Comment on other blogs that are relevant to your topic. Don’t spam, be social; make relevant comments.
Set up a Facebook Page. If you have a personal Facebook account it will probably take about 10 minutes to set up. After it is set up and has some content, invite everyone you can to it. From here, you can also consider Facebook advertising for your page. I’ve seen the Facebook advertising work pretty well, just make sure you are targeting appropriately and write compelling ads.
Twitter… Honestly, I’m not the greatest fan of Twitter, but there is no denying that it has made some great strides for some people. Here’s a tip that may seem counter-intuitive; promote others more than you do yourself on Twitter. It’s a great way to get attention. Also, once again, be social, don’t spam.
Set up a LinkedIn account for yourself. Most people see LinkedIn as a job search tool, but it is much more than that. Join some discussion groups; make relevant comments and link back to your blog. Be interesting, be social and don’t spam. (Sense a theme here?)
Under this heading I would also add Comment Moderation. Moderate your comments to get rid of spam and respond to the real comments. Keep the conversation going as much as you can.
Web Traffic 2: Why Do I Spend Time at Certain Websites?
In my last post I examined which websites I go to in an effort to remind myself that Internet Marketing is about marketing to people; and in my case, people like me.
I put together a list of non-work surfing that looked something like this;
GMail
Facebook
Links in Facebook take me to Youtube and a news story
Twitter
Google Reader (Mostly local news and weather)
I clicked through to 3 stories from a local paper
Yahoo News
I clicked through to a News Story about Frank Frazetta
Wikipedia Article About Frank Frazetta
Wikipedia Article About Flash Gordon (Frazetta did the art for many of the book covers)
3 -4 other Wikipedia Articles (I won’t bore you)
Back to Google Reader for other news and friends’ Blogs.
Webcomics
How did I most commonly end up at a given website?
Suggestions from friends took me to two websites.
About eighteen websites were reached through news aggregators.
I think I read a total of six Wikipedia articles, despite going there for just one.
Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo are just habit, but really Twitter and Facebook are another type of news aggregator, just with a social bent to them.
What do I extrapolate from this?
I like aggregators; I like my news to be delivered to me.
I like simple easy to use websites with bare-bones navigation, like Wikipedia.
I like to get news from my friends.
I like to be entertained.
What does this mean about a website I’m working on?
There needs to be a clear way to subscribe via email, RSS, Facebook and Twitter.
The information I want needs to be easy to find and easy to navigate.
I want a more personal tone with an entertaining feel rather than boring text-book like content.
With this in mind, it is easy to create content for PEOPLE, not Google’s Robots, Yahoo’s Slurp or Bing’s MsnBot.
Web Traffic : What websites did you go to today?
When optimizing for web traffic we sometimes forget about the purely human personal element. It’s so easy to get caught up in backlinks, page rank, and keywords that we forget that PEOPLE are what drive website traffic.
To sort of “reset” and remind myself of this I have a reminder set up in my Google Calendar that asks “What websites did you go to today?” When it comes up, I try to take a moment to sit back and list every where I went. I don’t list “work” surfing I’ve done, just personal surfing.
For example, yesterday I started out like I usually do; I checked Gmail, Facebook and Twitter, then I scanned Yahoo News and my Google News Reader feeds. It took me to a bit of sad point as I found out Frank Frazetta died. It would be tough for Frank Frazetta to get popular doing the same art these days, but nobody can deny his talent and legacy. I mean, his art, and imitations thereof, was spread all over groovy vans and corvettes throughout the seventies!
There are some friends’ blogs that I had to surf as they came up on my feeds; Splarks for some amusing stories, Inverted Sky for some great photography, some political junk that usually just makes me irritated (that I won’t share) and even Evolving Mommy. I’m not anywhere near being a mom, but it’s my niece’s blog and she’s really quite clever and interesting.
Then as the day wound down I ended up clearing my mind with a ridiculously long list of webcomics (that somehow keeps getting longer. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to sleep if I keep adding on to that list).
The work stuff? I checked some latest WordPress news, SEO news, Yahoo Answers (because it’s kinda fun), Majestic, Google Analytics, etc… You know, all that stuff we fill our heads with every day.
So what do I do with this list? I ask myself some questions, like how did I end up at any given website? What searches led me where, what news readers am I using, how many links did I follow from Facebook and Twitter (more from facebook, definitely), why did I spend so much time on Wikipedia?
In the next SEO Once Over post I’ll answer some of these questions.
Remember, you need to target people, not robots and spiders, and usually, you need to target people kind of like you. Who are you?
One Important and Easy Way to Optimize Your WordPress Site
If you have a WordPress site, you will want to use this plugin. It speeds up your website by creating static HTML pages from your dynamic WordPress content.
WordPress is an excellent tool for creating a personal blog, a business blog and can even be used for small ecommerce applications, but a dynamic website can slow down how fast the pages load. Page speed is important to optimization and WP Super Cache can help some sites dramatically decrease page loading time. This plugin creates a static HTML page from your wordpress pages it will serve them up instead of the dynamic pages.
Also, there are options to decide who gets served static pages and also which pages get cached and which don’t.
This plugin is essential if your site suddenly has to cope with huge numbers of daily visitors. For example, if one of your articles appeared on Digg or Slashdot you might see a spike in traffic that causes issues for your server. With WP Super Cache the burden on your host’s ability to serve those pages will be greatly reduced.
In other words, you need not fear success!